Timeline: 1st Appearances of each Supergirl, Superwoman, etc. (4th Draft)

[Lorendiac]

1. Introduction: Why I Wrote This
2. The Timeline of First and Final Appearances
3. Short Lists of the Different Users of Each Relevant Name
4. Postscript for the Fourth Draft: Comments on the Confusion that Followed "Infinite Crisis"


1. Introduction: Why I Wrote This

In various online forums where I hang out for comic-book-related discussions, people keep asking perfectly reasonable questions such as:

"Who is the current Supergirl? How is she different from the last Supergirl? (And the one before that, and the one before that?)"

"Just how many Supergirls have there been in the comic books, anyway?"

"Why so many?"

"Are they all related to Superman?"

The problem is that there's no simple "sound bite" of an answer that can honestly and accurately answer all those questions in one minute or less, even if you actually have all relevant facts at the tip of your tongue (which I certainly didn't when I started writing the First Draft).

For instance, if you start trying to delve into these subjects in a way that is not just shallow and superficial but really meant to clear things up, then you've got to talk about the differences between Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis continuity if you're going to make a clean sweep in explaining just how many Supergirls there have ever been, and why the one who held the job for over a quarter-century is no longer with us.

And since Power Girl started out as a parallel-world analog of the Silver Age Supergirl about thirty years ago, shouldn't she at least get an honorable mention in any in-depth discussion of The Many Supergirls even though she's never claimed the name "Supergirl" in her life? What about the various females who have called themselves "Superwoman" instead of "Supergirl"? Mightn't a fan who wants to know about the Supergirls appreciate having the Superwomen sorted out for him as well, at no extra charge? What about Kara of Argo City in the Superman Versus Aliens miniseries ten years ago, who never called herself "Supergirl" but was obviously designed to strongly remind us of the Pre-Crisis Supergirl who was also a Kara from Argo City, even if it was a different Argo City on a different planet?

You see how quickly such things can escalate? In April of 2005 I started typing out a piece explaining, from memory, what I thought I already knew about the various Supergirls, Superwomen, etc., Pre- and Post-Crisis. The early version was sadly incomplete because I knew I didn't know everything, but it was only a rough draft. I had a vague idea that eventually I might end up with a more "comprehensive" discussion of the subject, and after I had written and posted it, in the future I could simply post a hyperlink to it whenever newcomers on my favorite comic book forums started asking such questions as I listed above.

In early June of 2005, I got involved in an online discussion that somehow prompted me to dig out the old material on my hard drive and start sprucing it up, researching the subject further, splicing in new material, and organizing things into a comprehensive timeline showing the sequence of First Appearances of each relevant character in chronological order. In several cases, I mention Final Appearances as well, if there was an obvious "Final Appearance" for a particular person. (In some cases, a character's First and Final Appearances "in continuity" were one and the same!)

Who is a relevant character? I decided to do my best to cover any female character who has ever been connected with Superman continuity while doing one or more of the following things in at least one DC comic book story that was supposedly "in continuity" at the time it was published (or in a few cases the story was dragged into continuity retroactively).

A) Calling herself Supergirl (or Super-Girl, pronounced the same)
B) Calling herself Superwoman
C) Calling herself Power Girl (or Powergirl, pronounced the same)
D) Calling herself Kara

Obviously there are some characters who fall into more than one of those categories. And, out of the goodness of my heart, I've even thrown in a couple of characters who didn't quite fit any of the above categories, but were strongly suspected by the readers to be mysterious versions of one "Supergirl" character or another. You'll see what I mean as we go along. [Note for the 2nd Draft: I have also thrown in one "Supergrrl" for good measure.]

I should mention that for my purposes I am ignoring people who strike me as mere temporary "impostors." If there was once a story in which an actress played the role of "Supergirl" in a TV show or movie, or a Silver Age story in which Lex Luthor built a robot double to impersonate Supergirl for a few hours (and I have no idea if that ever happened or not!), then I'm not counting that at the moment. The Supergirl Robot that Brainiac 5 built in Superboy #204 has been brought to my attention, but for the moment I'm leaving her out of the Timeline as well. I do mention, below, the first appearance of the very first Supergirl Robot of the Silver Age, and I figure that will have to do.

On a similar note:At this time, I have no intention of going into the details of any variation of "Supergirl" or any similar character who has ever been presented to us in movies or television shows. Likewise, I am ignoring anybody who has appeared in a comic book story that was not meant to be, and never became, really "connected" to the mainstream DCU continuity in any visible way.

I interpreted "First Appearance" to suit my own purposes. If someone is supposed to have been the "same character" all along (both before and after Crisis, for instance), but got a reboot that wiped out most or all of the character's previous continuity, then I probably count that as the First Appearance of a new version of a character. (The Kara Zor-El who has her own title right now is not the same person as the late, lamented Kara Zor-El of the Silver and Bronze Ages.) Likewise, my Timeline doesn't mention the first appearance of reporter Lois Lane because she didn't meet my criteria when she first appeared in Action Comics #1, but I do list two later comics as both being First Appearances in Continuity of the "Lois Lane as Superwoman" concept one way or another. That includes the story in which she first believed she had superpowers that justified her wearing a red and blue costume and calling herself Superwoman, and a later story in which for the first time she really had superpowers that justified her wearing a red and blue costume and calling herself Superwoman.

On the question of what qualifies as "in continuity": My general rule of thumb has been that if a certain character lived on the Pre-Crisis Earth-1, or any world that was reachable from Pre-Crisis Earth-1, then that character was "in continuity." (On the other hand, if a character only existed in somebody else's "dream sequence" or a clearly labelled "Imaginary Story" from the Pre-Crisis era, then that person was never "in continuity" in the old Multiverse days.)

And regarding the two decades of stories that have come out in the Post-Crisis era, my attitude is that if a character existed in stories supposedly set in the "main" DCU timeline, or in any alternate timeline which we know is reachable from the main DCU timeline because we've actually seen someone or something make the trip, at least one way or maybe a round trip, then that means the character is (or once was) "in continuity."

That rule means that the typical Elseworlds story is not in continuity. As one example of what I don't count: There's never been any travel (that I know of) between the "main" DCU timeline and the world depicted in John Byrne's "Superman/Batman: Generations and its sequels; therefore, I don't feel the obligation to create a separate listing for the First Appearance of the Supergirl in "Generations" who was Kara Kent, the daughter of Lois and Clark in that world. (She was a blond, but wore a black wig with her costume to conceal her identity.)   

On the other hand, the last Superboy series included a "Hyper-Tension" story arc in which Kon-El visited an alternate timeline that had earlier been introduced in the Elseworlds publication Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl. The way I see it, that meant that the Elseworlds in question was no longer "its own little world, totally separated from the mainstream DCU," but was instead a place that was demonstrably accessible from the mainstream DCU and thus was now included under the broad umbrella of DC's larger "continuity."

2. The Timeline of First and Final Appearances

CAVEAT LECTOR (Let the Reader Beware): This is only a Fourth Draft of the Timeline, and may not be the Final Word on the subject. At this point in my First Draft, I said: "I have done the best I could, but I feel certain I have not done it perfectly. Please speak up if you know of a relevant fact or character I completely overlooked, or if you spot a clear mistake in my quick description of a particular character or story. In many cases I am dependent upon online summaries of stories I have never read, and I am painfully aware that my efforts to paraphrase second-hand information leave plenty of room for error."

Many readers took me at my word and offered constructive criticism regarding characters they felt I should add or things I should modify in the existing text, and much of their feedback was reflected in the Second Draft, which was much longer than the First Draft as a result of all the new stuff I had to write in those cases where I decided people's suggestions were apt.

The Third Draft was only slightly longer than the Second. Apparently my alert readers had already helped me fill any really obvious gaps by then. Now the Fourth Draft adds a few things; largely to allow for a few characters Jeph Loeb introduced in the first five issues of the newest "Supergirl" title and in his last story arc on the "Superman/Batman" title. (And one or two other little odds and ends have been added or seriously modified.)

However: The call for constructive criticism is still in force if you think I've missed something that would improve this Timeline. I make no promises about how quickly your feedback will be reflected in a Fifth Draft, however. This version is being posted about fourteen and a half months after I posted the Third Draft! (I was waiting to see how things would settle down after "Infinite Crisis" ended.)

And now, on to the main event!

THE TIMELINE

1947. Superman #45. "Lois Lane, Superwoman!" Written by Alvin Schwartz.

Lois Lane is convinced she has gained powers comparable to Superman's by magic. (She hasn't. Superman was moving at super-speed to do her stunts and make it seem that way. Long story.) By the end of the story she voluntarily relinquishes the powers she thinks she has because they seem to be out of control and are thus hurting her social life with men who are afraid to get too close to her. But during the story, she had indeed called herself Superwoman and worn an appropriate costume.

Note: There was a previous "dream sequence" story in 1943 in which Lois had dreamed she got a blood transfusion from the Man of Steel and became a Superwoman, but since it was clearly labelled as a dream, that "Superwoman" appearance was basically "out of continuity." This story, on the other hand, was apparently the first "in continuity" story in which any female character wore a costume and publicly called herself Superwoman. So I count this as the First Appearance "in continuity" of a Superwoman, even if the "powers" were fake.

1949. Superboy #5. "Superboy Meets Supergirl!" Possibly written by William Woolfolk. Collected in the TPB "Superman in the Forties."

Superboy meets this really neat blond girl who calls herself Lucy Regent and is an incredibly skilled athlete. Although she has no powers, at one point she wears a costume modeled on his and calls herself Supergirl as part of a show the two of them put on together at a festival. Superboy is quite smitten by her, it seems, but unfortunately it turns out that she is actually Lucy, rightful Queen of Borgonia, and the story ends with Lucy staying in her native land to take up her duties as Queen after a villainous usurper has been defeated with Superboy's help. (Lucy was never been heard from again in any other story, so this was her First and Final Appearance.)

Note: I have learned from feedback that this story must have happened on Earth-1 (even though Earth-1 as a concept would not be mentioned in any comic book until the story "Flash of Two Worlds" in 1961) because it was eventually decided at DC that all the Superboy stories were Earth-1 material by default no matter when they were published; the Earth-2 Superman had reached maturity before creating a costumed identity for himself and surprising everyone with his superpowered feats (exactly as shown in the original Superman story in Action Comics #1.)

1951. Action Comics #156. "The Girl of Steel." Reprinted in the 1987 TPB "The Greatest Superman stories Ever Told."

Lois Lane temporarily receives powers which prompt her to create a Superwoman costume for herself (again!). The costume she came up with was very similar to one that Kara Zor-El later wore as Supergirl. Lois even wore a blond wig to disguise her hair color - going for a secret identity, apparently, which she had not bothered with in her previous "Superwoman" adventure in the story I mentioned above. This was apparently the First Appearance of any costumed female calling herself Superwoman, and wearing an appropriate costume "in continuity," and actually having superpowers to go with the costume.

I am told that Lois Lane and Lana Lang each got superpowers (always temporary!) in various other stories in the old days, but I'm not clear on how often the Superwoman name was explicitly used after this, and I have never heard that it was used by Lana.

[Lorendiac]

1958. Superman #123. "The Three Magic Wishes: The Girl of Steel (Part 1)." Written by Otto Binder. Reprinted in black-and-white in the TPB "Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 1."

