Supergirl Surprise #8: Adventure Comics #424

Adventure Comics #424 was released in 1972 and was the last issue of Adventure Comics where the maid of might was the star of the comic. This story, titled “Crypt of the Frozen Graves” follows Linda much more than Supergirl as she is working at the KSF-TV station. Linda has been in contact with a Bruce Ryan who has been leaking information about his connection to the Frisco Syndicate to Supergirl (Linda’s heroic secret identity).

While Bruce had been giving Supergirl more and more information about the gang, he was starting to pull back on the information he was giving and decided to stop altogether when he gets shot at. This causes our heroine to take a different approach and talk to Bruce not as Supergirl but as Linda Danvers. As Linda she is able to play up her femininity to get close to Bruce Ryan and she notices that he is rather cowardly. His cowardice isn’t totally unwarranted and results in a grenade getting thrown at him while at dinner with Linda. Instead of trying to protect his date or get rid of the grenade, Bruce instead flees the scene leaving a live grenade in a full restaurant.

Linda thinks quickly however and throws herself on the grenade to save the other patrons at the restaurant. to protect her identity she is forced to act dead after having a grenade explode under her but she is able to slip away before the police arrive to ID her. Linda uses this encounter to try to scare Bruce straight, or at least make him a bit less cowardly. Linda, having not actually died, dresses as a ghost and pays the former gang member a visit. While Supergirl does her best to scare Bruce, the pair are met by another ghost (at least he seems like a ghost) who startles Supergirl and kills Bruce Ryan.

Back at work the next day, Linda is taken away by the Syndicate and brought right to Mr. Big himself, the leader of the Frisco Syndicate. Here she finds out that the Syndicate has been using teleportation technology to get rid of any witnesses and also how a supposed ghost broke in and shot Bruce Ryan earlier. Now with all the facts, Supergirl comes back down to earth, trashes the teleporter and gets the syndicate tied up for the appropriate authorities.

The story isn’t quite over yet however, we get 1 more page of Linda back at KSF-TV where she tells the team she’s quitting and blames the death of Bruce Ryan for her abrupt departure. Although us readers know it’s actually because of her brand new “Supergirl” title starting up that she’s leaving. That’s right, after nearly 4 years as the star feature of Adventure Comics, Supergirl is now getting her own brand new comic magazine! As such we also have to say goodbye to some of the frequent supporting cast members including my favorite, Nasty Luthor.

Unfortunately Nasty doesn’t get a whole lot to do here as she does in previous apperances. She is however still antagonistic to her co-worker Linda Danvers as they are both shooting for the same promotion at KSF-TV. It is also stated by Linda that she thinks Nasty let slip to the Frisco Syndicate about Bruce Ryan being a rat and therefore causing the death of Bruce. It’s hard to say if Nasty actually did such a thing or if Linda just lashed out at her in anger. I wouldn’t put it past Nasty to pull a stunt like this just to beat out Linda, but there isn’t much in the story itself to support it. This is also tragically the final issue where Nasty shows up and she doesn’t even get a proper send off in my opinion.

While none of the letters or the ads in this issue really caught my attention, there was a backup story here titled “The Invasion”. This is a brief 6-page sci-fi story following an undefeated crew of alien invaders on another mission to invade and conquer a planet called “Earth”. While the first 5 pages are all building up this crew as a major threat to our planet, there is a very well executed twist at the end where we find out that the invaders are actually quite small and are taken out by an average Joe watering his lawn. He then spots the invader’s spaceship, but due to its small size he guesses it’s a toy and discards it which of course eliminates this terrible threat before it can even be known.

The creative team on this book, Steve Skeates, Tony De Zuniga, and Bob Oksner all did brilliantly and led to an engaging story, although as Supergirl’s final adventure in Adventure Comics it felt rather underwhelming. Aside from the final page, this story could’ve easily been any other issue of the series and I would’ve much rather had Nasty Luthor play a larger role in the story to really secure her as a rival to Linda. All in all, a perfectly serviceable Supergirl story with plenty of good Supergirl and Linda Danvers moments. Join me next month for another random look at a single issue from my personal Supergirl comic collection.