Supergirl hasn't recovered from the tie in's during the Bedard run and the dud that was the Puckett run and take in mind that comic sales on the whole where down. When selling 85,000 Supergirl was in the top 20 and this month those sales would reach #1.
Gates loves Superman primarily and has talked about how he loves working on the 'superman side of things'. Even if Kelly was cornered into doing the job I don't think there is any doubt in my mind he did it well. I don't think Gates is working with Kara's character with half the nuance that Kelly did.
Gates is drawing Supergirl back in to the Superman world and she is losing both her in-universe independance and her comic independance. I'm beginning to feel like her character is trapped whereas before, her role was all over the DCU with her home in New York. Now she's in metropolis and there is the prominance of Lois Lane and the Daily Planet and she's dressed as human with 'magic glasses'. She's more of a female superman than she has ever been and this is counting the 50's! I'm having trouble finding a difference beyond gender and age anymore.
Thats not to say this run in completely bad, her fight with Reactron was great and touched on a nice character moment. I thought #34 was a cute introduction issue but since the title has been bogged down with too much plot. As for the crying, maybe I'm exaggerating but there is the sense of helplessness. She will not stand up to her mother when in issue #4 of the series she would take no guff off anyone. She isn't the strong character she used to be. I think the biggest insult to her came in the origins and omens back up where Scar said she will realise she is a scared little girl. Why does Kara have to be weak and afraid when she was shown by Kelly and Loeb to be fearless?
It saddens me that Kara came back with the same inner strength she left the DCU with and now the writers are taking her all the way back to her characterisation in the 60's. No, not even that, its worse than in the 60's. At least in the 60's she wasn't in metropolis and didn't wear glasses to hide her identity and yet still had a supporting cast. Kelly's cast of Boomerang and Wonder Girl were perfect but were flung out as soon as he left.
I think DC's current attitude to Supergirl is summed up perfectly in Trinity where Interceptor realises to accomodate Superman in the timeline she would have to be less than what she had become. That whole aspect of character development is the most unfeminist part of comic-dom and we think we've come so far. Interceptor loses her identity completely without Superman, she can't even use her family crest without him. She is defined by the man and that is shocking in this day and age. So yep, I find DC's current take on Supergirl as less progressive than the one where she was supertorso -take that girl wonder :p