What a mess. I don't award 1 star or less easily, for me it means the book was either genuinely offensive or a complete failure. This time it's both.

In order of importance: the artwork, while fine stylistically, is extremely obsessed with showing off the female body: tits, butts, crotches and almost-upskirt arrangements are a constant. I'm no prude, but Supergirl is frequently referred to as being 15 years old, so it's pretty inappropriate.

They try to wave off any accusations of impropriety by occasionally stating her body developed slower than her mind on the trip from Krypton to Earth. Frankly this makes it even more gross because they're basically admitting they've done the wrong thing but have a get-out clause they hope holds water. It doesn't.

Artwork aside, on to the story. It starts with Supergirl saving people from disasters while being surreptitiously observed by Batman and Superman. Apparently she's newly on the scene, and Superman doesn't trust her to do a good enough job, while Batman just doesn't trust her - she seems faster and stronger than Superman, and this worries Bruce. To their surprise Supergirl becomes aware of them, and manages to lose Superman when he tries to pursue. So far so interesting - a potential story on misogyny in the workplace! But it goes nowhere fast. We spend half the book as Supergirl drops in on various superhero teams and they argue and fight, argue and fight, argue and fight. There is no plot to speak of. There are some issues surrounding her lost parents and the mission they set her out to do, but it turns out this "Volume 1" starts about a dozen issues after Supergirls actual first appearance - at one point split into two aspects of her personality - which seems interesting but the missing backstory renders what little plot there is senseless. Why call this Volume 1 yet chop out the actual beginning of this characters tale when it's so vital to her story?

Supergirl is miserable, the world is awful to her, and the artist is obsessed with her 15 year old body. Who is this for? Heaven help any young girl who picks up this book.

Suddenly we are in a different world with an evil Superman, and again it feels like we are missing a lot of information as to where we are, how or why Supergirl is there - and even left wondering how they left. Eventually I realise they are in the bottle world of Kandor - which wouldn't be obvious to the casual reader but even this knowledge doesn't actually explain anything that is going on. Tits and arse galore again with our female leads being regularly brutalized. Oh, at one point the 15 year old Supergirl is mind-controlled into (almost) marrying and having sex with an alternate-universe version of her cousin. Yuck.

In the final third of the book we have a few disjointed tales of Supergirl hanging out in bars and going into high school in disguise and a few other bits and bobs that are pretty disjointed and keep bringing up the age/body difference, then on to a short tale of Supergirl being made miserable by other heroes again, just to ram home the point that a) she sucks and b) this book has achieved zero character development.

One last note - I was really looking forward to this book as key art from this era (smattered throughout as one-page pieces) shows Supergirl up in the sky, bathed in sunlight with pure exuberant joy on her face at being aloft. Quite a shock to find that she never has a single moment like that: she is miserable, harried and brutalized throughout.

Avoid.