Kara Zor-El

Power Girl

Karen Starr

## Biography

### Early Life

Kara Zor-El was born on September 22nd, 1962 in Argo City, Krypton. Kara grew up in the care of the renowned House of El, where her father, Zor-El, was a prominent engineer and put Kara through the best academies. When Kara was very little, her father grew paranoid after his A.I system foretold the imminent destruction of their planet. He created an escape pod for the family to escape and enacted an evacuation plan with the entire family in agreement to follow it.

Unfortunately, the plans came in handy, when Vril Dox gained sentience and began destroying Krypton. Kara was able to evacuate to the escape pods and was jetted away from the planet, watching the destruction as she flew into space. She glanced out the window and spotted her baby cousin, Kal-El, in a twin ship, before she entered the Phantom Zone.

The harsh entry into the Phantom Zone activated the cryogenesis on the pod, which nestled itself into an asteroid belt contained within the dimension. And there Kara remained for two decades, until she was pulled out by a Kryptonian prison guard who had also been stranded there. This savior freed Kara and they two began working on their escape, planning to rewire the pod as an escape rocket.

However, the imprisoned Black Zero Squadron found the duo and delivered them to their leader, Dru-Zod, who used the rocket’s technology to open the Phantom Zone from their side, emerging with Kara held by the neck into the Fortress of Solitude, where her now adult cousin was standing, shocked to see them.

A fight ensued, in which the Black Zero Squadron escaped to absorb the yellow sun and gain their full Kryptonian powers. Kal and Kara gave chase, calling in reinforcements from Kal’s Justice League - leading to a full scale battle in Metropolis. In the midst of battle, the robot assistant Kelex helped Kara and Sal-Den rewire the Phantom Zone Projector to cryogenically freeze the Black Zero Squadron and imprison them once more.

Kara was forced to adapt to a new life on Earth. Luckily for her, she had a lot of health. Her cousin cashed in on an alliance with the Danvers family, so Kara moved to Smallville, was given the Earth name of Karen and moved in with her adoptive parents, Linda and Fred Danvers.

### Supergirl

In Smallville, she struggled to fit in, and the Earthly environment was full of new sounds and stimuli that she wasn’t ready to experience, despite how much her adoptive sister, Alex, tried to help. Thankfully, Clark was more than willing to fly down for the weekend and relate to her and help her gain control of her abilities. It was in one of these weekend training sessions that Kara confessed her desire to help people the way he did. So, in late 2004, Superman gained a Supergirl.

Serving by Clark’s side was a great honor for Kara and being Supergirl gave her comradery with other Earth citizens, helping her come out of her shell. To sort of push her out of her shell, Clark introduced her to a group of the Justice League’s proteges and started a training camp for them. On July 19th, 2005, the Titans had their first mission to take down a wizard called Mister Twister.

Her adventures on the Titans were numerous, but as she started to embrace the wildside of Earth’s teenage culture (including one horrendously awkward date with Dick Grayson), she landed the Titans in some hot water, resulting in Clark “grounding” her to just Smallville operations for a few months. She was unaware that Clark had asked his old friend, Chloe Sullivan, now a high school teacher, to keep an eye on her and report back.

Kara was pulled out of her grounding when Vril Dox, now calling himself Brainiac, came to Earth and attempted an invasion. The combined might of both of their teams was enough to destroy his mothership and force the being to evacuate to another ship and hightail it out of Sector 2814.

Kara and Clark investigated the depths of Brainiac’s ship, finding hundreds of imprisoned genetic samples and Kara even found the shrunken and bottled Kryptonian moon of Kandor (which became a shelf piece at the Fortress of Solitude after Ray Palmer determined it would be unsafe to the biological specimens within to resize it). However, they also found a girl who appeared to be Kryptonian and bore the sign of the House of El.

She identified herself as Cir-El, which Kara was instantly suspicious of. She and Cir-El (who took the human name Mia) had a rocky relationship to say the least. Kara thought Mia wanted to replace her, and so the two would constantly butt heads. On one occasion, Mia tried to open the Phantom Zone and shove Kara within it. However, they were forced to work together after Clark was kidnapped by Lobo and Mongul, forcing the two and Superboy, another recent acquisition to the growing House of El, to jet off into space and save their mentor.

Upon their return, Kara decided it was time to focus on Karen Danvers for a bit. So, she enrolled at Stanhope University in Sun City, and decided to go part-time on the whole superhero thing.

At Stanhope University, she majored in computer programming, and would sometimes go to the Fortress of Solitude on breaks to practice her skills on Kelex. While attending college, she got close with Byron Starr, a wannabe country singer that she fell head over boots for. Unfortunately for her, she was not the only one, as did Anaya Bowin, another aspiring country singer (and a damn good fiddler). In the end, Byron (or Bill, as his stage-name says) chose Karen and ended up on bended knee at their graduation.

During her wedding rehearsal, Karen took Mia aside and gave her the Supergirl costume, officially passing the mantle on to her. The next day, she tied the knot with Bill, and a few days later his single “Comet” propelled him to stardom, and so the couple moved to Nashville to be closer to the industry he needed to thrive in.