Allegedly a "trial balloon story" to test the market for a "Supergirl" character. Jimmy Olsen uses magic to wish a "Super-Girl" into existence, but it doesn't work out so well and he finally wishes her back into oblivion (apparently to "save her life" after potentially lethal exposure to Kryptonite), and she's been gone ever since. She appeared to be a blond teenager and wore a blue and red costume, modeled on Superman's of course, and quite similar to one of the variations that Supergirl ended up wearing later. Favorable response from their readers persuades DC it's worth the trouble to create a more permanent character along similar lines, to be officially added to Superman's supporting cast as a cute young female version of himself.

Note: I am told that for many years afterward, whenever this story was subsequently reprinted in other comics, the color scheme of the magically-created Super-Girl's appearance was modified. Her formerly blue-and-red costume became orange-and-green and her blond hair became red hair, quite similar to that of Jimmy Olsen. Presumably this was done to accentuate the fact that she was a different person who should not be identified with the Kara Zor-El Supergirl (after she'd been introduced), but frankly, it sounds like overkill to me. A quick little caption from the editor warning people that this was a different, one-shot character in this reprint story would do just as well, wouldn't it?

(I've also heard that more "modern" reprints have preserved the original red-and-blue-costume-with-blond-hair color scheme. Can't swear to that; the only reprint I've seen is the black-and-white one.)

1959. Action Comics #252. "The Supergirl from Krypton!" Written by Otto Binder. Reprinted in the TPB "Superman in the Fifties." Reprinted in black-and-white in the TPB "Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 1."

The first story about the character who is still fondly remembered by such nicknames as "The First Supergirl," "The Original Supergirl," "The Silver Age Supergirl," "The Classic Supergirl," "The Real Supergirl," "The Real Kara Zor-El," and so on and so forth. (Some of those nicknames for her totally overlook the brief literary career of Lucy Regent in 1949, but nobody seems to mind. And anyway, my understanding is that Lucy never expressed the slightest intention of becoming a costumed crimefighter; wearing a costume that resembled Superboy's was just Show Biz and not any sort of commitment to a new lifestyle! So Kara Zor-El still qualifies as the first superhero to ever use the name "Supergirl.")

Kara Zor-El is rocketed to Earth from Argo City (a Kryptonian city that survived the explosion of the planet but has now perished anyway). When Superman first meets her, she is already wearing a blue-and-red costume modeled on his own, except that instead of blue shirt and blue pants with red shorts over the pants, she basically wears a blue dress. Over the next 26 years or so, she will change her exact look from time to time, but always maintaining a strong resemblance to Superman's traditional outfit.

She wants to call herself Supergirl. She is a blue-eyed blond; Superman's cute little cousin he never knew he had. (She is the daughter of Zor-El, who was the brother of Superman's daddy Jor-El, you see.) Superman ends up helping her create a secret identity as Linda Lee, a brown-haired girl (when wearing a wig) who was recently orphaned in a natural disaster, and checks her into an orphanage. In a later story, her "secret identity" name changes to Linda Lee Danvers after she is adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Danvers.

Note: It appears that various Pre-Crisis stories, sometimes via dialogue spoken "in continuity" and sometimes in events that were depicted in "Imaginary Stories" of the Silver Age, nailed down the idea that Superman fully expected that someday Supergirl would naturally change her alias to Superwoman when she felt the time was right, just as he had previously made the transition from Superboy to Superman at his own pace. This change never actually happened as a permanent condition "in continuity," however - it was merely anticipated. And below I will list one case where Kara was referred to as Superwoman very briefly, for the first time "in continuity," with no lasting impact. (There may have been other cases after that one, but I don't know anything about them.)

1959. Action Comics #256. "The Great Supergirl Mirage!" Written by Otto Binder.

First appearance of a lifelike Supergirl Robot. It becomes important to have one after a fellow orphan at the Midvale Orphanage named Dick Wilson (later known as "Dick Malverne" after he was adopted) captures a "Supergirl" on film and even suspects a connection with Linda Lee. Superman hastily creates a Supergirl Robot to give Linda an alibi and then to reveal itself as a robotic device in order to "disprove" that any flesh-and-blood "Supergirl" exists at all!

(In the early years of Kara Zor-El's activities as his helper, Superman's firm policy was to keep her existence a secret from the general public.)

Since the robot wears the same costume and answers to the name of Supergirl, with the real Supergirl's knowledge and consent, I figure it deserves a quick entry on this Timeline.

Note: I have no idea how many robot doubles of Supergirl and/or of her secret identity (Linda Lee, later Linda Danvers) the Earth-1 Superman ended up manufacturing over the years. I don't know how many of them "died" in the line of duty, either. I don't know how often anyone else tried to manufacture a Supergirl robot for reasons good or bad - although I know of one sad case including Brainiac 5. But I figure if you've seen one Supergirl robot, you've seen 'em all, so I'm only mentioning the first appearance of the first Supergirl Robot and that will just have to be enough.

1960. Action Comics #267. "The Three Super-Heroes." Written by Jerry Siegel.

First appearance of Kara Zor-El as a mature Superwoman "in continuity," although only for a brief time. Supergirl is invited to try out for membership in the 30th Century Legion of Super-Heroes. She successfully performs the task which is set for her, but in the process she is exposed to a piece of Red Kryptonite which causes her to physically age to look like she's twentysomething years old, apparently. Full-grown. She refers to herself as having become "a Superwoman." The key point here, from the point of view of the Legionnaires who were testing her, is that no matter how impressive her performance, she's obviously disqualified for membership at this time because of her new adult status. Their club has a strict age limit, you see. She can try again next year, however. After she returns home to the 20th Century, the Red K effect wears off and she reverts back to her juvenile self.

One would think that the Legionnaires would be aware of the very temporary effect of Red K after the times they had previously worked with Superboy. One would also think they would realize that just because Supergirl (temporarily) looked very mature for her age didn't necessarily mean her age had actually changed. On the other hand, the first publication of this story stated the Legionnaires testing her were the lookalike-children of Legionnaires whom her cousin Kal-El had adventured with in his Superboy years, so perhaps the kids weren't as up-to-date on the technicalities of Red K as their parents would have been. (At any rate, their status as second-generation Legionnaires was later retconned away and has reportedly been changed with rewritten dialogue in subsequent reprints of this story - the version of the Legion that Supergirl ended up successfully joining in a later story, after the next time she went through a testing procedure, was the exact same version as the one that her cousin Superboy hung out with in his spare time; not a second-generation Legion offset by a couple of decades.)

1960. Superman #140. "The Bizarro-Supergirl!" Written by Otto Binder. Reprinted in black-and-white in the TPB "Showcase Presents Superman, Volume 2."

The first Bizarro-Supergirl makes her debut. Her First and Final Appearance, as it turns out - at the end of the story she dies from exposure to Blue Kryptonite. (Blue K is what you get when you use the duplicator device that creates Bizarros on a piece of Green K instead of on a person. The Blue K acts on a Bizarro Kryptonian's metabolism the same way the Green K acts on a regular Kryptonian's.)

1962. Action Comics #289. "Superman's Super-Courtship!" Written by Jerry Siegel. Reprinted in the TPB "Superman in the Sixties."

Superman meets and falls in love with Luma Lynai, the Superwoman of the planet Staryl. But it all falls apart. Probably just as well, because physically Luma was the spit'n'image of Superman's juvenile cousin Kara, except taller and fully mature, and that could have gotten very weird after Kara was a grown woman and looked exactly like her cousin's wife.

You see, Superman had said something to his precocious cousin Kara about how if he ever married, he would like it be to someone much like her, although of course Kal-El and Kara could never marry because Kryptonian Law forbade matings between first cousins.

(That last part was probably the key point of the speech, if not of the entire story that DC was offering us: To hammer home to the Silver Age fans the point that there was a strong legal/cultural Kryptonian taboo that guaranteed that Superman had no intention of ever getting romantically involved with Supergirl, his first cousin, not even after she finished growing up. Genetically speaking, a very sensible policy, I might add, and one that I believe is also reflected in the laws of at least some parts of the United States, and probably in various other places around the world.)

Kara is determined to play matchmaker, however, and takes the part about how he'd like to someday marry someone like herself way too literally (I suspect Superman was talking about psychological characteristics rather than physical ones) and decides it's a good time to use the Supercomputer in the Fortress of Solitude to somehow search the rest of the universe for qualified candidates to become her cousin's spouse. Judging by results, she must have input roughly these parameters for the search: "Humanoid female, my skin, my hair, my eyes, my facial features, my superpowers or very similar ones, superheroic lifestyle, but several years older than I am, old enough to get married." (Modest, wasn't she? Only a near-copy of herself, except with a different genetic background and already a full-grown woman, could possibly be worthy of the great honor of marrying Kara's cousin! Sigmund Freud would have a field day with this scenario!)

So the computer finds what Supergirl describes as a "Superwoman duplicate of me," and Superman dutifully takes his cousin's advice and flies off to meet Luma Lynai (who even wears an S-emblem, though not identical to his, on her chest and on her cape by a wild coincidence). They get along splendidly and fly back toward Earth, meaning to get married upon arrival - except that it turns out to their mutual horror that yellow solar radiation is poisonous to Luma, whose own metabolism is super-powered because of the orange sun of Staryl. Superman actually offers to emigrate from Earth to Staryl so they can stay together (I gather his powers worked equally well under that orange sun?), but Luma bravely insists Earth needs him more than she does, and that is the end of another fine romance.

As far as I can tell, Luma never actually was featured in another story, although she was subsequently referred to in flashbacks and such on a few occasions, so this was for all practical purposes her Final Appearance as well as her First.

1964. Justice League of America #29. "Crisis on Earth-Three." Written by Gardner Fox. Collected in the TPB "Crisis on Multiple Earths, Volume 1."

We meet the Earth-3 Superwoman, a member of the Crime Syndicate of America, blue eyes, black hair, who is presented to us as the evil analog of Wonder Woman. No relation to any version of Superman; she simply is superstrong and happens to use the adjective "Super" in her name.

1966. Action Comics #336. "The Forbidden Fortress of Solitude." Written by Otto Binder.

The second Bizarro-Supergirl makes her debut. This one is different from the run-of-the-mill Bizarros. As the story begins (continued from a previous issue), the real Supergirl has been rendered ugly by a villain and is experimenting with various things that might be able to reverse the effect. When she uses the Bizarro-creating duplicator on herself, what she ends up with is an atypical Bizarro Supergirl. The new Bizarro-Supergirl a) looks like a lovely teenage girl, just as the original Supergirl normally would, and b) speaks English with decent grammar, unlike other Bizarro characters, but c) is rather dim-witted. This was apparently both the First and Final appearance of this particular Supergirl knockoff.

1969. Adventure Comics #387. "The Wolf-Girl of Metropolis." Written by Cary Bates.

First appearance of a parallel-world Supergirl who apparently looks something like a werewolf -- as does every other human and Kryptonian in her universe, evidently. (Bear with me; I've never actually read this story.)

