And if we look for anybody who has ever seemed to be connected with Superman continuity, and used the first name Kara, we have:
Kara01. Kara Zor-El of Earth-1, the Silver Age Supergirl (erased by Crisis).
02.
Presumably the Wolf-Faced Supergirl mentioned above was also named Kara Zor-El, although the online reference I used didn't go into that much detail, which may meant the writer of the original story didn't do so either. (Erased by Crisis.)
03. Kara Zor-L of Earth-2, aka Karen Starr, the Pre-Crisis Power Girl. She later became (or thought she became, or whatever): Kara, granddaughter of Arion of Atlantis. Now she "remembers" that she is Kara Zor-L, cousin of the deceased Superman of the Pre-Crisis Earth-2, all over again.
04. Kara, the mysterious ghost who appeared in a single Deadman story and might be some lingering echo of the officially-erased-from-continuity Kara Zor-El (#1 on this list),
although she never actually said so. (For all we know, she could also be the ghost of that nice German girl, Kara Hausenpfeffer of Earth-46038, whose name and homeworld I just invented to illustrate a point - one of the zillions of unnamed casualties of Crisis from when all those other parallel earths were getting the ax.)
05. Kara of Argo City, of the planet Odiline, the blond teenage girl who fought bravely alongside Superman in
Superman Versus Aliens, whom Dan Jurgens insisted he was going to use again, but never did.
06. Kara Zor-El of the story
Supergirl & Batgirl: Elseworld's Finest, mentioned above in the "Supergirl" listings.
07. Kara (last name unknown), the African-looking Supergirl of Earth-D, mentioned above in the Supergirl listings. (Killed in, and later erased from continuity by, Crisis.)
08. Kara, the mysterious ghostly character who advised the Linda/Matrix Supergirl, first mentioning her name in
Supergirl #49. She may or may not be the same as Kara #4, above. And she may or may not be the spirit of Kara #1, above. She never explicitly said, "I had a nice little chat with Boston Brand, years ago," but on the other hand, she never explicitly said she didn't!
09. Kara Zor-El of what I arbitrarily call the "Earth-Silver Age" alternate timeline, the girl in the "Many Happy Returns" story arc written by Peter David. (She was bounced back to her native timeline and presumably will die/did die in Crisis.)
10. Kara Zor-El, the one who has just recently been inserted into modern DCU continuity by Jeph Loeb, and what will become of her is anyone's guess. Currently starring in her own "Supergirl" title.
11. Kara Zor-El, the "Evil Kara" who appeared in the first story arc of the current Supergirl title as a physical manifestation of the dark side of Kara #10's psyche (maybe). She emphatically disowned any connection to the name "Supergirl." She appears to have been merged back into the mind and body of Kara #10, but there's no telling how long she'll stay that way. (For instance, fresh exposure to a piece of Black Kryptonite might bring her out all over again.)
So by my reckoning, we have the following characters who have been "in continuity" at one time or another:
2 Super-Girls
17 Supergirls
3 Bizarro-Supergirls
An unknown total of Supergirl Robots over the years
1 Supergrrl
10 Superwomen
1 Power Girl (but her origin story keeps fluctuating)
1 Powergirl
11 Karas
With considerable overlap among those categories, of course.
(Here's my advice: The next time anyone tries to tell you that the purpose of killing off Supergirl in Crisis and retconning her out of existence to boot was to
greatly simplify Superman's family tree and his general continuity in years to come, just laugh!)
