In more recent years and most notably in the Supergirl CBS/CW television show, the general consensus of the Supergirl and Superman relationship is that Supergirl is technically older than Superman. Due to shenanigans in her trip to earth from Krypton proper or Argo (depending on the exact continuity) Kara Zor-El was trapped in suspended animation while Kal-El grew up on Earth and became Superman. With this idea in mind, I’ve been fascinated by the idea of a story where Kara did land on earth before Kal and how that would effect their relationship and the heroic community as a whole. It does seem like we will have some amount of this story told in the upcoming Supergirl: Survive Elseworlds tale, but I was quite surprised to find a story like this had already been told back in the 60s by Leo Dorfman and Jim Mooney across 2 issues of Action Comics in stories titled “How Superwoman Trained Superboy!” and “The Duel Between Superwoman and Superboy!”
Action Comics #332 begins this imaginary tale in what is essentially a story of Jor-El’s family and Zor-El’s family switching places. The first few pages of this issue play out similarly to the origins of Superman and Supergirl that we’ve all come to know aside from the pair swapping places. We see Zor-El as a resident of Kryptonopolis and he is pleading with the science council to take action in regards to the coming destruction of the planet and Jor-El is instead telling his brother about the dome he plns to install over his home city of Argo. It is also shown that Kara had already been born before the destruction of Krypton but Jor-El had yet to meet Lara or even think of having a son named Kal-El. We get a handful of scenes on Krypton where we see the El brothers in swapped positions but it’s during the destruction of the planet where we start seeing some more prominent differences.
When Zor-El is loading his young child into the rocket to save her, he remembers an enlarging ray he had invented which he turns on the rocket which enlarges it to allow for himself and Allura to also be rocketed to safety. Zor-El and his family land in the outskirts of Smallville and begin their lives as the Zorelle’s living as farmers in the small town and would secretly use their powers to help their fellow citizens until suddenly they stumbled upon a chunk of gold Kryptonite.
The Gold-K of course took away the powers of Zor-El and Allura, but thankfully their young daughter was safely away and didn’t lose her powers. Kara, using the alias Carole, would grow up with human parents and in her teen years would patrol Smallville as Supergirl just like Superman of our world did when he was Superboy. Carole would later move to Metropolis after her parents died of old age and would take on the mantle of Superwoman while working as a private investigator.
Around this time we would see Jor-El’s Argo City facing the same fate of Kryptonite poisoning and we see Jor-El send his teenage son, Kal-El, off to earth to safety. Kal lands on earth in a scene that mirrors the origin of Supergirl we saw in Action 252 with the roles of Supergirl and Superman swapped with Superboy and Superwoman.
Superwoman takes Kal to Midvale Orphanage where he adopts a blond wig and the name Cal Ellis. We get a few scenes of Cal at Midvale Orphanage and we see him interact with Dick Wilson (who would later be Dick Malverne) in both a swimming scene, as well as a scene that mirrors one from Action 256, where Cal has forgotten to write a paper and Dick sees that his paper is undone, but Cal super-speed writes his paper and Dick asks him about it and the same excuse of “completed paper in drawer” was used.
We get a few scenes of Superboy being clumsy and misusing his powers before an experiment goes wrong and he exposes himself to Gold-K, or so Superwoman thinks. Before the issue ends, Superboy throws the supposed Gold-K into the sky and reveals that it was all a ploy to get Superwoman off his back.
Issue 333 opens with a bit of a recap and we also get a few more scenes of Superboy acting up before the fake Gold-K scene. We then cut to the Orphanage and Cal trying to get adopted and he ruins 2 other orphans chances of getting adopted before he is taken in by a scientist named Dr Kean. Dr. Kean has a penthouse laboratory which Cal quickly puts to use as Superboy who is putting together a device to free the Phantom Zone criminals.
At this point, Superwoman tells Superboy about a pair of Zoners named Van-Dal, the worst juvenile delinquent on Krypton, and his mother Tir-An. Superboy know having knowledge of these fiends only makes him more eager to get them to earth to help him rid Superwoman from his life. Superwoman returns to her office where she tells Jimmy Olsen of a plan to take care of Superboy once and for all. It is at this point that Carole reveals to her associate that she is in fact the hero Superwoman. Superboy gets his machine working and frees the Zoners who quickly get to work on putting together a potion that would remove their weakness to Kryptonite. While Superboy initially refuses to drink the concoction, after seeing Van-Dal drink it he finally agrees.
To drink the potion he has to turn off his Protecto-Belt and when he does so, Tir-An takes off her mask and reveals she was Superwoman the whole time and it was all a ploy to de-activate his belt and remove his powers temporarily with Red-Kryptonite that was in the cup with the Kryptonite cure. The Red-K didn’t affect Van-Dal because he too was a disguise, this time with Jimmy Olsen under the mask.
It’s at this point the plot gets a bit confusing, at least to me. Superboy is powerless under the effects of the Red-K, so Jimmy punches him out. Then suddenly, even though the effects of the Red-K should still be in effect, Superboy gets his powers back, but they keep going on and off and eventually he is subjected to Gold-K which permanently removes his powers. And to really put a bummer ending on this story, Superwoman hypnotizes the now powerless Kal-El into forgetting everything and she drips him off at an orphanage as a full amnesiac.
I did really enjoy this story and I felt like it really explored how the Silver Age Superman and Supergirl switching places could have played out. There are a lot of references to other stories that I mentioned here, especially the stuff with Dick Malverne that I really enjoyed. They felt like little Easter eggs of Supergirl stories from her previous years in action comics. I will say I wish they would’ve explored Lex Luthor a bit more, he’s shown briefly as a non-villainous friend of Carole and I would’ve loved to see how that would affect Lena, since she and her parents wouldn’t have had to change their name after Lex’s turn to evil deeds. This also confirms that Lex Luthor was only ever a villain because of the actions of Clark “Superboy” Kent and I think that’s fascinating. Also Superwoman placing Cal into Midvale Orphanage felt like readers finally getting justice for Kal doing the same thing to Linda all those years before. Unlike the last story I covered from Supergirl’s action comics back-ups (The Survival Zone Saga), I really think 2 issues is perfectly fine to tell this imaginary story and I wasn’t really itching for more. This wasn’t exactly what I was after in regards to a Kara landing on earth before Kal, but it was a pretty enjoyable story that made Kal-El a pretty bad person all told.
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