However, as a fan of comics, the Supergirl trailer did more for me than merely amp up my already serious excitement for the upcoming film. With Supergirl being based on Tom King’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow and set to follow that story closely, I’m already familiar with Supergirl and Ruthye’s journey, but what I didn’t expect was that the trailer would make me reconsider how I felt about King’s comic when it first arrived in 2021 — and I think that screenwriter Ana Nogueira’s adaptation might not only improve on the story, but make King’s original work better in retrospect as well.
Supergirl Appears Have a Perspective Shift That Makes The Story Make Much More Sense
Image via WB
One of the hallmarks of King’s comic is that Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is not actually Supergirl’s story, but Ruthye’s. The book opens up with us having the story narrated to us by an older Ruthye so the journey we go on with these two characters is actually her memories, or rather, her version of events. This means that everything we’re seeing comes from Ruthye’s perspective and only includes the actions and stories that Ruthye was a part of or told directly — and as the story goes on, there starts to be some questions about her reliability as a narrator.
For me as a reader, this is something that I struggled a bit with. There were times that it felt like King had forgotten that he was writing from the observational perspective of the impartial Ruthye and there were others where it felt like the characterization of Kara was just off. To put a slightly finer point on it, it felt at times like there was an emotional core to the story and something that he wanted to say about Supergirl but hadn’t figured out how to get to (though he eventually would in a spectacularly great issue #3 and again in issue #6 as we learn about the death of Krypton.)
However, the Supergirl trailer suggests that this take on the story, while it may to some extent contain Ruthye’s framing and perspective, will also give us a more direct and unfiltered look at Kara. We’re getting to see more of Kara the Mess (as I like to call her) but we’re also seeing her actual emotions and pain. In particular, the point in the trailer where Krem looks at a suffering Kara and says “your eyes are beautiful when you cry. A lot of pain, lot of suffering,” that feels much more personal than the observational framing of the comic. It’s a shift that makes me go back and think about the smaller ways King incorporates the truth of Kara into Ruthye’s narrative and what reveals itself is a much more subtle and nuanced tale of healing and acceptance than you’d pick up on with a first read — I know I certainly didn’t.
Changing Krypto’s Significance Corrects the Biggest Issue In King’s Comic
Image via WB
The trailer also drives home the idea that Krypto is, in a sense, the emotional center of the Supergirl film. In the comic, the extent of Kara’s pain and feeling directionless is there, but it’s more subtle — again, because the comic is framed as Ruthye’s story. Because of that, we never really get a strong sense of how important Krypto really is to Kara. That, in turn, makes his poisoning feel gimmicky (which, comics spoilers — it ultimately is.) The movie appears to be making it clear the importance Krypto has for Kara and makes his situation her catalyst for helping Ruthye but also the catalyst for getting her own life together, for dealing with her losses and pain.
While we don’t know exactly how the movie will play things out — we already know there are going to be some differences from the comics to the screen with the addition of Lobo so there could also be differences in how the situation with Krypto plays out — just this one shift with Krypto early on already improves the story King laid out. Now we have a more Kara-centric perspective and we understand the importance of Krypto as well as the journey Kara and Ruthye go on. It gives the story a little more beyond “True Grit in space with capes” that the book initially gave me.
Even without the movie existing, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is a solid book. When reviewing the series for ComicBook, I gave it a 3.8 out of 5 overall. But with the movie coming out and having gotten that trailer that takes King’s raw materials and tweaks them just slightly, I’ve come to the conclusion that Woman of Tomorrow is better than I gave it credit for. It isn’t perfect, but there are multiple ways you can read it, and when you take it in from Kara’s perspective, a very nuanced and heartbreaking story emerges. That’s the story that Supergirl appears to be capturing — and the movie may just make the whole tale all the better for it.
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