Alan Kistler's History of Power Girl
Friday, December 21, 2007 at 02:32AM 
OUR HERO IN A NUTSHELL
There is more than one universe. More than one version of how people and events turned out.
In the mainstream DC Universe, the one we read about in comics every week, Superman (Kal-El) and his cousin Supergirl (Kara Zor-El) are heroes from the dead planet Krypton who protect Earth.
In a parallel universe, another version of Krypton likewise exploded. Its two only survivors journeyed to their own universe's version of Earth. There, they became costumed heroes. These two survivors were a man named Kal-L, who called himself Superman, and his cousin Kara Zor-L, who called herself Power Girl.
Some time later, circumstances beyond her control transported Power Girl to the main DC Comics Universe and her home reality was destroyed afterwards during an event known as the "First Crisis" (or The Crisis On Infinite Earths).
Haunted by the fact that she is the sole survivor of an entire universe, Power Girl is a loner by nature, constantly questioning her place and role. Despite this, she continues fighting for justice, both in her own adventures and alongside famous teams such as the Justice League and the Justice Society of America, which she currently leads. When she enters a fight, all doubts and fears are put aside, determined to finish the job as quickly and as efficiently as possible. Because she is Kryptonian (albeit from an alternate version of Krypton), she has abilities on the same level of Superman and Supergirl. Unlike either of them, she's got a lot less patience for anyone who gives her any trouble.
All in all, she's a formidable female hero fully in charge of her sexuality and secure in the knowledge that she's one of the toughest people on Earth, able to give the Man of Steel and Wonder Woman a good, solid brawl.
Now if only they could keep her origin stable.
Here then, gentle readers, is the History of Power Girl!
THE OTHER SUPERGIRL
Starting in the 1960's, DC Comics showed that there was an entire multiverse of different realities co-existing. The two that got talked about the most were the parallel universes known as Earth-1 and Earth-2. Earth-1 was the mainstream reality with all the modern day heroes. The Justice League of America, the Teen Titans (mainly made of the sidekicks of JLA members), the Outsiders, they all lived on Earth-1. Earth-2 was inhabited by DC's Golden Age characters from the 1940's, such as the Justice Society of America and a team of teenage heroes called Infinity, Inc. (primarily consisting of the sons, daughters and proteges of JSA members).
Now, many heroes had "equivalent twins" on the other world. For instance, on Earth-1, Barry Allen was the Flash and got his powers due to a freak lightning bolt striking him when he was in his crime lab. Whereas on Earth-2, the Flash was a guy called Jay Garrick who got his powers in college during a lab accident in college. These two filled the same role but were not identical, thus only "equivalent" to each other.
In some rare cases, a person had an near-identical twin on the other world. Superman and Batman were such cases. On Earth-2, there existed Kal-L of the doomed planet Krypton, who was sent to Earth, was raised as Clark Kent, worked at The Daily Star newspaper and became Superman in the late 1930's. On Earth-1, there lived Kal-El, a survivor of his universe's version of Krypton who was sent to his universe's version of Earth, was raised as Clark Kent, later worked at The Daily Planet newspaper, and became known as Superman in the modern-day world.
The reason for Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman having nearly identical twins on Earth-2 was to explain away how it was possible that these heroes had published adventures during World War II and yet they and most of their supporting cast were still relatively young and vital in the modern-day comics. For more information, see my Superman essay.
Now, in the mainstream/modern stories, Kara Zor-El aka Supergirl (Superman's cousin and occasional partner) had been introduced and had adventures on Earth-1. Eventually, DC decided there should be an Earth-2 Kara but that she should have a unique look, attitude and code-name in order to distinguish herself as her own character and not just Supergirl-Lite.
Kara Zor-El's origin is explained in her own profile (coming soon). On the Earth-2 universe’s version of Krypton, Zor-L (brother of Jor-L) constructed a ship similar to the ship that would carry the infant Kal-L, but designed it to provide a much greater array of sensory stimulation. As Krypton exploded, the two ships were launched. Kal-L's ship took a more direct path to Earth, arriving while he was still an infant. Kara Zor-L's ship took a more circuitous route, arriving 60 years later. It wasn't explained if this was because Kal-L’s had warp-drive and hers didn't for some reason. Maybe Zor-L just thought Kara should take the time to see the sights.
