Plot summary: Granny and the Furies capture Superman and bring him before Darkseid, leaving Supergirl to mount a rescue mission to Apokalips.
Notes and Trivia
Episode: 41 (S2.E28)
Original Air Date: May 2nd 1998
Directed: Curt Geda (13)
Written: Evan Dorkin (4) & Sarah Dyer (4) (teleplay) and Rich Fogel (story)
Animation: Koko Enterprise Co., LTD & Dong Yang Animation Co., LTD. (25)
Music: Lolita Ritmanis (12)
The plot originally called for Granny Goodness to be rounding up wayward teens to turn into Parademons, revealing that Darkseid’s entire army were engineered from prisoners captured during his conquests. This was nixed. Boo.
The comet being attracted to Earth via a magnet-laser-thing is named Fleischer’s Comet. The first episode of the old Fleischer Superman cartoons featured an identical whacky scheme.
So let’s talk Supergirl a little, I guess! She has one of the most convoluted character histories in comics because of how many continuity changes and retcons she’s been hit with. So much so that DC decided to kill her off in 1985 and then pretend she never existed! It took an unthinkable 19 years to bring her back in 2004, with audiences having to make do with the controversially-attired alternate universe ‘Power Girl’ in the interim. They’re kind of capturing the spirit of the classic version of the character… while also going their own way, hence being unrelated to Clark.
Recap
The Female Furies surround Supergirl and while she’s able to make Lashina and Mad Harriet take each other out, Stompa lives up to her name and kicks her ass and causes a small earthquake.
Unfortunately for the Furies, this attracts Superman. Unfortunately for Superman, they work together much more smoothly this time and beat him unconscious!
Granny has mislaid her Boom-Tube controller, so Lashina opens one back to Apokalips for her, where Superman is bound and tortured.
Naturally Jimmy, Kara and Amy (one of Granny’s teen recruits) find Granny’s controller and Supergirl mounts a one-woman rescue mission… but she’s almost immediately beset by Parademons and loses the controller.
Superman is brought before Darkseid, who reveals his plan to destroy the Earth by pulling a passing comet into a collision course, making it seem like a natural disaster.
Sure enough, back in Granny’s Metropolis hideout, Jimmy and Amy discover a giant magnetic laser type device from all the stolen tech her followers gathered . Oh and it’s on an auto-timer. Great!
Supergirl attacks and while she’s initially easily beaten by Darkseid, she rallies and tricks the Furies into not only taking out each other, but also Granny and their means of restraining Superman.
Weakened and with a comet to stop, they elect to escape back to Earth via another Boom-Tube controller. Kara impulsively destroys the magnet, so Clark has to fly off to redirect the comet.
Or rather he tries but isn’t strong enough, so Kara launches herself into it like a rocket and blows enough chunks off it for Clark to fling it back into space. Miraculously none of said chunks kill a whole bunch of people.
In the aftermath Darkseid has Granny tortured for her failure and Jimmy gets his first byline in the Daily Planet writing about Supergirl’s exploits as Kara flies triumphantly around the city.
Best Performance
It feels like an ever so slightly less engaged performance from Michael Ironside this time around, though I enjoyed his sly delivery of Darkseid’s comet plan. Otherwise it’s all a bit more generic and like they just got him to do a few extra lines at the end of a meatier session. I have no idea about the logistics of STAS voice recording sessions.
So it’s over to Ed Asner yet again, who delivers even more of Granny’s charmingly creepy turns of phrase. The little affectations on the end of otherwise threatening sentences basically always work. He’s also excellent in the final scenes where she begs Darkseid for forgiveness and for her Furies not to turn on her. Just a wonderfully bizarre little character.
Once again, Nicholle Tom is only giving you like… 70% of what you want. There’s certainly youthful exuberance but she doesn’t seem like an overly strong actor.
Episode Ranking
Mostly your classic Part II episode that dials the action way up. I wouldn’t go as far as to say there’s no plot or interesting stuff, but the scales are definitely tipped toward fighting. It’s pretty good fighting though, with the Furies providing lots of fun variance to the usual brawls, and Kara’s creative ways of evading Parademons. But it also can’t really compete with the big Apokalips two-parter that it’s trying to follow up on, which is yet more evidence they should have closed with that and opened up season three with this, but alas.
I’m torn over whether they really needed the whole comet subplot as Superman getting captured and taken to Apokalips should have been plenty to fill an episode, especially as Supergirl is a brand new character to the show still getting her bearings. It did allow Jimmy Olsen to have his largest role to date, which is nice, and it is quite a creative plan on Darkseid’s part to destroy the planet without violating his peace treaty with New Genesis. Can’t blame him for a ‘random’ comet collision! But on the other hand it feels quite perfunctory and the resolution is extremely flat. From the rampantly dangerous ‘break it into chunks, it’ll be fine!’ gambit, to the visual communication of what’s even going on, with Kara’s impact seemingly annihilating the thing entirely… only for Superman to then be carrying/steering what looks like an identically-sized comet. It just screams tacked on late into the script. Maybe that was Rich Fogel’s contribution? As I say, they do a good job of having Darkseid justify it as a plan, but in terms of vibes it’s a little off.
