Adventure Comics #397 is notable for a few reasons, the extremely iconic cover, the Supergirl/Wonder Woman/Morgana team-up in the main story, but today we’ll be talking about the backup feature and the introduction of a certain foil to the girl of steel, Nasty Luthor. In short, Nasthalitha Luthor is the niece of Lex Luthor via an un-named older sister that Lex has of had. This is of course a separate sibling to Lena Thorul but a note from Mike Sekowsky on the letters page in Adventure Comics #401 mentions Nasty’s parentage is Lex’s unnamed older sister and a European gentleman she lives with abroad. Unlike the other female Luthor we know, Lena Thorul, Nasty does take after Lex Luthor and generally acts as an antagonist in the Supergirl stories she shows up in.
Nasty Luthor, as mentioned above, first shows up in the back-up story from Adventure Comics #397 and would show up about a dozen more times in the title until Supergirl left the title for her own magazine after Adventure #424. Aside from a couple appearances in out of continuity stories, these Adventure Comics stories are all we get to learn about her.
Her first 2 appearances (Adventure 397 and 401) both take place in the Stanhope College era of Supergirl’s career and have a bit of a different vibe and aren’t really representative of the Nasty to come but are important to cover in the grand scheme of things. Her first story, being a back-up, is rather short. Here we are introduced to the character in a story aptly titled “Supergirl meets Nasty”. Here we are introduced to a new student at Stanhope College who turns out to be the niece of Lex Luthor and she has infiltrated the educational establishment to find out the secret identity of Supergirl. Nasty soon becomes very popular on campus and grows a following called Nasty’s Nasties who work together to terrorize the student population. Supergirl of course stops Nasty’s plan and prevents her from finding out her most important secret. Her next appearance was covered in full last week as part of Supergirl Surprise #11 but since it turns out the whole story was just a dream, I don’t count it as part of Nasty’s history and I won’t be covering it any further.
After this, Nasty would show up again in issue 406 in a story called “Suspicion”. This issue would also serve to lead into a new era of Supergirl’s life after her graduation from Stanhope and her start into the career world. During the graduation ceremony, Nasty notices Supergirl enter Linda Danver’s dorm room and Linda leave which sets her on the path to proving Linda is Supergirl.
She would eventually land a job in San Francisco at the K-SFTV News station along with Geoff Anderson, Jonny Drew, and of course Nasty who followed Linda across the country just to try to prove she is Supergirl. This seemed to be trying to create a similar supporting cast for the girl of steel that Superman had with Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. This K-SFTV crew would be a consistent feature in Supergirl’s life for the rest of her time in Adventure Comics.
During this time Nasty’s main role as a thorn in Supergirl’s side really came through. Many stories would have at least some mention of Nasty trying to prove that Linda and Supergirl are one and the same, but aside from a couple times Nasty doesn’t ever sure to be the true antagonist of the story. Adventure Comics 418 is particularly good in this aspect, as it tells a story of Nasty hiring a private investigator to follow Linda in an attempt to out her as Supergirl. Most of the other stories are fairly standard Supergirl stories just with a tv news station subplot, a lot of alien related stories but there were quite a few that just felt like Scooby-Doo plots. In issue 412, there’s a nice bit where someone else is dressed as Supergirl committing crimes which confuses Nasty since it goes against her Linda is Supergirl theory and that was a nice change from the norm.
Nasty of course never proves that Linda is Supergirl, but the pair do have a proper tussle in Adventure Comics #424 where Linda tells Nasty to back off and it does feel like a fairly solid send off to the character even though I’m upset that she never showed up again. The main reason Nasty stopped showing up is because Supergirl was leaving Adventure Comics for her own series which also meant she would be leaving K-SFTV and all her co-stars including Nasty.
That really is the end of Nasty’s story, but it’s not exactly the last time we see her. Grant Morrison would bring her back in some capacity in the pages of All Star Superman. Here Nasty would be little more than Luthor’s equally fiendish niece, although there is a panel where she is seen talking on the phone to her mother and we get a bit more information on Lex’s un-named older sister when Nasty says “mad at you” when Lex asks Nasty about her mother so that’s nice. Otherwise I personally don’t feel like this is a particularly good depiction of the character, she doesn’t really feel much like a go-getter in All Star Superman although maybe the lack of a Linda Danvers prevents her from having a motivation. Nasty would also appear in the animated direct to video version of this story as well and it’s fairly similar to how she was depicted in the comics.
She would next show up in Scooby-Doo Team-Up and it is perhaps my favorite depiction of Nasty Luthor. She shows up in digital chapter #74 (print issue #37), and she is masterminding a plan that involves hooking a holographic projector to Supergirl’s cape which shows her ghostly images of her parents. The ghosts of course bring in the mystery gang but clipping a small device to Supergirl’s cape does feel like a call back to the Adventures 401 story with the remote control car. The story is a good mix of Nasty being a proper antagonist in the story, while still being 100% focused on proving Linda is Supergirl and I feel like it’s done quite successfully, although her plan seems more like something Lesla-Lar or Black Flame would do.
The next couple external media Nasty Luthors I want to talk about aren’t Nasty but they do invoke the character to some extent. Lena Luthor, as seen in the CW Supergirl series is of course meant to be a version of Lena Thorul but it could be said that there is a bit of Nasty influence to her characterization as well. The other, probably more absurd, character is Lenny Luthor from Superman IV. Played by Jon Cryer, Lenny is a nephew of Lex who takes up in his uncles more fiendish ways and whenever I watch Superman IV I always think of Lenny as a gender swapped Nasty Luthor.
Nasty, to me, feels like a second attempt from DC to give Supergirl a Lex Luthor counterpart after Lena turned out to be more friend than foe. Nasty, similarly, doesn’t quite measure up to the arch enemy status and generally seems more like a nuisance than anything. Going back to the K-SFTV crew having a similar structure to the Daily Planet crew, Nasty almost fits the role of Steve Lombard while also having a bit of that Lana Lang to her as she tries to reveal Supergirl’s secret identity. I do also want to mention that, while everything lists her surname as Luthor, since her relation to her uncle is on her mother’s side it’s probably unlikely that she shares the family name. In all her appearances she’s only ever named “Nasthalitha” or “Nasty” and her having a different surname probably helped her integrate so easily into Stanhope and K-SFTV since Luthor is a household name of a super-criminal during the time of her appearances in comics.
I really love Nasty Luthor as a character and I would love to see her show up again. I think the dynamic with her and the current Lena Luthor would be interesting since they would be cousins and I feel like that could create some interesting storylines between the next generation of Luthors. I hope you enjoyed this in depth look at Nasty and if you’d like to learn more about other supporting cast members to the girl of steel check out my Friends and Foes page!
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