| Supergirl: Last Daughter of Krypton | |
| November 2011 — May 2012 | |
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| Writers | Michael Green, Mike Johnson |
| Artists | Mahmud Asrar |
| Comic Book Story Arcs | |
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Supergirl: Last Daughter of Krypton is a storyline told in the pages of the Supergirl comic book.
Supergirl #1
- Date: November 2011
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Dan Green, Mahmud Asrar
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
Near Kansas, a group of meteors crashes through the earth, monitored closely by a government organization. The lead meteor travels through the earth's crust and mantle, and winds up in Siberia, Russia.
From the crater crawls Kara Zor-El, who believes that she must be dreaming. Confused by the fact that she's wearing a uniform that she is not meant to be wearing yet, and the appearance of a blizzard on what she believes is Krypton, Kara can't imagine that it couldn't be a dream.
Suddenly, she is surrounded by a number of men in metal suits, speaking a language she cannot understand. Suddenly, they restrain her with powerful ropes that hurt her. Feeling confused and set upon, Kara realizes that this isn't a dream after all - and when she notices that the sun is yellow, she realizes that this is not Krypton.
Almost against her will, Kara unleashes her heat-vision on her captors, and attempts escape. Others come after her, and she is overwhelmed by the discovery of her own impressive strength. Deciding to simply run away, she is again overcome by the sudden onset of her super-hearing, faced with a barrage of sounds from across the globe. As the soldiers close in on her, she becomes enraged, and tears one of their suits away until she grips a mere man in her fist. She demands to know where she is and who he is, but he can't understand her Kryptonian.
They can neither understand her, nor she them, and they find themselves at an impasse. Unexpectedly, a blur of red and blue passes behind Kara, and she turns to see Superman flying overhead. In Kryptonian, he commands her to stop.
Supergirl #2
- Date: December 2011
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Dan Green
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
Kara remembers that just three days ago, she had been tasked with babysitting her infant cousin Kal-El, in lieu of studying for her final trials. When she passed the trials, she would finally get the privilege of wearing the family crest.
Now, she is in a whole different world, being accosted by a man who wears that family crest, and speaks Kryptonian. He demands to know who she is, but she won't answer his questions. He is taken aback when she finally tells him that she is Kara Zor-El of Argo City. Confused, he responds that if what she says is true, he is Kal-El, her cousin, and grown up.
Kara believes he is lying, and punches him hard. As they fight across the snowy landscape of Siberia, the men who attacked her in the first place realize that the situation is more dire than expected. Fortunately, they got what they came for, having taken something from Kara's pod, and they return to their dropship.
As Kara lays several punches on Kal-El, her eyes suddenly become able to see through her own skin. He explains that it is X-Ray vision, one of many abilities available to them by way of Earth's yellow sun. Listening to him, Kara determines that his Kryptonian has an accent that sounds as though he learned it from a textbook, and reassures herself that he is a liar. As she lunges at him, he grips her, and launches her into the atmosphere.
Kara is terrified that she will fall to her death, but suddenly realizes that she is flying. Unfortunately, just as she makes that realization, she begins to fall, only to be caught by Superman. She breaks free of his grasp, soaring towards China and the Geat Wall. He catches up to her, and demands to be allowed to help her. She refuses, punching him through the wall.
Through the debris, Kara spies a shadow, and prepares to fight again. However, she is horrified to discover that it is not Superman, but rather an injured civilian holding an infant. She has endangered innocents with her recklessness. Superman returns, and expresses regret that things got to this point. He promises her the answers she seeks, flying with her up into the clouds.
Superman explains that they are on Earth, and that the yellow sun gives them powers which are akin to the Kryptonian Worldkillers, requiring that they be very careful. When Kara asks him why he has never returned to Krypton, she is stunned to hear that it no longer exists.
Elsewhere, a man in shadows receives the delivery of an artifact recovered from the crash site. It is a red crystal, which he believes will provide him all of the knowledge he needs.