During the journey, Kara was kept in suspended animation, which slowed her aging so that she was only about 19 or 20 when she finally arrived on Earth. Furthermore, her "symbioship" used virtual reality programming to provide her mind with a full Kryptonian education, simulating years of life experiences so that she'd mature at the same pace that her body did.
When Kara Zor-L landed on Earth-2, her universe's Superman found her and was glad to find that he wasn't the sole survivor of Krypton after all, he had a cousin. Although Kara was technically older, her years of suspended animation meant that she was now about 19 and her baby cousin was now old enough to be her father. And indeed, the Golden Age Superman and his wife Lois (on Earth-2, they'd been married for some years now) took in Kara Zor-L and practically became parents to her.
Kara Zor-L was thrilled by the discovery of the powers that Earth's environment granted her. She was ready to
don an outfit and fight evil just like her cousin. But not wanting to seem a secondary version of Superman, she wanted the title Power Girl rather than Supergirl. She was her own woman with her own strengths and assets, not just Kal’s cousin. Likewise, she wore no S-shield on her chest nor blue tights. Her uniform was an all-white body suit with a red cape and blue gloves and boots. It was a fitting outfit, matching her with the patriotic spirit of many Earth-2 characters.
Along with shorter hair, Power Girl had a more aggressive attitude than the sweet, innocent Supergirl of Earth-1. In fact, when she met the JSA and they wondered just who she was, she lost patience with the veteran heroes and engaged them in a quick brawl. Superman arrived to confirm that Kara was indeed his cousin. Furthermore, he had decided to retire and wanted Kara to take his place on the team (which riled up JSA member Wildcat, who found the lady to be too big for her britches and hated that she had the power to back it up).
There were still some similarities between Power Girl and Supergirl. On Earth-1, Supergirl was best pals with Batgirl, Batman's occasional apprentice and partner, whereas on Earth-2 Power Girl was great friends with Huntress, the heroic daughter of the Earth-2 Batman (not to be confused with the Post-Crisis Huntress who is a blood-thirsty vigilante that Batman doesn't approve of). But whereas Supergirl was pretty much on her own on Earth-1, Power Girl was part of a team. Not only was she a full-fledged member of the JLA, she also later becoming an honorary member of Infinity, Inc. On solo adventures, she fought villains like The Gang, Reactron and Blackstarr.
In her first appearance in All-Star Comics, inker Wally Wood told someone concerning Power Girl "I'm going to make her breasts larger each issue and see if anyone notices." By the time he finally left the book many issues later, PG had a serious rack on her (no offense meant to female readers) and later artists simple assumed this was how she was supposed to be proportioned.
Power Girl quickly got a fan following. In the 70's and 80's when women were more and more concerned about equal rights and equal treatment, here was a hero who was never afraid to speak her mind even if it ticked people off, who didn't pull punches, who was always ready to charge into a fight, and who was completely unapologetic about who she was and the power she wielded both physically and sexually. She quickly gelled with the JSA heroes and it certainly helped her image that she was seen as the team's strong-arm in Superman's absence.
Power Girl wasn't a man-hater though, let's get that clear. She jokingly called her teammates sexist and chauvinist, but it was obvious she had a deep respect for them and all they'd accomplished. And when the JSA teamed-up with the Justice League of Earth-1, Power Girl did not immediately deck the teenage hero Firestorm when he made several passes at her. She just laughed them off, telling the guy he was a little young to know what he was risking getting himself into. Along with this, Power Girl's friendship with characters such as the Huntress showed Kara Zor-L could be a very sensitive and sympathetic big sister when she needed to be. She wasn't just arrogance and violence, she was a complex woman who wanted to make sure no one ever underestimated her.
THE FIRST REVISION
Then came The Crisis On Infinite Earths, a crossover that resulted in a lot of continuity being changed and revised. It allowed DC to look at their characters as a whole and say "What works and what doesn't?" with mixed results concerning their solutions. On reworking Superman, they decided they wanted to go back to the basis of him being the sole survivor of Krypton. No city in a bottle of surviving Kryptonians, no animals who conveniently escaped, and no cousin. Supergirl (who had actually died during the Crisis to save Superman's life) was erased from continuity, as if she'd never existed.
