Don’t let the title fool you — Supergirl’s last stand isn’t something as quotidian as a car crashing into her. Oh, no. The Maid of Might can’t be stopped by something so mundane as steel and horsepower.
The last stand, really, is right at the top of the cover:
SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE!
Ah, if only ’twere so…
Don’t get me wrong. They did make a Supergirl movie. But calling it a “major motion picture” is an exercise in either clueless hype or deranged perception. It stank like a Kryptonian rondor corpse.
If the movie had been any good at all — hell, if it had been awful, but at least made money! — then Supergirl’s fate would not have been sealed. But in truth, her comic hadn’t been selling well for a while and she ended up on the list of possible deaths when DC was trying to hype a big, universe-changing crossover series.
She crossed the line from “maybe” to “definite” when the movie tanked. She had outlived her usefulness, and all that was left was to wring out a few more sales by killing her in the instantly infamous Crisis on Infinite Earths #7.
I always thought Supergirl was cool. Really shook me when they offed her.
“Major motion picture.”
If only.
(From Supergirl #17, March 1984. Cover by Carmine Infantino and Dick Giordano.)