Lara Lane-Kent’s First Appearance

One of my favorite comic book stories is Injustice. You know, the one where Superman kills The Joker and becomes evil? He kind of went crazy when The Joker tricked him into thinking Lois Lane was Doomsday, leading to Superman accidentally killing the love of his life. Wait, there’s more: Lois happened to be pregnant with Superman’s baby. So as you might imagine, he was mighty pissed off. But hold on a second. What if the baby didn’t die? What if Lois Lane gave birth to their child? We get to see the outcome in Injustice Year Three. We see a new kind Supergirl named Lara Lane-Kent.

We see the magic begin to happen in Injustice Year Three issue 12. Batman puts Superman into a slumber using some sort of purple magic dust. Apparently this was used earlier in the story to put Wonder Woman to sleep by Constantine. While Superman sleeps, he has a vivid dream of what things would have been like if Lois had not died. In this dream we see that Batman kills The Joker in order to save Superman’s life, knowing that The Joker would never stop trying to ruin it. Batman then immediately accepts the consequences and goes to prison for murder. While this is going on we get to see Lara Lane-Kent’s first appearance in issue 14. We see her grow old enough to fly, coached by her father Superman all throughout her upbringing. She becomes a teenager and Green Arrow helps her accuracy with her heat vision. As she matures her father watches her progress but doesn’t interfere.

It’s here in the story that we see an outcome that contradicts the world that Superman had created. While in space, Lara Lane-Kent looks upon the Earth with her father and says that she sees the world is pulling apart and asks what should be done. He suggests the possibility of a dictatorship. Lara disagrees and points out that the two of them can’t fight all their battles for them. But why not talk with them? Superman is not of this planet, but Lara understands that she is, and not being an outsider would allow her an opinion with weight. She speaks at the United Nations and says that she is a child or two worlds, and the world her grandfather knew (Krypton) is gone because their leaders were narrow-minded.

This entire series is really excellent, and the way that everyone, good and bad, is considered in this story is brilliant. John Constantine steals the show as he often outsmarts everyone else, including Batman. He nearly kills Superman by having him fall into a trap and get captured by Ragman. You can pick up the entire collection (Affiliate Link), which I highly recommend that you do. I honestly could not stop reading this story.