Welcome to Loneliness & Cheeseburgers Presents: Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #7 – “Graduation Day”! The thrilling (?) conclusion to the first New 52 Supergirl story arc. In the previous installment, Supergirl uses the power of LOVE and FAMILY MEMORIES to free herself from the doomed-for-a-second-time Argo City. She flies back to Earth, where Reign already started rootin’ and tootin’. Supergirl is inclined to stop her from conquering Earth, but Reign has other plans.

So now they’re gonna fight and stuff. Let’s take a gander.

Supergirl (Vol. 6), Issue #7 [May, 2012]
Written by: Michael Green & Mike Johnson
“Graduation Day”

Purple text boxes tell me that we’re in yet another Krypton flashback! Or at least we’re seeing flashback panels of a laboratory while Reign is describing to Supergirl her earliest memories. “My companions and I awoke, fully formed, in a deserted laboratory. Whatever work had once thrived within its walls had long since ceased.” What’s with the flowery prose? Say it this way: “WE WOKE UP IN A TUBE. SHIT LOOKED ABANDONED.”

Reign and her companions tried to put the puzzle together from whatever data they could find within the lab’s datacores (aka computers with hard drives loaded mostly with sexy Kryptonian pornography). They discovered that they weren’t on Krypton at all, the lab existed floating on its own in a far-away corner of space so that no one knew what these scientists were actually doing (looking at sexy Kryptonian pornography).

The goal was to scoop up some species and genetically modify them for unknown fun reasons. But now they’re pissed, and all they want to do is destroy and conquer and find out where they all came from. Reign herself looks like a regular, generic big-eyed tropey alien (with auburn locks!). The other three are, like, a puma and a bunny and a reptile or something.

HERE ARE THEIR NAMES AND STATS! They are all female. Thanks, large intro page:

Reign: Super-strength. Invulnerability. Flight. Tactical leader.
Flower of Heaven: Energy creation and manipulation. Flight. Planetary systems overlord.
Perrilus: Poison/virus generation and dissemination. Population extinction.
Deimax: Super-strength. Invulnerability. Mass terrain destruction.

Whoa, what a group of badass, insecure losers each with heavy metal band names. How is Supergirl going to stop them? Erp! BLERBEB! HFLUFH!

Be a sport and die with aplomb!

Deimax (nu-metal puma) tries to give Supergirl a large hug, possibly one that crushes normal human bones, but Supergirl’s bones are certainly more robust than Deimax anticipates! Plus, the energy of the Earth’s yellow sun is now charging her batteries, so she is able to heat herself up to a billion degrees, causing Deimax to go “ow”, and then she blasts her about five feet away.

“You continue to surprise me, Kryptonian,” says Reign (NWOBHM alien). “This may take longer than I thought.”

But lo! Behind Supergirl is Flower of Heaven (post-metal Donnie Darko bunny thing) and he grabs her head to jolt painful, brain-exploding electricity through her whole body! SHRRZAK! Just like that!

“Or perhaps not.” concludes Reign. “Perrilus, finish her, please.”

Perrilus (black metal reptile) tries to wrap a long, scaley tentacled appendage around the girl’s body to crush her, but it doesn’t work. Robust bones! So, instead, she intends to “enter through the eye and poison her soul”.

Awww, hell no. Supergirl ain’t stickin’ around for that! She blasts Perrilus full of fiery eyeball juice! She lies on the ground trembling and hissing.

“Breathtaking. Do you even comprehend how powerful you are?” Reign asks, but we’ve been through this before with Supergirl and she doesn’t care. She wants to get away from these nerds posthaste. But she wants them to follow her away from all the innocent peons walking around, so she zips into space with the hopes that the four Worldkillers will take the bait.

Hey, though, don’t you remember? Reign put them all under the dome. No one can get in or out. Even Supergirl isn’t strong enough for that! Stolen Kryptonian technology, how did Reign gain access to such magical mysterious power?

