All true, but it is nonetheless the case that we here have a female character being murdered, for what is, after all, a rather frivolous reason. It's barely even jobbing, at least not according to the tvtropes definition of that term. After all, being able to defeat Aura hardly means one poses a threat to Superman. But I think killing off a female character in a throw-away intro to the story (seriously, remove those first four pages and the story works pretty much just as well) just to demonstrate the villain's malafides qualifies as a form of WiR.