The strong aesthetic of Apokalips is a smidge weaker this time in my opinion, as I’m sure what they put together for ‘Apokalips… Now!’ took a considerable amount of effort. It could also just be that because they needed to spend more time there it just wasn’t feasible to portray it in quite the same way as when it was in short bursts. It’s still a cool location, but just a little blander this time around… though they do add a colossal statue of Darkseid for Kara to meet before the man himself. That’s about all the scale you get by comparison to the sprawling hellscape we were treated to before.
I liked that Jimmy seemed to want to go with Kara to Apokalops but then instantly realised how dumb that would be so just wished her good luck. It was extremely cute to give him his first byline and then for Clark to ostensibly set him up with Kara at the end. But then his tiny adventure recruiting Amy, who just knocked herself out trying to destroy the laser was bad. Again, these waifs and strays don’t feel like their story comes all the way together. Perhaps when that initial pitch of revealing they were being turned into Parademons was rejected they didn’t quite know how to pivot into something else.
The biggest triumph of both parts is of course Supergirl’s loud, proud arrival on the scene as Superman’s sidekick. In this regard it’s pretty strong as she gets to beat up Granny’s minions over and over, and even takes a run at Darkseid even if she’s gloriously overmatched. Kara getting this big hero shot swooping around Metropolis to end the season is certainly a lighter tone to end it on than Dan Turpin dying in an almost successful alien invasion.
So while I think this second part is weaker, I still feel decent about the overall placement. Or perhaps Part I was too low and now Part II has placed it where it belongs?
- The Late Mr. Kent
- Brave New Metropolis
- Apokalips… Now!
- World’s Finest
- Livewire
- Double Dose
- Fun and Games
- Warrior Queen
- Father’s Day
- Little Girl Lost (–)
- The Hand of Fate
- The Last Son of Krypton
- Ghost in the Machine
- Stolen Memories
- Action Figures
- The Prometheon
- Tools of the Trade
- The Main Man
- Mxzypixilated
- Blasts from the Past
- Target
- The Way of All Flesh
- Solar Power
- Protoype
- My Girl
- A Little Piece of Home
- Feeding Time
- Speed Demons
- Two’s a Crowd
- Identity Crisis
- Heavy Metal
- Monkey Fun
- Bizarro’s World
Rogues Roundup
Granny Goodness (Ed Ansner) (second appearance)
In terms of character work it’s more of the same, but ‘the same’ in her case is a whole lot of fun. They also let her get a lot more physical this time around, pacifying Superman with her staff and generally being more of the big woman in charge. Or rather second-in-command. I do think in totality it’s enough to bump her several slots up the list.
The Female Furies (Diane Michelle/Andrea Martin/Diane Delano) (second appearance)
Now that they’ve gotten more than a 10-second entrance I have decided they warrant their own spot on the list separate from Granny. Obviously they have a ceiling as they’re just muscle with no character stories of their own, but they’re pretty cool.
Lashina uses electrified metal ribbons as whips (or lashes, I guess), Mad Harriet is fucking insane and has little Wolverine claws, and Stompa… well she stomps! And it turns out that may be the most effective of these three tactics as she repeatedly knocks the Super duo down with kicks and buries them with ground-pound-induced earthquakes.
Darkseid (Michael Ironside) (fifth appearance)
Ever the schemer, I enjoyed his plan to blow up Earth (he destroys what he can’t conquer) while looking entirely innocent in the eyes of New Genesis. Otherwise he’s just sitting in a chair and unleashing eyebeam city on Kara in a fun display of power. Similarly, having him sit and watch his minions get beaten but not sweating the notion of fighting Superman and Supergirl at once, and them in fact retreating rather than facing him keeps him high on the threat level in the audience’s minds.
This may sound like I’m planning to move him down slightly. Absolutely not. But as I said before I need the full package from him if he’s going to dethrone Livewire, and for as cool as he is even in autopilot, we’re still no there yet.
- Livewire
- Darkseid (–)
- Lex Luthor
- The Joker
- Toyman
- Queen Maxima
- Metallo
- Parasite
- Karkull
- Brainiac
- Mr. Mxyzptlk
- Harley Quinn
- Granny Goodness (↑)
- Kalibak
- Lobo
- Luminus
- The Female Furies (NEW ENTRY)
- DeSaad
- Detective Bowman
- Bruno Mannheim (and Intergang!)
- Steppenwolf
- The Preserver
- Kanto
- Mala & Jax-Ur
- Mercy Graves
- The Prometheon
- De’Cine
- Corey Mills
- Earl Garver
- Titano
- Bizarro
- Weather Wizard
The Matt Signal 
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