The network has signed Glee actress Melissa Benoist in the starring role of Kara Zor-El in its series version of the classic comic-book story.Benoist played Marley Rose in seasons four and five of Fox’s Glee and was also in the 2014 indie film Whiplash. The show’s official description: “Born on the planet Krypton, Kara Zor-El escaped amid its destruction years ago. Since arriving on Earth, she’s been hiding the powers she shares with her famous cousin. But now at age 24, she decides to embrace her superhuman abilities and be the hero she was always meant to be.”
24 seems a little old to be referred to as a “girl”. Would you call a 24 year old superman “superboy”? In the comic books, how old was Clark when he first donned the cape?
Ah, gotcha - well, “Supergirl” has always been her name in the comics, so maybe this will be a show that starts off with her already been wearing the mantle for several years. Also, “Superwoman” doesn’t really roll off the tongue nearly as well.
Besides, we know that’s the name of one of several beloved ABC/CBS modern life comedies about young, intelligent, funny, but utterly overwhelmed working businessmoms in NYC or LA who want to try to have it all and by golly they just might make it.
I’m very curious about this show - It could easily tip over into embarrassing, but then again - The 100 has shown that strong female leads ARE possible without overt use of sexuality or male power fantasies, so I’m hopeful!
She was Supergirl because she was originally a teen-ager. In the world of comics where characters are often the same age after thousands of adventures over 50-75 years (yes, I remember her debut in 1959) she’s pretty much going to be Supergirl no matter how they repackage her age with the current actress/setting.
I get the comic book world. Supergirl stays a teen in that world, regardless of what happens out here. It’s appropriate to call her Supergirl decade after decade of real time, because she remains a girl. Bart Simpson is always a little boy, for example. That’s a choice they’ve made with the fiction.
But in this iteration, they’ve made her 24. They made a different choice. Seems odd to keep calling her Supergirl. If she was 35 and still doing her thing, is she still Supergirl?
Didn’t Superman have a Superboy phase in the comics, with a distinct name?
I think it’s a simple matter of name recognition. There’s a lot of folks who know the Supergirl name, from comic nerds to people that watched the 80s movie to folks who just caught a bit of a Superman cartoon with her in it.
And yeah, there have been many Superboys, but generally they are either clones or beings from an alternate dimension. There might be a story here or there with the actual younger Superman, but that’s the exception.
Not when I was a kid. “Superboy, the adventures of Superman when he was a boy!” was the tagline and selling point for the comic. It all depends on the comic era in question. Here’s a quote from the wiki page:
Billed as “The Adventures of Superman When He Was a Boy”, Superboy stories in both Adventure Comics and Superboy treat him as essentially a junior version of Superman. To that end, he wears the Superman costume and his alter ego Clark Kent wears glasses as a disguise for his civilian identity. Superboy’s powers are identical to those of Superman, including enhanced strength, speed, vision, and hearing, plus flight and invulnerability.
Yeah, I recall that Superboy was just pre-Metropolis Superman. Weirdly, for those of us who remember the 70s and 80s, Superboy’s adventures were generally in the future, rather than the past… in that Superboy would travel forward in time to interact with Legion of Super Heroes.
I want to say that Superoy-as-a-clone was a post “Death of Superman” thing, but I was out of comic books by that point.
The villain that punched through multiple universes and required the entirety of the Green Lantern Corps plus multiple Super-people to defeat him was Superboy Prime.
