Since Supergirl #1, Sophie Campbell’s run on the Girl of Steel has been pure comic book joy. Far from being empty Silver Age and Bronze Age nostalgia (though the comic still calls back to those eras), Campbell is breathing new life into Kara Zor-El in ways that’s been absent from her stories for quite some time. Instead of reinventing the character to conform her to the latest trend, Campbell fully embraces every aspect of Kara’s history and uses it to inform her storytelling.
The darkest aspects of Kara’s publication history comes to the forefront in the Halloween-themed Supergirl #6, which is perfect for the spookiest month of the year. But aside from acknowledging Kara’s brief stint as a Red Lantern during The New 52, and her death at the hands of the Anti-Monitor in Crisis on Infinite Earths, Campbell uses these past events to meaningfully explore the Girl of Steel’s unhealed traumas.
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What really stands out about Campbell’s depiction of those traumas is that it doesn’t come in the form of an old enemy like the Anti-Monitor to reopen those old wounds. Instead, the source of that is Kara’s own mind. Following the “Misadventures in Midvale” and the Super-pets’ own wild adventure in Supergirl #5, Kara finally collapses from exhaustion. It is also during her REM sleep that she relives some of the low points of her life and how that truly makes her feel.
The brilliance of this approach is that it very succinctly conveys how trauma tends to stay with someone, even when those traumatic events “don’t seem that bad” to someone else. For instance, Campbell doesn’t pretend that losing Krypton and being abandoned to an orphanage by Superman wasn’t traumatic for Kara. In fact, Campbell doesn’t downplay that at all, which sheds new light on the seeming perfection of Superman.
Though Campbell doesn’t challenge the idea of Superman being the DCU’s “Beacon of Hope,” she also makes a point about him being a flawed individual. Rather than take Kara in when she needed him the most, Superman put her in the care of complete strangers, and even kept her hidden from the world as a “secret weapon.” To a teenager, this can easily compound an already traumatic experience like loss of family and an entire planet to a mass extinction event. Even when Kara acknowledges that her cousin did what he thought was best for her at the time, it doesn’t shake off the feeling of abandonment she experienced as a result of that.
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The other great thing about Campbell exploring Supergirl’s subconscious is that it spotlights the greater significance of the relationships Kara has made independent of her cousin. For Campbell’s run, this includes the Danvers as her adopted family, and the friendships she established with Lena Luthor and fellow Kryptonian outcast, Lesla-Lar. This actually results in one of the best moments in the entire sixth issue: her friends recognizing that there is something wrong with Kara and showing up for her when she needs them the most. Not only do Lena and Lesla remind Kara that she is loved by them, but Kara even gains a new friend in the form of a psychic girl named Luna.
As with all the previous issues of Supergirl, Campbell’s characterization of the Girl of Steel and her friends remains a highpoint throughout issue #6. Another highpoint is how Campbell cleverly uses both her own artwork and that of Rosi Kämpe’s to help differentiate between Kara’s reality and her nightmare. Campbell herself draws the sequences set in the real world, while Kämpe handles the nightmare sequences. This difference in art styles helps establish the “normalcy” of the real world vs the distorted thoughts residing in Kara’s mind.
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The only drawback to this back and forth between Kara’s nightmare and reality, however, is that it takes a while for readers to catch onto how this is being executed. A lot of this, however, boils down to the fact that dreams as a storytelling device can include different layers, or “a dream within a dream.” The latter is especially common in the horror genre, and Campbell does play with horror tropes for this story. As such, it’s easy to get the impression that Kara’s waking hours are her “waking up” to another dream, and as a reader, you wait for “the big twist” to come. When it doesn’t, that’s when it becomes clear that Supergirl #6 isn’t that kind of horror story.
All in all, it was very good planning on Campbell’s part to follow up her first Supergirl storyline with a Halloween-themed interlude for the month of October. Not only did this create the perfect opportunity to revisit Kara’s past traumas in a really fun way, but the realization that her friends will always be there for her will make the upcoming holiday issues for Thanksgiving and Christmas resonate more strongly.
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