Supergirl #3
- Date: January 2012
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Bill Reinhold
- Colors: Paul Mounts
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
Superman explains to Kara that he is her cousin - all grown up, despite her memories of having held him as an infant just three days ago. Likewise, a number of other events have occurred without her knowledge, including the destruction of her home on Krypton. She has been outside of time for a number of years, unaware. Kara's reaction is disbelief, and she demands to know what has happened to her family. Unfortunately, Superman has no knowledge of whether her family survived, or how she came to be on Earth.
Superman suddenly hears the sound of people in danger, and demands that Kara accompany him. When she asks why, he explains that because the yellow sun gives them power, but not humans, he feels the need to use his superhuman abilities to protect them from harm. Because Krypton is gone, and Earth is his home, he feels a responsibility to the people who took him in. Kara refuses to accompany him, and heads off in search of her flight pod. As she flies away, Superman warns that she is not prepared for life on Earth.
At the crater site, Kara finds that her pod has been taken. However, a strange device pops up and projects a hologram of a man who introduces himself as Simon Tycho, adding that it is great to meet her. He admits that he took her pod, and uses his device to lure her into space. They go out beyond the earth's atmosphere until reaching a satellite.
Tycho suspects that Kara is somehow related to Superman, as he traps her in a hangar. He releases mechanical butterflies into the hangar which attack her with lasers with increasingly intense heat. Eventually it becomes clear that Kara is producing much of her own heat, exceeding that of the lasers, and risking damage to the satellite.
Tycho calls off the bugs and releases a device called 'the brain', a strange gelatinous humanoid with only a nervous system. While Kara fights it, Tycho receives a call from the President of the United States, who is annoyed that the Russians are asking questions about the alien crash. Tycho hangs up on him in time to see the brain envelope Kara's head in fluid. Desperately, she forces the creature out through the wall of the space station and into the vacuum of space, disabling it.
From outside, Kara uses her X-Ray vision to locate her pod, and blasts through the wall to find it. However, before she can investigate it, she is affected by Kryptonite poisoning - much to Tycho's amusement.
Supergirl #4
- Date: February 2012
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Dan Green
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar
Simon Tycho is pleased to discover that the suit that Kara Zor-El was wearing when she fell to earth is essentially indestructible. He hopes to reverse engineer it, and then have the fabric mass produced and sold to the military and eventually to regular households. Meanwhile, the alien herself has been trapped inside a chamber with a large chunk of Kryptonite.
Kara feels a significant amount of pain as a result of the radiation, and she knows that even being in close proximity to the substance is potentially lethal to her. Tycho hopes to dissect and research her, and when one of his guards overhears that plan, he takes action. His name is Jacobs, and he forces his way into Kara's chamber, and to her surprise, he frees her. Though she can't understand him, he apologizes for his part in her capture, and helps her away from the Kryptonite.
Unfortunately, they enter the hallway to find Tycho and several guards waiting. Kara's strength is returning, but she is still weak, and she is unable to act as Tycho orders Jacobs killed before her eyes. Angered at what happened to the only man who has shown her kindness since her capture, Kara's strength returns, bolstered by the appearance of the yellow sun on the horizon. She easily beats her way through Tycho's guards, and seeks out her uniform.
Once she has found and donned it, Kara bursts through the wall of Tycho's command centre and knocks him to the floor. Before she does anything rash, Tycho warns that he has something she desires; a sunstone. The stone, she assumes, likely contains a message from her father that will give her the answers she needs. Tycho believes that it must contain schematics for a weapon. He has managed to pull data that shows a star map from the stone, indicating a location beyond the capacity of human telescopes to see. Kara instinctively knows that this must be where her home is.
Tycho threatens to destroy the stone if she refuses to do as he tells her. So, improvising, she blasts a hole through the floor with her heat vision. Tycho believes she has simply missed him, but his assistant informs him that Kara's target was actually the satellite's core, which means that it will soon be destroyed. The distraction allows Kara to grab the stone away from Tycho, and then escape from the satellite, moments before it explodes. Fortunately, most of the crewmen managed to escape with their lives. Tycho on the other hand, appears to have been caught in the blast. Afterwards, she examines the sunstone, and notices that it has been cracked. She contemplates asking Superman for help in activating it, but instead recalls the star map she saw, and chooses to fly home.
