It was announced this week that “Glee” and♌ “Whiplash” star Melissa Benoist will play Supergirl in an upcoming CBS seriesℱ.
N🤡ow we know who Benoist is — but who is Supergirl, exactly, and is she a worthy subject to be o♒ne of the first female super-heroes of this decade?
The character made her debut in DC’s “Action Comics” in 1959, when Kara Zor-El was sent from her home planet, Krypton, to liv꧒e onꦰ Earth with her cousin — yep, Superman.
As DC Comics’ official site describes her, “she’s the ultimate new girl in schoಌol — with a planet-splitting right hook.
Still learning to control her awesome powers and lacking her cousin’s 🀅self-restraint, she may even be more dangerous than the Man of Steel.”
Subseque꧂ntly killed off on the𝓡 page in 1985, she was revived in 2004, and finally got her own comic in 2011.
In 1984, she was played by Helen Slater in a campy movie, whic𝐆h was near-universally deriꦫded by critics.
“There’s a place, I think, for a female superhero, and Helen Slater, who plays Supergirl, has the kind of high spirits and pluck that would be just right for the character,” wrote Roger Ebert, who nonetheless conclud𝔍ed, “Why even go to the trouble of making a movie that feels like it’s laughing at itself?”
Then the character appeared in the final season of “Smallville” in 2010, brandishing the kind of teenag𓆉e snark with whꦅich the character was originally conceived.
The new series is set to take pla🀅ce when Supergirl’s in her 20s and rediscovering her power after keeping it under wraps: “She’s still pretty, but with her face hidden behind glasses and her hair pulled back, she doesn’t 🦂know it herself,” wrote the Hollywood Reporter, in a somewhat unpromising note for a series purporting to be a step forward for women in comics.
Yes, it’s par for the course, but given co-cre𒐪ator Greg Berlanti’s success with “Arrow,” the show may yet carve out better dramatic territory for this Kryptonian lady. (Maybe she’ll even get a costume that covers her whole torso!)
Meanwhile, why wasn’t the character just called Superwoman? Pres𒀰umably her younger age, for starters🅷 (though by that logic, Tom Welling’s TV character ought to have been called Superboy), but also because that’s a separate character.
Fun fact: That title originally belonged to Lois ꦫLane, who in an early comic dreamed of hers🐓elf as Superman’s female counterpart.