The origin

Megaton was Gary Carlson's black-and-white superhero anthology, the first title from Megaton Comics: eight issues from 1983 to 1987. Ultragirl was in the first of them. Christie Kelly, daughter of the hero Ultiman, was caught in the meteor explosion that recharged her father's powers. It charged her with the same powers and turned him into a raging thing that fled rather than drain her life. She put on the costume to make up for his absence. Butch Guice drew that origin.

In print

She returned in Megaton #7, with a Guice cover, and in #8 in a variant costume drawn by Rob Liefeld; a Christmas story, White Christmas, ran in the Megaton X-Mas Special, pencilled by Frank Fosco, inked by Aubrey Bradford and scripted by Ron Fortier. When Carlson and Chris Ecker built Big Bang Comics, the Silver Age homage line (Caliber Comics from 1994, Image Comics from 1996 to 2001), she came with them. Her Big Bang stories, Tales of Tomorrow, are set in the near future, and most of her adventures a thousand years on, with the Pantheon of Heroes.

Where to read her

Big Bang Comics sells its own back catalogue and collections, and its blog keeps a post, Looking for Ultragirl?, on where she has appeared and who drew her. Two collections are on Amazon.

• Megaton Archives, Vol. 1Image, 2023. All eight issues of Megaton collected for the first time: her origin, #7 and #8.

  Buy on Amazon

• Ultiman: The Ultimate CollectionThe Big Bang Comics Collection, 2015. Every Ultiman story, with Ultragirl and the rest of the Ultiman family.

  Buy on Amazon

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