Supergirl Revealed, the story of Lesla-Lar

A few years into Supergirl’s run as the backup feature in Action Comics Superman was ready for his cousin to jump into the spotlight and be revealed to the world. Supergirl, up until this point, had been kept as Superman’s secret weapon and would only operate in secret until Superman felt she was competent and trained in her powers. The story begins in Action Comics #278 which has Superman telling Supergirl he is ready to reveal her to the world but due to a handful of shenanigans, and the evil plot of Kandorian Lesla-Lar, Supergirl would not be revealed to the world until Action Comics #285. This 8 issue storyline was rather unheard of in the 60s when these comics were coming out. Unlike today when we often see multi-issue storylines telling a single story over a handful of issues or even plot lines evolving in the background over a full run, the stories of the silver age often stayed self contained in a single issue. Often times these issues even contained multiple stories, in the case of Action Comics Supergirl only had an 8 or 12 page story per issue, making this 8 part storyline even more impressive.

While the story does have an overarching plot thread, and has a clear beginning and end, each issue does have a clear standalone narrative as well. We’ve got one issue where Supergirl goes back in time and becomes a historical figure, an issue where Lesla-Lar disguised as Supergirl teams up with Lex Luthor, an issue that retells the origin of Superman and Supergirl through the narrative structure of Linda watching a Kandorian film about her, and so on. I’ll save the specifics of the individual stories for later and today focus just on the plot thread that ties all these stories together.

In the first issue of this arc Superman approaches Linda to tell her he’s finally ready to reveal her to the world as Supergirl. This is part of the character’s lore that goes back to Action Comics #252. After coming to earth and showing her super powers, Superman convinces her that until she is fully trained in both her powers and keeping a secret identity, she will stay hidden and be his secret weapon. With that in mind, the idea of Supergirl getting revealed had been a long time coming. Superman sets up a television broadcast with a special announcement but then right before Superman is ready to bring her in suddenly, and mysteriously, her powers are no more making the reveal unnecessary so Superman once again puts it off. The issue ends with Linda, now powerless, at Midvale Orphanage wondering if her powers will ever return.

The next issue shows Linda trying to adjust to this new powerless life and coming to realize she no longer has to stay at the orphanage. She can get adopted now without accidentally revealing her identity to her foster parents. And so we meet Mr. And Mrs. Fred Danvers (Edna wouldn’t be named until a few issues later). The introduction of the Danvers is another of the reasons why this story is so crucial to the Supergirl mythos. The Danvers have come to be almost synonymous with the character and have been present in many incarnations since their introduction in this story. Along with the Danvers, we’re also met with the antagonist, Lesla-Lar.

It is revealed here how Supergirl lost her powers. Lesla-Lar is a scientist living in the bottle city of Kandorian who shares a striking resemblance to Kara Zor-El. She has cooked up a plan to take away Supergirl’s powers. With a newly depowered Linda (Supergirl) Danvers, Lesla uses a teleport ray to trade places. While in Kandor, Kara undergoes brainwashing to make her believe she is Lesla-Lar and carries on in Kandor having no idea she ever had powers or was the cousin of the world’s greatest hero. Lesla-Lar on the other hand, now grown to full size and under the rays of earth’s yellow sun, now has superpowers which she plans to use for nefarious deeds.

Lesla’s plan is told in the pages of the next few issues structured around Kara (as Lesla) in Kandor exploring the bottle city. Her plan involves sneaking Lex Luthor out of jail and helping him destroy Superman. Her idea is that once she and Luthor get rid of Superman, she can easily dispose of Lex Luthor which would in turn remove any proof of her ties to him. Once Superman and Luthor were both out of the picture, she would reveal herself to the world, as Supergirl, and be the most powerful being on the planet easily able to conquer it. A few moments that happen during these issues involve Supergirl realizing she regains her powers in the past and future only being powerless in the present, and also Krypto realizing Lesla isn’t the real Supergirl by smelling her perfume. Lesla (as Supergirl) also briefly tricks Superman into thinking she’s found a cure for her powerlessness in order to trick him into revealing her to the world as Supergirl. This reveal is once again thwarted as the real Supergirl returns, now powerless and unable to be cured by the phony cure Lesla used. At this point Lesla-Lar is unceremoniously exited from the story and Mxyzptlk makes a quick appearance.

