Superboy meets Supergirl & The Girl of Steel

Supergirl as we know and love her first appeared in 1959 in the pages of Action Comics #252. This was Kara Zor-El and the cousin of Superman. You can read more about that story here, but today we’re talking about the Supergirls that predate her.

Superboy #5 from 1949 was a collection of 4 stories, the first of which was Superboy Meets Supergirl and it was written by William Woolfolk with art by John Sikela and Ed Dobrotka. This was the first attempt by DC to create a female companion for Superman, or Superboy in this case. The Supergirl from this story is Lucy Regent from the kingdom of Borgonia in Latin America. She is the child queen of this kingdom, but because of her young age the Duke Norvello instead rules the kingdom. Lucy is an accomplished athlete and very intelligent but isn’t happy because the duke prevents her from appearing before the people of her kingdom. Seeing her sorrow, her caretaker Elena takes her away to the city of Smallville, USA. Lucy soon meets Superboy and even helps in stopping a crime which brings her to the attention of the whole city. This leads to an article about her great deeds making its way all the way back to Borgonia where Norvello realizes where she’s run off to. In the meantime Lucy is invited to show in a parade fpr the people of Smallville as a Supergirl. Lucy, while being quite a good athlete, is still just a human. However, with the help of Superboy, she preforms a handful of super-feats to present to the people of Smallville. During this scene she is wearing a Supergirl costume that still has the iconic S symbol and red cape. However, instead of the classic blue her Supergirl dress is orange with a white trim. after her presentation at the parade she is kidnapped and taken away back to Borgonia. Back in Borgonia, Norvello traps her in an iron mask and tries to discredit her in front of the people of her kingdom. Superboy soon arrives to discredit Norvello and save Lucy. Lucy, now rightfully in charge of her country, is no longer able to stay with Superboy in Smallville.

Moving on almost a decade later we are brought to Superman #123 from 1958. This story, The Three Magic Wishes, is written by Otto Binder with art by Dick Sprang and Stan Kaye. The story is novel length taking up the whole 32 page issue and split into 3 chapters. The first chapter is al that will be discussed here as it where The Girl of Steel makes her debut. The story opens with Superman preforming various super saves and is accompanied by Jimmy Olsen. Superman saves an archeologist from a landslide and, as thanks, gifts Jimmy with a magical totem. This totem grants Jimmy 3 wishes, the first he uses to find Superman a supermatch with a Super-girl. This magically created Super-girl has all the powers of Superman and wears a costume that is much closer to how Kara would appear in her first appearance, however this Super-girl instead wears a red skirt which Kara wouldn’t adopt until much later. The story then follows a commedy of errors as Superman and Super-girl both try to preform saves at the same time, often creating disaterous results. The story comes to a climax as Superman, during a save, is thwarted by Kryptonite. Super-girl, saying she is immune to Kryptonite because she was magically created, saves Superman from the green rock. It is however revealed that she is weak to Kryptonite because Jimmy wished for her to be just like Superman. This heroic save ended up being Super-girl’s last and she would tragically perish because of her prolonged exposure to the Kryptonite.

Both of these stories set up Supergirl to be a romantic interest to Superman which makes her actual debut as Superman’s cousin a weird departure. I think it is also interesting to note that the first iteration wasn’t super powered at all, and I liked the contrasting orange of Lucy’s costume to Superboy’s blue. Also the blundering of Super-girl from Superman #123 may be why Superman would later require Kara to undergo such a long training process before her official reveal to the world. While I enjoy these early proto Supergirl stories, I much prefer the Kryptonian born origin of Kara Zor-El.

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