On Earth-1, the Silver Age Supergirl takes a serum that is meant to confer immunity to Kryptonite radiation, but it has some unpleasant side effects. She ends up looking much like a werewolf - hairy wolfish face, hairy hands. By an astonishing coincidence, Supergirl's analog in a parallel universe has been having the same experience in reverse - the serum she gulped down has made her lose all that "normal" body hair and now she looks like a freak, by local cultural standards. A fortuitous explosion permits the two of them to meet and compare notes. Somehow, it all works out in the end (thanks to the efforts of the scientists, both named Dr. Sanford, who had brewed the original serums) and both Supergirls end up looking "normal" again. This was the First and Final Appearance of the Wolf-Faced Supergirl (to coin a new name for her).

[Lorendiac]

1975. All-Star Comics #58. Written by Gerry Conway. Collected in the "Justice Society: Volume 1" TPB.

Power Girl first appears and, I gather, soon afterward becomes a member of the JSA on Earth-2. Her Kryptonian name is Kara Zor-L (which is pronounced exactly the same as Kara Zor-El, as near as I can tell). As far as the basic origin story is concerned, she is essentially the Earth-2 equivalent of Supergirl, with a few modifications. Kara Zor-L was launched from a doomed Krypton in a spaceship at the same time her cousin Kal-L was, but for some reason her vessel took decades longer to reach Earth than his did, with her in suspended animation during the trip. As a result, she was still a very young woman in the 1970s, at a time when he was definitely getting middle-aged. This gives us a bizarre situation where Earth-2, the "older generation" parallel world that contains the Golden Age heroes, is suddenly doing its own "knockoff" of a character concept first introduced on the "younger generation" parallel world of Earth-1, instead of the other way around as it had always been done before.

Power Girl is a blue-eyed blond, but differs in some ways from the Earth-1 Supergirl as she had been presented up until that time. Power Girl may be a bit older and definitely shows a more voluptuous figure (and seems more willing to dress in ways that emphasize whatever she's got). She is also said to have a more aggressive, even defiant, attitude. Her costume does not even resemble Superman's - mostly white, with red cape and blue boots and gloves. By an astonishing coincidence, her costume bears a marked similarity to that of Luma Lynai, mentioned a few listings above, except that the things that were green in Luma's costume have been changed to blue. (Exception: I believe Luma wore a green cape. Power Girl's is red.)

There is a rumor that writer Gerry Conway originally tried to get the Power Girl character concept approved by the DC editorial staff as the never-before-mentioned daughter of the Golden Age, Earth-2 versions of Superman and Lois Lane . . . but the idea was shot down. Possibly someone felt that having two very similar characters on parallel worlds, one a Superman's daughter and one another Superman's first cousin, would just get too darn confusing for the fans?

According to the Wikipedia entry: The original artist to draw her, Wally Wood, started her out with large breasts and intended to see how much further he could push it. He allegedly planned to keep increasing her bra size a bit more in each consecutive issue to see how exaggerated things could get before someone on DC's editorial staff would finally catch on and tell him to stop. It appears that Wally moved on to other things after a mere eight issues, however, so I guess we'll never know just long he could have gotten away with it. Be that as it may: Ever since then, Power Girl (whatever her origin story) has been notorious among fans for her large breasts, even when compared to various other superheroines who run around in tight costumes that show they are not exactly flat-chested.

Note: In a previous story, in Superman #125, the Silver Age Lois Lane had dreamed of becoming a Power Girl (yellow and green costume; red wig; totally different from the appearance of the Kara Zor-L Power Girl). I refuse to count a "dream sequence" as being the First Appearance "in continuity" of a character. But I'm mentioning the fact in this Note attached to the first appearance of a "real" Power Girl character in order to prove that I've done my homework as best I could!

1980. Superman #349. Written by Marty Pasko.

First and only appearance of a very obscure Superwoman who may not have really been a living, breathing being per se. (But don't hold me to that!) This one will take some explaining. As this story commences, Superman finds himself on what appears to be a parallel world closely resembling his own beloved Earth, except that every male character he knows is represented by a female equivalent, and vice versa. He discovers that Clara Kent works at the Daily Planet (alongside Jenny Olsen and Louis Lane) and that a black-haired Superwoman fights crime in Metropolis - but he is very startled to eventually realize that Clara Kent and Superwoman are definitely two separate people here. This anomaly damages his initial theory that this world is simply a gender-reversed parallel version of Earth-1, and he eventually figures out that he's still on the real Earth-1, as magically modified by Mr. Mxyzptlk for the occasion!

This would then qualify as the First (and Final) Appearance of a high-powered Superwoman character who was probably a magically-created simulacrum as far as I can tell, rather than a normal person, human or Kryptonian. (Whereas most of the other characters Superman met in this story were allegedly their usual selves, briefly magically transformed into the opposite gender from the default condition, without being allowed to remember things had ever been any different.)

This particular Superwoman basically looked like a black-haired, blue-eyed woman who had taken the exact design of Superman's traditional outfit and merely had it retailored to suit her feminine anatomy. No skirts, wigs, facemasks, shift in color schemes, or other noteworthy variations from the usual appearance of the costume - it was merely covering a differently-shaped body than what we normally expect to see.

1982. Superman Family #215-216. The relevant stories are "Crisis At the Crossroads of Time" and "Victory Is Only 5,000 Centuries Away," both written by Marty Pasko. (I'm combining them in one entry because I've never read them and am not sure what happened in which installment in this two-parter.)

The Kara Zor-El Supergirl has a two-part teamup with Louise-L, a Supergirl of the far future (around the year A.D. 502,000). When visiting Louise-L's era, Kara is much weaker because the sun has faded quite a bit to an orange shade. On the other hand, when visiting our era, Louise-L finds her powers greatly magnified because of the much stronger and yellower sunlight we enjoy these days. Louise-L refuses to explain whether or not she is descended from Kara Zor-El, and at the end of the story she mindwipes Kara to remove any knowledge of Louise-L and the future she inhabits. As far as I know, the Louise-L Supergirl never made any further "in continuity" appearances, Pre- or Post-Crisis. So #215 was her First - and #216 her Final - Appearance.

1982. Superman Family #220. "Where Off Earth Are You From?" Written by E. Nelson Bridwell.

First appearance of Liandly of Rolez, the Super-Girl of Earth-2. Liandly comes from another dimensional reality and has remarkable superpowers; nothing Kryptonian about her. The Earth-2 Lois and Clark befriend her and even help her create a secret identity as "Linda Lee." To confuse the issue, this story published in the early 80s is retroactively set sometime in the 1950s, as one of the "Mr. and Mrs. Superman" stories that dealt with adventures in the lives of the Golden Age versions of Lois and Clark when they were a fairly young married couple. An online illustration that's supposed to be of Liandly shows her as having long blond hair and wearing a costume that looks something like an orange one-piece swimsuit with a few other accessories. As far as I know, this was the First and Last appearance of this character, and only the second (and last!) time that any "in continuity" character has been presented to us as using the name Super-Girl with a hyphen in the middle.

Note: Liandly is almost an anagram of Linda Lee (if you replace the double E with a Y), and Rolez is an anagram of Zor-El.

1983. Supergirl #10. "Radiation-Fever." Written by Paul Kupperberg.

First appearance of six miniature, doll-sized clones of the Pre-Crisis Supergirl, created by a villain called Professor Drake. Each of the clones has the full powers and memories of the original -- but not the pure intentions. They gang up to fight her in the next couple of issues. Eventually, they permanently lose their powers when Supergirl manages to expose the entire six-pack of them to a piece of Gold Kryptonite while keeping herself shielded from its radiation. She then places them in a "stasis field" in Superman's Fortress of Solitude and evidently forgets about them for awhile. (Stay tuned - we'll get back to that in a minute!)

I mention the clones here, but I don't intend to list them as six separate Supergirls at the end of this post, because it seems that they never spoke during their struggles with the real Supergirl, so they weren't actually calling themselves The Supergirl Six-Pack or anything like that.

1983. DC Comics Presents Annual #2. "The Last Secret Identity." Written by Elliot S! Maggin.

Kristin Wells, previously a character in a printed novel about Superman (Miracle Monday, also by Elliot S! Maggin), travels back in time to meet Clark Kent again. She is a 29th Century historian in search of the last great secret identity of the 20th Century superheroes, all the others having long since been solved and entered into the textbooks of her era. There was a female crimefighter called Superwoman who was scheduled to make her grand debut right around "now" according to those same textbooks . . . Maggin plays a few mind games with us, planting hints that a Superwoman costume hanging in a closet might belong to Lois Lane or Linda Danvers, but surprise surprise, it turns out it's actually Kristin Wells (red hair, blue eyes) who ends up wearing that costume, using futuristic technology to simulate various superhuman powers. Those include: flight, superstrength, time travel, the ability to create space/time warps that amount to being able to teleport great distances, an energy blast, and also intangibility.

1984. Supergirl #19. "Who Stole Supergirl's Life?" Written by Paul Kupperberg.

A life-sized "clone" of Supergirl, comprised of a miraculous merger of the six doll-sized clones of her mentioned above, temporarily takes over the role of Linda Danvers and considers herself to be the true Supergirl for a brief time (despite the annoying lack of powers, thanks to the Gold K exposure previously mentioned). Somehow, the similarity in brain structure, memories, thought patterns, etc., apparently creates a psychic bond between Kara I and Kara II such that the clone is able to temporarily blank out the real Supergirl's memories of her Linda Danvers secret identity. Once this gets straightened out, the real Supergirl offers to help her de-powered lifesize duplicate build a new identity elsewhere to live as a normal human being. As far as I know, that character was never heard from again, and I don't think we ever even knew what her new name was going to be.

In a subsequent lettercol (at the back of Supergirl #23, reacting to mail re: #19), Paul Kupperberg, the Supergirl writer at the time, referred to the merged-clones-lifesize-copy by both of these names: Kara II and Linda II. After all, she had the appropriate genes and memories, didn't she?

1985. Crisis on Infinite Earths occurs as a 12-part series with crossovers into other titles, and the culling begins. 

1985. Crisis on Infinite Earths #1. "The Summoning." Written by Marv Wolfman.

The Superwoman of Earth-3 dies as her entire world (and the surrounding universe) of Earth-3 is devoured by nothingness. At first, other people from other parallel worlds still remember that Earth-3 and this Superwoman used to be there, but eventually (after the Crisis is over) just about everyone will have forgotten.

1985. Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. "Beyond the Silent Night." Written by Marv Wolfman.

The Supergirl of Earth-1 dies onstage in this issue, and later gets erased from continuity so that no one remembers her anymore. (With possible exceptions for a handful of "cosmic" entities such as the Spectre.)

In fact, all previous stories centered around "Superman Family" characters got erased from continuity in the Post-Crisis Era, including most of the female characters mentioned above - except that Lois Lane promptly got Rebooted (so that she had never been "Superwoman" after all), and Power Girl survived, keeping at least some of her past continuity. She escaped oblivion by being simply retconned out of the Superman Family entirely! We'll get back to her in a minute.

1985. DC Comics Presents Annual #4. "Welcome to Luthorcon III!" Written by Elliot S! Maggin.

This wraps up the saga of the Kristin Wells Superwoman. She travels back to the 20th Century, somehow gets amnesia for awhile, and spends several years as a superhero in the late 20th living the distinguished career that she had "already" studied as a historian in the 29th Century, then finally returns to her native era where her boyfriend has been faithfully waiting for her (it was some years from his point of view, as well). I believe this was meant to be her Final Appearance and official retirement from the whole costumed crimefighter bit in a story that was clearly set in the Pre-Crisis continuity.

