This month’s endeavor into my boxes of comics lead me to an issue in Supergirl’s 40ish issue run in Adventure Comics, specifically issue 398. I can’t remember entirely how long it was, but for a portion of Supergirl’s Adventure run each issue would reprint a previous Supergirl story as well as a brand new story and issue 398 is one of those. The reprint issue for this issue is a 14 page story from Action Comics #306, and the new story is comprised of 6 pages. There is a nice parity between these 2 stories as they both feature an unknow alien antagonist that Supergirl has to overcome, but are otherwise quite unrelated. This issue was released with a cover date of October 1970 and the Action Comic story is from 1963.
Coming in first is “The Maid of Doom” from writer Leo Dorfman, artist Jim Mooney, and letterer Milt Snapinn. This story is both the reprint story and also the cover story. Initially it feels odd, to me at least, for the reprint story to be the feature on the cover, but further reflection it makes a lot of sense. Supergirl in Action Comics was always the backup feature and hardly ever got the cover spotlight, so when reprinting the stories it makes a lot of sense for this story to show up on the cover. This cover is particularly striking, from Dick Giordano, showing the Super Pets lying dead around Supergirl as Superman is banishing her to the phantom zone.
The story opens with Linda on a movie date with everyone’s favorite non-super boyfriend, Dick Malverne, before Supergirl remembers she has a peace keeping mission to do out in space. Supergirl goes to 3 distant planets; Mutor with it’s shape changing inhabitants, The Mole World with it’s metal eating moles, and finally Erg who’s lifeforms all emit a bluish radioactive glow about them. Remember these planets and their life forms for later.
After landing back on earth near her secret entrance to the Danvers’ home, she is met by her trusty Super-Cat Streaky. Unfortunately for Streaky, it seems Supergirl has brought back a deadly virus back to earth which has tragically ended the life of the unsuspecting cat. Krypto, also nearby, comes over to see what’s going on and meets the same fate. Both of the super-pets had a bluish glow about them as they passed leading Supergirl to believe the root of the deadly virus came from the planet Erg. Thankfully the virus only seems to affect super-beings which is revealed when Supergirl tells her adoptive mother, Edna, what happened. This is not the end of tragedy though as Mr. Mxyzptlk and Comet both fall to the Maid of Doom before Superman shows up and tells her the only safe place for her is the Phantom Zone.
After our hero is subjected to the same fate as Mon-El, we get a surprising image of Superman turning into a fish before diving under a lake. From here we find out that wasn’t Superman at all but one of the Plasmos from the planet Mutor! We find out from Sklor, the Plasmo, that he had just successfully executed a plan to rid Earth of it’s heroes Supergirl and Superman so that the rest of their race can take over the planet. Sklor retells the story from his point of view and we find out that Supergirl is not the deadly menace we were led to believe and all the deceased super-beings were actually Sklor shape changing and acting. He was also able to convince Superman and the Super-Pets to go to the future as to not disturb his plans.
All looks pretty dire for the girl of steel when suddenly she shows up again in the Plasmo’s lair! Supergirl, through some rather convoluted reasoning, was able to thwart Sklor. After realizing the best plan they ever could’ve thought of ended in failure, the planet Mutor decides to sign a treaty with Earth and also to not conquer any other planet. The UN celebrates by raising a Supergirl flag and everyone is happy aside from probably Sklor who probably doesn’t have many friends left on Mutor.
Before we get to the 1970 story, we get a full page of Supergirl letting you know the story you just read was old and she doesn’t dress like that anymore. This is a nice transition between the A and B stories and also serves to highlight the fan costume designs for the maid of might which were featured in the issues around this time.
“Catcher in the Sky”, by Mike Sekowsky with inks by Dick Giordano and letters by John Costanza is a brief little 6 page story with some really exceptional imagery of Supergirl. Linda is sat bored at home watching reruns on TV when she hears of a mysterious tragedy as the US Carrier Whitney has vanished into thin air. Supergirl suits up and rushes to the scene.
While the story doesn’t have a lot of real estate in regards to page count, that hasn’t stopped the art from producing some great sweeping images of Supergirl in action. Although she looked good doing so, she too was met with the same fate as the Whitney as she suddenly vanishes. Supergirl has now found the Whitney along with everyone and everything else that vanished and soon gets on the case to find out what happened and how to fix it.
It seems like the son of a scientist from an alien alternate dimension has been messing around with his dad’s equipment and has snatched stuff from our world into his. This alien race is much larger than any earth being so it takes all of Supergirl’s strength to get their attention to get her and the people of earth back home.
Thankfully the alien dad is much more accommodating to the earthlings and sends everyone back where they belong. The story then ends with the alien dad spanking the alien son. There is also a 1 page tease for the next issue which features Johnny Dee-Bum which seems to be a big deal but I don’t think he’s nearly as important as he’s made out to be.
While I didn’t see any letters that really stood out to me, I have to note that “Super Fe-Mail” is a particularly bonkers choice for a letters page. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this and it definitely won’t be the last but I needed everyone else to know about it. I also found this really cute ad for some animal figures and the cow at the top just looks really goofy. Neither of these stories are astounding by any means, but they’re goofy 60s-ish super hero alien stories and I always have a fun time with those. And between the cover and the interior art it’s a rather stunning issue visually.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 
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