Supergirl flies frantically around the sky, trying to keep them off the ground and away from buildings. Reign pops up to ridicule her lack of fighting experience. Not alert enough! Take…THAT! And Supergirl is thrown through some NYC buildings like she was piloted by Mohamed Atta.

Pfft, 9/11 was so 22 years ago.

She lands on the street below, creating a massive crater and scaring, like, one bird.

Reign applauds Supergirl for making the whole destroying-a-planet-and-eradicating-all-the-life-on-it a thrill. Usually it’s a dreadfully boring process! Ha, but you didn’t think this one through, did you Reign. You didn’t think this one through at all. “MISS, STOP RIGHT THERE!” Hahaha! You’re about to face the fucking consequences, you alien piece of shit! THAT WAS THE SOUND OF THE POLICE PULLING UP TO AIM THEIR GUNS AT YOU! Better give it up now.

Ohhhh shit, Reign isn’t even giving the police a glance. She’s in for it now.

Reign offers Supergirl another chance to join them. After all, it would be a waste of such amazing power if they had to snuff it out in order to carry on with their mission. She’ll even sweeten the deal: join them and they’ll leave Earth alone. Whattaya say? ♩ ♪ Oooh, you make me live. ♫ ♬ Only a Worldkiller can defeat another Worldkiller anyway, so don’t even bother trying to fight anymore!

The police are like “buuhhhh, hands up! Hands where I can see ‘em! Daaahhhhhh”.

“I guess…it’s like my father always said… I’m stubborn!” Supergirl thinks to herself as she picks up the police car and tosses it onto Reign. Oh well.

No more running and hiding now. Supergirl actually starts fighting them proactively. A car on top of Reign here, an attempt to rip apart Flower of Heaven’s protective shell there. Perrilus slams her against a car and she gives up again!

The ground starts rumbling under her, and the nu-metal Puma emerges with a subway car, showering everything in broken chunks of dirt and concrete. “I found this underground.” she declares before launching it at Supergirl. She stops it mid-air and tries her best to set it down gently on its side. Traumatized subway passengers begin clamoring out.

Let everyone off first before you board the train. Common courtesy. One at a time, people.

Supergirl faces her opponents again. “Reign was right. I can’t beat all of them,” she thinks, taking all the time in the world to think such thoughts, “But I’m not going to let them hurt these people. I’ll die before I let that happen. Krypton might be gone… but there’s still something left to save.”

She tries to formulate a quick plan. One that’ll really ALLOW HER TO WIN WITHIN THESE LAST FEW PAGES, so to speak! Immediately, because Reign talks too damn much, she remembers a comment about how Worldkillers can only be defeated by other Worldkillers. So she tests that theory out by grabbing Perrilus’ long, razor-sharp, tentacley arms and shoving the stabby parts into Deimax’s chest. A ton of gross, thick, purple blood splurts out. Or, rather, the blood SCHUKK’s out.

Reign sees this and probably grinds her teeth and rolls her beady black eyes about it. “Enough! Worldkillers! Cease!” Then she tells the two unwounded losers to take the wounded, bleeding loser back to the ship to help her before the poison kills her.

Reign takes this opportunity to talk a lot more!

Anticlimax Alert!

Her final words can be summarized as follows:

-Just like Supergirl, the Worldkillers continue to evolve and realize their potential.
-Supergirl gets to keep her dumb Earth. The Worldkillers will continue to search for their own respective planets.
-One last thing, btw. The Kryptonian lab they all awoke in? There were actually five incubation chambers! The fifth was empty when the rest woke up, as if it had escaped a hell of a long time prior.

So where is the fifth Wordkiller?

Final Thoughts

It’s Supergirl, ninnies. The fifth Worldkiller is Supergirl.

Well this story petered out in a big way with the final couple of issues! At least I can say with confidence that the overall experience was POSITIVE, so the Superfamily is off my personal ON-NOTICE list. For now. I can’t say that I look forward to absorbing some more Kryptonian hijinks just yet, but I’m keeping my mind open.