Joe Kelly (writer) finally ended his amazingly horrible run of Supergirl… and what a way to go out! Thanks for giving me a really terrible issue to trash, Kelly. This thing was so bad I don’t even know where to begin.
I guess I’ll start with the cover even though this doesn’t fall under the writer’s jurisdiction. The cover of Supergirl #19 shows Superman laying dead on the ground with Supergirl (Kara) standing over him, her arms covered in his blood. A caption reads “The Death of Superman Again!”
Nowhere in this issue does Superman end up dead. There is no fight between him and Supergirl. In fact he doesn’t even appear in the issue until the final three pages. Thanks for the false advertising, DC.

This had to have been the most confusing and poorly written issue of Supergirl to date. I swear, Joe Kelly must have thought to himself “Wow, I’m nearly finished writing this crap series, I’m going to get drunk, smoke some crack, and then dictate this issue to my blind, retarded pet monkey who will type it up on a tandy with his tongue.”
Even the title of the issue, “Goodbye, Hello” is absolutely inane.

For those of you who haven’t been foolishly wasting your money and life reading this tripe, here’s a summary:
Kara has been going through some really strange things over the past 12 issues or so. None of those things have been explained in a satisfactory manner. The stories are disjointed at best. As soon as you would start to feel comfortable with one of the lame story-archs, the plot would shift to something else. It wasn’t a smooth shift either… it shifted like a car with no transmission.

Most recently Kara was fighting her psycho stalker boyfriend, Powerboy. At the end of the battle (in space) she suddenly came in to the possession of his most favorite thing in the world: a box. “Father Box” to be more specific. I don’t know the background of this box, but Powerboy was upset to see it thrown in to the sun by Supergirl. A big explosion happened and Kara started tripping. Suddenly she was having hallucinations of her dead father which filled her and us in on her past. This was somewhat entertaining… and then we found out that past was totally bogus. After that she went back to earth to fight Phantoms and ended up killing Superman and fighting a weird version of herself for the second or third time… I’ve lost count.
In issue #19 Kelly gives us one of his completely unexpected story shifts and Supergirl is talking to Pariah. This meeting with Pariah attempts to gain the reader’s forgiveness for the shoddy writing of the past several issues by Supergirl finding out that the visions were presented to her by Pariah.
So there… you’re more or less caught up to date on the history of Supergirl.

Some really odd things have happened over the past few months. Most notably, Kara is looking way younger. I assume this is a response to readers such as myself who have complained that she doesn’t look her age (16 years old) but rather looks like an anorexic 23 year old supermodel. Fine, I’ll forgive the shift in looks even though it’s highly inconsistent and DC shouldn’t have made the mistake to begin with.
Then there’s this weird conversation with boomer in issue #19. In this conversation we’re given a little bit of closure on the whole Boomer totally crushing on Supergirl dilemma: you know, him being in his late 30’s (guessing here) and her being 16. Basically Supergirl apologizes to boomer for leading him on.
He responds: “For me to have been ‘led on’ would presume I thought I had a shot with you… for me to think I had a shot with a sixteen-year-old girl– crystal-powered hypersleep whatever junk aside… that would mean I was a dirtbag with a thing for jailbait. Which I am not.”
Wow, thanks for clearing that up Boomer. I could have sworn that’s where this whole friendship was leading. Guess I was wrong. I’m glad to see Joe Kelly tried to clean up the comic a little… oh wait, never mind. He failed miserably! This picture completely negates any damage control that was being performed on the preceding page. What was the thought process here? “I have an idea for a page, retarded monkey secretary! I know DC wants to clean up the misconception of Boomer’s lust for Supergirl, but I don’t care! Now that she’s looking her age, let’s get Ale Garza to draw Kara pounced on top of boomer in order to sexily seduce him!”
I love the fact that Boomer just got through admitting he would be a “dirtbag” if he “had a thing for jailbait” and 3 seconds later is visually and audibly struggling with his dirty-old-man crush on Kara.
And that’s not the half of the weirdness… no that just triggers a downfall for the entire comic.
The next “scene” brings us to the Titan Tower. where we find the Teen Titans dramatically discussing not washing the dishes. Did I miss something here? As best I could figure after reading this and the following page a couple of times, the Titans are split in to two groups and are playing a game called Manhunt to determine which team will have to wash the dishes that night.Supergirl and Wondergirl are about to make out when Ravager shoots them, winning the game. From there on out Supergirl flys around attempting to make amends with Powergirl, some fat chick she made fun of, and Superman, who incidentally must have been having a really bad hair day.

Good riddance Joe Kelly. Please stop using drugs.