An Introduction to Black Flame

While I have been kicking around the idea of doing a blog post about Black Flame (she showed up in the Superman Family Super Extras post a couple months ago) it was the March 2026 solicitations that got me to actually sit down and explore this character. For anyone who hasn’t been reading the most recent Supergirl ongoing title (first off go do that it’s wonderful) you may have realized that Sophie Campbell has been pulling in a lot of references and characters to Supergirl’s Pre-Crisis era. Characters like Lesla-Lar, Satan Girl, and Nightflame all come from this era of Supergirl stories and Black Flame is no different.

Black Flame only has a handful of appearances since her debut in 1963, 5 total if you count the Super Extra from Superman Family #174, her appearance in the young readers DC Super Friends #19, and what seems to be a 2 panel cameo in Krypton Chronicles #2. This means that Black Flame showing up as a starring foe for the girl of steel really only happened twice, in Action Comics #304 and Adventure Comics #400, and of those two she only got 1 cover appearance and it’s only her bottom half.

Action Comics #304, specifically the backup titled “The Maid of Menace” was written by Leo Dorfman with art by Jim Mooney. This is a pretty solid 13-page story with a lot packed into it. The opening splash gives us a great look at Black Flame tormenting Supergirl in the climactic scene of the story, as splash pages often did, before jumping back a little bit so the reader can figure out how Supergirl got into that situation. Black Flame herself has a black and red suit with a black and red cape and a black mask. She is referred to as “more cunning than Lesla-Lar,” and “more evil than Luthor” so you know she’s bad news.

The story proper starts with Linda and Dick Malverne on a beach date and Dick is currently burying Linda in sand preventing her from sneaking off to do her super duties. While things seem fine at first, Supergirl soon notices a super powered being helping a gambling ship escape the coast guard before escaping off to the future. Later, Linda sees a news broadcast about Comet, the Super-Horse, destroying Monument Park and she rushes to the scene.

Comet has been affected by Black Flame’s Brain Command Ring to do these evil deeds and once the park is destroyed as much as Black Flame desires she lets Comet go. Black Flame leads Supergirl back to her headquarters to let Supergirl know her secret villain origin via a Mento-Dome that she has.

We find out that Black Flame is not only a terrorizing pirate queen from the year 4,000, she is also the far future descendant of our very own Supergirl! Apparently some of her henchmen revolted against her so she’s hiding out in the past and using her new-found free-time to menace her 1963 grandma. Supergirl is now at a stalemate, she can’t change history to try to make her descendant less evil, and she can’t fight Black Flame head on because she fears this menace telling the world of her and Superman’s secret identities.

Back home, Supergirl tells her adoptive mother, Edna Danvers, about her predicament and she suggests Supergirl go to the future and see if she can find out more about this Black Flame. Supergirl does so and realizes that the year 4,000 has no record of any pirate queen so she comes back to the present and asks her telepathic horse to get another idea of who this villainess might be. Comet points her towards the bottle city of Kandor where the Census Chief mentions a Kandorian by the name of Zora Vi-Lar who matches the description and was a friend of Lesla’s. Unfortunately Zora is still showing as working away in Kandor so it seems that’s a dead end as well.

Supergirl faces off against Black Flame once again with a clever plan to use Gold Kryptonite to remove her powers and cause her future descendant to be powerless. Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to work and now our hero is powerless and Black Flame is still at full strength. Instead of taking Supergirl out or causing more evil deeds, the fiend reveals that she is Zora Vi-Lar and explains how she left Kandor and grew to full size. Zora now thinking she has the upper hand tricks Supergirl into a quicksand pit where she presumably meets her demise.

This is of course all part of Supergirl’s clever plan! The Gold Kryptonite was a ruse and she still has her powers and is now easily able to overpower Black Flame and get her back into Kandorian custody. The plan itself is absurdly convoluted and has a bit of that “if you were paying attention you can solve the mystery too” vibe but it relays heavily of just not thinking too much about the specifics. Black Flame of course ends the tale saying “you outwitted me this time but I’ll even the score some day! Just wait!”

And that day came a few years later in Adventure comics #400 from 1970 in a story titled “Return of the Black Flame” by Mike Sekowsky who provided both story and pencils with Jack Abel inking. Black Flame seems to have a pretty similar costume to her previous appearance although it seems more purple than black this time around, Supergirl on the other hand has an entirely new costume that she still hasn’t treated to be invulnerable yet. Supergirl is working on said costume when she hears a news report urging the girl of steel to go to an address to help someone in trouble. While she is streaking away, the reader gets to meet the foes of the story, Black Flame, Toymaster, the Inventor, and L. Finn. While we have seen Black Flame before, the others are all new and never show up again after this story.