Logically, there was now to only be one Superman in this new, merged reality. The Golden Age Superman was now gone and no one remembered him. Same with the Golden Age Batman and Wonder Woman. Other Golden Age characters who only had "equivalent twins" (such as Flash, Hawkman, Atom and Green Lantern) remained on Earth-1, since they were still markedly different characters from their modern-day counterparts, with different secret identities and in some cases different powers. Infinity, Inc. remained in existence. And suprisingly, so did Power Girl.
But how? Didn't we just decide Kal would be the only survivor of Krypton? Yet we had this girl who, as far as her origin was concerned, was also Kryptonian and was Superman's cousin (well, A Superman's cousin at least).
They could've given her a radically different origin, as they did with the Huntress. Pre-Crisis, the Huntress was Helena Wayne, Gotham lawyer and daughter of the Earth-2 versions of Batman and Catwoman who had begun her crime-fighting career after mommy was killed. Post-Crisis, she was introduced as a new character named Helena Bertinelli. She was a mafia princess whose daddy had been killed by other dons. Trained to fight, fueled by revenge and inspired by the Batman, she became a vigilante in Gotham. She was a school teacher now, not a lawyer. None of her Pre-Crisis stories remained in any kind of continuity and she had no relationship at all with the JSA anymore.
But with Power Girl, they decided to go a different route and altered just a couple minor details of her history. As it stood now, Kara had been found in a rocket ship by the modern-age (and now only) Superman. When he found her, she’d had amnesia, remembering not much more than that her home was gone and her name was "Kara" (no last name given this time). She had vague notions of having grown up on an alien world. Seeing Superman though, and seeing they had similar abilities, she concluded they were from the same planet, maybe even related. Not an unreasonable conclusion.
Superman, being an orphan and all, had jumped on the possibility that Kara was family. But it was later proven by tests that no, she had no Kryptonian DNA. (Later comics would posit that Batman himself was suspicious from the start and insisted on these DNA tests, which made a lot of sense considering how his character progressed after the Crisis).
After this, Superman suggested to the semi-active JSA that they take her in, believing that she could benefit from the experience of such teachers before trying to become a full-time super-hero herself. This meant that most of her pre-Crisis adventures with the JSA were still in continuity. And just as before, she later became associated with Infinity, Inc.
Thus DC got to keep Power Girl and add a new twist on her. A girl without a past, she was now a hero who longed for an identity. Disillusioned and embarrassed by the revelation that she WASN’T Superman’s cousin, she stayed away from Superman for the most part then.
Soon after the Crisis, the JSA were exiled into the null-dimension Limbo where they were forced to fight the Norse gods. The younger members, Star-Spangled Kid I and Power Girl, were sent to stay in the mainstream universe because the JSA figured they might very well die in Limbo. They accepted that, they'd all been around for decades, but they didn’t want the youngsters to waste their lives when they had still had so much left to give to the world.
So Power Girl was on her own. And soon afterwards, she found a crystal sent by the ancient sorcerer Arion of Atlantis, one of the most powerful mages of Earth's past, and learned the hidden “truth” behind her origins. The whole story was covered in Secret Origins #11.
Arion was a sorcerer who primarily operated when the world was young and Atlantis had not yet sunk. He was a Merlin sort of character, but more proactive. Anyway, Kara found out that evidently she was Arion's grand-daughter and had been born in those ancient times. She also had a brother named Khater. Their parents died after Kara was born and Arion chose to perform certain experiments on the girl. Arion believed there was a great war coming between light and dark and through Kara he was going to create a champion to win that fight. Somehow, he used the essence of the magical villain Scarabus and used it to empower his granddaughter.
Arion then placed Kara into suspended animation and sent her into the future to save her from his evil brother Garn Danuuth. Kara aged about 18 years while unconscious, and emerged in the 20th century as a 19-year-old girl, where it would be safe for her to eventually give birth to the champion. Arion had also given her false memories which made her believe she had come from Krypton and that she was Superman's cousin, believing this would lead Superman to protect her. She later reconnected with Arion, who was still alive and living in New York.
After learning of her true heritage, Power Girl traded in her normal belt buckle for one that had an ancient Atlantean symbol on it in order to emphasize her connection to Arion rather than Superman.
Later on, even when she changed her costume later to a gold and white cape-less outfit, she still kept the buckle (which is odd considering she had no belt then, but who am I to judge?).
