Exclusive Preview: Superman Gets a Beatdown in DC Comics' Supergirl #2

And you thought your family reunions were tense? Supergirl's first meeting with her cousin as an adult results in a seismic showdown in Siberia. In the second issue of DC Comics' new Supergirl series (on sale Wednesday) Kara Zor-El is still unsure of where she is and how she got here. Superman attempts to be a voice of reason but quickly finds himself a punching bag for the so-called Maid of Might.
Click here for an exclusive five-page preview of Supergirl No. 2
Like her cousin, Supergirl arrived in a rocket ship on Earth from the doomed Krypton. But while Superman arrived as an infant, Supergirl is already a teenager — with no memories of her final days in her home in Krypton's Argo City. "In her mind, just yesterday she was a normal teenage girl at home with a family," says Michael Green, who is writing the series with his longtime collaborator, Mike Johnson. (Mahmud Asrar is drawing the comic.) "She wakes up in a new place and all of what she thought was going to be her life is gone, and that's an incredible upheaval."
Not only must Kara adjust to her new home, she will also need to adapt to her new, enhanced abilities, the result of Earth's yellow sun. "That's really what our first story arc is about, just the shock of realizing that you have powers and how they turn on and off, like x-ray vision and heat vision, and some other powers that we're going to reveal that are different from what her cousin has," says Johnson, who has written comic book adaptations for Fringe and Star Trek. "It's really a learning curve. We're experiencing all this new stuff with her because there are a ton of new readers." (Those neophytes are the target of DC's recent relaunch, featuring 52 titles with brand new first issues.)
Giving Supergirl different abilities than Superman is a new twist on the mythology. "She has the same core basics: flight, strength, invulnerability, heat vision, x-ray vision," Johnson says. "And then we're going to reveal a new power in issue 3 that is unique to her and also a result of her new origin story."
Green, whose resume includes writing/producing stints on Smallville, Heroes and ABC's midseason thriller The River, promises that the truth behind her arrival will be worth the wait: "We know how Superman got Earth, it's a really beautiful story," he says. "Her story might be a little less beautiful, but no less engaging."
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