My husband and I saw Supergirl a few weeks ago, after which my husband asked me to read the comic on which it was based and do a "Book vs. Screen" post comparing the two. So here we are!
The comic that was the inspiration for the 2026 movie is Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King. According to my husband, it was very well received when it came out in 2022–so, of course, it got made into a movie. And I have mixed feelings about that.
I'll start off by saying that I usually prefer the book over the movie simply because the longer format allows it to have a more nuanced plot and complex character development. In this case, however, the condensed nature of the movie worked in its favor, as the comic was all over the place and mostly related a bunch of random scenes from their journey–which took months, instead of three days. I guess that's a more accurate timeline for interstellar travel, but I felt that the movie setting a sense of urgency with Krypto's predicament made the story more compelling.
The Comic:
I will say that the artwork and design of the comic were way better than the movie. While the comic is suffused with tons of color, the movie suffered from the modern filmmaking allergy to color and was pretty much just ... gray. My husband told me that this was a common complaint of people who read the comic and then watched the movie, and I would have to agree.
Apart from the plot being all over the place, the writing style seemed very inconsistent. I get why the overall narration was more flowery, since it was Ruthye's reminiscence on the past, but sometimes Ruthye's actual dialogue was very polished and convoluted in its sentence structure and word length, and at other times it was very "plains girl". (It cracked me up that she grew up on a rock farm. I want to know what they grew the rocks for.)
The Movie:
Okay, let's talk about Krem. There's nothing wrong with having the villain be evil (I mean, that's kind of the point), but Krem truly just made me uncomfortable.
Instead of being a kingsagent who joined up with the brigands, Movie Krem was a brigand. This wasn't an issue in and of itself. Where it started to break down for me was that instead of simply gallivanting around the universe wiping out civilizations for fun and money, as in the comic, the brigands were going around space trafficking young women to help them further their all-male race. Lovely. I think the movie had the right idea in giving the brigands more of a purpose other than "Let's k*ll a lot of people for no reason," but I didn't think that the trafficking part was dealt with in the best way. I would have liked for it to have either been a larger part of the plot and explored with more thoughtfulness OR for them to have chosen some other villainous purpose for the brigands.
Apart from Krem, I think that some of the flashback scenes were a bit long and took the viewer out of the main story.
What I Liked about Both:
Supergirl. In the comic, her unfailing kindness shines through no matter what she's doing. In the movie, she was much more reluctant and ... human. I can't decide which version I liked better (although I'm leaning toward the movie; she was just more interesting).
What I Disliked about Both:
The ending.
***CUE SPOILERS***
And by the ending, I'm really talking about what happens to Krem.
I did like the final scene in the movie, where Supergirl finally goes back to Earth and joins forces with Superman, so for that reason alone the movie probably wins on this point.
However.
The ending of the comic seems somewhat ambiguous: does Supergirl kill Krem at the end of their journey, as Ruthye's narration claims, or does Ruthye kill him at the end of her life after he's been slowly reforming in a pocket universe for three hundred years? Either way, Krem dies. This is how many people–including the director of the movie–interpreted the ending of the comic (she went with Supergirl killing him, which I didn't love).
However (according to my husband again), apparently the writer, Tom King, did not intend for the ending to be ambiguous at all and Krem doesn't die in either ending. My husband only knows this because he watched an interview where Tom King said this.
The comic's ending was ambiguous and unsatisfying. The movie's ending was a little better, with the final scene where Supergirl decides to turn her act around, but she still killed Krem, which I didn't love.
***END OF SPOILERS***
Book or Screen?
I think I've actually talked myself into preferring the movie. Could the visuals have been more colorful? Yes. But was the story tighter than the comic, with a slightly better ending? Also yes. However, I don't think I would recommend either the comic or the movie to anyone.
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