Note: this story takes place after the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985)...
...(trust me, it's important you know that)!
Also, that despite a spectral superhero being the apparent protagonist, this is a tale about a superheroine...
Figure it out?
Here's a hint...
Yep. it's the ghost of Kara Zor-El, the Silver Age Supergirl!
During Crisis on Infinite Earths, Supergirl was killed in action, and her very existence eliminated from the DC Universe as the various worlds (Earth-One/Earth-Two/Earth-X/etc) were merged into one universe with characters killed (The [Barry Allen] Flash), killed and expunged (Supergirl/Green Arrow of Earth-Two/etc) or merged/recreated (Superman/Hawkman/Wonder Woman/etc)
It was meant to be permanent, but, for a variety of reasons (mostly editorial screw-ups), it didn't work.
(The story of what happened to the various versions of Hawkman and HawkGirl/HawkWoman, with a half-dozen reboots in a dozen years, is famous for its' ineptitude!)
One of the biggest outcries was the death of Supergirl, who though derided as a mere female copy of Superman, had a solid fanbase...including numerous comic creatives who grew up reading her.
One of them, writer Alan Brennert, sneaked her into this tale from DC's Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989).
As Alan himself explains...
I wrote it for a fan -- me. Supergirl had just been killed off in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and both as a reader and a writer, I was kind of pissed that she had been retconned out of existence.
It seemed to me a repudiation of not just the character and her history, but the work of the writers and artists who had chronicled that history.
You can read the rest HERE... BTW, Brennert was a crossover scripter from TV with considerable credits (including the 1970s Wonder Woman, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century and 1980s Twilight Zone)!
So, as a "name-value" creative, he had some cachet and "pull" with DC that most others didn't have.
Ironic Trivia: In 1985, this tale's artist, Dick Giordano, was the vice president/executive editor who approved the killing of Supergirl in Crisis!
He was still in that position when he illustrated this story in 1989.
(Maybe it was his way of "apologizing".)
Comic Book Resources' readers voted the tale the #1 Supergirl story ever told!
The reference at the end to writer Otto Binder and artist Jim Mooney is a "tip of the hat" to the team who handled most of the Girl of Steel's Silver Age adventures in Action Comics!
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the only place this story's ever been reprinted!
Odd since there's no Batman in the tale...
