Supergirl in the Multiverse: Earth-A42

Archie comics have a long history of being slice-of-life teen drama or comedy stories featuring a handful of students that are all enrolled at Riverdale High. However, there are some stories with the Archie characters that see them taking up heroic identities and becoming superheroes. Pureheart the Powerful (the heroic form of Archie Andrews) first shows up in Life with Archie #42, and he would later be joined by his friends Jughead (under the name Captain Hero) and Betty Cooper as Superteen. These heroes would have various adventures throughout the years and in 1996 a miniseries called Archie’s Super Teens would come out and 2019 would have a 2 part series called Archie’s Superteens vs Crusaders which pitted the Riverdale heroes up against the Crusaders which were the more traditional comic book heroes that also made their starts in Archie comics. As far as my research could come up with, this universe does not have a specific designation, so I used the prefix “A” for Archie Comics (just in case I find any other Supergirls from Archie Comics) and the 42 coming from Pureheart’s first appearance in Life with Archie #42.

Superteen (Sometimes Super Teen) first appears in Archie’s Girl’s Betty and Veronica #118. In this story Betty Cooper is shown reminiscing about what it would be like if she had super-powers and what she would use them for (mostly keeping Archie away from Veronica it seems). The next issue #119 would take a slightly different approach, with Mr. Weatherbee getting assaulted by a monster called the Consumer who is terrorizing the school. The teacher calls for Superteen to come save the day and we see Betty Cooper jump into action as the Superteen! It does end up being Jughead saving the day however by beating the fiend at an eating contest. Superteen, much like Supergirl, has had many different costumes since her debut and for the most part I’ve stayed true to her earliest appearances (red and blue with short sleeves) however I have added the cape that she didn’t have at first and also used the heart shaped logo as opposed to the shied logo she has at first.

As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Superteen is in the foreground leaping slightly with her fist raised in front of Riverdale High School. The clock on Riverdale High is reading the time of 1:18. The top right corner has a motif of Superteen’s symbol with “A42” on top of it.