A Quick Trip to Mars

 

cover art by Curt Swan

The next story from Superman Family #182 (March-April 1977) features Supergirl, whom we first see clearing the way for the Viking probe to land on Mars. (Which happened in real life in July 1976).

I wonder, in the DC Universe, how it might affect the morale of NASA when they spend years (including a year in flight from Earth) to get a probe on Mars, while superheroes and mad scientists can get there in seconds.

In this story, written by Jack C. Harris and drawn by Mike Vosburg, we see Supergirl helping out NASA and they are perfectly happy to have the help. Larger issues about this (raised by Eliot S. Maggin in "Must There be a Superman" a few years earlier) aren't discussed this time. Nor do they need to be--it's not the point of this particular story. I bring it up simply because it occured to me while I was reading the tale and... well, it's my blog. 

Supergirl returns to Earth and a line of dialogue tells us that someone has been stealing rocket components. Soon after, a Viking photograph shows a piece of kryptonite is on Mars.

At this time in DC's continuity, all the kryptonite on Earth had been transformed into iron. This was done because it was felt that kryptonite was used too often as a plot devise. But the stuff still existed out in space, so it had not completely disappeared.

One of the staff at NASA is really a spy for Lex Luthor--and is also the guy who has been stealing rocket components. With these, he's built a rocket ship discussed as a redwood. When he tells Lex about the kryptonite, the arch-criminal summons the rocket via remote control and uses this to escape prison. The rocket, equipped with a space warp devise, then reaches Mars within minutes.

So once again, we see the importance of keeping Lex Luthor away from the darn machine shop while he's in prison.

Soon, the Viking camera is picking up Lex walking on the surface of Mars. (Let's be generous and assume that Mars was at it's closest point to Earth, so it only took five minutes for this image to reach NASA. That's not too much of a time gap for the story to still work--though I suspect that Harris simply didn't think of this or choose to ignore it for the sake of moving the story along.)

Luthor's spy wrecks the monitor, but Supergirl quickly catches him, then flies to Mars. Luthor has found the kryptonite and put this into a sort of kryptonite bazooka. When Supergirl arrives, he shoots and "kills" her.

But it's a trap. In fact, it's all a trap. The kryptonite was fake, planted there by Supergirl to smoke out the spy in NASA and recover the stolen rocket parts. 

It's a nice touch, by the way, that Supergirl wears a head set to explain how she can talk with Luthor so easily.

It's a fun, well-constructed story, showing off Supergirl's intelligence as well as her powers. That's a key part of what makes the best Superman family stories work. Whether it's Superman, his younger cousin, or one of the Super Pets, when a writer creates a situation in which the hero must use his or her brains as well has their godlike powers, then we have a truly well-told tale. 

In two weeks, we'll return to Superman Family to see how Krypto is doing. Next week, we'll watch a turtle joust with an alligator.