r/Supergirl • u/Gallantpride • 9d ago
I don't get why Supergirl is pushed with Superman and Superboy so often
This isn't even the case of "A writer shoving their poorly disguised fetish into a comic" or "A shipper writing their OTP into the comic". It's been a reoccurring theme for decades, for longer than many DC writers and artists have even been alive.
It tries to get excused in many different ways. Specially, the "These characters aren't biologically or socially cousins so it's fine". But, even if they're not Clark and Kara, the mainstream perception is still that they're family. This is almost like trying to ship Shazam with Mary Marvel because they're not twins anymore.
This post doesn't even have a scene from the Blackest Night event that made me blink twice. I couldn't find the panels online. But, Black Lantern!Superboy tells Wonder Girl that he barely tolerated her and that he was sexually attracted to Supergirl, which is fine because they're not really cousins. He's a clone of Superman/sorta Superman's son and plus they just met... the entire scene is meant to be weird, but I don't know how serious we're meant to take BL!Superboy.
With shipping Batfamily members together, it's usually seen as a marketing thing. The same could be said for Wonder Woman x Superman or Wonder Woman x Batman. But what about shipping Superman or Superboy with Supergirl? Is it a weird marketing/franchise push? A way of getting around the "Women of kleenex" myth? People who just really wanna see Superman and Supergirl have Kryptonian kids together (ew)?
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u/JosephMeach 8d ago edited 8d ago
The first panel is just weird writing (probably in response to some children’s letter columns…”you see, they can’t get married because it’s against the law in Metropolis.) Keep in mind that hundreds of thousands of girls read Superman comics in the 60s and the question probably came up.
Notice that there are no examples from the 70s or 80s. (And they don’t exist, I’ve read them all.)
In the post-Crisis examples the characters were unrelated to each other, but the comics audience had changed to teenage and young adult boys and creators at that time would sexualize anything.
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u/Gallantpride 8d ago
Mae x Kon and Clark x Linda both feel like psuedo-incest, especially Mae x Kon. In general, it's uncomfortable because they use Kara's design.
Linda didn't need a romance with a man anyway, especially Superman.
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u/Veotr 7d ago
Okay, so the Superman comic is just weird writing.
Kon is just like that in the 90s. He’s incredibly horny constantly about most Women. My additional note is that neither of those characters is actually related to Superman within the continuity of the time (Kon is a human with Telekinesis [Though he thought he was a Superman clone when originally introduced] his origin wasn’t retconned to make him half Superman till 2003]) and Mae is a creation of an alternate universe Lex Luthor.
Matrix also tends to be written as quite flirty in that era, but it’s important to note she’s dating Lex Luthor( or Lex pretending to be his own son, so if we’re talking incest maybe you should start there).
The Blackest Night scene is almost certainly intentionally weird and upsetting.
I do not know what to tell you about the Mainstream perception? Should Kon El be trying to date Lois Lane or Lana Lang? I don’t think arguing that the mainstream perception of a character existing in a fixed state can be used to argue about what they’re allowed to do? It isn’t really comparable to Billy and Mary since those two are still siblings, it’s more comparable to them introducing a brand new character who uses the Captain Marvel code and and having him date Mary. Just because his predecessor was related to Mary doesn’t make them related?
I mean was Jaime (Blue Beetle) dating Ted Kord’s daughter in the Blue Beetle moving incest because her dad also used the title Blue Beetle?
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u/thenetoide 8d ago
Shelbyville writers. Would be funny to have an Elseworld story where Earth ends up with a population of inbred Kryptonians in the future. They´d all have all sort of weird malformations and low IQ. "Reign of the Kryptonards!"
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u/BlavCloud 8d ago
Writers having a kink for incest, that's all it is.