Supergirl #8 – Sophie Campbell, Writer; Haining, Artist; Alex Guimaraes, Colorist
Ray – 9.5/10
Ray: Most issues of this charming series by Sophie Campbell are done-in-one stories, and that adds to the Silver Age aesthetic that she’s playing with. I find some of the things that are being brought into continuity to be…questionable (Superman left Supergirl in an old-timey orphanage in the 1990s or so?), but Campbell is weaving gold out of every weird plot thread. This issue is set around Christmas, where Kara is staying with the Danvers and reformed supervillain Lesla-Lar. The new arrival is getting very much into the holiday, but Kara is struggling with it – she always thinks about her family on Argo during the holidays, and becomes tense. But there’s another, darker subplot here – the Linda Danvers robot she built shortly after her arrival on Earth, to take her place when she needed to be Supergirl. And then after she was adopted, she sealed it back up in the tree and forgot about it…
This story has a lot of themes in common with things like Steven Universe: The Movie, or the underrated Steven Spielberg movie “AI: Artificial Intelligence”, when it comes to its thoughts on robotic beings and the way we treat them. But whether this being was real or not, in the same sense that we are, it has its own form of consciousness – and Kara’s realization of this is one of the most emotional moments of the issue. This issue is a great look at how the nature of the holidays can mean different things for different people, and what brings joy to someone can bring pain to someone else. That’s such an important message for this time of the year, and it’s another example of how good this series is. While this issue has a smaller cast than most, with Lena and the super-pets being completely absent, it’s another great installment in what could wind up being Kara’s defining run.
To find reviews of all the DC issues, visit DC This Week.
GeekDad received this comic for review purposes