[Lorendiac]

1985. Legion of Super-Heroes #14 (second regular monthly series of that title). "Unto the New Generation." Written by Paul Levitz.

While the Crisis limited series is still being published, writer Paul Levitz and penciller Steve Lightle introduce a "new" character who keeps her entire body covered with her red and white costume, except for a mane of golden hair, and calls herself "Sensor Girl." For several issues her precise powers and background remain a mystery to all but one of her fellow Legionnaires (and the readers), although occasional hints are dropped to the effect that she might be an old, familiar face underneath that white facemask she wears. For instance, one or two things suggest that she already knows a fair amount about the other Legionnaires, as if she might have worked with some of them before (which the Pre-Crisis Supergirl had done several times). Veteran Legionnaire Brainiac 5 (the "good" Brainiac) had long had a hopeless crush on the Pre-Crisis Supergirl, and in these stories Brainy still remembered her vividly and hoped desperately that this masked "Sensor Girl" character would turn out to be her.

Sensor Girl gets mentioned here because it is alleged that revealing her to be Kara Zor-El, the late, lamented Supergirl, possibly amnesiac and with her powers now pretty much limited to super-senses rather than the full package of strength, speed, invulnerability, etc., was exactly what Paul Levitz originally hoped to build up to, but DC wouldn't let him get away with it and he had to reveal Sensor Girl as someone else, finally. (Apparently it took a little time for the Post-Crisis policy of "There are no surviving Kryptonians but Superman, and his cousin Supergirl never existed in the first place and never will!" to be firmly established, clearly explained to everyone at DC, and aggressively enforced.)

1987. Secret Origins #11. "Ancient Histories." Written by Paul Kupperberg.

Power Girl's "new and improved" Post-Crisis origin story is paraded before us to explain why she still exists in the modern DCU if the policy is that the Rebooted Superman has no living Kryptonian relatives, period. Her name is still Kara, and her "secret identity" in the modern USA is "Karen Starr," and she still has similar powers to those of Kal-El's. But the similarity is now pure coincidence; there's no genetic relationship at all. Power Girl now just happens to be the granddaughter of the great wizard Arion of Atlantis. About 45,000 years ago his evil brother, Garn Daanuth, tried to possess her the way a demon would, and caused a lot of trouble.

Kara learns this when she goes back to look at the "spaceship" she arrived in and finds it's actually a magical artifact with a recording of Arion's personality to explain things to her now. His solution to the attempted possession of her, 45,000 years ago, involved shoving the little girl named Kara inside a magic crystal and leaving her in suspended animation for 45,000 years, during which time she aged several years into her late teens, emerging in the modern era of the DCU.

By an astonishing coincidence, at the time she emerged she had developed superpowers very similar to those of the Post-Crisis Superman. A recording of her grandfather's personality eventually (in this story, set a few years after her awakening in the 20th Century) offers the opinion that her unexpected powers resulted from a combination of three things: Some experimental modifications Arion had previously made in her genes (we don't know exactly what the purpose of that had been), the exposure to Garn Daanuth's essence when he briefly melded with her, and the 45,000 years she spent sleeping inside the crystal which was a very potent magical artifact.

Arion was able to see into the future well enough to see that her powers would resemble those of Superman, and for some reason decided it was a great idea to magically brainwash her to think she was Superman's long-lost cousin from Krypton at first. Arion's argument was that the true story of her origins would have just been too difficult for her to accept right away. (No, I don't quite follow his logic on that point either - but remember, Paul Kupperberg was desperately trying to salvage as much as he could of the Pre-Crisis Power Girl continuity in which everyone she knew had thought she was Kara Zor-L, cousin of the Earth-2 Superman. In fact, Kupperberg apparently tried to introduce a retcon in his work on the "Doom Patrol" in the late 80s, to the effect that some of the stuff from the early-1980s "Supergirl" title (which he also wrote) had instead happened to Power Girl in the Post-Crisis version of the DCU's history. As far as I know, nobody else ever really did anything with that idea of trying to take pieces of Pre-Crisis Supergirl continuity and give them a new paint job to retroactively make them "old Power Girl continuity." The whole idea seems to have pretty much faded away.)

Incidentally, this story starts out with Power Girl brooding over how what she remembers of her own past is how she used to  be the cousin of the Earth-2 Superman, Kal-L, whom she realizes no longer exists Post-Crisis -- which means her own existence has strange implications if she was his blood relative. In the immediate wake of Crisis, some writers and editors let their characters remember, for awhile, nearly everything that had happened in "Crisis on Infinite Earths," including such things as the death of the old Supergirl and the knowledge that Earth-1 and Earth-2 had been merged, with some characters being erased from existence as a result in order to avoid duplication. Marv Wolfman had wanted no one at all  (except Psycho-Pirate, maybe) to remember the Crisis itself and what the Multiverse had looked like before the Crisis ever happened, which certainly sounds like the "simplest" way to handle it, but he was overruled in the short run . . . but seems to have gotten his way in the long run on most of that. As the years went by, DC's writers generally quit referring to the Crisis in dialogue, or if they did refer to it, it was only as something that DCU heroes remembered had been a terrible threat to their own Earth but did not remember had caused the destruction of a zillion other parallel Earths. Accordingly, I strongly doubt that the Power Girl of the last 15 years or so has ever mentioned any recollection of good old Earth-2 - she presumably remembers a time when she thought she was the long-lost cousin of the modern Superman, that's all. (I think. Maybe. Don't hold me to that!)

Note: We are informed in this story that Kara, growing up as a little girl 45,000 years ago, had a brother named Khatar. He was later established to have been a Hawkman avatar, although I don't know that Power Girl and the current incarnation of Hawkman feel any particular sense of kinship with one another on that basis. (In the JSA TPB collections I've read, I don't recall the subject even coming up.)

2nd Note: A third origin story has just been released in the pages of JSA Classified #4. That gets a quick entry at the very end of this Timeline. Of course, what I said above about "Power Girl of the last 15" years (by which I meant 1990 to mid-2005) not remembering the Pre-Crisis Earth-2 has now been invalidated.

3rd Note: In previous drafts of this Timeline, I have chosen to interpret this as the "First Appearance" of a "new" Post-Crisis Power Girl character. Since then, I've changed my mind; mainly because most or all of the pre-Crisis Power Girl appearances were (evidently) still supposed to have "really happened" to her after you subtracted the role of the Golden Age Lois and Clark in her life. (As opposed to the concept of Power Girl getting totally rebooted, which was what happened to Superman and his supporting cast in the wake of COIE.) One might argue that this means I shouldn't bother to keep the listing for this issue in this Timeline at all; but my attitude is that as the sole creator of this Timeline, I can make, break, or "creatively reinterpret" my own rules any time I want to!

1988. Superman #20 (second series). "You Can't Go Home Again." Written by John Byrne.

The Post-Crisis Superman meets a blue-eyed blond in a Supergirl costume "for the first time." This new Post-Crisis "Supergirl" eventually turns out to be Matrix (no relation to the movie trilogy starring Keanu Reaves), an artificial lifeform created by the brilliant Alexander Luthor of a parallel world (er, I mean a pocket universe, since DC had officially gotten rid of "parallel worlds" in Crisis). Her powers include flight, invisibility, psychokinetic blasts, superstrength, and shapeshifting. Her appearance as a gorgeous, full-figured blue-eyed blond in a Supergirl costume is just one possible shape she can take, rather than being her "natural" appearance. This Supergirl later ends up living with Ma and Pa Kent on the farm in Kansas for awhile, and they sometimes call her "Mae" as a more normal-sounding nickname derived from "Matrix." Somewhere along the line Superman will start calling her his adopted sister - but all that doesn't happen in her First Appearance.

(In contrast, the Superboy who was later created in a test tube when Superman was "dead" only got to be taken into the family as Clark's adopted cousin.)

Note: She previously was seen in a cameo in Superman #16 but I don't think she actually called herself anything in that one.

1989. Christmas with the Superheroes #2. "Should Auld Acquaintance Be Forgot." Written by Alan Brennert.

Boston Brand (Deadman), the professional peeping tom and mind-controller who (for some odd reason) is normally considered a hero rather than a villain, is trying to "celebrate" Christmas by taking over other people's bodies - spending their money on gifts for his old friends, etc. He finally feels ashamed of himself and vacates the body he had taken over in order to enjoy the sensation of attending a family-and-friends Christmas dinner. While he's getting all angst-ridden about his lot in life (or in death, or in afterlife, or whatever the correct word is for his condition), a beautiful blond woman, who can see and hear and touch his ghostly form, and thus is probably some sort of ghost herself, suddenly pops up with a few words of patient counsel and good humor, saying in part: "We don't do it for the glory. We don't do it for the recognition. We do it because it needs to be done. Because, if we don't, no one else will. And we do it even if no one knows what we've done. Even if no one knows we exist. Even if no one remembers we ever existed."

When he asks her name, she says as she walks away: "My name is Kara. Though I doubt that'll mean anything to you."

(She was right. It didn't. But then, Brennert wasn't just talking to Boston Brand through Kara's dialogue; he was trying to give a bit of comfort to diehard fans of Kara Zor-El with this final tribute to the nobility of her character.)

Since the Sensor Girl thing fell through, we could argue that this was the first Post-Crisis Appearance of the Pre-Crisis Supergirl. Presumably, the writer only got away with it because Kara seemed to be in much the same position that Boston was - a lonely, insubstantial ghost whom no one else could see or hear or knew anything about (and without even having the morally questionable perk of being able to take over other people's living bodies).

Note: I am told that Mark Waid, who then held an editorial position at DC, approved this story by Alan Brennert, but subsequently got in hot water over it with editor Mike Carlin, who didn't notice what was going on (a possible, subtle "violation" of the Sacred Rule that the Pre-Crisis Supergirl no longer existed and never had existed, period!) until it was too late to stop it. Shortly after that, Waid lost his job on the editorial staff.

2nd Note: It is possible that this Kara should be identified with a mysterious, ghostly Kara who will be listed on this Timeline in a 2000 entry. No promises, though!

1992. Justice League Quarterly #8.

First appearance of the Post-Crisis Retconned Version of the old Earth-3 Superwoman, although she is already long dead when she is "first mentioned" here. Hal Jordan looks at some faces on a screen and explains that five natives of the Antimatter Universe inhabited by the Weaponeers of Qward had somehow managed to turn themselves into super-powered near-duplicates of prominent heroes of the DCU, way back in the early days of the League. These baddies were, in fact, more powerful than the originals - so that it took the combined efforts of the JLA and the JSA to finally subdue them. This is a clear effort to try to save some of the old "Crisis on Earth-3" storyline from the Silver Age that first introduced the evil characters Superwoman, Ultraman, Power Ring, Owlman, and Johnny Quick.

(As near as I can tell, prior to this story, Justice League fans had spent about seven years believing that the obliteration of Earth-3 and its denizens in the opening pages of Crisis on Infinite Earths meant that the Crime Syndicate of America had never existed in any way, shape, or form in Post-Crisis continuity. That was certainly my own impression for many years, until I heard about this retcon.)

