Great Darkness Saga--Part 5

 

Legion of Super-Heroes #294 (December 1982) brings the epic Great Darkness Saga to an appropriately epic conclusion. It really is one of the best written and dramatically satisfying endings to a comic book story arc ever produced. Both Paul Levitz' script and Keith Giffen's art mesh perfectly, bringing together the various elements of the story into perfect dramatic harmony.

It's actually difficult to do justice to this issue with a straightforward summary, since there are so many individual "Wow, that's cool!" moments within the story. Basically, the mysterious baby turns out to be the Highfather re-born, who quickly reaches adulthood this issue. Though without the same level of power he had back in the 20th Century, he is able to give Darkseid a hard time, with his best move being turning the Servant clone of Orion into a "real" Orion, who promptly battles the villain. 

 Superboy and Supergirl, protected from red sun radiation by Brainiac 5-built devices, also pummel Darkseid. None of this is enough to take him down and, in fact, he regains the upper hand in the fight. But it distracts him enough to lose control of the billions of Daxamites he's been using. Knowing he can't win, Darkseid takes his planet and goes home--disappearing with Apokolips from the cosmos.

As I said, within this basic story, there are many, many individual cool moments, even beyond the appearance of a restored Orion or the Kryptonians' surprise attack. For instance, to prevent the Daxamites from rampaging across the galaxy, the Legion calls in other superpowered beings. This gives us cameos from characters such as the Wanderers, the Heroes of Lallor, the Legion of Substitute Heroes and a survivor of Krypton named Dev-em. 

These cameos are presented in a series of vertical panels that effectively highlight the action, allow us to follow the complicated story without problem, and simply look cool. It's mentioned that the Daxamites, because they are being mind controlled and not used to superpowers, are fighting ineffectively. That allows those heroes on a lower power level (everyone except Dev-em and Lallor's Duplicate Boy) to be able to at least temporarily hold back the horde. It is, within the context of the rules of the DC Universe, reasonable. Though I will forever wonder what good Color Kid is doing shooting a beam of rainbow light at someone with Superboy-level powers. 

Other cool moments include Chameleon Boy, without access to his shape-changing power, outsmarting a Daxamite who is out to get him; Light Lass and Shadow Lass desperately trying to defend Baby Highfather against Darkseid; and Darkseid's takedown of most of the Legion with one brutal burst of nigh-omnipotent power.

But, as I said, the good guys win in the end.

The Great Darkness Saga is a high point in the stories of the Pre-Crisis Legion--a title that was already filled with awesome moments. It seamlessly melds the Superhero and Space Opera genres into one of the best stories ever. 

Next week, we return again to visit the Super Friends. 

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.

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.

Supergirl is Pretty Darn Smart!

cover art by Curt Swan

 As a writer, I think Bob Kanigher's best work was on DC's war-themed books rather than superhero books. But he did manage to tell some fun superhero stories as well.

Adventure Comics #395 (July 1970--with art by Kurt Schaffenberger) is an example of this. It is a silly tale in many ways, but it portrays Supergirl in a way I really enjoy--showing her using her intelligence rather than her superpowers to solve a conundrum.

The conundrum in question is a supposedly haunted house, once owned by an inventor named Amos Ameswell until his mysterious disappearance 10 years earlier. There's a one million dollar prize for anyone who can say the night in the place without being forced to flee in pure terror. Recently, a horror movie actor named Vincent Sale (get it?) tried it, but was rendered grey-haired and insane before the night was over.

Before going on, I'm going to get a nitpick out of the way.  Notice in one of the above panels in which Linda Danvers (aka Supergirl) adamently states that she doesn't believe in ghosts. But she exists in a world in which magicians, supernatural threats and such things are acknowledged to exist. In fact, Supergirl regularly travels into the future to work with the Legion of Super Heroes--WHO HAVE AN ACTUALLY MAGIC-USING WITCH ON THEIR TEAM!  I'm sorry, Linda, but you aren't in a position to summarily dismiss the possibility that something supernatural is going on in that house.

To be fair, I do get that she has to explore the theory that the supernatural events in the house are being faked. But then she encounters the ghost of Superman's dad Jor-El.

Soon after, she encounters an apparently solid Kryptonian Thought-Beast, which (while under a yellow sun) should be more powerful than she is. But, inexplicably, it melts away when she hits it with heat vision.