For some folks, this just didn't feel right. It was like saying that the Flash woke up one day to realize that he was actually a super-soldier who'd been engineered by aliens and that the lightning accident was a cover story. It just seemed odd and suddenly connected Power Girl to a character and an atmosphere she'd never been a part of before. She'd always been a sci-fi alien hero, not the magically empowered granddaughter of one of Earth's biggest sorcerers. What's more, this (along with the introduction of a new version of Supergirl) seemed to cut off any real connection Kara had to Krypton and Superman in general.
MOVING ON WITH LIFE
Fan's weren't a big fan of PG’s new origin. She went on, establishing a lax secret identity as Karen Starr, head of a small company, and joined the Justice League, later adopting yet another new costume. Although she later gave up the Karen Starr identity for the most part, many of her friends would still call her Karen in following years.
Karen joined the newly formed Justice League Europe and stuck around until issue 67. Beforehand, her powers had been comparable to Superman's. But during a battle with vampires and the mystical Gray Man, she lost her enhanced sense of hearing and enhanced eyesight (microscopic/telescopic/x-ray vision), as well as her heat-vision. Also, she was no longer quite as strong or as invulnerable as she’d been before. This seemed to do away with the last traces of her connection/resemblance to Superman or indeed to a Kryptonian at all.
DC grew tired of trying to work her civilian identity into sub-plots, so they decided to get rid of it. During an adventure with the JLE, Power Girl met a friendly other-dimensional imp named Ghy who took on the identity of Kara's "cousin" Gina Starr and began running her company for her. In another JLE story, Power Girl made the strange decision to visit once a year to the Underworld and learn from the monstress Echidna. Presumably, DC was trying to cement her as a magical character now and thus distance her from Superman.
DC also tried to spice up the character with romantic flirtations between her and Aquaman. Later, she totally made out with the Green Lantern Hal Jordan when he had a bit of amnesia (which is slightly creepy when you think about it). Neither of these flirtations were serious and it felt like DC was just desperately trying to find her something to do.
Fearing that no one was caring about Power Girl, DC decided to introduce a champion that Arion had “created” so long ago. It was revealed that Kara was now magically pregnant (although there was minor fan speculation that this was Hal Jordan’s kid, it was confirmed that the conception was immaculate). The baby was growing at a fast rate and was born during the time crisis crossover called Zero Hour. The child was obviously magical because during Zero Hour when everyone was running around, terrified of time-rips and time-vortexes, Kara’s baby (hours before it would be born) was able to cast a protective force field around his mom.
The boy was born and started growing up at a fast rate, which made some readers think about that STAR TREK: TNG episode where Deanna Troi was impregnated with an energy being, had the kid the next day, the kid grew up hours later and then died, becoming an energy being again afterwards. Kara and the boy she seemed unwilling to name later ran into the evil villain Scarabus and had to be rescued by the JLA and Arion (Justice League America #93). A couple issues later, the kid went off on his own, as magical babies are wont to do and showed up again, now a grown-up and with a monk of some sort as his companion. He called himself "Equinox" now and killed Scarabus before going off into the sunset.
And he hasn't been seen or mentioned ever since!
Take note readers, this is what Marvel should have done back during the Spider-Man Clone Saga. When you realize you’ve created a storyline (“magically-born savior” / “Spider-Man has a clone”) that no one cares about or thinks is too weird, have it wrapped up quickly and get rid of the new character (magic baby / clone named “Ben Reilly”) in a way that’s vague enough that a later writer could bring him back if he somehow thinks of a brilliant story but is also definite enough that there is no reason to really speak about said character ever again. Since this story ended, no one's even mentioned that Power Girl was ever a mom in the first place.
After leaving the League, Power Girl seemed to vanish into character limbo for a while but then showed up 
again in the story Kingdom Come. In this famous mini-series, Alex Ross and Mark Waid showed us a possible future for the DCU and Power Girl was one of the more prominent players in it. Now calling herself Power Woman, Kara was one of the major power-houses of a newly formed Justice League that policed the entire planet. Whether fighting super-villains or rogue anti-heroes who kept endangering the lives of bystanders, she was a force to be reckoned with.
