Supergirl: Many Happy Returns [Paperback]

That doesn't describe this collection at all.

This collection reprints #75-80 of SUPERGIRL. Please note that the review that I originally wrote for this collection was 3,500 words long. That alone gives you an indication of how bad this collection is. I had to trim my review down to meet Amazon's 1,000-word limit. If you want to read the entire review before voting on it, e-mail me.

By #74, sales were dropping for SUPERGIRL. Peter David, in a last-ditch effort to save the series, convinced DC to let him bring back Kara. That right there was the beginning of the problem. Kara never existed. She had been completely wiped from continuity. How could she be brought back?

The entire premise of this story centers on the idea that pre-Crisis continuity still exists somehow. The point of the Crisis on Infinite Earths was that most of the universes were destroyed, and what remained of the multiverse collapsed into one single universe with a revised history. There were no other universes.

Kara has been plucked from pre-Crisis continuity and dropped into post-Crisis continuity, and, if she doesn't get back to her own continuity, which never existed, the remaining universes, which never existed, will be destroyed, and post-Crisis continuity will have never come into being.

DC had let Peter David use Kara for only six issues. He knew that he had to wrap up the story arc by #80, regardless of whether the series continued or not, yet he wasted a lot of time. He admitted that he ran out of room in the final issue, so he glossed some plot points over. He wasted most of #79 by putting Linda in pre-Crisis continuity. That wasn't needed at all, and it created a lot of problems:

The way that Linda behaved in #79 was extremely selfish. She knew that she was going there to die, yet she decided that it was okay to marry Superman and have a daughter, thus creating a widower and an orphan. The Linda Danvers that I had gotten to know over the previous 78 issues would not have behaved so selfishly and irresponsibly!

The Spectre told Linda that only Kara could fix things. Linda's actions create a new world, but Kara's don't? Basically, that's saying that Kara, no matter what she does, will remain on Earth-1, but Linda, no matter how much she tries to adhere to Kara's actions, will end up on a "divergent" Earth.

During the 7-8 years that Linda spent in pre-Crisis continuity, only a few hours had passed in post-Crisis continuity. Was Linda de-aged back to normal after she sent Kara back to pre-Crisis continuity, or was she still 7-8 years older? I say that she was de-aged. When Linda arrives at the hospital, her mother tells her, "Linda, come in! Meet your baby brother." Peter David replied by saying "She was still 7-8 year older. The art didn't reflect that, but she was. Seven years can be subtle in terms of aging." Huh? There's a difference between looking, say, 20 and 28.

Did Linda go to pre-Crisis continuity, marry Superman, and have a daughter? I say that she didn't. The events of #79 were overwritten when Kara was sent back. The idea of one person creating a new world is insane. Kara's success depends on it being one Earth with only one active timeline. Otherwise, Kara would create a "divergent Earth" and fail.

The dreams? Just that. Or maybe the Spectre's way of trying to give Linda comfort. If Linda had to lie to fix things, so might the Spectre. Linda had broken her promise to Ariella that she'd come back. There's no way that riding a hoverboard around space, eternally youthful, would make Ariella happy.

The artwork and dialogue in the supposed pre-Crsis scenes conflict with the comics that were published back then. Peter David admitted that he didn't have his copy of the first Kara story from 1959 handy while he wrote the script, so he just winged it. That's very careless. The fact is that Peter David and Ed Benes got lazy and screwed up.

It's common for writers, after publication, to claim that their "intent" was something different and blame their mistakes on someone else. Peter David was lazy in his descriptions, wasted a lot of pages with extra plot instead of trying to tie things up sooner, blamed Ed Benes, and hoped that the readers would figure out his alleged intentions. If the reader has to supply all of the important parts of the story, what is the writer's job? It's like the writer is saying that the reader is deficient for reading the text as written and not imagining scenarios by which it all makes sense. To assume that the reader can and should interpret something totally different than what is composed there shows a lack of responsibility for the story, the characters within, and the audience that the writer is trying to entertain and/or educate.

To understand this story arc, you'll have to read THE SUPERGIRL ARCHIVES, VOLUME 1, for Kara's first appearance and early adventures; CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS; and the first SUPERGIRL collection, which introduced Linda Danvers. Is this story a fresh start, allowing new readers to come in without any previous knowledge? Nowhere near.

The nonsensical story was a bad way to end the series, and it shows Peter David's complete lack of respect toward the readers that had invested lots of hours and money in SUPERGIRL.

To quote Linda Danvers in #76, "This is wrong on so many levels."