Warner Bros. PicturesIt’s ironic that, despite the impetus of his origin story being his existence as the “Sole Survivor of Krypton,” Superman hasn’t been that in quite some time. Over the years DC Comics has slowly increased the number of Kryptonians who survived the destruction of their planet: General Zod was one of the first, debuting in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961, and since then they’ve added the entire city of Kandor (a population of thousands that accidentally avoided the destruction of Krypton when they were shrunken down and put in a glass enclosure by Braniac), H’el (a Kryptonian clone created by Superman’s father), and even Jor-El himself, transported through time by the machinations of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (a creative decision that surely sent psychic shockwaves down Alan Moore’s spine).However, predating all of those examples is none other than Kal-El’s famous cousin Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, who made her debut way back in 1959 and whose deeply complex and convoluted existence arguably rivals her cousin. Kara has been rebooted multiple times, and on top of that there have been several different characters who have inhabited the mantle of Supergirl, all of them with their own unique spin on the title. The upcoming film Supergirl, the second installment in James Gunn’s newborn DC Cinematic Universe, revolves around Kara specifically – but considering the multiverse shenanigans Gunn’s universe has already gotten up to, it might be worth a crash course just in case one or more of them show up in the future.The Woman of Tomorrow arc the film is based on follows Kara Zor-El’s Supergirl, but there are quite a few others. | DC ComicsPre-Crisis Kara Zor-ElNot technically the first character to be called Supergirl (that distinction belongs to a woman created from thin air by Jimmy Olsen using magic in a one-off Golden Age story), Kara Zor-El is nevertheless the oldest and most famous version, introduced in the pages of Action Comics #252 by artist Al Plastino and writer Otto Binder (the creator of Mary Marvel). Her home of Argo City survived the initial destruction of Krypton by becoming a self-sustaining colony afloat in space, but was later destroyed by a meteorite storm – but not before Kara was rocketed to Earth in a similar fashion to her cousin, arriving after he had already made his debut as Superman.In her earliest stories, Supergirl resides at Midvale Orphanage under the secret identity of Linda Lee, only using her powers to aid Kal-El sparingly because he didn’t want her revealed to the world until she’d mastered them. Eventually she’s adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, makes her debut as Supergirl to the world in 1962’s Action Comics #285, and graduates from high school as Linda Lee Danvers; after her college years, Linda relocated to San Francisco and took up a variety of different jobs in her off-time from superheroics, including serving as a TV news camera operator, student counseling, and even acting. The 1970s was arguably the biggest period for defining Kara as a character – along with her relocation, she also received her first major villain: Nasthalthia “Nasty” Luthor, the stubbornly loyal niece of Lex Luthor who made it her mission to discover the secret identity of her hated enemy, Supergirl.Kara’s popularity made her a mainstay in Superman lore, earning her two solo comics as well as appearances in other Superman books, but 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths brought her character to a shocking and tragic end. Years earlier, in an attempt to reconcile the canon inconsistencies that naturally arose from decades of different writers, Kara Zor-El and the Superman of the 50s through the 80s were retroactively labeled heroes of the reality Earth-One, while the original Golden Age Superman of the 1930s and his cousin (more on her later) hailed from Earth-Two – Crisis on Infinite Earths was an attempt made by DC editorial to totally erase the Multiverse, having felt the concept ultimately created more problems than it fixed. The reality-destroying villain of Crisis, a being known as the Anti-Monitor, posed so great a threat that heroes were recruited from multiple alternate Earths to stop him; in the battle, Kara Zor-El was fatally wounded while trying to save her Superman, and when the story concluded with the establishment of a new, singular DC Comics timeline, Kara’s existence and sacrifice were erased for decades.Supergirl’s death in Crisis on Infinite Earths was a massive raising of the stakes withinn the storyline and is part of why it’s remembered as such as seismic shift in comics all these years later. | DC ComicsPower GirlPiggybacking off the utterly maddening convolution of early DC Comics storylines, the character known as Power Girl is actually the Supergirl of the aforementioned Earth-Two; her name is Kara Zor-L, her cousin is Kal-L (the Golden Age Superman of the 1930s), and unlike her original alternate universe counterpart, she was rocketed away from Krypton at the same time as her cousin but arrived as a young woman in her 20s, after he’d already started acting as Superman. Debuting in the 1970s (prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths but after the Earth-One and Earth-Two designation had been created), Kara was initially known as simply “the Supergirl