Adventures of Supergirl Chapter 10 Review and **SPOILERS**

Mother, Tell Your Diamond-Hardened Space Prison Wardens Not to Walk My Way

Written By: Sterling Gates

Art By: Cat Staggs, John Rauch

Lettered By: Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: 99 cents

On Sale Date: May 30, 2016

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Okay, I’m just going to call bullshit on this whole thing where Superman and co. can communicate with their dead parents’ holograms to ply them for information. I know there’s precedence for it, I know Donner used it in his original Superman film and it looked soo cool, but it totally dulls the tragedy of, you know, having your birth parents die. At least the way Sterling Gates writes Kara’s Kryptonian mom, there’s a limit to the information she can divulge because she died before iPods became big, in Man of Steel, Jor-El was strolling from behind pillars and popping up whenever the hell he wanted. There’s no way I’m going to miss my deceased father if he can still annoy the shit out of me from the afterlife. Anyway, this chapter of Adventures of Supergirl contains Kara’s holographic mom, so if that’s something against your church or whatever, then you should probably skip it. Everyone else can read on!

Explain It!

Last we left the sisters Danvers, Kara and Alex got the snot beaten out of them by Facet and then discovered a creepy stalker’s collage dedicated to Supergirl. Following her suggestion to talk to her mother, Kara does just that—first getting Winn to cover her desk, which is something I’d like to see. I mean, he’s not exactly perky or especially anticipatory. Anyway, he agrees to do it because he owes Supergirl for saving him from Vril Dox a few issues back, and because he wants to make out with her. So Kara and Alex head down to the Department of Extranormal Operations to unleash the mom hologram—or the mammogram! Wait, that didn’t come out right.

Though she rarely visits her mom hologram and never writes or calls, Kara dispenses with pleasantries and gets right to interrogating her about Facet. Turns out Facet is a indestructible gem-skinned being from planet Barrio Prime, who lived on Krypton because they had the better movie theater. She was tough and apparently from the barrio, they made her a corrections officer at Krypton’s first prison complex, Magin. Despite the prison erupting into a massive riot that claimed thousands of lives, Facet distinguishes herself by cracking the most skulls, and so is installed in the new Phantom Zone-based prison Fort Rozz, where she is so successful that other prisons send her their worst prisoner. That’s sort of like being so good at singing that you get hired to join a Screamo band. Kara accuses her mom of sending Facet to Earth to watch over her, a question she sort of sidesteps with that old “does not compute” excuse. But considering Facet kicked the crap out of Kara and her sister last issue, then Facet is doing a pretty piss-poor job of being anyone’s chaperone.

So this chapter had some interesting information, including that Kara Zor-El’s mom was on the Kryptonian prison council and probably the Kryptonian Kiwanis Club as well. Unfortunately, the entire thing consisted of Kara and Alex standing around, having a conversation with a digital ghost. This is all set up for some big showdown, I’m sure, but taken individually I’d have to say this chapter was a bit on the dull side. The art by Cat Staggs livens things up a bit; I find her art to be hit-or-miss on interiors, but in this chapter it looks pretty good. On to the next adventure!

Bits and Pieces:

This chapter is all set-up for future events, and as such it turns out to be twenty digital pages of Kara and Alex talking to a hologram. And it's not even a hologram of 2Pac! The artwork is really nice,  but there's not much action to speak of and the reveals are less staggering and more intriguing. This has been a good digital series, and I am sure stuff gleaned from this chapter will have ramifications in the near future, but if you jumped on here for some reason then you might wonder what the hype is all about.

6.5/10