It all seems to be too much for the Maid of Might. Soon, she is acting nuttier than a Kryptonian Fruit Cake. But that, of course, is a trick.

Supergirl has picked up on several subtle clues and used deductive reasoning to realize that a custom-made TV in the house is linking the place to the Phantom Zone, making some of the Zone criminals visible and allowing them to mess with people via telepathy. She smashes the TV to re-banish them to the Zone, but is then confronted by Amos Ameswell, the supposedly missing inventor. It was Amos who built the TV and who now seems completely unconcerned with her superpowers.

As I said, I like this story specifically because Supergirl's powers are of limited use and it's her intelligence--complete with her own Sherlock Holmes-like deductions--that really make this one stand out.

The story continues into the next issue. Next week, we'll finish up with the Outlaw Kid story arc we've been following, then finish up with Supergirl in two weeks.

Cover Cavalcade

Jimmy Olsen has the reputation for being regularly transformed into something bizarre, but red kryptonite-induced transformations weren't that unusual for Superman.

Those Darn Gigantic Alien Kids!

The back-up stories in Action Comics in 1968, including the issues I reviewed last week, were Supergirl stories usually written by Otto Binder. I mentioned in my review of the Superman tales that writer Leo Dorfman embraced comic book logic and ran with it. But Binder pretty much left everyone else in the dust in this area. Whether he was pitting Captain Marvel against a tiny, intelligent worm or having Superman join the Capone mob, Binder never worried about applying even the illusion of real-life logic to his stories. His stories were well-constructed in terms of internal logic--that's what mattered. The heck with you, Real Life. You're not wanted here!






That's why his Supergirl story from Action Comics #363 (May 1968) is so much darn fun, especially when enhanced by Kurt Shaffenberger's art.

Someone is stealing landmark buildings from around the world, lifting them into space with giant tweezers. Supergirl investigates, saves the Taj Mahal when the tweezers suddenly drops it, then hitches a ride with the Statue of Liberty when that's taken.

It turns out that a pair of giant alien children are taking the buildings. Is it a precursor to an invasion? Is it part of a plot to somehow subjugate mankind?

No. Actually, the two little brats are playing an alien version of Monopoly and need the buildings as tokens.

I really need to tell my board game group about this. We'll never be satisfied using tiny plastic or wooden pieces again.

The kids need a good spanking, but they are invulnerable and also have a "super-rope" that they use to imprison Supergirl until she agrees to play. So the Maid of Might finds herself zipping back to Earth herself to snatch up the "tokens" she needs as the game progresses.

Fortunately, she notices that, when the kids need to retrieve a museum, they reject a "Museum of Gold." The Taj Mahal contained gold as well, didn't it? Ha! The brats are weakened by gold, aren't they? Gold is their Kryptonite!

Well, I'm sure any one of us would see the obvious thing to so at this point. Supergirl studies their language at super speed, uses her super breath to manipulate the die roll so it comes up "concrete structure," then brings up Fort Knox into the alien ship. The gold weakens the aliens. She busts up their game and returns the stolen buildings. The aliens fly off, cheering themselves up with the thought that they can play marbles with asteroids.

Someone on a forum I was following once said that when Otto Binder went to DC, he was essentially still writing Captain Marvel stories, using Superboy, Jimmy Olsen and Supergirl as Billy Batson surrogates. (I apologize for not being able to find this statement again and properly credit the source.)

This, I think, was an insightful and accurate assessment of his comic book work. In a general sense, Binder had a formula for telling superhero stories--start with a premise involving super-science, magic or something else fantastical, then take it wherever its own logic leads. It worked for Captain Marvel and it worked for Superman's corner of the universe. And within that framework, we get an infinite variety of plots set in a world where carrying Fort Knox into space to discipline a couple of gigantic alien kids makes perfect sense.

Next week, we'll go a-pirating with Robert Shaw in a look at an adaptation of an old TV show.

I'm not sure he's a "pet."

As much as I enjoy the concept of the Super-Pets, I'm not sure they really should have been considered pets. Remember, once they gained superpowers, they also gained super-intelligence. Doesn't this make them sentient beings who should be considered the equals of human beings and other sentient beings?

But they were always considered pets and seemed content with their lot. Which might be understandable for Beppo, Streaky and Krypto. Their basic psychology might have still allowed them to be content with having human owners, just as a well-loved normal dog is content with a human owner.