The first years of their marriage were taxing, as Karen still kept secret her true origins, only telling him that her biological parents were dead and she was taken in by close family friends. She then started working with Ted Kord to perfect A.I systems in smartphones. She would eventually have her breakthrough with the creation of Gideon - an invention that would make her one of the most desirable figures in technology.

Shortly after this, Kara had a run-in with advanced technology in a different way, when a figure the media dubbed “Cyborg Superman” came to Earth and nearly killed Steel, before demanding he see Supergirl. When Mia responded, the being only became more enraged, proclaiming she wasn’t the real Supergirl. Kara jetted off to the Fortress, grabbed an old suit, and then flew to Metropolis to please the guy.

Throughout the ensuing fight, Kara couldn’t shake a familiar feeling the assailant gave her. Their fight went into the sky, where they knocked a plane off its course. Kara stopped fighting to save the plane but was shocked when the Cyborg Superman helped her land it. The two exchanged a look and Kara realized that beneath the half-metal face and photo cellular eyes, it was her father, somehow alive. She collapsed into sobs and when she opened her eyes, he had vanished.

Torn to pieces by this revelation, Kara was inconsolable. Bill tried to comfort her, but she refused to leave her bed for months, except to help respond to the manhunt for the Joker after Jason Todd’s death. Following the disbanding of the League and Titans, fellow Titan Donna Troy was leaving Earth with her Green Lantern boyfriend, and Kara decided to hitch a ride with them to outer space. She left Bill with a note asking to take a break and headed into the outer sectors of Lantern patrolled space. The trio parted ways at New Cronus, the center of the universe, and Kara decided to find herself.

### Power Girl

She found herself in the intergalactic party scene, mainly. She muted her sorrows and anger with drugs, casual sex, and alien mead. She even became a patron of the elusive Event Horizon, a mobile rave organized by space-celebrity Kindred Marx. She got herself a nice apartment on Rimborr and began contracting her services out under the alias of Power Girl.

These odd jobs wound her up in a tough crowd, and she found herself distrusted in most corners of the galaxy. One night, while wandering home from the Event Horizon, she found an adorable blue cat and took him back to her apartment. When she awoke the next morning, he was standing over her with a little red ring in his mouth. She slid the ring on her finger and was suddenly pulled hundreds of miles away to the planet Ysmault and was standing before Atrocitus.

And that was how Kara became involved in the Red Lanterns - a group that proved therapeutic for her, allowing her to channel her rage at her father and Brainiac and life in general into something productive - yet misplaced. Her time on the Red Lanterns was short-lived, when she crossed paths with the stranded Hal Jordan when both were attempting to rob the same vault. Hal managed to free Kara from the ring’s control and after a heart-to-heart, both agreed to go back to Earth and face the demons they had been running from.

However, their return was anything but joyful, as they discovered Gotham was in chaos, the League and Titans were defunct, and a group of villains were masquerading as corporate sponsored superheroes. Kara returned to the Fortress of Solitude, where she found that Mia was on ice. Then she went to Kent Farm and found that Clark had more kids and retired. Then she went to Hawaii and found Conner was ignoring his problems too.

Kara went home to see Bill next, and he was angry at her. She told him the truth about everything she had been through, and after spilling her secrets, Bill asked for a divorce, and she couldn’t even blame him. A few days later, the divorce was finalized, and both were left with a hefty sum. Kara moved to National City and went to work for Kord Omniversal again, developing the StarrWare Project.

A few short months later, and the Justice League and Titans were back in action, but Kara struggled to find the motivation to put on a suit again, especially when Mia was put back in action. Kara remained on the sidelines for a short time, before Nightwing asked her to join his newest Outsiders team. When she expressed dismay over what symbol she should bear, he suggested no symbol, prompting her to tear the House of El from her chest and take up her Power Girl alias once more.

As Power Girl, she was invited to join the Justice League in late 2017, which she accepted, and would regret when Triumph and Tomorrow Woman mind-controlled the League into fighting the Titans and Outsiders in a long-running plot with the Reach and the Light. This plot led into the OMAC attacks, where Kara was crushed by the loss of her friend and business partner, Ted Kord.

Since the OMAC attacks, Kara laid low for a little bit and continued developing StarrWare for STAR Labs, where she's employed her own support staff she calls "the Super-Friends". She’s also started casually dating Atlantean royalty in the form of Jerro Issitoq, and they are apparently very happy together, despite the long-distance relationship. She has also adopted a new cat, Streaky. Kara has also discovered that she was a victim of cloning, at the hands of Emil Hamilton and Amanda Spence, so now the DNAngels are on the run - not quite heroes, but not quite villains either.

## Notes

* In the comics, Biron Starr was Comet the Superhorse, so he has been re-imagined here as Kara's ex-husband.
* Serving on the Red Lantern Corps happened in the *New 52*.
* Jerro the Merboy was one of Kara's love-interests in Earth-One, he has been re-imagined here as a member of the Drift.
* The Event Horizon rave happened in the 1996 series *Superboy and the Ravers*.
* Anaya Bowin is the Fiddler in the comics (coming soon to Earth 76).
* Salden was Stan Lee's version of Superman in *Just Imagine* (coming soon to Earth 76).
* In the comics, Linda Danvers was Supergirl, but she is re-imagined here as her adoptive mother. Kara's Supergirl costume is inspired by Linda's.