Comic Cover Of The Week: Supergirl #19

Welcome fellow agents of Precinct1313 to another episode of  Comic Cover Of The Week, and an extra special welcome to our continuing “Women’s History Month Spectacular” a bombastic blogging event set up by the tantalisingly talented Cupcakes and Machetes.

Supergirl’s more recent adventures since her DC Rebirth renewal have been rather awe inspiring, as the creative teams have foregone a lot of what constitutes the typical cape and cowl comic book hero tropes, and have been focusing their efforts on Kara’s trials and tribulations as a teenager and alien visitor. The stories have been much more intimate and slow burn than out and out action and conflict, and with the Girl of Steel finding herself back in mainstream public consciousness thanks mainly to the amazing CW television series, Superman’s Kryptonian cousin is soaring higher than she ever has.

Diversity has been at the forefront of Kara’s comic book adventures, with DC Comics evolving along with the world around them to spotlight and champion characters from across a much broader spectrum of gender, race, and ethnic heterogeneity.

In fact Supergirl #19 steers itself away from the principal narrative of Kara Zor-El and focuses its attention on Lee Serrano, a brand new non-binary character who is struggling with their emerging identity crisis, bullying from their student peers, and an increasing anxiety about revealing their gender quandary to their parents, this topical storyline is deftly handled by writer Steve Orlando with an extremely sensitive and compassionate take. Lee is initially presented as androgynous up until the point of their coming out in two sequences, once with Supergirl and secondly to Lee’s parents. It’s an emotional and fantastically wrought piece by the book’s creators and is a heartfelt tale that sits perfectly with what we have come to expect from the ongoing Supergirl monthly comic series.

‘In his search to write a CatCo piece on the truth about Supergirl, Ben Rubel interviews a young kid named Lee Serrano, who recently became close friends with the Girl of Steel. As Lee struggles with their parents and school bullies for acceptance as non-binary, Supergirl is caught between punching her way through the problem, and standing behind Lee as a symbol of hope’

Supergirl #19 is available right now. This stunning variant cover by Stanley “Artgerm” Lau is sure to be in short supply, so why not don your cape and red boots and super speed your way over to your nearest comic book emporium, before it disappears into the phantom zone forever…