The success of Kingdom Come (hailed as one of the greatest comic book stories ever) definitely helped in getting many readers interested in our patriotic color-clad champion once again. And if you don't believe me, re-watch the episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer where the title character admits that when she was a girl she fantasized about growing up to be like Power Girl.
A while later, Oracle (formerly Barbara Gordon, the original Batgirl) teamed-up with Black Canary II and they starred together in a series called Bird of Prey. Oracle would be the info broker while Canary went out on missions. As the title went on, Power Girl guest-starred and it was revealed that not too long before recruiting Black Canary, Oracle had first partnered with Power Girl. But on their last mission together, a lot of people were killed and Kara now only worked with Oracle very reluctantly. This was a strange twist on the old pre-crisis friendship between Barbara and Supergirl.
OTHER FOLKS FROM KRYPTON
After seeing that readers still missed many Pre-Crisis elements even though it had been over fifteen years later, 
and seeing how successful Superman: The Animated Series was in using some Pre-Crisis stories and characters that had been deemed silly by comics, DC eventually began relaxing on their rule that Superman had to be the only survivor from Krypton. They introduced a new version of Krypto the super-dog. And later they reintroduced Kara Zor-El, Superman's actual cousin and the only other survivor of the House of El. She was back now, introduced as if this was the first time we were seeing her, calling herself Supergirl again.
Now here’s another interesting thing. In her reintroduction, Kara Zor-El’s Post-Crisis origin was closer to Power Girl’s Pre-Crisis origin. Funny, huh? Supergirl was able to use, for the most part, the same origin that Power Girl had to give up because it was deemed as unusable in Post-Crisis continuity. Makes yer head spin, don’t it?
Now, a little before Supergirl’s reappearance, writer Geoff Johns was already making sure that Power Girl would not be over-shadowed by the return of her predecessor. So he had PG join the newly-reformed JSA (JSA #31), returning her to her original costume and immediately treating her as a dynamic take-charge character who truly belonged with the big guns. She was the first one to charge into battle and the last one to even think about retreating if the enemy seemed really tough.
Some thought she'd become a bit of an egotistical bitch, but she countered to her teammates that if she were a man, no one would comment about her arrogant jokes during fights or the fact that she often challenged folks like Captain Marvel to prove that they were indeed stronger than her.
In her post-Crisis appearances, Power Girl seemed to lose the top-heavy proportions that Wally Wood had given 
her and regained a more average female super-hero build (which admittedly is still more impressive than the average woman on the street). She still often wore a costume with a window on the chest that exposed her cleavage and one time her fellow Justice Leaguer Crimson Fox questioned why she would show off in such a way. Power Girl remarked that her outfit simply showed what she was: "female, healthy, and strong. If men want to degrade themselves by staring and drooling and tripping over themselves, that's their problem, I'm not going to apologize for it."
When he painted Kingdom Come, Alex Ross was more faithful to the old Wally Wood art and afterwards Power Girl was once again portrayed as being among the more well-endowed female super-heroes of the DCU. More characters now remarked on this and it was occasionally used for humor, such as when Batman once suggested that Power Girl was the best candidate to distract a fifteen-year-old boy whose help was desperately needed and who tended to be stubborn in offering aid to adults. And when teenage hero Courtney Whitmore (originally called Star-Spangled Kid II, later called Stargirl) met Power Girl, she couldn't help but ask the elder woman "Can I be you when I grow up?"
Power Girl herself never let such remarks bother her and often laughed at the absurdity of men who were distracted by her chest, joking that it was the main reason why she never felt she'd had to wear a mask to hide her identity since no one was looking at her face anyway. She was proud of her body and her powers, so why concern herself with what others thought?
Power Girl also showed up in the very popular Justice League Unlimited cartoon series. Well, sort of. The cartoon had already introduced Supergirl. Then, an episode came where Supergirl was having dreams of herself committing crimes and murders. She found out that she had been cloned. The clone had been artificially aged and programmed and trained to be a warrior. The writers gave a nod to Power Girl's larger bust size and taller stature when Green Arrow saw the clone and remarked that she was "more ... mature" than Supergirl.
The clone was called Tea (short for "Galatea") and was quite a handful. Although defeated in her first battle, she later came back to take on Supergirl and the Justice League, driven by a psychotic need to prove that she was better than the original Kara Zor-El. Though she didn't wear a cape and was a misguided villain, it was obvious who she was meant to be.