Elsewhere, Miss Thorne wakes Tycho in a secret facility off the coast of India in the Andaman Sea. Unfortunately, the explosion left his body quite damaged, and she was forced to merge what was left of his torso with the gelatinous creature they call the Brain. Tycho notices that a nearby guard has a blood spatter on his uniform, and demands to know whose blood it is. The guard assumes it must be the alien's, and Tycho smiles, knowing that he has won.
Supergirl #5
- Date: March 2012
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Mahmud Asrar
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
As Kara Zor-El flies outward from the Earth in search of her home planet of Krypton, she fails to realize that someone is following her.
Kara is growing unsure that the super-human abilities she acquired on Earth will last long enough for her to survive the trip all the way to Krypton, but suddenly, she begins to feel a strange pull on the Sunstone that she carries, recovered from the wreckage of her pod's crash landing. The stone pulls her to a strange device floating in the middle of space. Reluctantly, she passes through the field the device produces, and realizes that she has emerged in a completely different sector of space. The pull on the stone grows even stronger, and she follows it to a small blue star. Orbiting that star is a strange asteroid, which she soon discovers is much more than just that.
It is the ruins of Argo City, torn from the very surface of Krypton, somehow. Many prominent structures have been destroyed, and the place looks to have been deserted for quite some time. Sadly, she begins to realize that her family and friends are not there, and are likely dead. She makes her way to her father's lab where she finds a device which can activate her sunstone.
The sunstone reveals a message from her father, Zor-El. The message was recorded just moments before Krypton's inevitable destruction, and it confirms Kara's fear that Kal-El was telling the truth when he said their home planet was gone. Zor-El explains that he has used a risky plan to attempt to save Argo. He designed a force-field around the city, and his hope is that the city will survive long enough for the people remaining to find a new home to live.
Zor-El hopes that his plan has been successful, and that he and his daughter will be reunited on that new home planet, but if that is not the case, she must know that she holds the memory of the city, the planet, and her family in her heart. Zor-El promises that the stone holds a historical record of Krypton, all of his research, and the truth about what happened to something. He is interrupted before he can reveal what that something is, and Kara watches as her father is murdered by an unseen assailant. With her father's death, the sunstone crumbles in Kara's fingers, leaving her with nothing.
In a rage, Kara flies out into the city and begins smashing buildings to rubble. She is suddenly surprised by the appearance of another person there. This alien woman introduces herself as Reign, and offers Kara a new life. Impulsively, Kara turns on the woman and accuses her of having killed her father.
Reign defends herself, and explains that nobody has set foot on Argo since before the dead city began orbiting this blue star. But she does know that Kara is one of Krypton's only survivors. Reign explains that she is one of the Worldkillers, a race of conquering warriors whose origin is traced somehow to Krypton. She and her people came to Argo on a mission to discover the mystery of their creation and found it as dead as Kara did. What little she could determine from the city's datacores led her to Earth, where Kara herself landed. Reign believes that this is more than coincidence, that some Kryptonian secret lies on the Earth.
Reign had hoped that Kara could be convinced to join her in conquering the earth, but the girl's attitude has shown her that this is not a possibility. So Reign leaves, warning that if Kara doesn't also escape soon, Argo's remains will be burnt up by the blue star it orbits.
Supergirl #6
- Date: April 2012
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Mahmud Asrar
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
In a memory, Kara Zor-El trained against a robot instructor for her finals trials. The combat aspect was an integral part of the curriculum, and as such, she was required to pass it. Still, Kara's interests lay in the sciences, and her father was well aware of this as he interrupted the training session. Despite the reprieve, Kara knew that she would have to improve in order to pass the finals.
Now, Kara is powerless and pinned to a wall on what remains of Argo City, which somehow survived the destruction of Krypton, and now orbits a blue star. Away from the yellow sun of earth, Kara is merely a normal girl again. She resigns herself to dying, but at least it will be at home, in the place where her family and friends died.
Near the Statue of Liberty, a young Irishwoman is accosted by a pair of tourists and asked to take their picture. She has them get a photo of her as well, but her pose is ruined by the sudden appearance of Reign. Turning to one of the security guards at the monument, she commands him to inform the leaders of the world that she will give them the honour of dying first.
