Reign of the Supermen #118: Matrix

Source: Action Comics #644 (1989)
Type: ReplacementLate 80s Super-madness didn't just strike Clark, but Supergirl/Matrix as well. While Superman was off-world, becoming a Warworld gladiator and all that, the Byrne equivalent of Supergirl, Matrix, went a little loco and started to believe she/it was Superman. Didn't quite get the colors right...

Of course, Superman came back, and Matrix thought HE was the impostor. After a fight and needless endangerment of Clark's loved ones, Matrix came to its senses and left Earth to find its inner Supergirl again.

So... whatever happened to Matrix? Peter David merged her with the human Linda Danvers and later, well, Infinite Crisis wiped her out of existence. Supergirls and Crises, eh?

Comments

snell said…
Darn...from the title I thought you were doing Neo from the Matrix. You know, where he leaves the phone booth and flies off at the end of the first movie...
February 15, 2011 at 10:28 AM
Siskoid said…
Hahaha, I didn't even think of that!

neo has always been more of a Christ figure for me, so I never thought of him as a Superman analog (even if Supes is sometimes also a Christ figure).
February 15, 2011 at 11:11 AM
snell said…
Yeah, they really ladled on the Christ imagry, especially in the last two...but that flight at the end of 1, with the trenchcoat fluttering like a cape, always screamed "Superman" to me...
February 16, 2011 at 12:12 AM
Carl Walker said…
Last I read was that Didio claimed Matrix/Linda Danvers "never existed" thanks to IC, but Johns or someone denied it, and Johns would seem to have been right as she did later show up in Giffen's Reign in Hell. It would almost be better if she had been retconned away, considering how her old friends never mention her anymore.
February 16, 2011 at 1:11 PM
Unknown said…
For every good/at-the-very-least-interesting-thing Bryne did on Superman (Most of the Man of Steel mini, Both Kent's still being alive, an explanation for the powers, etc) we'd get something like 90's Supergirl. How on earth does turning "Superman's cousin from a city that avoided Krypton's destruction" into "protoplasm that thinks it is Supergirl based on Clark Kent's memories, shacks up with Lex Luthor, then later merges with a dying girl and becomes an earth angel" come across as more realistic or straightforward? 90's Superman comics were weirdly dense, even for superhero fare.

As much as the story that introduced her sucked, Loeb pushing the reset button on Supergirl was a good idea in hindsight.
February 16, 2011 at 1:45 PM
Siskoid said…
My favorite Supergirl is, of course, the one in 9th grade, but I agree that Byrne was a little too anal about the "last kryptonian" idea.
February 16, 2011 at 2:16 PM
Siskoid said…
I think Linda exists, she was just never Supergirl.

Or if she was, she was always merged with the Supergirl of the Pocket Dimension.

Oh comics, don't ever change...
February 16, 2011 at 2:47 PM
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