But Comet--well, I don't think he ever came close to being a "pet." As we saw in our last Superman Universe post, Comet was first seen in Adventure Comics #293, cover dated February 1962. He's next seen in Action Comics #292 (September 1962)--the first part of a trilogy (written by Leo Dorfman) that firmly brings the Super-Horse into DC continuity. The October issue details Comet's origin.

Pay attention, because Comet's origin is the model against which all other origin stories should be measured for pure weirdness.

In ancient Greece, a centaur named Biron falls in love with the sorceress Circe. He saves her from being poisoned by an evil wizard named Maldor. As a reward, Circe promises to turn him into a human so they can marry. Unfortunately, Circe turns out to be an idiot and gives Biron the wrong potion, turning him into a horse.

She can't reverse that spell, so to make up for her error she gives him another potion giving him immortality and super powers. But Maldor later vengefully uses a magic spell to send Biron to a remote asteroid, where he's trapped by a magical aura.

A few thousand years later, the rocket taking Supergirl to Earth from Argo City passes near the asteroid and shatters the magical aura. Comet is freed, follows Supergirl to Earth and eventually makes telepathic contact with her.

By the end of Action Comics #294, Comet has amnesia and thinks he's just a regular horse, but he regains his powers in later issues. It's also eventually established that he turns human whenever there's a comet in the sky, then turns back into a horse when the comet is gone.

I love the convoluted and bizarre feel to the origin. And I love the idea of a Legion of Super-Pets. But I still don't think Comet or Biron or whatever you want to call him should be considered a "pet."

Of course, neither should Proty, an intelligent shape-changer that hangs out with Lightning Lad and joins the Super-Pets whenever they visit the future. He's definitely a member of an intelligent species and is still called a pet!

There's no denying it. The Super-Pets need better legal representation.

Next time we visit the Superman Universe, I think we'll take a look the Legion of Superheroes. We can warn them they might be getting sued by their pets.

Yeah, well, in real life the Supercat WOULD take over the world in a heartbeat.

We've looked at Krypto and Beppo, the two super-pets who came from Krypton. These were two of the four super-powered animals that would form the Legion of Super-Pets.

The other two are from Earth. One of them was a cat named Streaky, adopted by Linda Lee (aka Supergirl) when she was still living at the Midville orphanage.

In Actions Comics #261 (February 1960), Supergirl was experimenting on a small chunk of green kryptonite, hoping to find a protection against its radiation. Her experiment failed and the Green K was transformed into an isotope called X-Kryptonite.

Supergirl, in a move that would have really ticked off the Environmental Protection Agency (had the EPA existed in 1960), casually tosses the X-Kryptonite into the nearby woods. Later, Streaky runs across it and its radiation temporarily gives the feline Kryptonian superpowers.

In that first story, he brings milk to homeless cats, drives off a mean dog and saves some baby chickens from an eagle. (Though that last one seems a bit unfair to the eagle. Is interfering with the food chain something superpowered pets are supposed to do?)

Anyway, as even cat owners would readily admit, if a cat got superpowers, he'd take over the world and make everyone else wait on him hand-and-foot. Heck, many cats seem to have that power naturally. But Streaky has an unusually strong moral center. Every once in awhile, he'll expose himself to the X-Kryptonite, gaining superpowers just long enough to help Supergirl out of a jam.

Now I will admit up front that I'm not a cat guy. For me, a superpowered dog is awesome--a superpowered cat is... well, not awesome. Because dogs are more awesome than cats.

But I will also admit that we needed a superpowered cat. Because it was adding yet another animal with superpowers to the DC Universe that allowed for the creation of a truly awesome superhero group.

Streaky meets Krypto in Action Comics #277 (June 1961). At first Streaky is jealous of the dog and the two have a series of contests to decide who's the better pet. But they eventually become friends. This forms the core of the Legion of Super-Pets.

We get our first glimpse at this group in Adventure Comics #293 (February 1962). In this delightlful Superboy-era tale written by Jerry Siegel, the villains are the four disembodied brains called the Brain Globes of Rambat. And, in my opinion, the name "Brain Globes of Rambat" is by itself reason enough to rate

this story as Brilliant.