Kara is wakened by the sound of her parents' voices. She looks to see their ghostly visages, encouraging her. Her father states that they will always be there for her, and together, with their added strength, she can free herself. With some effort, Kara yanks the sword from her cape, freeing herself from the wall. Her parents warn that she must go before the remains of the city are absorbed by the blue sun. Kara worries that she cannot escape, because she has no power left. Her Mother places a hand on her chest, and a bright ball of light glows as she states that the power is and always has been within her. Her parents bid her goodbye as Kara makes her way back to the only home she has left - Earth.
Meanwhile, Reign is wreaking havoc in New York City, with the military trying to apprehend her to no avail. Fortunately, Kara arrives and punches her hard. Reign is pleased to see that Kara has freed herself, and hopes that she has come to join her in conquering the planet. With righteous rage, Kara explains that she is not there to rule the earth, but to kick Reign off of it. Reign defends herself, taunting Kara with the mystery of her past; of both of their pasts. She believes that the earth is somehow involved in the destruction of Krypton, especially considering that it is the only place where Kryptonian survivors can be found. She reveals that she knows about Kal-El, and has taken measures to prevent his intervention.
Reign warns that Kara will not likely survive this encounter by herself, given that just like the Kryptonians, more than one Worldkiller survived.
Supergirl #7
- Date: May 2012
- Written by Michael Green, Mike Johnson
- Pencils: Mahmud Asrar
- Inks: Mahmud Asrar
- Colors: Dave McCaig
- Cover by Mahmud Asrar, Dave McCaig
While she battles against Kara Zor-El, Reign explains that the Worldkillers were the result of experiments by Kryptonian scientists, who had kidnapped embryos from other worlds and brought them to a laboratory somewhere away from Krypton itself. The scientists had been secretive, and not wanted anyone to know their purpose as they studied, tested, and changed the creatures they took. In each one, they left a hunger to destroy, a hunger to conquer, and a hunger to discover the planets of their birth. Though the Worldkillers escaped, the trail led back to a planet that had long ago been destroyed. From there, the trail led to Earth - the only place where survivors of Krypton persist.
Now, Kara struggles to stay alive in battle with the four Worldkillers: Reign, Deimax, Flower of Heaven, and Perrilus. When locked in Deimax's powerful bear-hug, Kara somehow manages to draw on the energy of the yellow sun and create a heat blast which radiates from her body and sends the creature flying. Perrilus tries to poison Kara, but the girl's heat-vision proves a powerful asset.
Kara realizes that she has to lure the Worldkillers away from the innocent bystanders on the ground, but because of the stolen Kryptonian technology developed by Zor-El, Reign has placed a force-field around most of New York City, which prevents her from getting much distance between them. Even in flying amid the tall buildings, Reign still sends Kara hurtling back onto the streets below.
Even so, Reign is impressed with Kara's endurance, and offers her an invitation to join them. In exchange, she will spare the Earth. Rather than consider the offer, Kara picks up a police cruiser and slams it down on Reign's head. Even so, Kara senses that she may not be able to defeat these Worldkillers alone. This is emphasized when Deimax leaps up from underground, carrying an entire occupied subway car overhead. She launches it at Kara, who struggles to catch it without hurting anyone inside. Kara vows that she will die before letting the Worldkillers hurt any of these innocent people.
Kara remembers that Reign had said "Only a Worldkiller can defeat another Worldkiller," which gives her an idea. She takes Perrilus' barbed appendages, and thrusts them into Deimax's chest, poisoning her. Finally, Reign calls an end to the attack, stating that she cannot afford to lose another of her number. She has Deimax taken for treatment before conceding defeat to Kara.
Though Kara has defeated them on this day, Reign promises that it is not a victory. She and the Worldkillers will return one day, after seeking out their home planets. Before leaving, Reign leaves Kara with one last mystery: back in the lab they grew up in, there were five incubation chambers. Who and where is the fifth Worldkiller?
Despite the mystery and the property damage, Kara feels as though today was a success. She saved lives; saved the city. Just for today, she won.