[Lorendiac]

1995. Superman Versus Aliens (3-part miniseries, collected as a TPB). Written by Dan Jurgens.

Superman meets a blond girl named Kara who speaks Kryptonese and hails from a town called Argo City in this crossover between DC and Dark Horse. In keeping with DC's firm Post-Crisis policy that Superman is the Only Surviving Kryptonian, writer Dan Jurgens makes this particular teenage Kara a native of a culture from the planet Odiline, whose humanoid inhabitants of many generations earlier had been so overwhelmed by what they heard from a traveling interstellar cleric about the glories of Krypton that they apparently tossed their own cultural background out the window and started using the Kryptonian language and culture for everything they did. (I hate to think about what low self-esteem they must have had if they abandoned their old customs so quickly.)

In the environment in which Superman meets Kara, she has no superpowers. Since she presumably does not have a Kryptonian metabolism (although some fans have argued that the people of Odiline might be a long-lost offshoot of the Kryptonian race even if they didn't remember it themselves), the subject of what powers she might develop after exposure to the yellow sunlight here on Planet Earth remains a very open question. She and Superman fight the evil Aliens together, and at some point Superman tells her he's come to think of her as "family."

At the end of the story, he thinks she's dead, but the reader is told she got away in an escape pod, thereby leaving the door wide open for sequels - in theory. This story was written by Dan Jurgens, who then took the trouble to insert a bit of dialogue referring to this storyline into Superman #117 (second series), apparently believing that this would help slip the crossover story "into continuity" since it had now been referenced in one of Superman's regular ongoing titles. In addition, http://www.supermanhomepage.com/other/kryptonian-cybernet/kc23.txt reports that Jurgens dropped some hints about his plans for follow-up in an AOL chat in 1996:

Second, he hinted at some plans on continuing the tale begun in SUPERMAN VERSUS ALIENS! Dark Horse Comics has asked him for a sequel to the wildly popular mini-series, but he did not indicate whether or not it would happen. However, he did reiterate the fact that SUPERMAN VS ALIENS took place inside current Superman continuity, and the story *will* have repercussions on the Superman titles in the future. In fact, he specifically mentioned that he has very special plans for Kara, the teenage girl introduced in the series!

I am willing to take it on faith that Jurgens did, in fact, have big plans for the Kara he had created as an "almost-Kryptonian" whom Superman had come to feel a family fondness for despite the trifling detail that they were from different species (supposedly -- but no one ran a DNA test). But it's obvious that for one reason or another, those plans never materialized, and at this point, over a decade after that miniseries, it seems unlikely (but not impossible!) that they ever will.

1996. Adventures of Superman #538. "Fatal Obsession." Written by Karl Kesel.

Dana Dearden, having gained impressive magical powers and fashioned a costume for herself (basically a green outfit with bits of purple here and there) presents herself as the new Superwoman. Apparently she was a Superman stalker in her heart (as hinted in previous stories I don't list here because she was never called "Superwoman" in them). We learn that she has long been obsessively convinced that once she gained the powers to make herself a worthy mate for Superman, he would just naturally take her into his arms and marry her. It doesn't work. The media ends up calling her Obsession, by which name she will be referred to on other occasions, but Superwoman was the name she had chosen for herself.

1996. Supergirl #1 (third regular series with that title). Written by Peter David. Collected in the TPB "Supergirl."

In this story, Linda Danvers - more or less - wakes up with memory problems and soon realizes that her present existence is the result of a recent merger of the minds and bodies of the Matrix Supergirl and the Post-Crisis Linda Danvers -- who was either dead or dying from mortal injuries at the moment Matrix somehow merged with her in an effort to save her. The new human "half" of this Supergirl has the exact same name as the "secret identity" the Pre-Crisis Supergirl had used for many years, but that was just Peter David's attempt to throw a bone to fans of the Pre-Crisis Supergirl; this Linda was a new and different character who was now making her First Appearance and had no previous connection to Superman continuity. Eventually the hybrid being composed of these two became known as an "Earth-Born Angel of Fire," lacking at least two of the previous Matrix Supergirl powers - general shapeshifting and invisibility - but still retaining the ability to switch back and forth from the blond-haired, blue-eyed Supergirl form to the Linda form, and gaining some strange new powers as time went by.

The pre-merger Linda Danvers was shorter and more slender than the blond form that the Matrix Supergirl normally used, and had brown hair and brown eyes. The merged Supergirl, when in her Linda form, still looks like Linda except she has blue eyes instead of brown ones. (A doctor who is unaware of the background here gives post-merger "Linda" a physical in this story, and says she's fine except for the odd change in eye color, which could have been caused by extreme stress. I hadn't even known that was possible.)

1998. Supergirl #1,000,000. Written by Peter David.

In a one-shot story, we meet a brown-haired little girl called R'E'L who lives 1,000,000 months in the future. I am told that she was immensely powerful but seemed not very bright; in fact utterly clueless as to how to use her powers responsibly. More of a horror than a hero, in other words. I am told that at the time, this girl never had face-to-face encounters with any of the "modern era" superheroes of the DCU during the DC 1,000,0000 event. But I mention her here because several of her contemporaries were having face-to-face encounters with "modern era" heroes at "the same time" which sort of establishes them "in continuity," and by extension, the same could be said of her. Stay tuned for a second sighting of her, below, that was more squarely "in continuity" or seemed that way at the time.

1998. Elseworld's Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl. Written by Barbara Kesel.

First appearance of a Supergirl in a world where nobody ever heard of Superman or Batman. As near as I can tell, this Supergirl is still very much like the Silver Age Supergirl - Kara Zor-El of Argo City, which survived the explosion of Krypton for a while; blond, blue-eyed, young, sincere, rather naïve. (I haven't actually read this story, so I'm going on hearsay.) However, she lives in a world where the old JSA is still the main superhero group to join, and where Barbara Gordon is the embittered, obsessive-compulsive crimefighter Batgirl because her parents died when courageous police officer James Gordon tried to protect the Wayne family from a mugger, and got himself and his wife shot in the process. (Decades later, zillionaire playboy Bruce Wayne is sufficiently grateful for Jim Gordon's sacrifice that he subsidizes Barbara's vigilante activities, but of course he feels no particular need to get his own hands dirty.)

Normally, as an "out of continuity" variation of a character, this Elseworld's Finest Supergirl wouldn't even be mentioned in my Timeline. But a year later, she was dragged into a connection with the regular continuity via the wonders of Hypertime when the mainstream DCU Superboy visited her native timeline. (See entry for Supergrrl, below.)

1998. Tangent Comics/Powergirl #1. Written by Ron Marz.

The Tangent comics were supposed to be quick attempts to fool around with completely new characters who just happened to recycle the names of some of the well-established DC ones. This comic contained the First Appearances of the Supergirl and Powergirl of the Tangent Universe.

Both of them were created as part of a top secret genetic engineering project in the People's Republic of China. "Supergirl" was their first serious prototype. However, as the main action of this story begins, the "Supergirl" is already dead. She had pasty white skin and long black hair and a very, very muscular build. As powers: she had exhibited extreme superstrength, very powerful leaping ability, and very dense skin (to make it bulletproof, presumably). But the genetic engineering wasn't quite as sophisticated as the designers had hoped; she'd eventually just disintegrated because of flaws in the DNA sequencing. Thus this was her Final Appearance as well as her First.

The next model of a super-powered artificial lifeform is supposedly about ready to be unveiled as this story began: The PRC scientists call it "Powergirl" and feel that this time they've worked out the last few bugs in the process so that their pride and joy won't self-destruct any time soom. The President of the United States orders a commando raid against the facility where Powergirl's being developed; the objective is to steal her for the USA before she can be imprinted with a personality that would make her obedient to the wishes of authority figures in the PRC.

The mission is about half-successful: The PRC does not get to keep and control its new creation. During a firefight, the full-grown Powergirl emerges from a "gestation cylinder" without having been imprinted to automatically obey anyone. She exhibits remarkable energy-wielding abilities, including the power to raise the recently dead, and then blasts a hole in the roof and takes off to live an independent life. Judging by a cover scan I just looked at: she has a more "normal" build than  her "Supergirl" predecessor, with black hair, pasty white skin, and was last seen wearing a costume that covered her from the neck down, except for the hands; the costume was mostly indigo with some bits of other colors.

As near as I can tell, this issue represented the Final Appearance of Tangent Powergirl -- so far -- but since she was still alive and well when last seen, she could conceivably pop up again. During Infinite Crisis, we saw bits of the "Tangent Universe," establishing that it is in fact possible to get from the main DCU timeline to Tangent's (or the other way) if necessary. This retroactively makes the Tangent Supergirl and the Tangent Powergirl eligible for my Timeline of characters who are "in continuity."

1999. Legends of the DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths #1. Written by Marv Wolfman.

This story was done about 14 years after the original 12-part Crisis on Infinite Earths series (also written by Marv Wolfman, of course). It is meant to occur between the events of #4 and #5 of the original series, so some fans refer to it as Crisis 4.5.

For our purposes, the key point is that it includes the First and Final Appearance of a parallel-world Supergirl on Earth-D (a world which also makes its first and final appearance herein). This Supergirl is a Kryptonian, as is the Earth-D Superman, but they both look African rather than Caucasian, and they are a happily married couple who landed on Earth as adults about three years prior to this story. This Supergirl is still called Kara, but presumably not Kara Zor-El, since her husband is named Kal-El and there's no mention of their being cousins. Both the Earth-D Superman and Supergirl die by the end of the issue, as does their entire universe, except for some refugees whom members of the JLA were able to transport to safety through the dimensional barriers before the end came. (Naturally, after the Crisis had concluded, everyone would have forgotten there ever was an Earth-D.)

Even after I was reminded of this particular Supergirl, I considered not mentioning her because she was only retconned into Pre-Crisis continuity about 13 years after the Post-Crisis era properly began at DC. But I finally decided to go ahead and make room for her, even though her existence was already automatically "out of continuity" by the time we first heard about her!

1999. JLA: Earth-2. Graphic novel written by Grant Morrison.

This story introduces Morrison's "reverse" Earth, sometimes called Earth-2 (though not by its natives, if memory serves -- I think they call the "mainstream" DCU's Earth by the name Earth-2), which is basically a reboot of the nasty place we called Earth-3 in the Pre-Crisis DC Multiverse. It is actually an evil version of Earth in an Anti-Matter Universe -- and it was later established that this was the same universe that included Qward. Morrison's reboot includes introducing (or reintroducing) the concept of an evil Superwoman who is Amazonian in heritage, rather than Kryptonian or Qwardian. To play mindgames with us, however, this one uses the name of "Lois Lane" as her secret identity. She has continued to encounter Superman and other heroes of the Mainstream Earth of the DCU since the events of this graphic novel.

Note: To the best of my knowledge, Morrison's "reboot" of the Crime Syndicate of America in this graphic novel has retconned away the previous Post-Crisis Retcon about the old CSA who fought the JLA in their earlier days and came from Qward, inasmuch as nobody in JLA-Earth-2 says, "Gee, I wonder if these people called Ultraman, Superwoman, Power Ring, Johnny Quick, and Owlman are any connection to the super-powered quintet with the same codenames whom we fought many and many a year ago in the early days of the JLA?"