Rambat has blown up and the last surviving Brain Globes need a new home. So they plan to steal Earth and bring it to orbit around their purple sun. But first, they have to get rid of Superboy, the only being powerful enough to stop them.

When they fail to fully mind-control the Boy of Steel, they instead jump into the future and gain control over three members of the Legion of Super-Heroes. These three then ambush Superboy and infect him with a lethal dose of Green K radiation.  The Brain Globes then drop their control of the Legionnaires, knowing their mental powers will keep them safe while they hijack the Earth.

But the Legionnaires notice that the Brain Globes run away from Krypto and deduce that the villains can't control super-animals. So they  zip into the future to recruit Beppo, Streaky and Comet the Superhorse. The inaugural battle for the Legion of Super-Pets involve the animals pretty much curb-stomping the Brain

Globes.

It's a great story. All the silliness in it is played straight, with a lot of details added that show Siegel and Mort Weisinger always remained true to the "reality" of this universe. And it works, resulting in a tale that is 100% pure fun. Heck, it involves disembodied brains fighting super-powered animals. It can't help but be fun!

But waitaminute? Did I just mention a superhorse? Yes, this story is the first appearance of Comet, with a caption hinting that his origin will be revealed soon. And it would be a little bit later in 1962. I originally intended to discuss Comet and Streaky together in the same post, but I'll talk about the horse next time. His origin is so bizarre it clearly deserves its own post.

It’s the real Supergirl this time! I promise.

I know that Mort Weisinger would often supply basic story ideas or modify what the writers brought to him, but I have no idea how much of the Supergirl story in Action Comics #252 (May 1959) comes from him and how much came from writer Otto Binder. Both men had a keen grasp of comic book logic—the ability to think out the implications of the fantastic elements that populate Superman’s universe and use those implications for new story ideas and plot twists.

This time, an important factor of this story is that the explosion that destroyed Krypton turns all the surviving fragments (large and small) into deadly green kryptonite.

That’s important, because here we learn that a big chunk of Krypton broke away from the planet when it exploded, carrying Argo City and a large bubble of air with it. Don’t think about the science behind all this. That way lies madness.

Argo City’s leading scientist is Zor-el, brother of Superman’s dad Jor-el. He makes sure the city’s food machine is working—so they have food and air. They can survive, right?

Well, maybe not. Because the planet fragment they are sitting on turns into green kryptonite!

Zor-el deduces the problem and they cover the ground of the city with lead sheeting. Zor gets married, has a daughter named Kara and raises her into her mid-teens before a meteor storm punches holes in the lead shield. Suddenly, all Argo City is doomed to slow death by Kryptonite poisoning.

Apparently, no one in Argo City knows how to use a soldering iron.

Zor-el quickly throws together a space ship big enough to save his daughter. Using a space telescope, they locate Earth, decipher the language and learn about Superman. Kara’s mom makes her a version of the Superman costume and it’s off to Earth in the nick of time.

Of course, years later, it turns out Zor-el and his wife Alura zapped themselves into a Phantom Zone-like dimension in the nick of time. They eventually get out and settle in the bottle city of Kandor.

But for now, Supergirl thinks she’s an orphan. She arrives on Earth and meets Superman, who immediately sticks her in an orphanage, where she uses the name Linda Lee to preserve her secret identity.

She’ll soon get a family of her own, though, when she’s adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers. Superman will keep her existence secret from the world for a few years, before revealing her to an enthralled public in Action Comics #285 (February 1962).

Supergirl is a fun idea for a character and a vibrant edition to Superman’s rapidly growing cast of characters. She’ll have adventures of her own, team-up adventures with Superman, be instrumental in adding several Superpets to the line-up and travel to the future to join the Legion of Superheroes (where she’ll often work with Superboy—the explanation for why Superman didn’t know her when he meets her for the “first time” as an adult will be yet another example of priceless comic book logic.)

But Supergirl isn’t the only survivor of Krypton that enters into Superman’s life during the Weisinger era. Next time we visit Metropolis, we’ll meet another lesser-known survivor from Krypton.

The Debut of Not-Quite Supergirl

By many accounts, Mort Weisinger could be something of an egotist and a bit of a jerk towards his employees, but by golly the man accomplished a lot in his career.

As a teenager, he (along with Julius Schwartz and Forrest Ackerman) founded the very first science fiction fan magazine. Later, he and Schwartz become literary agents for SF writers such as Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder.