BACK TO BASICS
As the issues went on, Johns began dropping hints in JSA that Power Girl's origin as Arion's grand-daughter might not have been all that accurate. JSA member Dr. Mid-Nite did tests and saw that her powers were not magical in nature and pointed out the absurdity that Arion would send his granddaughter several millennia into an unknown future to protect her when he was such a powerful sorcerer himself. During a time travel trip, Power Girl felt a strange disturbance when she passed over the year 1985 (the year of The Crisis). Finally, Power Girl met up with Arion's spirit who admitted he had lied to her about her origins, saying only that he promised her mother he'd protect her (JSA #50). OOOH, mystery!
Power Girl then developed heat-vision again, though she seemed to have no control over it yet. Not helping matters, she found that her mind and powers went a little nuts when she was in the presence of Supergirl, though why she couldn't say.
Then came the first story-arc of JSA Classified, which was written by Geoff Johns and tied into DC's cross-over
Infinite Crisis (which he was also writing, conveniently). The story filled in some gaps about Power Girl's past, such as explaining why she had not been seen with the Kents or with Superman much Post-Crisis despite the fact that she had initially believed herself to be Kal's cousin. Evidently, she'd felt like a fraud after discovering her genes meant that she couldn't be Kryptonian and she'd felt ashamed to be in the presence of Martha and Jonathan Kent, who'd both been concerned that their adopted son was not taken in by an impostor.
There was also a touching moment where she revealed that the hole over her chest was not to be lewd. She had wanted to wear a symbol that was all her own, just like Superman's S-shield had been identified as his personal mark by the people of Earth. She figured that eventually she'd think of a design and fill the hole. But with tears in her eyes, she told Clark that even after all these years, she couldn't think of a single design because she wasn't sure who she really was.
Geoff Johns then had Power Girl discover the truth of her origins during a battle with the emotion-manipulating villain Psycho-Pirate. She was really Kara Zor-L, the last survivor of a Krypton in an parallel universe that had been destroyed during the First Crisis. Her shifting powers/abilities and violent reaction to Supergirl's presence were all due to the universe trying to deal with the fact that she wasn't supposed to be here when this universe already had a version of Kara Zor-El. Being native to the Krypton of an alternate universe was also the reason why she didn't register as Kryptonian on DNA scans. Her universe's Kryptonians had evolved somewhat differently.
The Psycho-Pirate demanded to know why Power Girl had survived while the other Earth-2 direct doppelgangers had all been erased from history and continuity. Power Girl herself didn't know why, though. For one reason or another, she had fallen through the cracks when time and space were reordered. Before, she was faced with the possibility that she was an orphan with no family. Now, she had to face up to the fact that she was the sole survivor of an entire universe.
Well ... ONE of the only survivors ...
The rest of Power Girl's story was continued in Infinite Crisis. She was re-united with Kal-L, who had survived the original Crisis by entering a different dimension with his Earth's Lois Lane, Superboy-Prime and the Alexander Luthor of the now destroyed Earth-3. Alexander Luthor had no explanation as to why Power Girl had survived the destruction of the multiverse but concluded her shifting powers and false origin of Atlantis was, in a way, the universe trying to make sense of her presence. Kal-L said that Power Girl's survival must be due to her sheer willpower and determination.
Kara was confused at first, neither recognizing these people nor remembering their role during the original Crisis years before. But when she touched the hand of Earth-2's Lois Lane-Kent, she suddenly regained all her Pre-Crisis memories and embraced the two people who had treated her like a daughter. But she was shocked to then learn that Kal-L intended to remake the universe, feeling that this world that had survived the Crisis had become corrupt and was patrolled by ineffective and overly-flawed heroes, whereas his Earth-2 had been a wonderful and perfect place. Power Girl soon discovered that Kal-L was being manipulated by the Earth-3 Alexander Luthor and Superboy-Prime, both of whom wished to create their own vision of the perfect universe and didn't care who they had to kill to achieve it.
Lois Lane-Kent finally died of old age and Kara was captured by the Luthor of Earth-3. She was then placed into a machine along with several others, a device Alexander Luthor had built to recreate the multiverse. The machine was later destroyed (and universal history was against altered somewhat, restoring several Pre-Crisis elements) and Alexander Luthor was defeated. Superboy-Prime went on a rampage and only the combined might of our Superman and the Superman of Earth-2 were able to defeat him. Superman of Earth-2 died during this final battle and Kara wept as she held his hand and watched her cousin pass away.
