You'll believe a girl can fly (on a TV budget)

Yes, I'm biased!

So news has hit the internet that a Supergirl TV show is being developed by the makers of Arrow for CBS. For the usual sketchy, probably not accurate plot announcement here's the Newsarama article.

Now, as keen as I usually am to rag on DC Entertainment's film offerings (for, I feel, legitimate artistic reasons) their TV offerings have traditionally been rather higher quality. I grew up watching Batman the Animated Series which is still held up as the defining take not only on Batman himself but on numerous other Bat-characters. Hell, DC still publishes that version of Batman in the Batman Beyond digital series. More recently, Smallville was a great modernising of the Superboy concept, albeit one that spent its opening seasons under the delusion it could beat Buffy at its own game.

Looking to the future the trailers and leaked pilots for Flash and Constantine are generating good buzz (haven't seen them myself).

Oh, and Newsarama insists that an I, Zombie series is already filmed for release before the end of the year. Now, I flat out loved the I, Zombie comic and I'm more stoked for that than Supergirl getting a series, but still...

Honestly, it does surprise me that this hasn't happened before. Smallville had a perfectly functional take on Supergirl and they tried to spin-off more marginal guest characters like Aquaman and the Legion Of Super-Heroes to varying degrees of abject failure.

I've no research on this point but think about it like this: apart from Superman himself and Batman is there a more recognisable superhero in the world than Supergirl? Plus “Superman... but a girl!” is an elevator pitch you can get out before the doors close.

Not that interest in the character is entirely based on her gender. If you take the more-or-less consensus canon of the character as read what she has over her famous cousin is that she's an actual alien. Superman's alien nature is entirely biological but she was raised on Krypton, she isn't culturally human as Clark is. Fish out of water humour and wry outsider perspective ahoy!

This might be nothing, of course. Lots of series enter development and DC is a little notorious by now for announcing such projects before anything is certain (the aforementioned Aquaman and Legion projects, as well as a Blue Beetle series that never happened). Still, DCE is making a lot of TV content now and aside from Gotham this is the biggest property in the running.

Colour me hopeful.