4. Postscript for the Fourth Draft: Comments on the Confusion that Followed "Infinite Crisis"My last draft was done shortly after the “Infinite Crisis” (or IC) miniseries started. I'd figured all along that there was an excellent chance that, after IC had ended, it might be necessary to do yet another draft of this Timeline to keep up with current events and set the record straight for any newcomers to the confusing mess that is known as "Supergirl continuity." I thought there was an
excellent chance that some of the previous Supergirls (ones who had appeared in Post-Crisis stories, but before the
latest version of Kara Zor-El) might get significantly changed and/or Erased as part of the general commotion. There was, for instance, strong reason to believe that Dan DiDio saw the convoluted origin and subsequent history of Matrix Supergirl as a headache-inducer and an
unnecessary embarrassment now that we had a Kara Zor-El Supergirl back in continuity again. I personally
hardly cared whether Matrix Supergirl, Matrix/Linda Supergirl, and/or Linda Danvers Supergirl got erased or not. I only wanted a nice clear definite answer on that subject so that I could then incorporate it into this Timeline,
whatever the answer might be!
What I
didn't anticipate was the possibility of getting Mixed Signals from people at DC on the subject of
whether or not such Erasures had occurred as part of the repercussions of Infinite Crisis! (Live and learn!)
Three things all happened
on the same day (3 May 2006).
1.
Infinite Crisis #7 was released (and I bought it). Dialogue in that story made it clear the the Post-IC version of the DCU had suffered some additional continuity changes; Alexander Luthor quickly rattled off a list of three, none of them involving any Supergirls, but in a way that left
plenty of elbow room for other writers and editors to subsequently use this as an excuse for any further retcons they felt were necessary.
2. Dan DiDio said, in a Question & Answer session posted on Newsarama --
Crisis Counseling: The Finale --
"The matrix is one of the beats retconned out of existence by the Continuity Wave."3. Geoff Johns logged onto his forum at ComicBloc later that same day and saw a new thread in which various fans (in reaction to DiDio's statement) were already bemoaning the loss of Linda Danvers Supergirl from the modern continuity. Johns seemed very surprised. He said, on
Page 2 of this thread
I'm back from Australia and New Zealand! It ruled! More on that later.
As for this...huh? Linda Danvers hasn't been retconned out at all.
Simple - Joe Chill killed Bruce Wayne's parents. Wonder Woman helped found the JLA. Superman did stuff before Metropolis...more to come on this.
Where'd you get that idea that Linda Danvers didn't exist?
GeoffThat combination of evidently uncoordinated statements from DiDio and Johns left the situation as clear as mud!
These events of 3 May 2006 were then followed by approximately four and a half months of
Total Silence on the subject from Johns, DiDio, and anyone else who worked at DC and might actually know what, if anything, was being Officially Decided about the various Supergirls who had come and gone
after COIE and
before the Kara Zor-El Reboot.
Which left us fans with plenty of time to throw around personal theories, interpretations, etc., recklessly! No one
really knew anything, but everyone had questions and opinions!
Here are some of the questions that occurred to me at the time.
Did DiDio's statement mean that Matrix Supergirl, and the later Matrix/Linda Supergirl hybrid, and the later Linda-all-by-herself Supergirl, were one and all erased from history? Or
just the Matrix parts, since he mentioned Matrix by name but
didn’t specifically mention Linda? That second possibility seemed highly unlikely, because he had only mentioned Matrix in response to a question that was
specifically asking about Linda instead -- and never mentioned Matrix per se! -- so that,
in context, DiDio’s response mentioning Matrix
strongly implied that, in his mind's eye, it all amounted to the same thing; i.e., Matrix and Linda were all glued together in one big confusing and embarrassing mess that should be surgically removed from the DCU in a package deal if you were going to touch it at all. (To be perfectly frank, I could sympathize with that point of view --
if you were going to remove any portion of it,
then I agreed your best bet was to bite the bullet and remove
every single scrap of it and take the heat, instead of trying to cherry-pick a little bit here and a little bit there that you wanted to preserve.)
Did Johns's statement mean that Matrix, and the later Linda/Matrix Supergirl hybrid, and the later Linda-all-by-herself Supergirl, were one and all still firmly embedded in the Official History of the current version of the DCU after Infinite Crisis had finally been resolved? Or
just the Linda parts of Supergirl continuity remained, since he
specifically mentioned Linda as still being part of the Post-IC DCU's history, but
didn’t say a single word about Matrix one way or the other?
