Milly Alcock on the set of Supergirl, reading Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilves Evely.

Parisa Taghizadeh, shared on Instagram by James Gunn, April, 2025

When Supergirl (Milly Alcock) staggered into the Fortress of Solitude after a long bender at the end of 2024’s Superman, some fans were surprised by this unusual characterization of the so-called “Maid of Steel” and wondered where the new masters of the DC movie universe might be taking her. While the world waits to find out with the release of Supergirl this weekend, readers can get a head start by checking out a DC comics limited series from 2021-2 that put all the pieces in place for the movie adaptation.

“It’s hard to find an example of a comic coming out then five years later getting a live-action film adaptation,” said Tom King, who wrote Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, the story adapted by director Craig Gillespie and screenwriter Ana Nogueira for Supergirl. “The movie called on other things, obviously, but such a direct adaptation is almost beyond comprehension because it’s never been done before.”

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, written by King and beautifully drawn by Bilquis Evely and color artist Matheus Lopes, features a 21 year-old (drinking age) Supergirl befriending a young woman on another planet seeking revenge on a thug who murdered her family. The story casts Supergirl as a worldly-wise survivor of tragedy counseling restraint to her comrade as they embark on the interplanetary manhunt.

King says he was initially inspired by westerns he watched with his daughter during the pandemic along the lines of The Searchers, Red River and True Grit, which was also cited as a touchpoint by Gillespie.

“When I first got the Supergirl assignment, I had no concept of her as a character,” said King in a phone interview earlier this month. “I thought she was just kind of a distaff Superman. I'd written Superman already, and I was afraid that I was going to repeat myself. She was just someone who was always nice, always good, and I was like, what's the point of that?”

King says his fellow writer Steve Orlando set him straight, reminding him that, canonically, Supergirl was a teenager when Krypton exploded. Unlike her cousin Kal-El, Kara was socialized on Krypton, not Earth, and had a profound sense of what and whom she had lost.

“As an older Millennial, I was immediately brought back to images of 9-11 and those buildings,” said King. “I was in Washington that day and I instantly saw that moment where you're in a situation and everything is going one way and then the world explodes around you and everything has changed. What would that do to a 14-year-old and how they could grow up amongst that?”

For King in his own life, that answer led to what is, as far as we know, a unique career path into comics: he joined the CIA to pitch in to the national defense effort. For the next decade, he served in the anti-terrorism unit, including stints overseas in Iraq and Afghanistan on the trail of some of the highest-priority Taliban and Al Qaeda targets.

“It was very isolated and very intense,” he said. But then, after having his first child, King stepped away from intelligence work and decided to pursue his childhood dream of writing comics, while being a full-time dad. He soon caught on with publishers and started writing some of the industry’s most popular, award-winning books.

Unsurprisingly, King’s work in comics, spanning celebrated runs on Marvel’s Vision and Scarlet Witch (partly the basis for the MCU’s WandaVision) and DC’s Batman, Mister Miracle (soon to be an adult animated series on HBO with King as showrunner), Adam Strange and Wonder Woman, has been characterized by themes of trauma, recovery, the healing power of fatherhood, and the place of violence in a world striving for justice. Those concepts also come through loud and clear in Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow.

“One theme of my work is definitely how people who lead violent lives deal with violence, and that comes from my experience going through wars at a young age, recovering from them, and dealing with the scars you’re left with,” he said.

For characters like Batman, who witnessed his parents gunned down in front of him as a child, and Mister Miracle, who spent his childhood in an orphanage on a hell-planet where his father had bartered him away in a peacekeeping pact, those scars are a fundamental element of their stories that King brought forward in his work.

With Supergirl, though, few previous writers had explored how a young woman forced into a role defined by her paternalistic older-but-younger cousin would manifest her personal trauma, both on her own and in a mentoring role herself.

In this case, it’s by blowing off some steam in far away galaxies and recklessly putting herself in peril to compensate for survivors’ guilt. Initially, King says he pitched the idea as Kara learning about the tough, cruel world from noted DC bad boy Lobo (played by Jason Momoa in the new film), but editor Brittany Holzer suggested the idea of having Supergirl as the grizzled veteran mentoring someone even more traumatized than herself.

“That broke it open,” King said. “She’s the one who’s been through something. She’s the one who’s cynical, who’s been around the world, and can talk to someone more innocent and say that the world is harsher than you think. Brittany and Steve really opened my eyes to the possibility of the character.”

For a long list of comic creators even down to the present day, launching an idea for a corporate-owned property that later gets adapted into bigger media does not equate to financial participation. King is not disgruntled on that score: DC, he says, has taken care of him very well and opened up new opportunities. Though he has no direct involvement in the Supergirl film, he has a unique deal with DC that gives him creative input across comics, games and media properties as one of the architects behind DC Studios.

“There’s been a wall between the comic book creator and Hollywood success, and I was very determined to not let that stop me,” he said. “I was very fortunate that James Gunn and Peter Safran, who run DC studios, invited me in.”

In addition to the Mister Miracle show for HBO, King is co-creator of Lanterns, another DC Universe series featuring Kyle Chander and Aaron Pierce, set to debut August 16. King and veteran screenwriter Damon Lindeloff (Watchmen, Lost) are the principle creative team under showrunner Chris Mundy (Ozark).

“Yes, doors opened for me, but I feel like I have to prove myself time and time again,” he said. “I have to take all that knowledge and experience and transfer it into making characters that people have seen a thousand times before interesting. It’s been very rewarding so far.”