Weisinger later edited a number of SF pulps, including Thrilling Wonder Stories and Captain Future. In 1941, he moved to DC Comics, co-creating a number of characters that included Aquaman and Green Arrow.

He was editor for both the Batman and Superman titles for quite some time, though he eventually dropped the Bat books and concentrated on the Man of Steel. 

And it’s a particular era—the late 1950s and early 1960s—during his tenure as Superman editor that we’ll be periodically covering on Wednesdays. Weisinger wanted to keep DC’s flagship character fresh and accessible, so he insisted that new elements be added to the Superman mythology on a regular basis. He also maintained a fairly tight continuity within the Superman universe (though, at the time, the continuity for the DC universe as a whole was pretty loose).

Weisinger “rationalized” Superman’s growing number of powers by explaining that Earth’s yellow sun and lower gravity was responsible for making him super. Prior to this, Krypton had often been referred to as a planet where everyone had super powers. At the same time, Weisinger also had a fondness for stories in which Superman lost his powers and had to really think his way out of danger.

We’ll be looking at some of the key additions to the Superman mythos that were added under Weisinger’s watch.

An important one, for instance, was the addition of other survivors from Krypton. Even discounting the Super Pets (though we’ll be getting to them eventually), the population of surviving Kryptonians shot up rapidly in the 1950s. There were the Phantom Zone criminals, the city of Kandor, and a reformed juvenile delinquent named Dev-Em. Kal-El was no longer the Last Son of Krypton and I’ll eventually do entries on a number of his more notable fellow survivors.

The most notable of them being Supergirl, of course.

Supergirl’s first appearance was in Action Comics #252 (May 1959), but she had actually had a try-out of sorts the year before in Superman #123.

In a story written by Otto Binder (who’s grasp of comic book “logic” has rarely been equaled by other writers) and drawn by Dick Sprang, Superman saves an archeologist trapped in a cave. Jimmy Olsen was there as well and the archeologist gives him a souvenir—a totem that supposedly grants three wishes once every hundred years. “Pure superstition, of course” laughs the archeologist.

Someone needed to remind this guy that he was living in a COMIC BOOK UNIVERSE!

Of course the darn thing works. Jimmy wishes up a Supergirl to be Superman’s assistant and companion.  She’s pretty close in appearance to what the “real” Supergirl will look like—a pretty blonde in a feminine version of the iconic costume.

Which leads me into an enormous temptation to make a blonde joke, since this Supergirl was something of a ditz.

Actually, that’s unfair. She was, after all, literally a new-born person and it was her inexperience that had her misusing her powers and causing unnecessary damage while helping Superman with various emergencies. Then she almost blows Clark’s secret identity because she doesn’t yet understand it’s a secret identity.

But when she finally gets the hang of the job, she shows herself to be a real hero, sacrificing herself to save Superman from some Kryptonite.

Otto Binder is one of my favorite Golden Age writers. He had a wonderful talent for building bizarre stories that still had their own internal logic. He had a quirky and somewhat gentle sense of humor as well. The Captain Marvel stories he wrote for Fawcett during the 1940s often showed these traits.

They are also apparent in this first “almost-Supergirl” story. It’s a fun and funny tale, though not without some nicely emotional moments. And we can presume that readers of the time liked it, since a permanent Supergirl followed soon afterwards.

I should also mention that Binder gives

Lois Lane

her own Crowning Moment of Awesome when she has an opportunity to undo Jimmy’s wish and erase Supergirl out of existence. She’s tempted to do this because she sees Supergirl as a rival for Superman’s affections. But in the end, she can’t do the dastardly deed.

It’s a nice moment for Lois, who doesn’t always come out looking that good during this time period. If she’s not scheming to get Superman to marry her, she’s trying to blow his secret identity to get a good story out of it. In either case, you usually ended up wanting to smack her one—and it was only those very occasional moments of nobility that made the darn girl tolerable.

The rest of the issue deals with the other two totem wishes. Crooks steal it and wish away Superman’s powers until they are tricked into revoking the wish. Then Jimmy wishes Superman back in time for a visit to with his Kryptonian parents, We’ll look at THAT last part in a later review, when we talk about a few stories that take place on Krypton.

But next time we return to the Superman universe, we’ll examine the first appearance of Kara Zor-el, the REAL Supergirl.