SPOILER WARNING: The following article contains major spoilers for The Man of Steel #6 by Brian Michael Bendis, Jason Fabok, Alex Sinclair and Josh Reed, on sale now.


While on the surface, Rogol Zaar may seem to share similarities with Superman villains like Doomsday or Mongul, over the course of the six-issue Man of Steel miniseries, he’s proven to have his own motivations and methodology. It's these differences which have quickly set him apart from Superman’s rogues gallery in a number of unique ways.

With the pair set for a final clash at the Earth’s core, it takes the intervention of one of Superman’s closest allies to stop the alien madman. But with few answers left for the many questions posed by his arrival, Superman is left more in the dark than ever regarding the true nature of his newest deadly enemy.

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Journey To The Center Of The Earth

Last week’s issue of The Man of Steel ended with Superman realizing that if Rogol Zaar was truly responsible for the destruction of Krypton, then he’d be more than willing to do the same to Earth over its handful of Kryptonian immigrants. Confronting his enemy at the core of the Earth, Kal-El finds Zaar, along with a mysterious technology which threatens to rip the planet apart, killing seven billion people in order to get to just three Kryptonians. Thankfully, Superman is able to distract the madman long enough for him to get his hands on the doomsday weapon and remove it, baiting the proud alien into a confrontation and outsmarting him with quick wits and quicker flying.

As the pair fight in space, Superman quickly realizes that Rogol Zaar isn’t going to get tired, he isn’t going to go down easily, and his doomsday machine still threatens to explode. It’s only thanks to the intervention of his cousin Kara, aka Supergirl, that Superman (and Earth) manages to survive. Kara takes it upon herself to separate Rogol Zaar from the axe which grants him much of his power, and then blasts the villain with energy from the Phantom Zone Projector, trapping him inside the Kryptonian limbo prison where he can’t hurt anyone.

In the aftermath, Green Lantern swoops in to contain the still dangerous doomsday device, but Superman isn’t one-hundred percent satisfied with his cousin’s solution to the problem.

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Many Questions, Few Answers

Since the dawn of DC Rebirth, Superman’s life has been almost plagued by mystery. Whether it was the mystery of the fake Clark Kent which led to the rewriting of his personal continuity, incorporating aspects of the post-Crisis on Infinite Earths and post-Flashpoint versions of the character into one unified history; or the mystery of Mister Oz and his true identity as Superman’s father Jor-El, which led Superman on a quest to learn how his father survived Krypton’s explosion and inching himself closer to the revelation of Doctor Manhattan’s meddling with his universe’s timeline.

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Rogol Zaar represented one last mystery Superman could perhaps get an answer to, a question regarding the true nature of Krypton’s destruction. While it may seem somewhat derivative to have an alien warrior arriving to Earth claiming to be responsible for the end of Krypton — the exact same thing happens in the first volume of Superman: Earth One with the villain Tyrell — Rogol Zaar has ended up representing more than that. He began as a problem Superman should have been able to solve by punching, but ended up being one more mystery that the Man of Steel didn’t get the chance to find an answer to. In this way, he has served as the straw which broke the proverbial camel's back, considering how much Superman has been through over the last two and a half years of stories.

The Rise of Supergirl

This represents one of Superman’s lowest points — cut off from his family, unable to communicate with Lois & Jon, who are somewhere in space with his father (whom Superman doesn’t quite trust). Meanwhile, his only link to his home planet, his Fortress of Solitude, has been destroyed, along with Kandor and all of its inhabitants.

However, for Kara Zor-El, Zaar's rampage presents an opportunity for her to step up and be the kind of hero she’s always had the potential to be. Instead of existing in her cousin’s shadow and waiting for him to give her the go-ahead, she took the initiative to bring the Phantom Zone Projector the the fight, and trapped Rogol Zaar in the cosmic limbo.

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While it may not have been what Superman would have done, she certainly wasn’t wrong to do so; her reasoning — that Rogol Zaar was responsible for the deaths of thousands of Kandorians, something that would no doubt lead to sentencing within the Phantom Zone if Krypton still existed — is more than fair. Superman wanted answers, but Supergirl wanted justice; specifically, Kryptonian justice. It’s easy to forget that Kara is technically older than Kal; he was sent to Earth as a baby but Kara had sixteen years on Krypton and remembers its culture both fondly and mournfully. Kara knew Kandor before it was a bottle city, and has a different perspective on its loss than Superman does. It’s no surprise, then, that she takes its loss differently.

Now, Kara has a new mission, one that separates her from her cousin both in methodology and quite literally. While Superman wanted answers first and justice second, Supergirl wanted justice first and answers second, and now it’s time to get the answers. Taking the axe of Rogol Zaar, Supergirl is heading into deep space to find out who he is, where he’s from and how true his claims to be responsible for Krypton’s destruction are.

Supergirl’s adventures will continue in Marc Andreyko and Kevin Maguire’s upcoming run on her title, coming in August and continuing the numbering from its DC Rebirth volume. This act in The Man of Steel #6 is just the start for Kara who is taking the leap from teenage sidekick to a young adult hero in her own right and her excursion into space is the rumspringa she needs to find herself and who she is separate from her adopted home, while still honoring the traditions and heritage of Krypton.