Kara Facts

Let's see how much of a Supergirl Fan you are! Here are One Dozen Supergirl Facts!

1. The concept of "a Supergirl" was tested four times before the character of Kara Zor-El was created in 1959. In one test story, Superboy mocked the driving of an alien woman and she turned him into a girl. Using the alias of Claire Kent/Supergirl, Clark pretended to be "his cousin" and prove to himself that is gender did not determine his strength.

2. The most common origin for Kara Zor-El is that she was Kal-El's older cousin. When Krypton blew up, Kara was sent off planet along with Kal-El. Along with surviving, she was sent off to one day raise Kal-El. However, her pod got locked in the gravitational pull of another planet. She arrived on Earth roughly thirty years after Kal-El landed. While this means Supergirl is physically his teenaged cousin, she is technically Superman's older cousin by fourty-six years.

3. In 1985, Marv Wolfman killed Kara off in "Crisis on Infinite Earths". As Wolfman explained in an interview later, the staff over at DC Comics noticed their were too many Kryptonians. Kara was only one example of Kryptonians being etched out so that Superman could be "more special". The iconic image of Superman holding her dead body has been referenced multiple times in DC Comics history.

4. During the period in which DC Comics wouldn't let other "Super-People" exist, John Bryne created a Supergirl who wasn't Kryptonian. This Supergirl was a shapeshifting organism created by an alternate version of Lex Luthor. On this alternate Earth, Superman died before General Zod's attack on Earth. So Lex created this blob-he called her Matrix-to become Supergirl and protect Earth. When she and our universe's Superman failed to save the alternate Earth, Matrix came to our universe and became the ally of Superman, and the lover of Lex Luthor.

5. Maxtrix would later fuse with a girl named Linda Danvers. Linda had been lured by her boyfriend into a cult that planned on sacrificing her. As she was deeply cut by the cult's ritual knife, Matrix poured herself inside of Linda and the two fused into a new Supergirl. This Supergirl-in design and attitude-was based off the Supergirl in "Superman: The Animated Series". Due to Matrix's sacrifice, her new shared body was dubbed "The Earth-Born Angel of Fire" by a higher power. This unlocked new powers for her, but further complicated her stories. Last we saw of this Supergirl, she was in Hell and thought be removed from the DCU.

6. Another Supergirl was Cir-El, the daughter of Superman and Lois Lane from an alternate future. During her time in the present she teamed up with Natasha Irons and Girl 13 to form "The Supergirls". It would later be revealed Cir-El was cloned from Superman's DNA by Brainiac as part of his plan to take over the world from the future.

7. The original version of Supergirl from 1959 would eventually grow older and assume the name Power Girl. This was done so that readers could tell the difference between Earth 2's version of Supergirl (the Golden Age version) and their then-current, New Earth version (the Silver Age version). It was also done so that DC could keep their young female superhero and have a new, adult female superhero. Powergirl would become an entirely different character in her own right, with stories and popularity rivaling that of her counterpart.

8. In the arc "Supergirl: Kandor", Supergirl and Power Girl travel into the shrunken, bottled city of Kandor (the only surviving Kryptonian city) to fight an uprising in crime. However, if the Kandorians saw two of Superman's allies fighting crime they would question why Superman can't bother to help himself. So, Supergirl and Power Girl assume the mantles of Flamebird and Nightwing, respectively. These two names were originally the names of two Kryptonian vigilantes.

9. During the New 52 reboot in 2011, Supergirl received a Red Lantern Ring. The Red Lantern Corps are powered by the emotion of rage. Kara's rage came from the destruction of Krypton. She served the Red Lantern Corps until she eventually accepted the destruction of her world and embraced Earth as her new home.

10. The New 52 version of Cyborg Superman is Zor-El. Zor-El is the younger brother of Jor-El, the uncle of Kal-El/Superman, and the father of Supergirl. Before Krypton was destroyed, Zor-El was plucked off the planet by Brainiac and reconfigured into his cybernetic slave. Calculating the superpowers a Kryptonian would have under a yellow sun, Brainiac assumed Zor-El would be the perfect subject to turn into his personal assassin. It was Zor-El's job to scout out planets that would be a threat to Brainiac and destroy them.

11. While Superman and Superboy (Connor Kent) occasionally worked with Krypto The Super-Dog, Supergirl has worked with Streaky The Super-Cat and Comet The Super-Horse. Comet would also be reinvented into another "Earth-Born Angel".

12. In 2002, Linda Danvers (Supergirl at the time) took the place of an alternate universe's version of Kara Zor-El. That version of Kara was going to die soon, so Linda became the Supergirl of her universe. Without meaning to, Linda fell in love with that world's version of Superman/Clark Kent. The two got married and had a daughter named Ariella. After years building a life on this other Earth, Linda is eventually found by The Spectre who plans on setting her back in her universe, undoing the time she spent on that Earth, and letting the events of that Earth's history play out as they were meant to. Linda's only request is that Ariella be allowed to live. Granting her wish, The Spectre undid her adventures in the alternate Earth, but allowed Ariella to travel through space and outside the flow of time.

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