If you think you get red-eyed when you’re drunk…

Previously on the all-new DC Universe: With last year’s Superman, James Gunn admirably rebooted Warner Bros’ big-screen superhero canon that kept putting the “League” in “beleaguered” with every new misfire. Rather than fully suppress the bad-boy edginess of his Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy — which worked for that particular motley crew, don’t get me wrong — Gunn shrewdly tapped humankind’s self-inflicted age of cynicism as a chief antagonist to the Big Blue Boy Scout’s superpowered optimism. He wasn’t necessarily renouncing “attitude” as a marketing mood, so much as he was conceding there are other ways to approach conflicts in modern life. In his own way, he celebrated Supes’ innate idealism more than any other feature filmmaker so far this millennium.

As is the procedure for every rebooted superhero timeline, Superman was a bit overstuffed with other faces from the original comics, because every comics-to-screen writer cannot resist grabbing every toy out of the IP toybox for as long as they’re allowed to reach under the lid, and studio execs do love offering lots of character options to their action-figure designers and other merch collaborators. Among the most logical inclusions was his cousin Kara Zor-El, but as played by Milly Alcock (House of the Dragon), her graceless debut had her drunkenly slouching into Supes’ Fortress of Solitude to fetch her furry pal Krypto and make the audience aware she’s no Helen Slater or Melissa Benoist. She’s young, she parties, she’s in-your-face, she’s super coooool just like You, The Viewers at Home! If the Guardians of the Galaxy threw a space kegger, she’d totally be invited and drink everyone under the table!

It’s no surprise that first up for a Superman Spinoff Showcase is Supergirl, which I understand is based on or at least inspired by Tom King and Bilquis Evely’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow miniseries/trade. I’ve been meaning to read it for years but keep forgetting to buy it, so I have little basis for adaptation comparison and no predisposition toward giving it straight A’s just because I’m a fan of King’s. I bet I’ll like the book a lot better.

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