BW Media Spotlight

With Totally Not James Gunn’s Supergirl movie being a hot mess and failing miserably, I’m only happy enough people with taste still exist in the world. Everything I’ve seen of it tells me nobody understood Kara Zor-El, but that’s been true since the New 52 spelled the end of DC Comics for me, after already having a Death Of DC category due to Dan DiDio’s darkening and destruction of what was my favorite comic universe. The last gasp of the Girl Of Steel I knew was in the internet version of DC’s Super Hero Girls by Shea Fontana. While I’m convinced that Lauren Faust was told to remake My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic rather than revisit her series of Super Best Friends Forever shorts, putting Kara in the “Rainbow Dash” persona rather than “Fluttershy” was a mistake, if she had to go with anything. But I’m getting off topic before I even got on topic.

Like with Starfire and what the aforementioned third full reboot of the DC Universe did to her (a sex fiend with the memory of a goldfish), my first introduction to Supergirl was from a free giveaway comic. I’d later get to see her origins in a black and white reprint collection Superman: From The 30s To The 70s that I used to get from the library constantly along with a counterpart book with Batman. However, while Starfire was trying to get kids off of drugs, Supergirl was a pusher…of computers. The second in a series of Superman comics by Radio Shack, in which DC heroes joined with him and Radio Shack’s original characters Alec & Shanna–the (then) TRS-80 Computer Whiz Kids–Supergirl was listed as a guest-star but is more of the lead heroine. They could have just put her name on the cover instead, like a pro-seat belt comic would years later. So how could an ad comic given away at a now extinct electronics store to push their new computers make me instantly like Superman if he were a girl? No, not puberty. You put the creators who make good superhero comics on the title.

Superman” Victory By Computer

DC Comics/Radio Shack (1981)

WRITER: Cary Bates

ARTISTS: Curt Swan & Vince Colletta

This fits into “Scanning My Collection” on a technicality. I had a copy but it was lost years ago. I still have my copy of the first one and the early TRS-80/Tandy Computer Whiz Kids by Archie comics before they started messing with the continuity. As it was the city got renamed maybe twice. I understand not being able to use Metropolis, but it went from Metro City to Coast City to I forget what after. This is also after Alec and Shanna managed to help Superman stop Major Disaster from causing his namesake. We’re getting the broken in Alec, who isn’t such a wise guy. Lucky Kara.

I have reviewed the first comic, and this one“Yesterday’s” Comic> Superman/TRS-80 Computer Whiz Kids #2, for “Yesterday’s” Comic, as well as the final issue that involved Wonder Woman that I’ve never owned. I only put this one together for the buffer after Supergirl’s missteps were being overshadowed by the mixed reaction to Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, but it’s still worth going over why I liked Supergirl so much, because of everything DC Comics and Studios abandoned. I also really liked the first Supergirl movie from the Salkinds that gave us Helen Slater’s better portrayal. I know that’s a minor opinion as well, but that’s hardly a first for me, is it?

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