The Wig is the Whole Point: A Supergirl Pitch

“It’s like if Hannah Montana had a baby with Mean Girls, and that baby had heat vision!”

As soon as I struck upon this notion last night, I was immediately  both terrified and intrigued by it.  How to do Supergirl right: take everything about her that I had always thought was stupid and should be written off, and put all the emphasis on those aspects of the character, instead of running away from them.  Because that’s the problem with the character today, they stripped all the weird and silly parts out of her.  Nowadays, Supergirl is basically just Superman with boobs.  And while I’m not going to complain about Rule 63ing a character, it’s still kind of boring to me.

The Pitch

Forget the origin story.  Does it really need to be explained (again) that Kara Zor-El is Superman’s cousin from Argo City, which barely survived the destruction of Krypton, and then got destroyed anyway?  That she alone survived only to find her cousin on Earth, getting all of his powers?  Do we really need to see a repeat of this (terrible) scene?

 (Pictured: Superman being terrible to his only living relative for basically no reason)

No.  I submit that we do not.  All we really need to know when we open the story is that Kara arrived on Earth a few months ago, the particulars of said arrival can be fleshed out later.  She’s been honing her powers inside the Fortress of Solitude during this time.  She’s going a little stir crazy, but honestly, Superman’s not entirely sure what to do with this 15 year old girl who dropped from the sky into his life.

Kara is not so much confused and moody as she is trying her hardest to stay bright and cheerful despite viewing absolute horror.  She’s a girl who has lost literally everything and everyone she loved, and then immediately became a goddess- Which is exactly why Superman is wary of her going out among humanity.  When his parents died on Krypton, he was an infant, he never knew them, the Kent’s were his real family.  Kara grew up in a world constantly on the brink, and watched her parents die.  And frankly, she doesn’t exactly share Superman’s sunny, Midwest-American (read:human) values.  And again, she’s 15.  Naturally, Kara has started to rebel just a little.  She’s sneaking out of the Fortress when she knows Superman won’t be around.  (Superman may actually know about this, but he’s letting her get away with it, knowing that she’s going to have to join the world eventually.)

So, as the story opens, Kara is starting to go out into the world, and she meets and befriends a girl named Linda Danvers.  At one point, Kara has to use her powers in front of Linda to save someone.  Once Linda knows the truth about Kara, she sets about helping Kara adapt to life on Earth, including helping Kara get into Linda’s high school, Midvale High.

Disguised with glasses and a brunette wig, Kara may live at the Fortress, but she now goes out to learn about the world and her place in it.  She’s Supergirl, teenage superhero.  And she’s only sure of one thing anymore: she’s dedicated to giving everything she can to her new, second life.

Cast

Supergirl/Kara Zor-El/Kara Zorelle

Linda Danvers (her BFF)

Richard Malverne (potential boyfriend material?)

Streaky (her cat, who is eventually added, because Supergirl with no cat makes 0 sense to me)

Superman/Kal El/Clark Kent (reoccurring, but not really in the main cast)

Bill Starr (other potential boyfriend material? But there’s clearly something up with this guy, maybe even something sinister?)

Nasthalthia Thorul (chief rival and nemesis at Midvale High)

Moving Forward From the “Pilot”

Once we get Kara started at the school, that’s where the real interesting stuff starts.  From there, we get to do the comedy/drama that is teens in school without really worrying too much about family drama nonsense.  Superman is a presence, but he’s not there all the time or anything.  He’s not her dad, he’s her older cousin- he’s looking out her, sure, but it’s not like he can make her do stuff.  She’s living in a weird, creepy fortress, but at school she can interact with kids her age.  She’s the awkward new kid, befriended by the awkward artist/skater girl.

And while she’s trying to find her place in the school, she has to deal with her chief rival and tormentor, Nasty.  Nasty is the smartest, most dangerous girl in the school, even the teachers are afraid of her a little.  She’s rich, she doesn’t care about anything, she owns the school and she knows it.  (She’s also secretly the niece of Lex Luthor, but let’s keep that close to the chest for a while, okay?)

Linda is really the one to push for Kara to follow in her cousin’s footsteps.  Linda feels her life is boring until she meets Kara, and she knows she’s living her life just a little vicariously through Kara’s.  But Kara needs Linda as much as Linda needs Kara, because Linda is her gateway to this new world she’s found herself on.  They both feel alone in the strange world of high school, and find kindred spirits in each other.

And then there’s Rick and Billy.  Rick is one of Linda’s few friends, and while he’s a little too straight laced in Linda’s eye, he’s a nice guy who treats everyone as well as he can.  And boy, does  he have a crush on Kara, pretty much as soon as he meets her.  Billy, however, isn’t always nice, and he isn’t even a student at the school.  In fact, he’s a little older than her, and he keeps bumping into her all over town.  Did he drop out?  Does he have a job? Kara doesn’t know.  He seems to be a moody stranger at first, but she keeps running into him.  And he’s always got weird, vaguely creepy, but usually helpful advice for her.  It’s surprising the things he can tell, just by looking at her.  It’s almost as if he can read her mind, but that’s crazy, right?

And early on, Supergirl/Kara decides she wants someone to talk to at the Fortress that isn’t a creepy robot, so she gets a cat named Streaky.  At some point, Streaky has to get super powers, because OBVIOUSLY, but I haven’t decided if they’ll be permanent or not.  (Everyone knows I love me some LOSP, but I’m not entirely sure that a permanently powered Streaky would really work for this particular take on Supergirl.)

The story is more about high school than super-heroing, because it’s a high school drama.  It’s a big metaphor about being a teenage outsider, and like so many great superhero dramas have done before, it uses the powers and hero stuff as a way to talk about teenage angst and growing up.  Yes, sometimes aliens or robots show up to wreck your school, but you have to grow past that sometimes.  It’s about growing up an underdog and realizing your true potential.  And yes, sometimes that involves punching supervillains in their ugly, stupid faces.

Because Supergirl is going to be awesome, always.  Just ask her.

Final Thoughts

It feels a little weird to me.  Supergirl has been rebooted a bunch of times since she first showed up.  And every new version has pulled further and further away from her earliest "orphaned girl in a brunette wig, trying to hide her powers form the world" form.  But can I be the only person who is completely bored by each of the newer and newer versions that have shied away from her origins?

I say, lets embrace some of the weirder parts of the Silver Age.  Let’s make her the teenage cousin of Superman, interacting awkwardly with the new world she has inherited.  She’s trying to pass as normal, even though she totally is not.  And eventually, she’s going to have to address that.  And by avoiding the family drama, by making it about kids hanging out with other kids, I think we’d be in for a very different kind of Supergirl dynamic. 

What do you think?