CW’s Supergirl Is The Best, And Most Important, Comic Book Show On TV
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We live with an embarrassment of riches when it comes to television shows and films based on comic book characters. Yet, of all of the shows currently airing or in-production, the CW’s Supergirl is the best and most important one.
That sound you may hear are the fans of FX’s Legion or Marvel’s Jessica Jones or Luke Cage all screaming “what?” angrily in unison. In fact, to remove the superpowers element entirely, Supergirl probably has more in common with iCarly or whichever shows are currently hot with tweens than The Defenders or even shows in its same small-scale universe like Arrow and The Flash. And that is precisely my point.
When it comes to art, terms like “the best” are so subjective they are almost meaningless. Is The Wire the best cable crime-drama or does that go to Breaking Bad? What about The Sopranos? Even if you try to be as objective as possible when it comes to the writing, the acting, or the cinematography, it all just boils down to taste. Were my sainted grandmother still alive, she’d likely still say that In The Heat of the Night was the best police drama ever filmed.
In terms of experimentation and the artistic level of these stories, films like Logan and series like Legion are pushing the boundaries of the form and subverting expectations about what a comic book story both can and should be. While this is great for keeping the superpowered hype-train moving ever-forward, Supergirl is something different entirely.
This show, when it originally premiered on CBS, was the first female-led solo superhero project since the disastrous Elektra and Catwoman films (beating Jessica Jones by a month). Part of the reason why these efforts failed is that, at their core, they veered too far from the spirit of these comic book stories. By the time we got the Batman trilogy from Chris Nolan, lauded for it’s gritty realism, we had both the pairs of Batman films directed by Tim Burton (dark but silly) and Joel Schumacher (just silly).
So while Melissa Benoist’s Kara Danvers has to contend with the other male-led incarnations of famous superheroes whose stories have been told one way or another before, she is something of a first. She is a lone female hero meant to carry an ensemble cast in a way that hasn’t been asked of one before. It stumbles and struggles but it also soars, at least for a specific audience.
Supergirl is unsubtle about their message and features almost child-like emotional character problems. Their handling of social issues, such as LGBT+ acceptance and toxic masculinity, are unquestionably less sophisticated and awkward than some adult fans expect. Yet, maybe Supergirl isn’t for adult fans?
This show isn’t for the dedicated super-fan of superheroes who want to see the genre drift toward the more mature fare of the Netflix Marvel shows or the R-Rated 20th Century Fox X-Movies. No, this show is designed to be an entry point for young women and little girls into a world where they too can be the most powerful beings on the planet.
Comic books, at least until the turn of the 21st Century, were funny books for kids that often hid socially conscious messaging inside the tales of heroism and sacrifice. When they really tried to drive home a socially conscious message, it was often less sophisticated and awkward than, say, the subtle parallels between the civil rights struggle for racial and LGBT+ minorities found in the pages of The X-Men. One need only look at the left-wing/right-wing team-up of Green Arrow and Green Lantern or Spider-Man’s drug abuse issue to see how awkward it can get.
That is precisely what Supergirl does. It has the story tropes — which seem different in the context of a female lead than a male one — such as the unrequited love interest and an unwanted suitor, the overbearing boss and the scheming villains, and so on. Almost every episode there is a moment when one character offers another a speech about how he or she (but mostly “she”) can do “it,” whatever the particular “it” may be. It has bald-faced empowerment messaging for young women and little girls that we boys and men have had for almost as long as there have been television shows.
It can be silly. It can be cute. It can be melodramatic. All of these are qualities found in comic books, and they serve the same purpose in this show. Wonder Woman was also a ground-breaking film, but in terms of its plot and structure it was right out of the “hero’s journey” textbook. It could have been a Phase One Marvel movie. But this is a necessary step a character has to take to ensure that audiences are coming along with them. We’ve seen Batman do a million things on-screen, so when creators play with the formula it’s exciting and builds on what came before it. But before Wonder Woman or Supergirl can go dark or get gritty, audiences have to get a baseline for these female-led stories. Before we examine these goddesses’ flaws, we have to see what makes them mighty in the first place.
This show reminds me a lot of the Star Wars prequels. When it was announced, long-time superhero fans — especially female ones — were eager to see how this show pushed boundaries and redefined the form. However the show’s writers and producers — like George Lucas before them — didn’t give a shit about what they wanted. No, they were thinking about the kids who would find this show on reruns or Netflix. Those fans wouldn’t care about or have context for what came before Supergirl. To those little boys and girls, they would start their journey into this new American mythology believing a girl can fly.
