Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #6 – “The End of the Beginning”

* Part 6 of 7 of the Last Daughter of Krypton storyline *

Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #6 – “The End of the Beginning”! And this, my friends, is the beginning of the end, as it were. The almost-final issue of the first Supergirl story arc. In the previous installment, Supergirl finds her way back to Argo City, which is now a tiny asteroid orbiting a blue sun. There, she pops in her red crystal sunstone and watches her dad’s message about the fate of Krypton, the attempt to save Argo City, the attempt to save Kara, and a surprise view of his death before the end of the message! Fun!

A Worldkiller named Reign followed Supergirl to Argo City, thinking that she would be a kindred spirit that could work with her to find the answers about Krypton that they both seek. Unfortunately, Supergirl went nutso again and tried kicking Reign’s ass, so Reign is like “fuck you, I’ll seek the answers myself” and warned her that Argo is going to spiral off into the blue sun soon, so you better leave before you get yourself dead an’ shit.

And that’s where we are now. Once again, Supergirl has no idea what to do next. Let’s see how that works out for her. Just swell, I reckon.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #6 [April, 2012]
Written by: Michael Green & Mike Johnson
“The End of the Beginning”

Reign told Supergirl to follow her, but Reign also left her unconscious and hanging on the wall. Is this the end for Supergirl?

Wait, who cares! We won’t even get to that yet. We have to see something entirely different altogether first, a flashback sequence of Kara’s bullshit training. “You’re late. I’m beginning to think you don’t take your physical training seriously,” rebukes a spindly floating robot. Here’s my translation: “Straighten up and fly right or your family will disown you. Take this shit seriously! These are the Trials. Don’t you know how important the Trials are? Goddamn! The Trials!”

And she starts fighting like Buffy the Vampire slayer while Giles holds boxing strike pads. This version seems wimpier, though. Kara says stuff like “Uff” and “Hrrf”, clearly unable to show this robot who the boss is whatsoever (maybe she does actually; the robot is the boss!). After a few more weak punches, the robot knocks her to the floor.

What’s disappointing is her stupid training outfit.

The robot berates the girl further, and if I were Kara I’d unplug this bitch. Her non-dead father walks into the room to inform the robot that Kara is very stubborn, so she’s not going to listen to him! Consider thyself unplugged. Bitch. Kara sits on the floor, put out.

“There’s only one thing you need to know about combat, Kara: Get knocked down? Get back up.” Ah, the wisdom of Chumbawumba transcends galaxies, I see. Her father smiles in that fatherly way that shows that he likes his loser daughter anyway, even if she is a 75-pound weakling. He helps her up and they start walking away, insisting that Kara is a scientist and not a fighter, and, against Kara’s mother’s wishes, she’s done training for the day.

Kara thinks back on all this and wishes her dad didn’t excuse her shitty training progress. After all, now that Krypton exploded and she’s on her own, maybe it would have been, uh, helpful in this current situation, to say the least.

She hangs there on the wall still, limp, feeling like a total failure for being the last daughter of Krypton (that’s the name of the storyline!). And I guess when Reign said that the city was going to fall into the blue star and burn up, I thought she meant, like, months or years from now. Not within the afternoon. Or before the commercial break. So Supergirl struggles to urgently free herself from the grip of the sword, but she has no strength! Blue sun = shitty super powers. Oh well, at least she’ll die in Argo City where she belongs! That’s comforting!

“Top o’ the mornin’ to ya! Give me a pint o’ the black stuff! You’ll never get me lucky charms!”

Back on Earth, a young tourist couple asks a passerby to snap a photo of them with the Statue of Liberty in the background. The passerby claims she is from Ireland, that’s probably why she has such a weird accent! Yep, Irish. Not Worldkiller. Nope. That’s closer to Northern Irish, heh heh. Anyway, Reign is disguised as a young woman, hair short and gray, dressed in leathery punk fashion. She then asks the couple to take one of her too.

Twist! The young woman isn’t Reign, but Reign shows up behind her and declares New York City to be the perfect place to start her various conquering-related objectives. The young people look slightly concerned and bothered. “YOU!” Reign points to a shaky, rather helpless cop, “You wear some kind of ceremonial garb! You represent the rulers of this world?” And when the cop poops his stupid cop pants and trembles in the affirmative, Reign lifts him by the neck: “Excellent. Tell them Reign has come. Tell them to assemble their forces. Their finest warriors. Their deadliest weapons. I will meet them in the center of this city…”

“…where they will have the honor of dying first.”

Reign smiles, relishing the thought of killing stupid humans. A real Bending Robot.

