Superman Adventures 21

Last Daughter of Argo
By Evan Dorkin and Sarah Dyer, Bret Blevins and Terry Austin
Jul 1998

- double sized issue
- collector's item
- 99 cents on Comixology
-

- Everything seems normal on Argo until Krypton explodes and Argo is blown out of the orbit of the sun and begins to get progressively colder
- Kara is 13 years old; Zor-el, her father, was killed on the day Krypton exploded
- After the disaster, Kala, Kara's mother, tries to hold what remains of the family (herself, her brother, Kara, her nephew) together but things continue to get worse as Argo drifts further away from the Sun
- After 4 years of deteriorating conditions Kala announces she has a plan; she has modified some sleeping pods to allow them to go into cryogenic sleep until hopefully someone finds and rescues them; Kara reluctantly agrees
- she wakes up on Earth at STAR Labs; Superman explains that when was out in space exploring he found her and her family but the others had been crushed by ice; he takes her to Smallville to stay with Ma and Pa Kent
- Kara writes in her diary about life in Smallville and how dull it is except for the one day she snuck out and went to Metropolis and had an adventure where she met Jimmy Olsen and fought Granny Goodness and the Furies (see S:TAS Little Girl Lost)
- finally she gets her break when Superman agrees to let her keep an eye on Metropolis for him while he is away in space with the Justice League; Ma Kent accompanies Kara but soon she is off on her own fighting crime
- Kara experiences anxiety over the changing of the seasons as the weather gets colder; it reminds her of life on Argo after Krypton exploded; she almost has a meltdown when Ma Kent shows her a snow globe
- she gets attacked by Kanto of Apokolips who is wielding a dagger with a Kryptonite blade but Kryptonite doesn't affect her and she defeats him easily
- Kanto returns to Apokolips and reports in to GG; after Darkseid forbids her from going to Earth or sending any of her people to Earth she takes Kanto to the Phantom Zone; there they find a Kryptonian (Zod?) who is more than happy to do her dirty work
- Zod reluctantly follows GG's orders and frees Jax-ur and Mala from their cell at STAR Labs; they are about to kill Professor Hamilton when Supergirl shows up; she almost gets killed when they turn a disintegration ray on her; they leave thinking she was killed by the ray
- the PZCs start tearing Metropolis apart, they don't stop until Supergirl shows up again with some Green K; the GK work on Jax-Ur and Mala but not on General Zod who like Supergirl comes from Argo; it is at this point that Zod reveals his true identity
- Supergirl isn't prepared for this setback and flies off; Zod uses this opportunity to make things worse for Jax-Ur and Mala; he crushes the GK into powder which he then blows all over them, payback for the way they treated him in the Phantom Zone
- Supergirl heads for the fortress of Solitude hoping to find something to help her defeat Zod; she uses the Brainiac memory globe to learn about Zod which gives her an idea; as she retrieve the Phantom Zone Projector Zod shows up and attacks her
- they fight, he is winning when she sees something and gets an idea, she knocks him into a cage which houses a Teerpa, an Argoan creature and is bathed in red sun radiation which robs Zod of his superpowers; just before the Teerpa tears him limb from limb Supergirl uses the PZP to send him back to the PZ

- neat 2 pages made up of multiple horizontal panels that stretch the width of the page, almost completely wordless, and show life deteriorating on Argo as it drifts further away from the sun
- the scenes of a Krypton exploding are fairly intense as life goes from calm to tragic very quickly
- Supergirl suffers from what can probably be best described as PTSD throughout the story; it takes a valiant effort for her to brave the snowy environment in which the FoS is located
- her overcoming her fears is a big part of the story

- in the Pre-CoIE Earth-1 Universe Argo was a little different

6/10