From the vaults. Supergirl #37

We originally introduced the new Superwoman in the pages of Supergirl #35. Her identity was intentionally shrouded in secret, even to me at the time but later revealed to be Lois Lane's younger sister Lucy.

Lucy was a long running DC comics character, created to be a pseudo foil for Jimmy Olsen. 

In later years Lucy had appeared in the Superman comics , she was eventually married off to fellow Daily Planet reporter Ron "Scoop" Troupe.

Her identity would be shrouded until Supergirl # 40,which was definitely a huge " WTF " for a lot of long time fans, but we'll get to that in another post.

The costume was designed by Alex Ross, Along with the original costumes for Flamebird and Nightwing .At the time Flamebird was going to be Linda Danvers and Nightwing Conner "Kon-El" Kent. Somewhere along the way it was changed that they would be the rescued "Chris "Lor-Zod" Kent and Kara's childhood friend, Thara Ak-Var.

The first time she appears in Supergirl, she tries to pass herself off as an earnest fellow Kryptonian who decided to fight crime under the EL family standard.

In panel one, I was trying to get across the idea that Lucy wasn't living in her kryptonian quarters, just using it as a base. So I had her footprints in the dust on the floor.

The panel with General Lane was also a stroke of genius on Sterling Gates' part. Since we didn't, as readers know her identity, the interchange between them was far more ambiguous and sinister. We would expand on the scene later on in Supergirl #50.

In the opening sequence of Supergirl # 37, Her motivations, if not her identity are made much more clear. At this point I knew exactly who she was character-wise and had worked very hard to make her physically different. I wanted her to be more visibly sexy, more womanly than Kara. I drew her a bit more buxom to push that aspect.

One of the things I did to throw people off was, that we introduced another female Kryptonian, Lyra Kam-Phar. I purposely drew her with the exact same physical proportions as Superwoman.

Another character we introduced was Inspector Michael Henderson who I based physically on one of my favorite actors, Dennis Haysbert. Now you'll notice that in the sketch, He's named William Henderson. That's because at the time, we wanted to bring a new Bill Henderson into the series. For those of you who aren't long time Superman fans, Bill Henderson was a character form "The Adventures of Superman"Radio series and then the TV series played by character actor Robert Shayne. In the comics, Bill Henderson was a police detective who eventually became Police Commissioner of Metropolis.

     

Our Inspector would be the head of the MPD Special Crimes unit investigating the murder of Agent:Liberty. Guess who killed him?

Here's the original layout for hte douple page spread. I had originally conceived of the shot as an overhead bird's eye view, but thought it was too boring. I really wanted to push the angles as I'm want to do in my work.

Any way... back to Superwoman and Kara, whom Kara has realized she can't trust. again, really trying to push the differences between the two of them physically.

Pow, the shot heard around the world!

Another element I was able to design was the "War Room". It was used a few times but eventually abandoned , since Pete Woods designs were so much better than mine.

layouts and thumbnails from Supergirl #37

Tomorrow: Chick fights and REACTRON!