Were the two statements both to be taken as “the truth and nothing but the truth,” although neither of them, by itself, explained “the whole truth”? Since DiDio said
Matrix was gone from continuity, and Johns said
Linda wasn’t gone from continuity, and DiDio had said nothing about Linda and Johns had said nothing about Matrix, it was
barely conceivable that both of them were accurately reporting
small pieces of a larger truth and not really contradicting each other at all! Although that would still require another Massive Retcon to later establish just how Linda ever became a “Supergirl” in the Revised History of the Mainstream DCU
if there had
never been a Matrix Supergirl to share superpowers with her in the first place. But it
didn’t seem likely that this was the carefully prearranged game plan, especially given Johns’s apparent surprise at people’s reactions to what DiDio had just said.
Had there been a
communications failure somewhere, with the whole “previous Supergirls” thing currently up in the air, with nobody (not even at DC's headquarters) really
knowing what the "new policy" would be after the smoke had cleared? In which case we simply had to play the waiting game until we got a
new "statement for the record" that would only be made
after DiDio, Johns, and any other interested parties had belatedly found a good chance to
speak to each other at length about the knotty question of Previous Supergirls and hammer out some sort of policy decision they could all agree to live with? (This was the scenario that I personally viewed as the
most likely explanation of how this bizarre set of circumstances had arisen.
If it were the truth, then there was nothing to be gained by arguing online about the subtle implications of DiDio's statement or Johns's statement, because either or both of them might be
totally invalidated by the "real policy decision" that had not yet been made and announced.)
So I put my "Fourth Draft" on hold indefinitely; not wanting to stick my neck out by prematurely commiting myself on the subject of who was still "in continuity" (or not) before there was better evidence of how DC would actually end up handling that tricky question as it related to the various Supergirls.
Eventually a smidgen of additional "evidence" crept out into the spotlight.
In September 2006,
Johns said, participating in a discussion on Newsarama about just who remembered the old Pre-Crisis Earth-2 continuity in vivid detail in the Post-IC version of the DCU:
Actually, the only one who remembers events like that is Power Girl.
Everyone on the JSA, from Earth 2, have vague recollections that there was a multiverse but that's it. DCU history is nearly identical to what it was.
Why is Power Girl the only one with real Earth 2 memories will be explained in Justice Society of America. I think some confusion has come from interpretation of interviews more than the comics themselves.
Hippolyta was a member of JSA, Matrix Supergirl did exist, Etc.
GeoffMy
tentative interpretation of these remarks as they apply to Matrix Supergirl and Linda Supergirl:
Without ever naming names, Johns may have meant the following: “A lot of people took Dan DiDio’s comments on this subject way too seriously. Don’t worry about it! He made an impulsive mistake; it could happen to anybody.”
(As far as I have heard,
nobody else at DC in the months following IC had given
any high-profile and confusing interviews that talked about the possibility of Matrix Supergirl (or Linda Supergirl) getting erased from history, so what do you think Johns was referring to when he delicately mentioned the problem of confusing interviews and then turned around and assured us that Matrix Supergirl's career was
still in continuity? But apparently he judged it more tactful to avoid apparent criticism of any single person in his “reassurances” about Matrix’s continued existence.)
A few more months have gone by since then, and I have seen no reports of any anguished outcry from Dan DiDio to contradict Johns's "follow-up" statement on this issue. No contradictory statements from anyone else have been reported, either. So I am provisionally embracing the interpretation that we should take Johns's recent statement as representing the post-Infinite Crisis policy on previous Supergirls. (Until further notice!)
With all that in mind, I finally decided I would take the plunge, add a few things to this Timeline, and present you with this Fourth Draft! (And if there is a later policy shift that knocks some currently in-continuity Supergirl characters out of continuity after all, I will do my best to explain those retcons in a Fifth Draft! And so on, and so forth!)
Dilber MC Theme by HarzeM