1999. Superboy #61. Written by Karl Kesel.

During the "Hyper-Tension" story arc, Superboy meets a female character in an alternate timeline who refers to herself as "Supergrrl" and is apparently the functional equivalent of himself; genetically created by the local version of Project Cadmus. I am told that she comes from a timeline that is either the same as that of the previous story Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl, or else is very similar to it in key respects. (See an entry under 1998, above.)

I have not actually read Superboy #61, but I get the impression that the Kara Zor-El Supergirl from Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl also gets at least a cameo here, making this (arguably) her First Appearance that was definitely "in continuity" at the time it was published, and her second appearance in any published comic.

[Lorendiac]

2000.Adventures of Superman #574. Plotted by Stuart Immonen. Scripted by Mark Millar. Reprinted in the "Superman: No Limits" TPB.

Obsession, aka Superwoman, aka Dana Dearden, dies in battle, having thrown herself into harm's way to protect Superman. By this time she had upgraded to a red and blue costume that was more along the lines of what you'd expect a self-styled "Superwoman" to wear.

2000. Young Justice #21. Written by Peter David.

At the end of the issue, a rocket ship lands in the modern day and R'E'L, the future Supergirl from the 1,000,000 event emerges. The only person handy to greet her is Klarion the Witch Boy, who has just recently stirred up an awful lot of trouble in the "Sins of Youth" Fifth Week Event.

What did the two of them do after that? We never found out! Nonetheless, taken at face value, the final page of that issue means that this future Supergirl, R'E'L, has been forcibly inserted into the "modern continuity," living "here and now on Planet Earth," of the DCU. Although I hear rumors that Grant Morrison is basically rebooting Klarion the Witch Boy as part of his "Seven Soldiers of Victory" miniseries this year [this was in 2005] and I hear that Morrison is basically taking the position that "Sins of Youth" never happened. Period. (Which is probably a good idea on his part!)

2000. Supergirl #49. Written by Peter David.

The Matrix/Linda Danvers "Earth Angel" Supergirl has been getting guidance from time to time from a sort of ghostly voice who now, at the end of this issue, says she has had many names but is most fond of "Kara." I am not clear on when that voice had first spoken, but we do get a look at a sort of spectral figure here (apparently for the first time). I gather that the name Kara means absolutely nothing to either half of the Matrix/Linda Supergirl at the time. Is she a ghostly remnant of the officially-erased-from-continuity Kara Zor-El who died in Crisis in 1985? Is she the same "ghostly Kara" who once gave Boston Brand a pep talk in that story I listed from 1989? Is she both? How would I know?

If we treat this Kara as a brand new character for the sake of argument, then Supergirl #49 was her First Appearance - at least in any sort of visible form offered for our examination, and the first time we got a name for her, even if her voice had been "heard" in previous issues.

She apparently remained an utter enigma to Linda Danvers, inasmuch as Linda never even makes any connection between this "Kara" and a "Kara Zor-El from an alternate timeline" when she meets the latter a couple of years later (we'll get to that one in a minute).

2000. Supergirl #50. Written by Peter David.

The "Earth Angel" Supergirl (the result of the Linda/Matrix merger) gets split into two different people again, both of them now Supergirls in one way or another. The one who gets the lion's share of time onstage for the next two years is the Linda Danvers Supergirl, who now has superpowers of her own, but much weaker than they were during her Merged-with-Matrix phase. Linda does not have any inherent shapechanging abilities, however, and so she has to start wearing a blond wig over her brown hair to conceal her identity. Meanwhile, the Matrix Supergirl (or Earth Angel Supergirl, or whatever the heck she's called) is being held prisoner in the Garden of Eden by Lilith.

2001. Supergirl #62. Written by Peter David.

Buzz (a Supergirl bad guy who had tried to reform, but it didn't really take, as I understand it) and Two-Face combine forces to somehow manufacture a Supergirl duplicate that turns out to be a Bizarro-Supergirl. The first one to ever exist in Post-Crisis Continuity. 

2002. Supergirl #74. Written by Peter David.

The Matrix Supergirl merges with someone called Twilight, and the resulting combo becomes an Angel of Fire. The Angel of Fire is somehow able to beef up Supergirl Linda's powers to approximately where they were at the beginning of this series, six years earlier. Linda Danvers intends to carry on as the current Supergirl, while I'm not sure if the "Angel of Fire" has ever popped up again anywhere in continuity. This may well have been the Final Appearance of the Matrix Supergirl (in her new role as 1/2 of the new Angel of Fire character).

This is also the Final Appearance of the Bizarro-Supergirl who debuted a year earlier. Her flesh is devoured by locusts during a big battle.

2002. Supergirl #75. "Many Happy Returns." Written by Peter David. Collected in the TPB "Supergirl: Many Happy Returns."

Linda Danvers, aka Supergirl, meets Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, an incredibly cute, wholesome, and sensitive blue-eyed blond girl making her Very First Appearance in the Post-Crisis Continuity (think: "Pollyanna with Superman's powers"). This Kara is basically from an alternate timeline that closely corresponds to the happy-ending, full-of-good-cheer, hardly-anybody-ever-dies-a-violent-death world depicted in Superman comics of the Silver Age.

Note for the 4th Draft: Since writing the above entry, I have finally read the issues of that Supergirl series that immediately preceded the "Many Happy Returns" story arc. I now know that a mysterious spaceship was shown to the readers in Supergirl #73 (still out in space at the time). There was no telling whether anyone was inside it. In Supergirl #74 we saw a close-up on a window that showed the face of a blond teenage girl, apparently sound asleep (suspended animation, presumably) inside. However, it was not until #75 that we learned anything definite about the girl -- such as her real name, her preferred codename, her planet of origin, whether or not she had superpowers, etc. -- so I'm sticking with #75 as effectively being the First Appearance of any new character who explicitly called herself "Kara" or "Supergirl."

2002. Supergirl #77. "Fatalist Attraction." Written by Peter David. Collected in the TPB "Supergirl: Many Happy Returns."

This issue includes what is probably the shortest Supergirl career ever, as measured by how many panels of an "in continuity" comic book this version actually appears in!

While Kara Zor-El (the Pollyanna version mentioned immediately above) is staying at the Danvers house and trying to fit in at the Leesburg High School, we have a scene set in some other corner of space and time where a couple of villains - Lord Xenon and his associate The Fatalist - are looking at a blond young woman in a tattered red-and-blue costume with an S-emblem on her chest, whom they have chained to a wall. Then Lord Xenon kills her with some sort of effect that leaves her looking rather mummified.

So she was only around for a few panels, and she only got to speak eight defiant words in a single panel before he killed her. (Granted, presumably she had been a Supergirl for quite some time in her native timeline, but not in any stories that we ever saw!) But the story was apparently happening "in continuity," so she deserves to be mentioned here. (What was her real name? What were her exact powers? Did she have any Kryptonian DNA? Was she a natural blond? We'll never know!)

In later scenes in this story arc, dialogue from Xenon clears up his basic motivation for killing Supergirls. On some previous occasion he had a very painful encounter with a female called Supergirl who was possessed of remarkable mystic power and knew how to use it effectively. Lord Xenon claims that he is "imprisoned" in "this nothingness" (a limbo-like place where he currently resides, I gather) as a result of a curse placed upon him by that Supergirl at the end of their fight. With the help of The Fatalist to run around through time and space in ways that Xenon is currently prohibited from doing, his mission statement is to track down, capture, and slaughter every Supergirl he can get his hands on, selecting them from points in their personal histories that ought to be well prior to the age at which one of them would have become the older, much more powerful version who stomped all over him in a possible future. Xenon proposes to continue with this series of murders until he hits the jackpot and retroactively prevents his ignominious defeat from ever happening. (He apparently doesn't have any way to positively identify, in advance of meeting them, which "Supergirl" character from which alternate timeline is destined to cause all this grief for him in the first place, so he figures he'll just have to keep killing any he can find.)

It is quite clear that Xenon has slaughtered other Supergirls before the one we saw. However, for the purposes of my Timeline, I'm only counting Supergirls who actually got a First Appearance onstage at some point, even if it was over so quickly that if you blinked, you might have missed it. This poor girl barely qualifies; Xenon's previous victims don't. We never see their faces; we don't even know how many there were!

2003. Supergirl #80. "Hail & Farewell." Written by Peter David. Collected in the TPB "Supergirl: Many Happy Returns."

By the end of a six-part story arc that began in #75, the Kara Zor-El introduced in #75 has been bounced back to her native universe and will presumably die in the Crisis on Infinite Earths, and the Linda Danvers Supergirl, after experiences which I don't propose to spoil for you entirely if you haven't read the TPB collection of this arc, finally abandons the Supergirl role and basically vanishes into comic book limbo; apparently she has not been seen or heard from since. This particular Supergirl series ends with this issue.

Note for the Fourth Draft: Linda Danvers Supergirl, or someone who looked like her, did get to appear (without really saying or doing much to make her stand out from the crowd) in Superman/Batman #24 and #25. Then she disappeared into thin air again, and may have been a magical duplicate anyway, for all we know. (I personally favor the idea that she had been magically abducted from a previous timeframe during her solo Supergirl career, prior to the ending of this issue.) 

2003. Superman: The 10-Cent Adventure. Written by Steven Seagle.

Cir-El, aka Supergirl, pops up in the modern Superman continuity. Although she is a mystery at first, in a later story she eventually claims to be the future daughter of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, come back from the future. Cir-El has black hair and wears a dark costume with a different style of S-insignia on it. She also has an alternate persona: Mia, a homeless woman, if I've got this right.

2003. Fallen Angel #1. Written by Peter David. Collected in the "Fallen Angel, Volume 1" TPB.

Peter David's creator-owned Fallen Angel title starts coming out, featuring a female protagonist whom many readers promptly suspect to be his take on the further adventures of Linda Danvers following her retirement from the Supergirl role. It helps that she is called "Lee," which could be a reference to how the Silver Age Supergirl used the secret identity Linda Lee (later Linda Lee Danvers) and/or to how the Post-Crisis Linda came from Leesburg.

Note from 2005: I am told that it has just recently become crystal-clear that "Lee" in Fallen Angel is not Linda Danvers after all. Which came as no great surprise, really, given that Peter David claimed to own Fallen Angel, but definitely did not own any of the characters he had used in his long run on a "Supergirl" title for DC. Ever since I first heard about this, it seemed to me that, legally, David could never "reveal" that Lee was in fact Linda Danvers; not if he was claiming Lee belonged to him personally. The best he could do was drop vague hints and refuse to disprove it so that readers could believe whatever they wanted to believe. But it appears that eventually he did choose to squarely disprove it, for whatever reasons.

2004. Superman #200 (second series.) "The Last Superman Story." Written by Steven Seagle.

The Cir-El Supergirl dies, having previously, in other issues, a) passed a DNA test to prove she is Superman's daughter, and then b) been revealed to not be any relation to Superman at all. (Don't go trusting those slipshod DCU DNA tests anytime soon! Superboy has gone through similar nonsense over the years!) The circumstances of her death are such that she seems to have been totally erased from continuity. (Also, this issue marked the end of writer Steven Seagle's Superman run, and maybe other Superman writers just didn't want to be bothered with her?)

