Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #1-4

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow #1-4

Originally released in 2021

Written by Tom King

Art by Bilquis Evely

I've seen this book described as being like "True Grit" but in space, and early on, that description seemed to match what I saw.  A grizzled/traumatized lawman (in this case, Supergirl) is hired by a girl who's far too young to be considering such a thing (Ruthye Knoll, an inhabitant of an alien world orbiting a red sun) to track down an outlaw who murdered her father, so said girl can kill the outlaw.  The world being on a red sun is the problem - Kryptonians lose their powers while on such planets.  While trying to discourage Ruthye from seeking revenge, Kara and Krypto are shot with arrows by said outlaw, Krem of the Yellow Hills, who steals the ship that Supergirl came to the planet on and escapes.

Once off the world, Kara recovers, but the arrows were coated in a poison that's deadly to animals, so now Kara (with Ruthye in tow) has to track down Krem in order to get a sample of the poison, so that an antidote can be made and Krypto can be saved.  The book feels like a Western, but with each issue having them travel to a different planet (or several), it allows for a ton of visual variety in the settings.  I can almost hear the Ennio Morricone music from something like The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly as we see the vast rocky planes of Ruthye's homeworld.

This comic is being adapted into a movie, and while I don't know if it will be a one-to-one adaptation (though it easily could be; it's set up like one, and the book is only eight issues long), there's one sequence that I hope stays almost identical.  While taking a passenger flight off of Ruthye's world, the spaceship encounters trouble, and I was filled with awe at the sequence that followed.

In order to force this space dragon off, Kara has to take Red Kryptonite.  For other races, it causes vivid hallucinations of being transformed, being treated as a highly illegal drug unless it's being used for medicinal purposes, but for Kryptonians, it makes those hallucinations come true.  It's an interesting take on Red Kryptonite traditionally making the person who's exposed to it transform, and I can easily picture this being the highlight of the movie once this makes it to the big screen.

It should go without saying at this point, but Bilquis Evely's artwork is gorgeous, taking full advantage of these alien worlds and the beauty of space.  Tom King's writing does a great job with ratcheting up the tension, such as when Kara and Ruthye visit an alien world while trying to track down Krem.  Something as ordinary as signing for a hotel room or seeing a pair of water fountains slowly becomes ominous - something feels wrong, but it's not entirely clear what the problem is, until eventually, the horrible truth is revealed.

While Supergirl hasn't talked much about her own history and the burden that she bears, this does an outstanding job with showing how compassionate she is and how much restraint she has.  She's haunted by what happened to the remnants of Krypton (she starts to say that she came to Ruthye's planet for her 21st birthday so she could get drunk and not have to think about it for one day, though she cuts herself off), but she still puts everyone's problems ahead of her own, whether it's digging hundreds of graves at super-speed so that Krem's victims will have a proper burial or helping someone grieve when they returned to their planet to find it in ruins.

I've only read the first half of this story, and I'm hooked.  It's immediately engaging, well-paced, and even the backgrounds of the worlds that Kara and Ruthye visit tell stories of their own.  I can't wait to see how this ends.