Kara buried her cousin and Lois Lane-Kent of Earth-2, placing them in a cemetery where Earth's heroes are mourned. Though she was once again alone, she was no longer lost. With her memories restored, she now knew exactly who she was and had no problem explaining it to anyone who asked. She was Kara Zor-L, an alternate/older version of Supergirl and sole survivor of a universe that no longer existed.
Perhaps due to her restored memories and due to the restructuring of time and space during Infinite Crisis, Power Girl finally found her powers completely stabilized, restored to their Pre-Crisis levels of a Kryptonian from the universe of Earth-2. Nor does she suffer any ill effects anymore when she's in Supergirl's presence. It's almost as if the universe itself has accepted her just as she's accepted herself.
As stated before, Power Girl's DNA is different from Kryptonians of this universe and thus she doesn't show up as one under any kind of scan. Even the computers in Superman's arctic Fortress of Solitude (the last hub of Kryptonian technology) doesn't register Kara Zor-L as a Kryptonian. Likewise, it seems that Kara is immune to kryptonite that is native to the mainstream DCU, meaning that if she and Superman are locked in a room with the stuff, it'll be up to her to save the day while the Man of Steel is being poisoned.
About a year after the events of Infinite Crisis, there was a story in Supergirl in which Power Girl and Supergirl journeyed into the Bottle City of Kandor, a city full of miniaturized aliens from many cultures (not to be confused with the true, original city of Kandor from Krypton). This story was confusing and has not been referenced since (in fact, later stories have contradicted it). It involved Superman's evil double Ultraman coming to Kandor and attempting to start a theocracy with him in charge. I honestly wouldn't bother with the story.
The one interesting thing about this story was that, since Power Girl and Supergirl had no powers in the environment of Kandor, they fought evil by wearing suits of techno-armor. In these suits, they called themselves Nightwing (Power Girl) and Flamebird (Supergirl), after two Kryptonian heroes of legend.
Following her departure from Kandor, Power Girl was asked to join Oracle's new line-up of the Birds of Prey. Power Girl flat-out refused, obviously still harboring some ill feelings towards Oracle from the last time they'd teamed up.
Despite being antagonistic with Supergirl and Oracle, Power Girl has begun establishing stronger connections with other heroes. She teamed-up with Superman in a few fun adventures and also fought alongside Wonder Woman in an issue of The Brave and the Bold. Written by Mark Waid, this story emphasized the difference between the two powerhouse females when Diana tried to constantly analyze the situation whereas Power Girl wasn't concerned with any plan more complicated than "punch faster." In the same story, fans also saw that Power Girl resented Wonder Woman somewhat for being so perfect and nice and patient, the latter quality being something Kara never quite got a handle on.
Immediately afterwards, Power Girl joined with several other old JSA members in reforming the team. To her surprise, the veteran members immediately nominated her to become the group's leader and she gratefully accepted. Since then, she's shown herself to be a great and formidable leader.
In the most recent issues of Justice Society of America, Power Girl and the rest of the team encountered a god-like being called Magog. Sensing Kara's desires, Magog realized that Power Girl wanted very much to return "home" and so he transported her directly to the new version of Earth-2 that was created in the wake of Infinite Crisis.
At first, Kara thought she had been brought home, only to discover that this new Earth-2 already had its own version of Power Girl. This wasn't her home, resurrected, this was just a near exact-copy recently created from scratch. As much as she'd like otherwise, her home was gone and she had to accept that.
It's great to see such a strong female character get her footing back over the past few years, especially when you consider that she's had many chances to just fade into comic book limbo but fans and writers seem to refuse to let her go. That says something about the lady. And in a male-dominated world (not just ours, but the DCU Earth too), it's very cool to see strong super-hero women who aren't just female versions of a more popular male version. As had originally been intended, Power Girl is not someone whom you can just dismiss as Superman's back-up. She's her own woman and she damn well likes it that way.
And if you have a problem with that, she'll simply smile and punch you in the face. How can you not love and respect a woman like that?
I hope you enjoyed this essay. Until next time, cheers!
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