[Lorendiac]

2004. Superman/Batman #8. Written by Jeph Loeb. Collected in the TPB "Superman/Batman: Supergirl."

Superman and Batman meet Kara Zor-El. A blue-eyed blond teenage girl, a fluent speaker of Kryptonese, who allegedly has been in suspended animation for a long time while a spaceship was carrying her to Earth from Krypton. She was (according to her, at least) originally intended to arrive simultaneously with her younger cousin, baby Kal-El, and help raise him, but her ship got delayed for many years and now Superman is thirty-something years old while she's probably less than half his age. By the time the six-issue story arc is over, she is using the Supergirl name with Superman's approval and wearing a bare-midriff blue-and-red Supergirl costume. (Which is a huge improvement over what she was wearing in the earliest scenes of the story arc: Nothing!)

At any rate, upon first meeting her and learning her name, Superman immediately fails to say, "Ah, then you must be my timeline's equivalent of the Kara Zor-El whom my good friend, the Linda Danvers Supergirl, recently encountered and once tried to introduce to me. She wrote me a long letter about her experiences with that girl and her years-long visit to the kid's native timeline!" In fact, neither Superman nor Batman confuse the issue by mentioning any other "Kara" and/or "Supergirl" person they have ever seen or heard of. They react as if the idea of a girl named Kara claiming to be a native speaker of Kryptonese, and/or a girl with powers very similar to Superman's, is a Strange New Experience for everyone.

(That's one of the drawbacks of a superhero career - as the years roll past, the cumulative effect of all those blows to the head in one slugfest after another can really mess up your memory, I guess. Or to put it another way, Jeph Loeb presumably doesn't want to waste precious dialogue acknowledging that the names Kara and Supergirl have both been used repeatedly in the past by other characters, in stories by other writers, before he came along and dusted them off for his own "new" version of the Supergirl concept. . . so he simply ignores any old continuity that would otherwise get in his way and make his Supergirl seem less new and exciting than he wants her to be! That's DC in the 21st Century for you!)

This particular Kara is now the star of a new Supergirl monthly title, and also seems to be used as a member of the Mark Waid's latest Rebooted Version of the Legion of Super-Heroes (in stories I have not read).

2005. JSA Classified #4. Written by Geoff Johns. Collected in the TPB "Power Girl."

Wrapping up the newest origin story of Power Girl. I am told that her second origin, the one summarized above in a 1987 listing, had previously been shot full of holes and she no longer believed herself to be the time-traveling granddaughter of Arion of Atlantis from 45,000 years ago. Now we are told that she is, in fact, Kara Zor-L, once the long-lost cousin of the old-timer Superman from Earth-2 (which no longer exists as a separate world). In other words, her old origin story, first introduced to us a good 30 years ago, is now being dragged back onstage after a long absence. (It is summarized in a 1975 listing, far above this one.) Since her origin story is getting Drastically Changed (again!), I generously give this a listing on this Timeline even though I no longer am inclined to count this as the "First Appearance" of a new character.

2005. Supergirl #3. "Power, Chapter Three: Outsiders." Written by Jeph Loeb. Collected in the TPB “Supergirl: Power.”

Lex Luthor uses a piece of “Black Kryptonite” (which nobody had ever heard of before within the comic books, as near as I can tell) on the current Kara Zor-El Supergirl. As this issue ends, all of a sudden a “new character” seems to spring out of Kara’s battered body. The new character speaks fluent Kryptonese (and fluent English, as she proves a minute later) and looks almost exactly like Kara, with the key difference being that the current Supergirl’s mainly-red-and-blue costume design is mostly black in the new girl's version, with bits of white. (One exception:The inside lining of the cape is still red.)

She appears to be a very bad girl, and proud of it! However, there room for doubt as to what we should call her. I have just gone through my copy of the TPB and read all of her dialogue twice, and I can’t see any place where she actually introduces herself by any name at all. Not “Kara,” not “Supergirl,” not “Slinky Blond in Skimpy Black,” not any sort of name or nickname!

This girl in black specifically, repeatedly, and violently objects to being called “Supergirl.” Fine; I won’t call her that. On the other hand, she reminisces aloud about being the daughter of Zor-El, she has all the memories (she says) of the original Kara from Krypton before they were separated by the Black Kryptonite (if that’s what happened) and she never expresses any specific objection to being addressed as Kara here and now. So I hereby dub her “Evil Kara” (or “Evil Kara Zor-El” for more formal occasions) for the purposes of this Timeline.

(Ironically enough, “Evil Kara” says to “Good Kara” at one point: “You don’t even have a real name, do you? You just let them take part of his name and add on the 'girl' part.” Which is a very strange criticism to hear from a girl who offers No Name At All for herself! But if we work on the assumption that she takes it for granted that she is the Original and Rightful Owner of the name “Kara Zor-El,” then her criticism of “Good Kara” as just being “Supergirl” starts to make a little more sense.)

2005. Superman/Batman #23. "With a Vengeance! Chapter 4: Smoke and Mirrors." Written by Jeph Loeb. Collected in the “Superman/Batman: Vengeance” hardcover, which presumably will have a TPB edition one of these days. 

First appearance of yet another Superwoman. Batman finds himself in what is apparently a previously unknown alternate timeline, as demonstrated by the fact that the first costumed crimefighters he meets in the local version of Gotham City are “Superwoman” and “Batwoman,” and they’ve never even heard of any “Superman” or “Batman” characters at all.

The Superwoman in question is particularly reminiscent of the Superwoman character who only appeared in Superman #349 (see listing above) -- and that is probably no coincidence, since Mr. Mxyzptlk turned out to be heavily involved in both stories. She presumably has the standard package of Kryptonian superpowers. She has short black hair and blue eyes, and her costume looks as if someone simply copied the design of Superman’s usual costume, adjusting the measurements so it would hug a grown woman’s figure. Her friend Batwoman also calls her “Laurel”; my best guess is that the full name of her civilian “secret identity” is “Laurel Kent” (but nobody says so). What her Kryptonian name might be is anyone’s guess. From what we see of this timeline, it appears that all of the DCU characters who are represented in it have had their genders reversed, as was also done in the aforementioned Superman #349 that almost certainly inspired this. (However, I strongly suspect that some DCU characters are “missing” entirely, but that doesn’t really matter now.)

2006. Supergirl #5. "Power, Chapter Five: Supergirls." Written by Jeph Loeb. Collected in the TPB “Supergirl: Power.”

Wonder Woman ends up putting the big loop of her golden lasso over both Karas at once as they stand back-to-back. Then Diana asks: “Who are you? Who is Kara Zor-El?” There’s a blinding flash of light, and then what appears to be “Good Kara” (wearing her usual red-and-blue costume) is the only one left.

One possible implication is that Evil Kara’s mind -- representing the briefly-separated darker side of the “complete” Kara Zor-El’s psyche -- has been merged right back into Good Kara. (Please don’t ask me where the hundred pounds or so of Evil Kara’s body mass ended up going to; nor where they originally came from, for that matter. How would I know?) However, no one in this scene – not even Good Kara herself – actually claims to know that this is exactly what just happened. So you could probably make a case that Evil Kara simply disappeared into thin air when confronted with the truth of her own fraudulent existence or some such thing.

This may or may not have been the Final Appearance of Evil Kara as a separate entity with her own physical body. See a listing below, for Superman/Batman #25, to see what I mean.

2006. Superman/Batman #25. "With a Vengeance! Chapter 6: Supermen/Batmen." Written by Jeph Loeb. Collected in the “Superman/Batman: Vengeance” hardcover.

This may be the “Final Appearance” of the Superwoman character introduced two issues earlier. At any rate, it is the last time she has popped up in any DC comic book as of now (January 2007 as I type this), to the best of my knowledge. It is possible that she ceased to exist by the end of this story. Or not. Who knows? (And this story arc was evidently happening just before the events of “Infinite Crisis,” which also could have changed her status “in continuity.”) 

Yeah, yeah, I suppose I need to elaborate upon that a little. 

At the end of this arc, Superwoman and some friends literally disappear into thin air without anyone saying just where they went. Also featured throughout the story arc were several heroes called the Maximums who hailed from yet another timeline. At the end, Mr. Mxyzptlk specifically claimed that he and the Joker (who then had access to the magic of Bat-Mite) had created the Maximums from scratch. On the other hand, on that same page Bat-Mite said to the Maximums: “When you get back home, everything will be as it was before this all began,” implying that they won’t cease to exist now that he’s done with them. A minute later, he made a similar comment in response to Batman’s question about the fate of a newly introduced character named “Batzarro” and also about “The Kryptonite Man,” (formerly Major Force), saying, in part, “Oh. They’ll still be around.”

However, neither Mxyzptlk nor Bat-Mite exert themselves to specifically comment on the origins or fates of the “Superwoman” and “Batwoman” (and other characters from their same timeline) who, at the time of that final conversation, had just vanished from the scene when Bat-Mite snapped his fingers.

So there are a few possibilities:

1. Superwoman et. al. had been recently created by magic and had been erased by magic when they weren’t needed anymore. However, in that case they presumably could be recreated, like loading up a file from a disk again, anytime Bat-Mite or Mxyzptlk feel the need in the future. (This would basically be a repeat of the apparent situation of the Superwoman who only existed in Superman #349.)

2. Superwoman et. al. had been recently created by magic, used in this “game,” and then were left alive and sent back to their own separate timeline at the end of this story arc, where they would hopefully continue to thrive and prosper. (That scenario appears to be exactly what happened to the Maximums in this story arc, although I don’t think we know if their entire timeline was a magical creation -- or did it already exist for ages before Mxyzptlk and/or Bat-Mite/Joker just did a little editing and magically “inserted” the Maximum characters into a world that was already there for them to play with?)

3. Superwoman et. al. were not magically created, but were “natural” residents of an alternate timeline, and, like our own beloved Batman and Superman of the “mainstream” timeline of the DCU,  just happened to get dragged into all this nonsense through no fault of their own. In that case, they presumably got sent safely back home when the game was over -- exactly the way Batman and Superman were sent back home just a few minutes later. If that’s true, then they continue to have a nice solid existence right now (unless the later events of “Infinite Crisis” messed up their timeline somehow) and they could easily pop up again at any time in the future, even in stories where there aren’t any fifth-dimensional imps running around using high-powered magic to stir things up.

A note: Also participating in the later pages of this story arc (#24 and #25) were five young women, three of whom wore S-shields on their chests (one wore a more simplified red S), and all five of whom were willing to exert themselves to give Superman a helping hand. They appeared to be:

Kara Zor-El, the newest Supergirl, the one from “modern continuity.”

Kara Zor-El, a younger-looking, more innocent and wholesome Supergirl, who probably either is -- or was based upon -- the Silver Age Supergirl in the first year or two of her career. Superman has trouble recognizing her when he sees her in this arc.

Kara Zor-L, Power Girl, presumably the one from “modern continuity.”

Cir-El, the black-haired girl who had claimed to be the “future daughter” of Superman and Lois Lane during a run by Steven Seagle, but who (apparently) has now been “erased from continuity,” in that she is the other member of this ad hoc group whom Superman has some trouble recognizing.

Linda Danvers, the Post-Crisis version created by Peter David, dressed in the costume she wore after she had been separated from Matrix Supergirl but still had superpowers.

If any of those were actually “magical duplicates” created by Bat-Mite and/or Mxyzptlk, then #24 constituted the “first appearance” of any such duplicate, and #25 constituted the “last appearance” of any such duplicate (at least until further notice!).

