Adventures of Supergirl Chapter 13 Review and **SPOILERS**

Here’s Your Cape, What’s Your Hurry?

Written By: Sterling Gates

Art By: Emma Vieceli, Sandra Molina

Lettered By: Saida Temofonte

Cover Price: 99 cents

On Sale Date: July 10, 2016

**NON SPOILERS AND SCORE AT THE BOTTOM**

Alright! Another hot chapter of Adventures of Supergirl to continue this story with…wait a second. This is the last chapter? Why wasn’t I informed? And if I was informed why didn’t people make sure I paid attention? It just seems so…abrupt, you know? There’s still a thing to settle with Vril Dox. And we barely saw Kara’s office buddy, whatsizname…Hacker Joey or whatever. And what about James Olsen? Did he even show up? Something smells fishy here! Okay, I guess this didn’t have to be a total port of the television program, but damn…I was really hoping to settle into a long run here. Oh well, the show starts up again on the CW Network in…three months? What the hell is going on around here? I guess the new Supergirl comic coming in August will adhere more closely to the show than I thought. Well, enough rumination and conjecture, let’s send this first digital, then digital-first comic off in the way it doesn’t deserve: a final review by yours truly! Read on!

Explain It!

You’ll remember that last chapter, the rage-filled, Danvers-hating ex-con alien Rampage had her rage drained when Alex Danvers apologized for killing her sister. Which she didn’t, actually. But that’s the kind of gal Alex is, always ready to feel badly even when she isn’t at fault. Now you’ll also remember that two issues ago, Facet grabbed Alex’s mom and Kara’s Earth-mom (whose name we learn in this, the final chapter: Eliza) from her house and made off with her. Well, it’s all coming to a head now, as this chapter opens with Supergirl flying Facet straight into outer space! Huh? Did we miss something here? I feel like we missed something. Facet puts up a little fight, but eventually they are high above the earth, in airless space, where Kara drops her. That’s the kind of plan I might have come up with. Actually, I would have come up with that plan but justified something to avoid doing it. That’s the Reggie Way.

Facet falls to Earth and makes a big crater, but is otherwise intact as Kara expected she’d be. She crawls over to Kara groggily, then reveals that she was faking all along and beats her up a little. Facet explains that she is there to train Kara to be the ultimate warrior or whatever, and she will never relent—Supergirl will just have to kill her. And then they fight for half an hour. I know how long it took because Kara narrates the thing over a montage of sketches and panels, and she says it takes half an hour. In the background, we can see Ms. Eliza Danvers kneeling on the ground and looking forlorn, presumably being held captive. Facet taunts and teases Supergirl, then Kara reveals she’s been biding her time all along, so her sister Alex could get a couple of shots off on Facet and shatter her leg and shoulder. What did she use? Why bullets made from Inertron, of course! Because Convenience Ore wasn’t available. Really, Inertron was something referenced in the third chapter of this series—Kara was held in a cell made from it for a brief time—and I gotta say, this whole run of Adventures of Supergirl has been very congratulatory to faithful readers all along. It’s like there were no wasted scenes at all, everything matters…which only gives more weight to the possibility that this thing got cut off at the knees.

Well, Facet is looking type fucked up, but she figures she can still use Eliza to mess with the Danvers girls. But no! It turns out that when Kara and Alex met Psi, who first told them about Facet, Psi looked into Kara’s mind and trusted her enough to commit this very complicated and somewhat hard-to-believe ruse: Facet only thinks she’s kidnapped Eliza Danvers, as implanted in her mind by Psi. Ms. Danvers has been a figment of Facet’s imagination all along. Which, realistically, was just two chapters. But this all seems a little…convenient. Broken, Facet is collected and stuffed into a tube at the Department of Extra-normal Operations, where she yells loudly and pounds on the glass, Vril Dox looking all sly at her. I just know more was intended for this character! I would swear to it. The day having been saved, Kara takes off smiling and ruminates for three pages about how swell her life is in National City: great family, great job at CatCo, great job at the DEO (where we see a cute panel of Rampage helping out, now that she has calmed down)—things are swell, and all she wants to do is help people, and people like that really make me want to puke!

I kid, I kid—this was a pretty solid issue to a great run of Supergirl stories by Sterling Gates. If I knew for a fact that the plug was pulled on this series, I’d rate it higher because it’s all reasonably seamless, if true. Oh sure, things happen a little rapidly and advantageously, but it’s still a well-paced story with enough action and interesting developments to make a good comic. This has been a strange comic book, to be sure: first, DC has no Supergirl comic to coincide with the new show on CBS. Then, they put out a Supergirl comic based specifically on the show, a month or two before the first season ends. DC makes it digital-only, until it becomes popular and then produces print editions of it. These seem to do reasonably well, and the series ends abruptly. My emotions are being pulled in every direction, I don’t know which end is up! This must be what Kara Zor-El Danvers feels like on an average day.

Bits and Pieces:

We have reached the end of this Supergirl experiment, and if you ask me it has been a success. I'd take Supergirl stories of this caliber endlessly, if provided, but I guess DC has other plans with the print book or something. I don't mean to make this sound like Evil DC Comics hates fun and teddy bears, perhaps Sterling Gates had another opportunity, or maybe there would be some conflict with the new season of Supergirl on the CW. It just seems truncated, that's all. But even if it has been shortened prematurely, this has been a really fun series for fans of the character and the television show.

7.5/10