In this review of Supergirl: Survive #1, we see an altered origin story of the Girl of Steel as she makes her escape from Krypton, this time accompanied by her infant cousin Kal-El.
Supergirl: Survive #1
Writers: Ethan S. Parker & Griffin Sheridan
Art and Main Cover: Rod Reis
Variant Covers: Taurin Clarke, Homare, Guillem March
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: June 3, 2026
This review contains spoilers
Supergirl: Survive #1 opens with teenage Kara sitting cross legged and grumpy-faced on a large, fairly normal looking sofa against an industrial-looking wall of metallic-looking panels, rivets visible in the corners. She’s meeting her baby cousin for the first time, silent as her parents, aunt, and uncle make conversation about the baby, the birth, and eventually allude to some political issues that her father and uncle disagree on.
Ignoring the adults’ argument, Kara looks at her cousin and softly says: “You are the most magical thing I have ever seen. I will protect you with my life.”
I think this is a fantastic choice of opening for the story that writers Parker and Sheridan have set out to tell. In two pages, they set up both the tensions existing on Krypton and within the house of El… or at least between the two brothers.
They also manage, throughout Supergirl: Survive #1, to make the conflict within Kandor specifically feel strikingly relevant without having to do anything over the top. Zor-El and Jor-El argue over the relevance of citizenship. Protestors are referred to as terrorists by a tyrannical leader. No one has to be screaming “Make Krypton Great Again” to see the parallels.
With about half of Supergirl: Survive #1 covering Kara and Kal-El’s joint evacuation from Krypton, Parker, Sheridan, and artist Rod Reis also make excellent decisions to maximize the impact of each panel and page. Showing Kara going through part of a school day, bantering with a friend, getting asked to formal in the middle of an “atom attack” drill, walking home; all of these show us Krypton, its culture, and its problems in an immediate way that’s more emotionally impactful than an exposition dump.
Even the composition of the panels, without dialogue, as Kara walks home communicates something about the state of Kara’s family as isolated from the general population, with their house standing alone on an empty plain with the city skyline looming against the horizon.
I was actually surprised, going back and counting pages, that the “inciting event” really does split the issue almost perfectly down the middle, as the second half feels much faster paced.
Reis’s artwork in Supergirl: Survive #1 is a painterly style with perfect emotional palettes for the most intense scenes. Zod, giving a propagandic speech with frenetic fervor is lit with ghastly violets while his frenzied crowd is tinged blood red. The expressions he creates are heartbreakingly real. Especially in the latter half, when emotions are so high and not only is there not enough time for the characters to say everything they want or need to each other, it’s so much more effective to see what’s playing out in their heads on their faces. I think the last five pages would lose a lot of impact if we had any kind of inner monologue for Kara, but we know exactly what she’s going through because we saw what she’s losing and we can see what she’s feeling so clearly in her face and body language.
I also love the style they chose for Krypton. A lot of it aligns with the typical style established by previous sources, I especially was reminded by the clothes, cars, classrooms, and lockers, of the glimpses of the future/off world tech from The New Batman/Superman Adventures (1997) and associated series. But there were also elements of retrofuturism that I really appreciated, including the trash robots, the family television, Kara’s spacesuit, and the weapon from the very last page. The two styles manage not to clash, but the retrofuturistic elements do set the series apart visually, in a good way.
Final Thoughts
Considering how carefully they’ve paced Supergirl: Survive #1, I’m interested to see where the series will ultimately take Kara and Kal, especially as it has deviated so far already from the story that we’re familiar with. If the quality of this issue is anything to go by, there’s a lot to look forward to!
