Part Five
Supergirl #17 slows Kingdom of Zod down, and the issue is better for it.
Instead of another chapter built around a brawl, Sophie Campbell puts Kara in the most dangerous place this story could send her: Krypton before it dies.
Kara, Superboy, and Ursa come through the timestream with Ursa determined to save the planet. Kara knows what changing the past could cost. If they tear the time bubble, they do not just scramble history. They could be stuck in the timestream for good.
Then they land.
Kara uses the S-Matrix suit, pulls a street cloak over herself, and walks into Kryptonopolis. Warm light. Orange trees. People on their way somewhere. Families. The buildings are still standing.
This is not a history lesson.
This is home.
She thinks it is as beautiful as she remembers. For a second she even wonders about ducking over to Argo City, just for a minute, like she has time.
Then she sees herself as a little girl, holding her parents’ hands.
That was the page that did it.
Kara knows these people are gone. She knows what happens to this city. And still there they are: Zor-El, Alura, and a kid version of her having an ordinary day she never thought she would get back.
The temptation is not a speech about destiny. It is quieter. Walking the street, she starts asking whether some of this could be saved. Some of the people. Without burning the future down.
Then she tells herself to knock it off.
A voice she does not recognize cuts in: “You are placing us both in danger.” She still does not know who that is. Finding Ursa is not the only problem on this planet.
The cleanest look at Kara fighting herself comes when the younger Kara gets knocked into traffic.
Adult Kara’s hand is already out.
Then she stops.
“Wait, what am I doing?!”
She thinks she should let herself fall to preserve the timeline. Who knows what she’ll be altering.
Clark does not teach her that.
She gets there first.
Then Superboy takes her off her feet.
The fight after that is the funniest scene in the issue.
Kara sees Clark and goes right at him. She told him to stay in the bubble.
Clark does not apologize. This might be the only time he ever sees Krypton. He is not sitting that out.
She tells him they cannot just start touching the past.
He has her there.
She just tried to save that little girl.
Her.
So she is furious at him for the exact thing she almost did. It is not a lecture about temporal mechanics. It is two people looking at a home they do not get to keep, and neither of them is as disciplined as they want to be.
Ursa is not having that argument with anybody.
She came here to save Krypton. She is not blending in. That is how the local authorities find them.
When the officers grab Kara, the S-Matrix immediately defends her. She realizes that will only make the arrest worse, shuts the suit down, and tells Superboy to run. He doesn’t slip away. She makes him leave while she takes the cuffs.
The interrogation is the sharpest use of time travel in the issue.
No name.
No identification.
The computer does not know her face.
“You don’t seem to exist at all.”
Ursa makes it worse. Their records show that an identical Ursa already exists in Kryptonopolis, so the officers start wondering if the woman they arrested is some kind of clone. They have no idea they are holding people from after the end of the world.
Then the door opens.
General Zod.
Not the Zod the present-day heroes think is dead. This is Zod on Krypton, still a general, still at home.
“I hope we can work together and get to the bottom of this.”
Kara’s face does the work. Ursa is the one who says it.
“Zod!”
Future Ursa is sitting across from the man she knew before the planet died. That is a mess waiting for Action Comics #1102.
Earth is not quiet while this is happening.
The Kryptonite infection is not a lab curiosity. Prisoners in El Caldero are growing crystals. Midvale civilians are locking up in the street. Lois and Jon are moving through the tunnels already marked by it. The Justice League is fighting infected life in the water.
John Henry Irons, Natasha, and Lana get a look at the rock itself. Steel says this is almost standard green K except for a small molecular change, and he compares what it does to a prion: it finds normal proteins and turns them into something else.
Whatever has happened to the Kryptonite, it isn’t just sitting there weakening Kryptonians anymore. It’s spreading and changing living things.
The short scene with Zod’s follower is the one that will probably matter later. Zod is gone. Ursa is missing. She is on a rooftop asking the only question she has left:
“Without Ursa, without Zod… without orders… what are we?”
Krypton in the past looks like a place you would want to stay. Sunlight, gold trees, clean towers. Earth is sick green, tunnels, crystals, bodies that are not bodies anymore. Bruno Frenda and Joe Quinones on the interiors, Luis Guerrero and Quinones on color. The split in the palette is doing as much work as the script.
The page that stayed with me was not a punch.
It was Kara in Kryptonopolis, looking at her parents and the girl she used to be, and walking anyway.
Then she gets arrested and ends up in a room with Zod before Krypton dies.
4/5
Quieter than the last few chapters, and more personal. Kara gets her home back for one issue, the infection keeps eating the present, and that last page hands the story to Part Six in the ugliest way it could.
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