Supergirl: The Matrix years

Back when DC was banking some serious sales from the whole 'Death of Superman' thing, and hundreds of thousands of new readers were trying out their first ever Superman comic, they had a very strange Supergirl, who was also a great symbol of the confused state of the DC Universe at the time.

Even though she had been one of the more notable casualties of the Crisis On Infinite Earths, it wasn't very long before the Maid of Might was flying through the skies over Metropolis again. But this wasn't the Supergirl who was Kal-El's cousin and another improbable survivor of the destruction of Krypton. She was a blob of protomatter from a pocket universe, held together by guts and willpower, and initially modelled on Lana Lang before taking on a more familiar blonde appearance.

And she was a great metaphor for the wonderful confusion after DC got rid of if most of its history in the Crisis. The laughable aim of making things less complicated with the merging of the timelines created nothing but nonsense, as dozens of different creators and editors tried to make things fit into the same universe.

So explaining who Supergirl was at the time could be a supremely complicated affair, which may even require bringing in some Legion of Super-Heroes lore, instead of  'oh, she's his cousin'.

Classic 90s DC. She deserved better.  I still have a fondness for this Supergirl, especially with her trans subtext (she tried on several different genders before finding one that fit comfortably). 

Through strength of will, power and compassion, she proved worthy of the Super shield over and over again. While there was a regrettable relationship with Lex Luthor when he was pretending to be Australian, she was also one of the mightiest women in the DC universe for several years, with a long-running monthly series.

I'd faded away from superhero comics when her story came to an end, and only know something about her evolution into some kind of angelic being, and they soon bought back another version of the cousin and have generally stuck with that. 

Which might be for the best, because it's easier to grasp, but there is always a part of me that yearns for that kind of over-complication. And when you can turn into any form in the multiverse, Supergirl was an obvious choice. The universe always needs its Supergirls.