Supergirl is STILL Pretty Darn Smart!

cover art by Curt Swan

Two weeks ago, I mentioned that Bob Kanigher was much better suited as a writer to DC's war books than their superhero books, but that he could nonetheless turn out some silly but fun superhero tales. The story I reviewed at that time was, I think, an example of this, with the silly story made stronger by requiring Supergirl to use her brains rather than her powers to figure out what was going on in a supposedly haunted house.

The second part of that story appeared in the next issue--Adventure Comics #395 (August 1970). Kanigher continues to drop Supergirl into a situation that required more brain power than super powers, but in this case, I'm afraid he let the plot get away from him. Even in the context of a Comic Book Universe, things don't quite make sense in the end.

In Part 1, Supergirl had figured out that the supposedly supernatural shenanigans taking place in the haunted house were actually caused by Phantom Zone criminals and had taken care of them. But then the long-missing inventor who owned the house--Ames Ameswell--pops up and threatens her. When she tries to grab him, he confuses the situation by turning into a variety of different forms and animals.

Supergirl continues to refuse to believe that Ames is using magic (despite, as I mentioned last time, being a member of a superhero team that includes an actual witch on its roster!). Ames challenges him to break a series of common superstitions AND he also points out that the date is Friday the 13th.

Supergirl flies off, confident that the superstitions are meaningless. But then everything she does goes wrong and ends in inadvertent destruction. Soon, she's decided that she is indeed bad luck and that she needs to exile herself to the Phantom Zone.

But, just has when she pretended to go nuts in the last issue, this is a trick as she suspects Ames is monitoring her. She's right, of course. Ames convienently explains his evil plans to... well, to no one. He's alone in his house when he tells us readers that he has used a time machine to travel back in time, where he studied with the great magicians of history such as Merlin and Nostrodamus. Once Supergirl is out of the way, he plans to launch a career of supervilliany.

But Kara is on to him, realizing that he coated her with an "anti-mass destruct element" that has been causing all the damage whenever she tried to help someone. She crashes into the mansion, destroys the time machine and hauls Ames off to the cops. The day is saved.

I still appreciate a story where Supergirl is shown to be smart--for the second issue in a row, she pulls off some nice Sherlock Holmes-style deductions. But there are a number of things that don't make sense. Ames is an inventor and apparently built his time machine, so why does he declare it "irreplaceable" when Supergirl destroys it? Does he actually have magical powers and if so, then why his evil plan employed scientific methods? Were his transformations in this issue magic, or (as Supergirl thought) post-hypnotic suggestions? If they were worked via hypnosis, how did he hypnotize a Kryptonian unless he was using magic?

I'm probably being far too nitpicky, since Kurt Schaffenberger's art endows the story with a sense of fun and I did enjoy it overall. But the story simply feels like Kanigher was tossing in plot elements willy-nilly without tying them all together properly. Had this story been from the pen of Edmond Hamilton or Otto Binder, I think it would have flowed much smoother. It still would have been silly, but it would have "made sense" in context to its setting.

Next week, we'll look in on one of the many, many alien monsters that visited Earth during the 1950s and 1960s.