Supergirl #59 – Review

By: Sterling Gates (writer), Jamal Igle (penciller), Jon Sibal and Robin Riggs (inkers), Blond (colorist)

The Story: Nothing like spending the night fighting crime and searching for the one person in the world you hate the most, which is what Supergirl finds herself doing on Christmas Eve—it sure is a wonderful life!

The Review: One of the very fine comic book bloggers out in the webosphere is Rokk Krinn, founder of the Comic Book Revolution.  Being an otherwise open-minded reviewer of comics, he had a massive pet peeve for derivative characters, those spun off from already established ones.  He felt they lacked originality and crutched on their originator’s cast and image.  This meant his distaste fell on quite a number of DC’s galaxy of stars, most of them sidekicks to the big leagues—Batgirl, Superboy, Kid Flash, Miss Martian, and yes—Supergirl.

There’s credit to Rokk’s prejudice, but if writers give derivative characters distinct personalities and motivations, then originality isn’t so much an issue.  People love imitations—tune into any pop radio station and you’ll sense that immediately—but no one loves a copy.  The best imitators use the original as an outline, then spin it into something new.  Sterling Gates has been working to do this since he took over Supergirl, and he’s gotten some good things out of it.

The previous Bizarro-girl storyline was exactly the sort of material Rokk would have hated: pitting an imitation of a hero versus an imitation (a rather weak one, too) of a villain.  This issue features a similar matchup with the Dollmaker, essentially a younger Toyman who specializes in the creepiest of all children’s playthings.  The Dollmaker has a fairly cliché connection to the classic Superman foe, and the full package of misguided angst.  By every definition, the Dollmaker is totally unoriginal.