We then get an explanation of how Black Flame escaped custody and then tracked down her 3 companions in the Phantom Zone. Supergirl has now arrived at the address and is ready to answer the call for help but is met with robots and Kryptonite rope when she realizes she’s fallen into a trap.

The quartet of fiends then sets up Supergirl in a bowling alley and they all take turns hurling Kryptonite bowling balls at the maid of might. This bowling sequence continues until Supergirl is able to break free from her Kryptonite bonds and clobbers the whole evil crew. Supergirl would’ve won the day here if not for L. Finn who is apparently a Leprechaun with magic.

The next trap set for Supergirl is just as convoluted as Supergirl’s plan from the previous story. They have strung up Supergirl atop a pile of gold Kryptonite dust which apparently will take away her powers but not immediately, and also there is a giant crossbow that will shoot a Kryptonite arrow at Supergirl that is presumably set on a timer. Thinking they’ve won the evil-doers leave the room which allows Supergirl to figure out a way out of this trap.

The Toymaster has foolishly left his toy remote within reach of Supergirl and she was able to use the toys to free her and then ambush the villains. Now captured, Supergirl takes the fiends off to the Phantom Zone.

Before going into my final thoughts, I did want to briefly mention the 3 other comics where she appeared. Superman Family 174 showed her as part of a Supergirl Villains Quiz and the artwork here is reused and flipped from the splash page of Action 304, it doesn’t add anything to the character and only references her first appearance. While most sources list Zora Vi-Lar as a supporting character in Krypton Chronicles #2, it seems like she only shows up for a couple panels. I’ve not been able to get a hold of this comic to read either physically or digitally but the Comic Box Commentary blog post of the series (read here) goes into depth about the whole series and it seems like character only exists as a reference. It is notable that this appearance also seems to neglect the Adventure Comics story since she is still shown as part of Kandor as opposed to being in the Phantom Zone where she was left after Adventure 400. Lastly we get to DC Super Friends #19. Black Flame has more to do here although she is little more than a Kryptonian villain in training working under Headmaster Mind and alongside The Ant, Black Alice, and newcomers Clown Boy and Mind-Grabber Boy who are the main protagonists of the issue.

From these stories I feel like Black Flame really hasn’t gotten a chance to shine. Her first story was a pretty good introduction and set up a possible new Kryptonian foe to replace Lesla-Lar who got disintegrated a few issues prior. Unfortunately the follow-up story where she claims to have “won the final battle” on the cover doesn’t really measure up. Part of this could be because of her powers being removed in her first story limiting her super powered potential, but I think it could’ve been interesting to see her as a foe for Nightwing and Flamebird in Kandor or she could invent weapons and tools like she did with her Brain Command Ring she used against Comet. Instead she finds 3 non Kryptonian Phantom Zone residents that are really no match for Supergirl in her one and only follow-up story.

A couple interesting things I’d like to note that I enjoyed are Zora’s friendship with Lesla-Lar and the inclusion of Gold-K in both stories. Zora Vi-Lar, in her first appearance, is said to be a “brilliant scientist who was a friend of Lesla-Lar” I feel like this friendship is something that could be explored when she shows back up in a couple months since Lesla has become such an integral part of the current Supergirl comic. I do also want to note that Black Flames costume does show some resemblance to Lesla’s red and black attire that she wore when she came back to fight Supergirl in Action Comics 297 (before getting disintegrated). Gold K, specifically powdered Gold K, appears in both Action 304 and Adventure 400 which is an interesting coincidence because of how brutal Gold K is to Kryptonians. For those unaware, Gold Kryptonite permanently removes the powers of Kryptonians. Interestingly however, it seems that in powdered form the effect is slowed – as shown in Adventure 400 – or totally ineffective to full size Kryptonians, but can be used against reduced size Kandorians – as shown in Action 304.

What is the most interesting to me about this character however, is the fake origin that Black Flame gives to Supergirl. Kryptonian descendant of Supergirl that becomes a pirate queen in the year 4000 is just a super interesting concept to me and I want to hear more about that version of the Black Flame. From what we’ve seen so far, it seems that her reappearance will be heavily tied to Kandor so we may have to wait for some other Supergirl villain to come around and be a pirate queen from the year 4000. I’ll leave off by saying that so far I’ve not been very impressed by Black Flame stories but I do really enjoy her conceptually and I’m excited to see her in new and interesting storylines.