Back on Argo again! Supergirl hangs there all pathetic and dying of exposure and/or blue sun burn-up. She gets ghostly visions of her parents talking to her. It’s all very heartwarming. “Your mother and I are here for you, Kara,” claims the vision of her father, obviously brought upon by her stomach eating itself, “We will always be here for you.”

But she’s wise to this ethereal visit! “I’m dreaming,” she tells them, but hush dear. It doesn’t matter. Just let the hallucinations do their work. “Take my hand, child. Together we have the strength. Now pull…”.

And “together” they have the strength. And “together” they pull.

Nothing like a good SHNNNK–NNHYAAA! to start your morning.

All right, now what did Kara’s father say? Oh yeah, it was something about getting knocked up if you get knocked down? Close enough! Her mother gets a turn to speak, though, for once: “You must go, NOW. The city is falling into the sun.” Supergirl doesn’t wanna! She wants to stay here with them! Be a normal Kryptonian teenager! Play normal Kryptonian Xbox! Do her normal Kryptonian chores! Watch normal Kryptonian Buccaneers vs. Vikings American football games! But no, fair daughter, the time has come to hoist yourself by your dang bootstraps and get the fuck out of dodge.

“Find a new home, Kara. Do not worry. We will always be with you,” speak her starvation-induced fantasies.

Once again, Supergirl finds herself in outer space. She looks behind her at the floating chunk of rock that used to be her city. This is the part of the story where she admits all the denial that she has been clinging on to since she crash-landed in Siberia. “My old life is over. I knew it already,” she tells herself, and then knows what she needs to do next. “I’m awake now. My home is gone. And I have only one place left to go.”

And that place is Hogwarts. Hey, are there any Harry Potter comics? Did I ask that before? Actually, I don’t care whatsoever, nevermind.

Reign is running through the city like she’s high on bath salts, laughing at all the helicopters, tanks, and gunmen trying to take her down to no avail. “HAHAHA! DON’T STOP! ATTACK ME UNTIL YOUR WEAPONS FAIL! ATTACK ME UNTIL YOUR CITY CRUMBLES!” she yells maniacally! Like a maniac! The bullets go “braap”. The tank missiles go “choom”.

One missile chooms like a mofo, connecting right with Reign’s torso. “That’s better,” she grins, then leaps on the tank to start tearing it apart. She lifts a guy out of the tank and yells at him to fight like a warrior. Reminds me of Issue #1 when Supergirl lifted the soldier up by his scruff out of his mechanical robot suit. Reign was right, these two really are alike. Maybe they’ll hook up in Issue #17, “Reign on Kara’s Wedding Day :]”.

But first, a little bit of playing hard to get! Supergirl HERSELF somehow found her way back to Earth, and THEN found her way to New York City, and THEN found Reign’s location, and THEN punched her into a large stone archway. All without any GPS at all! I can’t even find Walgreens without a GPS and I live, like, really close to the Walgreens.

Fast fuckin’ friends, these two.

“It’s good to see you again, Kryptonian,” Reign says this like it’s been more than two hours since they saw each other. Certainly, Reign knows that Supergirl isn’t here to help! That’s why Supergirl punched her into a large stone archway! Pretty big hint, I’d think. “I didn’t come back to rule this world, Reign…I’m here to kick you off of it!” Supergirl snarls, and the fight is on!

Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!

OK, well, there’s not really much of a fight yet. Reign throws Supergirl down and creates a Supergirl-sized hole in the concrete road. Then Reign talks a lot, mostly about how much the two of them have in common. Do I hear wedding bells? :]

Supergirl insists they have NOTHING in common, but just like the rest of this series so far, she’s been completely wrong every time there has been a situation in which to be wrong. Every time! “We both seek answers to our origins. Like you, I awoke with my memory fractured…the full truth of what happened to us remains hidden in the wake of Krypton’s destruction. And yet we both sense that this world might play some part. Why else would it be the only place in the universe to find Kryptonian survivors?”

Ahhh! She keeps talking! All right, so she’s like “yes I noticed your fight with Superman, I shoved that fucker under a couch for now, he’s not gonna bother us” and concludes that she, Kara, Supergirl, she’s the only one powerful enough to stop her. Why she tells Supergirl this information, I’ll never know, but Reign next puts up a Super Duper Force Field 9000 that will prevent anything, ANYTHING, from interfering with their battle.

Now then. Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight! F-

Still talking, Reign? Goddamnit. Well, at least this one’s rather important. Reign is smug to inform Supergirl that this force field is the same technology that her father tried to use to save Argo City. NOT unique technology. Her father ripped it off! Take that! Ha!

Now then. Fight! F-

There’s no fighting in this issue. Reign finalizes this issue with one more hard truth. Unfortunately for Supergirl, just like Kryptonians, more than one Worldkiller survived. And now Supergirl is surrounded by three more Worldkillers.