I love Supergirl. I fell in love with the character back when Jeph Loeb was writing her, and nothing since his days really captured my attention. Steve Orlando's Rebirth run was just so uninspiring and boring to me, I quit reading it only just few first issues, and returned to reading the series when Marc Andreyko took over. And then there's Mariko Tamaki with her Being Super limited series. I've ignored it for a while, mostly because lack of spare time to give it a try, but I recently just picked it up, and I am stunned with its quality combined to general reception it received from critics and readers. Spoiler alert - despite the name, there's nothing super about it.

The story is awfully boring and slow paced. I don't mind exposition and building up backstory, as well as protagonist's personality, but the entire comic reads like a soap opera. It feels like a filler, and the worst part is, it's not filler - things we see, and characters we meet are essential to the plot, and serve a purpose. Too bad this purpose is just not interesting, and none of the side characters really matter to me. With so much time spent on dialogues, I'd expect to feel any sympathy to Kara's friends, but I don't. They feel like stereotypical props (especially Dolly), not real human beings.
Everything ends up with an unexpected earthquake, which reminds me of silly silver age stories with very, very little sense and logic. Of course there's an earthquake in this particular place and time, why not? There's no Bane with bombs, destroying the stadium, there's no commentary on fracking and its disasterous consequences... Nope. Just a random earthquake, just because.

The only good thing about this issue I can see is the art. It's nice, but at times uneven, which is especially noticeabl when you compare splash pages with some irrelevant small panels. There is significant quality drop on the latter, with shadows, coloring and backgrounds.
Remaining illustrations, though, are pretty good, and seem to be a nice stylistic fit for a comic focused around a teenage girl, with teenage girl's problems.

Overall I'm very disappointed - for a comic with so positive reception, I've expected something that... wouldn't feel like a young adult soap opera masquerading as something super. The issue lacks any proper balance between action, heart and story, it's boring beyond belief, and definitely doesn't Kara any justice. She deserves some good stories, and Being Super drops the ball. If you look for good Supergirl origin story, grab Loeb's Superman/Batman #8 to #13.