Linda, still saddened by the loss of her powers is ready to give up the Supergirl life for good when suddenly she feels strong and powerful again. Her miraculous cure for powerlessness was done by Mxyzptlk. He was popping in on his normal menace through the 3rd dimension and stumbled upon a young powerless girl that he thought would make for a good prank. His idea was to give an ordinary girl the same superpowers as Superman without the weakness to Kryptonite. His plan of course backfires when the ordinary girl he chooses is the Maid of Might herself, Supergirl. Now more powerful than ever, Superman is once again ready to reveal herself to the world. As mentioned a moment ago, this is when Lesla-Lar exits the story. She sees Supergirl fully powered again and tries to use her ray to take her powers again, but because her powers are now from Mxyzptlk the ray no longer works. It is during Lesla’s frustration that the Kandorian police come in and arrest her. While Superman is now ready to reveal Supergirl, he has some business to attend to in the 50th century and puts Supergirl to watch over the earth while he’s gone.

During this time we face the final stretch of shenanigans before we finally get Supergirl’s debut. The shenanigans being “The Six Red K Perils of Supergirl”. Supergirl, now immune to Kryptonite, goes into space to get rid of 6 Red Kryptonite meteors. For plot reasons, a technicality is introduced in her Kryptonite immunity that makes her only immune to green Kryptonite. Over the next 2 issues we see Supergirl get very fat, turn into a wolf-girl, get very tiny, grow a second head, get fatal vision and kill everyone she loves (don’t worry this one is just a silly red-k hallucination), and finally grow a fish tail. These red-k mutations are all fairly brief and inconsequential, but do all for around dates that Supergirl is going on with one of her boy-friends, Dick Malverne. This storyline marks Dick’s first return to Linda’s life since he tried to expose her as supergirl at the orphanage, and begins the romantic life between them. As Supergirl finally winds down from the last of the red-k, Superman returns from the future.

Superman reveals he encountered Mxyzptlk on his way back and reveals to Supergirl that he was why she had her powers back and was immune to Kryptonite. With Mxyzptlk now defeated, Supergirl no longer has the Kryptonite immunity but does have all her powers back the way she should. It’s not really explained what finally caused her powers to come back all the way but I guess Lesla-Lar being locked up probably had something to do with it. Now, without any further obstacles, we can finally get to what fans had been waiting for for nearly 3 years, Supergirl Revealed to the world.

Action Comics #285 is a novel length story, this is what it was called when a story took up a whole 24 page issue back in the day. While this issue is notable for being a milestone issue in Supergirl’s life, it’s a tad unremarkable on its own. Superman informs Supergirl that she can tell her foster parents about her super heroic identity before the worldwide reveal which she does after saving them when their car falls through a bridge. The rest of the first part of the story goes rather well with Supergirl making global announcements of her existence and she sees Kandor, Atlantis, and alien planets celebrating Supergirl. The back half of the novel length story features Superman going off into space and publicly leaving Supergirl to defend the planet. This story feels basically the same as any other Supergirl of the time but does feature the general public reacting to Supergirl which sets us the new status quo for the Maid of Might.

This storyline has been reprinted a number of times mostly along with her other backup adventures in Action Comics in collections like Supergirl in the Silver Age, Supergirl Archives, Showcase Presents Supergirl, and the recent DC Finest: Supergirl. While I quite enjoy this storyline I feel like it looses itself in the middle a bit. I think the idea of a Kandorian stealing Supergirl’s powers and life is a very exciting story idea and I like what’s done in these first few issues. Once Mxyzptlk and Red Kryptonite enter the story and Lesla-Lar gets pushed to the side the story feels like it’s trying to waste time to further prolong the reveal. While I don’t particularly care for Mxyzptlk giving Supergirl Kryptonite immunity, or the rather arbitrary return of her powers, and I feel like they didn’t really stick the landing in the final issue, I do still find this storyline quite enjoyable. Lesla-Lar is a great foe for our heroine, the 2 red-k issues show a lot of wackiness in rapid succession, and the introduction of the Danvers and the reintroduction of Dick Malverne are great at building up Linda’s supporting cast. It looks like Lesla-Lar shows back up in Superman Family and she’s also been mentioned in the solicitations of the upcoming Supergirl series so I’m excited to read more of her.

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