Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the Tom King comic that inspired the film

The genesis: Tom King, True Grit and an adult Supergirl

In 2021, Tom King is one of DC Comics' most prominent writers. A former CIA officer turned author, he has written Mister Miracle, Batman and Strange Adventures, stories that take well-known superheroes and turn them into intimate characters. When DC offers him Supergirl, he starts from an observation: nobody really knows who Kara is.

His initial idea comes from a western. King wanted to adapt the structure of True Grit, Charles Portis's novel and the 1969 film: a young girl hires a hard man to avenge her father, and the story is told by her, years later. In his first version, the role of the hard man was to go to Lobo. DC preferred a Supergirl on her own, and the character of Lobo would only appear in the film.

The miniseries was published in eight issues, from June 2021 to February 2022, drawn by Bilquis Evely, colored by Matheus Lopes and lettered by Clayton Cowles. The short, out-of-continuity format gave King total freedom.

Our article on Kara Zor-El retraces the whole history of the character; this one focuses on the comic that redefined her.

The story: Ruthye, Krem and a wounded dog

The story is told by Ruthye Marye Knoll, a little girl from a rural planet, whose father was killed by a mercenary, Krem of the Yellow Hills. Ruthye wants revenge. She's looking for a killer to hire and stumbles upon Kara Zor-El, who is celebrating her twenty-first birthday alone on a planet under a red sun, without powers, and fairly drunk.

Kara at first refuses to kill for money. But Krem, before fleeing, wounds Krypto with a poisoned arrow and steals their ship. To save the dog, they need to find the antidote, and therefore find Krem. The pursuit begins, from planet to planet, aboard a transport ship full of refugees.

Each issue is a stage of this journey: a world where Kara faces thugs without her powers, another where she regains her strength, yet another where she tells Ruthye about the destruction of Krypton and her years in space, drifting in the pod that was supposed to take her to her cousin.

The ending won't be told here, but it rests on a simple question: what is revenge worth when you've lost everything? Ruthye, who writes these pages years later, answers it in her own way.

What the comic changes about Kara Zor-El

The comics' Supergirl was long a teenage, smiling version of her cousin. Tom King makes her a survivor. Where Kal-El grew up on Earth with no memory of Krypton, Kara lived through the destruction of her planet, watched Argo City die slowly, and arrived on Earth too late to raise the baby she was supposed to protect.

This difference, which our feature on what sets Supergirl apart from Superman develops, is the heart of the comic. Kara is angry, she drinks, she doubts, and yet she refuses to become what Krem is. Her strength lies not in her powers, often absent, but in that refusal.

King also writes a Kara who talks. The long monologues where she tells Ruthye about Krypton are among the most quoted pages of the series, and give the character a history that sixty years of comics had never quite pinned down.

Finally, he makes her an adult. Twenty-one years old, a life of grief behind her, and the choice, at the end, of what she wants to be. The title, Woman of Tomorrow, answers her cousin's Man of Tomorrow , and the word "woman" in it is no accident.

Bilquis Evely's art and Matheus Lopes's colors

Bilquis Evely, a Brazilian artist who got noticed on Wonder Woman and The Dreaming, gives the series its visual identity. Her pages are of rare density: each world has its own fauna, architecture and clothing, drawn with the precision of a book illustrator rather than a superhero comics artist.

The choice to age Kara's costume, dirtied, torn, then replaced by local outfits, is part of this approach. Supergirl isn't a clean icon; she's a traveler crossing hostile places.

Matheus Lopes's colors do the rest. The red suns, the ochre deserts, the purple nights: the series is one of the most beautiful DC has published in recent years, and many readers bought it for the images before the story.

This work earned the series a nomination at the 2022 Eisner Awards, in the Best Limited Series category, the most prestigious award in American comics.

Krypto, the true heart of the story

It has to be said: the most important character in Woman of Tomorrow after Kara is a dog. Wounded from the first issue, Krypto is the reason for the whole journey, and his condition dictates every one of Kara's decisions.

Tom King uses this device with remarkable economy. Krypto doesn't talk, has almost no action scenes, and yet every page he appears on is charged. He embodies what is most fragile in Kara: a being she loves and that she risks, once again, losing.

Our article on Krypto retraces the super-dog's history since 1955; in this comic, he is neither comic nor heroic, but simply alive, and that's what matters.

The 2026 film kept this device. Krypto, already present in James Gunn's Superman , is once again the link between the two Kryptonian cousins.

The reception: an instant classic

Critics praised three things: the voice of Ruthye, a narrator from another age whose formal language contrasts with the violence of events; the adult, damaged Kara; and the beauty of the art. Some readers regretted the slow pace and the lack of action, but that is precisely the book's choice.

Bookstore success followed. The collected edition, released in 2022, has become one of the most recommended entry points for discovering Supergirl, on a par with All-Star Superman for her cousin.

Above all, the series had a rare consequence for a comic: it was chosen as the basis for the first Supergirl film since 1984. James Gunn explained that he had read it and wanted to keep its tone.

From the comic to the 2026 film

The film Supergirl, first announced under the title Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, was released on June 26, 2026, directed by Craig Gillespie from a screenplay by Ana Nogueira. Milly Alcock plays Kara, Eve Ridley plays Ruthye and Matthias Schoenaerts lends his features to Krem.

The main difference from the comic is the addition of Lobo, played by Jason Momoa. The character doesn't appear in the series, but he was part of Tom King's first idea, the duo in the style of True Grit. So the film returns, in a way, to the original project.

The commercial result was disappointing. The film opened at around 37 million dollars in the United States, far below expectations, and the American press quickly spoke of a failure given its budget. Critics, divided on the whole, did however widely praise Milly Alcock's performance.

For readers, the film remains a faithful adaptation in spirit: an angry Kara, a little girl who wants revenge, a wounded dog and a journey. What's missing on screen can be found in the pages.

How to read Woman of Tomorrow today

The series is available in a single collected edition, under the title Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow published by DC Comics in the US. Eight chapters, a little over two hundred pages: an afternoon's read, requiring no prior knowledge of the DC universe.

A few reference points help, though. Knowing where Kara comes from, and why her story differs from Kal-El's, gives the monologues about Krypton their full impact: our feature on Argo City explains what she went through before Earth.

For those coming from the film, the book lets you rediscover Ruthye's voice, which the screen couldn't fully restore, and an ending noticeably different in its details.

Finally, it's the comic to give to anyone who thinks Supergirl is "the girl version of Superman." After these eight issues, nobody makes that mistake anymore.

Conclusion

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow did for Kara what All-Star Superman did for her cousin: give the character a definitive story, both accessible and profound. A little girl, a wounded dog, a heroine who refuses to become a monster: Tom King and Bilquis Evely found the story Supergirl had been waiting for since 1959.

For Kara's first big-screen adaptation, forty years earlier, read our article on Supergirl (1984).

The 2026 film didn't have the comic's success, but it passed on its essence to a wider audience. For the rest, there are the pages, and they haven't aged.

To go further, our profile of Milly Alcock tells the story of the film's actress, and our article on Kara Zor-El goes back to the heroine's origins.