On the other hand: at this point in continuity, the Silver Age Kara was supposed to be dead, Cir-El was supposed to be dead, both of them were supposed to be erased from continuity to boot, and the Post-Crisis Linda was supposed to have retired from the Supergirl role (although she would still have her powers if she needed them in an emergency). I personally favor the idea that Mxyzptlk had reached back through time and space to bring these three forward from the pasts of various timelines. In which case, although this would serve as a "Final Appearance" for those three in terms of the publishing dates (at least until further notice), it would be a story which (from their own perspectives) occurred well before any of them died or otherwise ended their Supergirl careers.

[Lorendiac]

In addition: a blond in a black Supergirl costume, apparently the same "Evil Kara" who was temporarily split off from "the Rebooted Kara Zor-El Supergirl" by Black Kryptonite, appears in the final pages of this story arc as well, although her role is not particularly important. Then she vanishes again. If you arbitrarily assume that this was the "same Evil Kara" who was last seen before this in Supergirl #5, then you could call this her real "Final Appearance until further notice." Maybe; we don't actually hear much about her circumstances or fate in this one. (In my opinion, Superman/Batman #25 suffered badly from having way too many faces crowded together in one long fight scene, and not nearly enough time for each of them to do anything significant to justify their being in the story in the first place! There apparently wasn't even enough time to explain where they all came from or where they all ended up as this sequence of events was winding down!)

Was all that perfectly clear? No? That's what I was afraid of!

This seems like an appropriate time to quote something that Jeph Loeb has helpfully stated about his own attitude toward the nitpicking details of continuity, in some commentary he wrote for the recent “Challengers of the Unknown Must Die” TPB collection of an 8-issue miniseries he did with Tim Sale in the early 90s. Loeb said:

In comics, for those of you who don’t read ‘em regularly, there’s this thing called “Continuity.” Now, mind you, I sort of believe that continuity – or the rules of storytelling in the DC Comics Universe – goes like this: “Jimmy Olsen didn’t become Robin the Boy Wonder, and everything else is up for grabs.”

(And by the end of that same piece in the TPB, he is humorously suggesting that perhaps he ought to go back and reexamine the Jimmy Olsen idea!)

With that in mind, I'm not surprised that Loeb didn’t bother to tie up all the loose ends (such as the nature and fate of the newly created “Superwoman” character) at the end of the story arc that introduced her to us.


3. Short Lists of the Different Users of Each Relevant Name

Here's the funny thing - no matter how hard you try to explain it to them, there are still some people who get just a trifle confused about exactly which character you mean when you casually refer to "Supergirl" or "Superwoman" or "Power Girl" or "Superman's cute blond cousin." Isn't that peculiar? Don't they realize how hard DC works to make these things user-friendly for new readers?

In an effort to sort it all out for you, I offer these lists of who has used which names, more or less in chronological order.

Super-Girl
01. A magically-created character in one story, conjured up out of thin air, then disintegrated and forgotten. (Erased by Crisis.)
02. Liandly of Rolez, a girl from an extradimensional reality who met the Lois and Clark of Earth-2 but had no Kryptonian blood in her veins. Appeared in a single story and promptly vanished into comic book limbo again. (Erased by Crisis.)

Supergirl
01. Lucy Regent, Queen of Borgonia (erased from continuity by Crisis)
02. Kara Zor-El of Earth-1, the "Silver Age Supergirl," also known as Linda Lee and then Linda Danvers (killed in Crisis, and then erased from continuity to boot.)
03. Supergirl, the Wolf-Faced one from an unnamed parallel world where all people looked pretty much like werewolves in the movies, judging from the description I've found. (I've never seen the story.) Only made one appearance in the Silver Age. The parallels were apparently close enough that this one was almost certainly also named Kara Zor-El, although I don't know that for a fact. (Erased by Crisis.)
04. Louise-L of half a million years in the future (erased from continuity by Crisis)
05. The life-sized clone who resulted from the merger of six miniature Supergirl clones in the early 1980s. I reread some back issues and it appears that the six miniatures never individually referred to themselves by the name Supergirl, but the full-sized clone definitely did think of herself that way for a time after the merger, and had the memories and genes to support that claim, even if the powers had already been lost. (She ended up meaning to start a new life as a normal person without superpowers, and was subsequently erased by Crisis.)
06. Matrix, an artificial lifeform created by Alexander Luthor in a pocket universe. She later migrated to the main Earth of the DCU.
07. The Matrix/Linda Danvers merged entity (who no longer exists as a separate entity, having been redivided.)
08. R'E'L of one million months in the future, who traveled back to the Earth of the DCU's modern era in Young Justice #21 and hasn't been heard from since.
09. Kara Zor-El of the story Elseworlds Finest: Supergirl & Batgirl.[/I], who was not "in continuity" at the time it was published (1998), but was later shoved into continuity (1999) when Superboy proved it was possible for heroes from the mainstream DCU timeline to cross over to her timeline and back.
10. Tangent Supergirl, created in a lab in the People's Republic of China in the Tangent Universe; already dead before we ever knew of her existence; apparently never had any name except "Supergirl."
11. Supergirl of Earth-D, a Kara from Krypton who looked African instead of Caucasian, the wife of her world's Superman. (Made a single appearance in a flashback story set in the middle of Crisis, and died at the end of that story. Subsequently any memory other heroes had of her, and of her native universe, would have been wiped out in the Post-Crisis continuity -- but her existence, and her entire universe, was being retconned into the Pre-Crisis DC Multiverse continuity, long after the fact.)
12. Linda Danvers, the Supergirl who initially had "reduced" powers after being split away from Matrix. (Still alive, but no longer calling herself "Supergirl" these days, and with her powers restored to a higher level.)
13. Arguably the Matrix/Twilight merged entity known as an Angel of Fire could still lay claim to the right to be called Supergirl, since the Matrix half of that entity had been a proud bearer of the name for years (with Superman's full approval, to boot). I don't know that the Angel of Fire has ever shown the slightest interest in using the name, however.
14. Kara Zor-El of an alternate timeline that I tentatively think of as "Earth-Silver Age." (Sent back home and presumably died or will die in Crisis, or her local version of Crisis, or whatever.)
15. "Supergirl," real name unknown, a blond girl in a red-and-blue costume who was slaughtered by Lord Xenon in the brief scene that was her First and Final Appearance all in one. She evidently came from an "alternate timeline," but we know absolutely nothing about its distinguishing characteristics - nor hers. (Dead.)
16. Cir-El, who started out allegedly being the time-traveling daughter of Lois and Clark, but was actually a genetically modified fake. (Dead, and apparently "erased from existence" in such a way that other DCU characters can't really remember her now, as near as I can tell.)
17. Kara Zor-El, currently the New Supergirl on the Block in her bare-midriff costume.

Bizarro-Supergirl
01. A character created and killed off in a single Silver Age story, who looked pretty much the way you'd expect a Bizarro-Supergirl to look. (Erased from continuity by Crisis anyway.)
02. A character created with the Bizarro-making duplicator at a time when the Silver Age Supergirl looked awful, with the result that the Bizarro version looked normal, and spoke good grammar, but was quite stupid. Apparently a single appearance; I don't know what became of her later. (Eventually, she too would have been erased from continuity by Crisis.)
03. A Bizarro copy of the Post-Crisis Linda Danvers Supergirl; her creation was financed by Two-Face. (Dead.)

Supergirl Robots
01. The first one appeared just four months after the Silver Age Supergirl did. There have been other robot doubles; not all of them manufactured by Superman. I prefer to lump them all together - once you've established the basic concept of a convincingly lifelike Supergirl robot, the rest of them are just repetitions of the same old, same old. Granted, sometimes they pose as "Supergirl" but I don't take that too seriously at the moment, and didn't bother to list any of the robots under the "Supergirl" heading above. (Any Supergirl Robot copy of the Silver Age Supergirl must have been erased by Crisis. I don't know if there have been any Post-Crisis robot doubles of any other Supergirl.)

Supergrrl
01. An alternate-timeline-analog of the modern Superboy; created by Project Cadmus. Given how Superboy's own genetic origins have changed from time to time, I have no idea whether Supergrrl should currently be considered to have any DNA in common with the Supergirl of her timeline or not. As far as I know, she still lives in her own native timeline (unless it quietly got wiped out by Infinite Crisis or something).

Superwoman
01. Lois Lane on various occasions (those occasions were all erased by Crisis, although the rebooted Lois is still with us).
02. The Silver Age Supergirl on at least one occasion that I know of, due to a brief transformation to a full-grown adult after exposure to a piece of Red Kryptonite. (There may have been subsequent occasions "in continuity," but if so, all of them were erased from Post-Crisis continuity at the same time the Silver Age Supergirl was erased.)
03. Luma Lynai of the planet Staryl (Silver Age Supergirl called her a "Superwoman," at any rate -- it's not absolutely clear whether Luma ever used that exact name for herself).
04. The evil analog of Wonder Woman from Earth-3 (killed in Crisis and then erased from continuity)
05. The Superwoman who looked very much like the female equivalent of Superman in a single Pre-Crisis story. Probably created from thin air by the magic of Mr. Mxyzptlk -- in other words, probably very similar in nature to the magically-created Super-Girl of a single story in 1958. (Erased by Crisis.)
06. Kristin Wells, time traveler from the 29th Century in two Pre-Crisis stories. (Presumably erased from history by Crisis - her appearances as Superwoman were definitely erased, but Kristin Wells the historian might "still" live in the 29th Century of the modern DCU for all I know!)
07. The evil artificially empowered near-duplicate of Wonder Woman from Qward in the Antimatter Universe, this new origin story being meant as a retcon to salvage the gist of some of the Pre-Crisis stories about the various members of the Crime Syndicate of America from Earth-3. This version of Superwoman had still died during the Crisis, evidently. (She was supposed to already be dead when she was first mentioned in a Post-Crisis story. And now she has presumably been retconned away by Superwoman #9, below.)
08. Dana Dearden, also known as Obsession -- but who preferred to call herself Superwoman -- a Superman stalker who was convinced they were meant to be a happy couple. (Dead. She apparently also called herself Mrs. Superman at least once, shortly before she died in battle.)
09. The evil analog of Wonder Woman and of Lois Lane, from the modern Antimatter Universe Earth-2.
10. Laurel (presumably Laurel Kent) of an alternate timeline where she and Batwoman are apparently two of the biggest names in the superhero business; she may have "naturally" been born in that timeline, or she may have been magically created out of thin air by Mr. Mxyzptlk and/or the Joker/Bat-Mite combination. As far as we know, she was returned safe and sound to her home timeline at the end of the only story arc she's ever been in, and hopefully is still there. (Unless she was a magically created being who may have been "erased" when she had served her purpose. Who knows?)

Power Girl
01. Kara Zor-L, the cousin of the Golden Age Superman (Kal-L), from the Earth-2 universe in Pre-Crisis continuity. She thought she was the granddaughter of Arion of Atlantis. Lately she's decided she's Kara Zor-L of the Krypton of a long-vanished universe all over again; the Post-Crisis Origin Story having been some sort of swindle.

Powergirl
01. Created in a lab in the People's Republic of China in the Tangent Universe; struck out on her own rather than serve someone else; hasn't been heard from since that single story.