of Earth-Two,” but it wasn’t until post-Crisis that she fully stepped into a character of her own.After CoIE, Power Girl was folded into DC’s new Prime Earth, with a fresh backstory that presented her as the long-lived descendant of an Atlantean sorcerer. Naturally, this was a disappointment to fans, so when 2005’s Infinite Crisis (a direct sequel to the original) resurrected the concept of the Multiverse, Power Girl’s origin was again retconned to reveal that she had actually always been the Supergirl of Earth-Two, and had somehow survived the destruction of her original reality; this has remained her consistent backstory to this day, a tragic recontextualization that makes her a refugee of both Krypton and Earth-Two. Adopting the name Power Girl to differentiate herself from Superman (and stand on her own with the appearance of yet another Supergirl), Kara Zor-L’s presence in pop culture has largely been relegated to countless jokes about the overtly sensual nature of her costume, but on the page she’s an incredibly intelligent and authoritative character in her own right, with years of experience as a superhero that make her a stark, mature contrast to the frequent depiction of other Supergirls as impulsive teenagers.It’s a shame Power Girl is mostly known for her risque costume, because her status as a refugee of both her planet and her reality make her an incredibly tragic and interesting character. | DC ComicsMatrix/Linda DanversAfter the original Crisis on Infinite Earths, a totally new version of Supergirl was created in 1988’s Superman vol. 2 #16: this version was an artificial lifeform created by a heroic version of Lex Luthor from yet another alternate universe, imbued with some of Superman’s powers but granted new ones such as telekinesis, shapeshifting, and invisibility. After the destruction of her original universe, the Superman of Prime-Earth brought her to his world, where she was taken in by Ma and Pa Kent and affectionately given the name “Mae.” Inevitably, she would take up the Supergirl mantle in her own stories, which included a brief era in which she fell in love with Prime-Earth’s Lex Luthor before realizing his villainous ways.Mae’s story got even more convoluted in the mid-90s when writer Peter David took over the book: he introduced a troubled young woman named Linda Danvers (a reference to pre-Crisis Supergirl’s identity) who was murdered by a religious cult her boyfriend recruited her into — however, right as Linda was about to die, Mae sacrificed herself to save Linda’s life, an act which fused the two of them together into a creature known as an “Earth-born Angel” (a being that is born when someone sacrifices themselves to save another life). The two of them began operating as Supergirl together, gaining new powers such as teleportation and flaming angel wings, and their stories took on a decidedly more supernatural tone than traditional Supergirl stories. Eventually the two would find themselves separated, with Mae fusing with another woman named Twilight to become a separate hero and Linda slowly fading out of relevance, with her canon status still in dispute to this day.She might certainly have the strangest origin, but Linda Danvers is still one of the more memorable and unique takes on the character. | DC ComicsPost-Crisis Kara Zor-ElIt wasn’t until 2004 that the grandmother of Supergirls finally returned, receiving a rebooted origin in the pages of Jeph Loeb’s Superman/Batman series. Her initial post-Crisis origin involved Kara (chronologically older than Kal) being sent away from Krypton at the same time as her cousin, with space shenanigans delaying her arrival for decades and causing her to meet her younger cousin in adulthood while she has the appearance of a 16 year-old girl; later comics revised this by once again having her home of Argo City survive Krypton’s original destruction, only for her parents to send her to Earth before Argo City is forcibly integrated into the Bottle City of Kandor by Braniac. Her first appearance on Earth sees Kara train with Wonder Woman and the Amazons before she’s kidnapped by Darkseid who plans on making her one of his Female Furies — after being saved by the combined might of the Trinity, the new Supergirl goes on an odyssey of self-discovery around the world, encountering Power Girl, the Teen Titans, and the Justice League before she’s transported to the 31st Century where she temporarily joins the Legion of Super-Heroes.Since her post-Crisis debut in the early 2000s, Supergirl has gone through a few more reboots and reimaginings, but most of them use her 2004 origin as a launchpad to integrate her into whatever new confusing company-wide reboot DC Comics is going through at the time. Across 70 years and multiple different characters holding the mantle, Kara Zor-El has remained one of the most popular characters in the Superman mythos, growing far beyond her initial conception as a “female Superman” to become a character with a vast library of stories in her own right, including her brief time as a Red Lantern as well as the recent Woman of Tomorrow arc the movie is based on. Hopefully, Supergirl does decently enough to bring the character back for more movies. And, not only to ensure the continuation of this new incarnation of the DCU, but so that Milly Alcock can bring more of the character’s various adventures to life.Supergirl is in theaters now.