It’s ironic that, despite the impetus of his origin story being his existence as the “Sole Survivor of Krypton,” Superman hasn’t been that in quite some time. Over the years DC Comics has slowly increased the number of Kryptonians who survived the destruction of their planet: General Zod was one of the first, debuting in Adventure Comics #283 in 1961, and since then they’ve added the entire city of Kandor (a population of thousands that accidentally avoided the destruction of Krypton when they were shrunken down and put in a glass enclosure by Braniac), H’el (a Kryptonian clone created by Superman’s father), and even Jor-El himself, transported through time by the machinations of Watchmen’s Dr. Manhattan (a creative decision that surely sent psychic shockwaves down Alan Moore’s spine).
However, predating all of those examples is none other than Kal-El’s famous cousin Kara Zor-El, aka Supergirl, who made her debut way back in 1959 and whose deeply complex and convoluted existence arguably rivals her cousin. Kara has been rebooted multiple times, and on top of that there have been several different characters who have inhabited the mantle of Supergirl, all of them with their own unique spin on the title. The upcoming film Supergirl, the second installment in James Gunn’s newborn DC Cinematic Universe, revolves around Kara specifically – but considering the multiverse shenanigans Gunn’s universe has already gotten up to, it might be worth a crash course just in case one or more of them show up in the future.
