Spoilers Supergirl - Season 2

The show is called "Supergirl", not "Superman". Regardless, Kara was capable of taking on her cousin. And both were capable of defeating each other.

I also want to say something about Mon-El . . . I hope he didn't trip on his way out the door.

 

Mon-El will be back for sure.

Oh please, get over it...

A Girl won, A man loss.

 

I was never an avid fan of this show, but the minimal interest I had is gone now. I don't mind Superman losing to Supergirl so much as the simplistic and predictable way it was handled, the way that almost all of their episodes are handled. I get the impression that as long as a show has a message people like (in this case: women can be strong, too), the utter lack of subtlety, nuance, and sophistication doesn't bother them. It bothers me. Then again, I'm not the target audience for this show, so if others enjoy it, that's good for them.

 

Strength isn't always the decisive factor in a fight. As I mentioned, Alex surely fights plenty of men who are bigger and stronger than she is, but she's trained specifically in methods designed to counteract those advantages. That principle underlies a lot of combat and self-defense techniques for women. Look at the way Black Widow fights in the Marvel movies -- throwing her whole body around in these big, swooping acrobatic moves, getting her opponent's heads or bodies between her legs and swinging them around. When I last watched Captain America: Civil War and saw her doing that in the opening sequence, I initially thought it was just about flashy/sexy fight choreography, but then my physics background kicked in and I realized it was all about leverage. Since she's smaller and lighter than her opponents, she has to compensate by making her moves bigger, the lever arms longer so she can do more with less force. So instead of just swinging her arm or leg at an opponent, she swings her entire body, puts all of her weight into it. These techniques are tailored for women or smaller people in general to enable them to overcome bigger, heavier adversaries.

So Alex would be trained to outfight men stronger than her, and Kara learned to fight from Alex. So it's really not surprising that she could hold her own against Superman -- and that she could use moves that Superman wouldn't see coming, because his big, burly foes like Zod and Mongul and Reactron wouldn't be trained to use them. Therefore, Supergirl beating Superman is an eminently plausible outcome. Because how much raw power you have is not as important as how skillfully you wield it.

Yes. This is the classic Silver/Bronze Age Superman, the way he was for decades before people started trying to deconstruct and darken him. The man whose true super-ness is not in what he can do but in who he is.

Yeah. And Superman's been the champion of Earth multiple times over the previous dozen or so years before this series began. He doesn't have to be the champion every single time.

I don't believe Kara was holding back. Yes, she knew who she was fighting, so she knew he could take everything she could dish out -- and she knew that he would be the first to insist that she not hold back against him with the world at stake. Plus, again, she's been trained by Alex Danvers, who taught her not to hold back (I think we actually saw that in the first or second episode of the show).

 

It's odd that multiple people on this BBS are suddenly complaining about my tendency to elaborate when it's just what I've always done. I'm a writer, and I'm analytical by nature. I think it's interesting to explore ideas in depth, and I like to share what's interesting to me. It's my hope that other people find it interesting too. After all, this is a discussion board, and to me, discussion means in-depth exploration.

 

Three things about that:

1) There's nothing sudden about that. People have been annoyed about that for a long, looooong time.

2) There's nothing wrong with it when you actually add something worthwhile, but very often you just restate what was already said, just in more words.

3) You have a tendency to word your theories as if they are fact, and when called out or challenged just play the "I don't know why we are even talking about this" card.

 

I read that in the current comics, Supergirl's father was a geneticist. He tweaked her DNA to make her stronger than her cousin.

 

I'm guessing the writers thought that readers wouldn't find a female alien who can fly and shoot lasers out of her eyes beating her male cousin in a fight realistic without some justification.

 

Sometimes an short, precise post can be much better than a long drawn out one. You're a good writer, but I've always thought you should be practicing using an economy of words in certain situations, especially in your novels.

 

I can't speak for everyone, but that makes you no different than a lot of us, certainly.

 

Now, now:

Doomsday killed Superman.

It was in all the papers.

Then Superman came back to life, and has kicked all kinds of ass since.

So, perhaps we can be, uh, consoled that Kara did not actually kill Clark and therefore is only the second most powerful adversary he's faced?

 

That's not in the current comics.

 

It was one of the reboots. But I did read it off a blog comments page so I don't know and don't care either way.

 

Superman getting jobbed again, I see. Set Phasers to Full Worf Effect, FIRE!

Spoiler

 

Maybe Kryptonian females are naturally stronger than males. We don't know, it's all fictional so any writer could say that and it would be canon. It's not like Superman himself has had a set in stone list of abilities. He gained and lost powers all the time. It doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

 

That third image. Did Darkseid do that?

One of the what if ending of Injustice 2 has her in a similar outfit working for him.