Supergirl turns to the shadowy organization known as the D.E.O. (Department of Extranormal Operations) to restore her lost powers once and for all! But as a fateful experiment sends Kara Zor-El rocketing toward the sun, disaster strikes at home in the form of the lost Kryptonian werewolf Lar-On!
As someone who’s neither watched the current Supergirl TV series or read an issue in a long time, I was curious as to how Supergirl Rebirth #1 works as a jumping on point. Click the jump for the review!
Keeping to DC’s promise of more traditional, straightforward stories, Steve Orlando has a satisfyingly simple story for this issue: Kara takes off on a last-ditch mission to get her powers back (flying into the sun) which causes a rift in the phantom zone. Out drops a werewolf from her planet’s past, cue the fight scenes and explosions. It’s definitely fun.
I think the story is helpful for new readers. We find out who Kara is and who her father was. We meet her foster parents and her new boss. We see her new cover-identity and the school she’ll attend in disguise, and at the very end we get the briefest glimpse of the next story arc: her father, back from the dead (?) There’s a good bit of exposition in a short amount of time, but it doesn’t feel overly clunky or contrived.
For the most part I was happy with Emanuela Lupacchino’s pencils and Ray McCarthy’s inks; everything was very dynamic and I liked everyone’s faces and expressions. My only quibble was when Supergirl’s ship reaches the sun and she (just in time) (spoilers) gets her powers back and blasts off towards earth. I thought her pose was a little stiff; there wasn’t quite the forward motion you’d want in that moment. (A few pages later there’s a great example of what I’d been looking for, when she punches the Krypto-werewolf in the face.) But that’s a pretty nitpicky complaint.
All and all this works well as a jumping on point for new readers. I like the straightforward story but I’m hoping we get a little more complexity in the future. But not too complex: the complaint I’d heard most from readers of Supergirl in the past few years was that she tended to be a bit of a jerk. This nicer, good-hearted Supergirl promises to be more fun.