Candor, part III
Supergirl #8
One Year Later
Cover Date: September 2006
Released: 26th July 2006
- Writers: Joe Kelly
- Pencilers: Ron Adrian
- Inker: Norm Rapmund / Rob Lea
- Colourists: David Moran / Beth Sotelo
- Letterer: Comicraft
- Editors: Jeanine Schaefer / Eddie Berganza
Despite what the cover “promises” us this is not a fight between Kara’s, though that means it’s mostly a Supergirl story. Which as pointed about before it’s only fairs, as it’s comic after all!
After a quick recap of the church gloating we open with a full page spread of Pee Gee, in chains, in her Nightwing costume, with the costume torn to give her a boob window, because subtly is for weaklings!
Meanwhile Supergirl is being prepared for a wedding to Kal-el, obviously must point out they are (kinda sorta) cousins. Saturn Queen gets to call her mother, so maybe it’s some kind of weird fetish thing, not I’m here to judge villains here!
And whilst we get less Pee Gee here, we do get a great scene where Saturn Queen tries to break Karen. Whilst not telling Saturn Queen about the resistance she makes a joke about Professor Plum, not a big deal except recently it’s been implied that Pee Gee, or the current version on Earth-0, doesn’t get idioms. It’s confirmed here that the very psychic Saturn Queen is in some way controlling Supergirl, she claims it didn’t take much but almost instantly suffers the nose bleed of losing psychic control that claim must be in doubt.
Kara is talking to Kal-El, who is enjoying a nice bathe in artificial yellow sun lamps. She has a series of killin’ Kal-El flashes, that seems to be counteracting the control, whilst Kal-El is totally oblivious to her murderous intent. And we finally learn, thanks to psychic exposition, that this isn’t our Kal-El but Ultraman, the evil Superman from Earth-3’s Crime League. Saturn Queen tries to calm Supergirl by literally impersonating her mother, but she breaks the conditioning and attacks Saturn Queen. She tries to stick Ultraman on Supergirl, but it goes bady with Kara hitting him so hard he hits to side of the bottle.
Meanwhile Pee Gee is about to executed, being suitably resilient and defiant, when Supergirl knocks down the executioner. We then get a nice little panel where Supergirl apologises after a Pee Gee asks if they are on the same side. Ultraman turns up and the two get to finally beat him down, there actions causing the aliens to uprise to overthrow the tyrants.
With Ultraman down Supergirl pauses about to potentially kill him, Pee Gee trying to again talk her down from taking the final step. Instead Saturn Queen offers her something, we don’t know what, but it’s enough for Kara to leave him alive. We don’t know it yet, but they’ll soon be leaving Kandor II to it’s fate…
It’s weird that everything competently told, but it also feel rushed and unfinished, we never see them leaving Kandor or learn how it happens. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a good story and we get some great moments of Pee Gee being great and Ultraman and Saturn Queen are great villains, even if we don’t see much of her until the later half of the story. The main issue I have is Supergirl, dark angsty potential killer Kara isn’t someone I’m interested in, especially as we keep hitting that same note about her wanting to kill Kal-El. And we don’t get that moment where she just decides not to do the thing, it’s always something that gets in the way to stop here doing the deed.