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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!

The DC Book of Lists is a book by Randall Lotowycz that takes the 85 years of history (at the time) of DC Comics and reorganizes legacies, histories, and hierarchies – as it mentions on the cover – as well as loads of other information into easy to digest list format. Published by Running Press and released in 2021, this is a fun book that seems to have a lot of research put into it and, by Lotowycz’s own admission, doesn’t care about continuity resets and instead takes the entire history of DC when organizing such topics as Superman and Batman’s first meetings (page 64), all the colors of Kryptonite (page 115), and all the times we’ve seen Darkseid sitting down (page 105). While the book has an absurd amount of references to the girl of steel (as you might be able to tell by the mess of post it notes in my copy shown above) but today I’m going to focus specifically on the 2 pages Lotowycz dedicated specifically to Supergirl, and specifically when she strayed a bit from the heroic ideal.

I’ve had a wonderful time reading through this book over the past week or so, but my biggest issue with it is that it doesn’t always give issue numbers for the stories and characters it references. I do understand that it’s probably an insurmountable task when you’re talking about 242 pages of non-stop facts. That being said, the fact that some of the lists do reference specific issue numbers (like the list of times Suicide Squad members died in the field on page 4), just makes the lists without feel a bit underdeveloped. Because of this, I’m going to take the 13 baddie Supergirl’s that are listed on pages 145 and 146 and do my best to give you at home a good editors note on where to find out more about each not-so-good maid of might.

The first entry, which also has an image associated with it, is titled “Black Magic”. This is one of the entries from the list that I wasn’t particularly familiar with so tracking down the issue (Action Comics #324), and reading the story was a fun diversion into wacky silver age comics. I do really love the silver age Supergirl stories and this is no exception. Supergirl encounters a weird guy, gets into some shenanigans that cause her to grow devil horns and go evil, and by page 13 everything is right back to normal like nothing happened. It’s fun, it’s exciting, and the story features probably the only iteration of “Flame Kryptonite”.

Next up is “Brain on Fire” and readers of the current Supergirl comics may be familiar with the character this entry is referencing, Nightflame. Nightflame first showed up in Adventure Comics #421, and isn’t quite a bad version of Supergirl in my opinion, but more so the Innerverse version of all of Supergirl who lets all her bad thoughts come to life and tries to get control of Supergirl’s body. It’s possible I’m in the minority but Nightflame isn’t one of my favorite pre-crisis Supergirl villains so maybe my reaction to her inclusion here is a bit biased.

“Bad Hair Day” was the other of the entries that I didn’t know right off the bat, but it comes from Supergirl #8 from 1972 in a story appropriately titled “A Head-Full of Snakes!” This story opens with Linda rehearsing for a play at Vandyre University where she is playing the role of Medusa. She then gets cursed by the actual Medusa’s ghost and she gets cursed to start turning anyone she looks at to stone. This story actually has a similar story structure to the one from Action Comics #324 with Supergirl helping someone at the start, getting cursed where she turns on her fellow heroes, and then everything just going right back to normal at the end. A perfectly serviceable story but I do feel like “turn people to stone” doesn’t have quite as much potential as “devil ring that gives you 3 wishes” so it doesn’t quite hold up to me.

From here we move into the Matrix era of the list with “Identity Crisis” and while this isn’t a reference to the critically acclaimed miniseries of the same name from 2005, it is a story where Supergirl thinks she’s Superman and tries to take out the man of steel all while sporting a gray and brown costume that’s particularly striking. This storyline went for a few issues in 1989 across the various Superman titles of the time, I’ve got Action Comics #644 called out specifically here for the simply astounding George Pérez cover that really shows off the brown and gray version of Superman’s costume that Matrix is wearing.

After many months of being in a relationship with Lex Luthor II (who was actually just Lex Luthor I with better hair), Matrix finally finds out that he’s bad news in her 1984 miniseries Supergirl (Vol. 3). The image shown here is from the cover to issue 4 of the mini and shows Supergirl’s reaction to finding out Lex had been cloning her for nefarious deeds and Superman is trying his darndest to stop her from killing Lex. Does this really count as Supergirl going bad if she’s just getting Lex back for being a tool? That’s for you to decide! I will say this is one of my favorite alternate Supergirl costumes and was used as inspiration for me in my most recent Supergirl in the Multiverse post on Super-She-Hulk.

Very soon after the Matrix merged with human (earth-born angel) Linda Danvers, the hero got her mind taken over by a certain gorilla named Grodd in Supergirl (Vol. 4) #3, but issue #4 is where she really starts getting up to monkey business. The cover to #4 seems to be referencing Angel and the Ape, another DC property, with the tagline “The Ape and the Devil”, and throughout the issue Supergirl is under the thrall of the psychic ape. It takes Linda seeing her father endangered by her actions, and a little help from Wally, to break free of Grodd’s influence and back to rights, but she does eventually overcome the fiend.

“Matrix Returns” is actually a story I referenced way back in my Supergirl vs. Supergirl Part 2, specifically 1999’s Supergirl #30. Once again this storyline took place over many issues and eventually ends with Linda overpowering the gooier version of herself but not before Superman steps in and it’s finally revealed to him that Matrix isn’t just a protoplasmic organism anymore and is actually merged with a sort of human.

That was the last of the Matrix era entries and now we move up to the Pre-Flashpoint Kara Zor-El and her first bad girl form “Welcome to the Dark Side”. Once again this is a storyline I covered from the Superman/Batman title in my post Superman/Batman: Apocalypse. This was the second story arc of the title and served as the re-introduction of Kara Zor-El who had been absent in comics since her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths. The story arc started in issue 8 of the title, but issue 12 has the cover that shows off Baddie Kara the best. I did want to note, in regards to this entry, this story got mentioned fairly recently in the pages of New History of the DC Universe by Mark Waid and Kara being under Darkseid’s control was actually how Waid tied the pre-crisis and post-crisis Kara Zor-El characters together. In my opinion I think it’s a really smart approach and feels like a pretty seamless way to merge the 2 characters without too much retconning.

Kara would soon get her own title after re-debuting in Superman/Batman, but would quickly get split into “Supergirl Black, Supergirl Blue” by Lex Luthor using black Kryptonite. This split happened in the back half of Supergirl (Vol. 5) #3 (I covered the first half of this issue in Nightwing and the 4 Supergirls) after Supergirl left the Outsiders she got ambushed by Lex Luthor who instigated the split and it would take until issue 5 (shown above) before the pair recombined with a little help from Wonder Woman and the Lasso of Truth.

Speaking of Wonder Woman, “Executive Mistake” refers to the Amazons Attack event (the 2007 one not the 2023 one) where Supergirl and Wonder Girl (Cassie Sandsmark) tried their best to help out and ended up probably causing more harm than good. The event as a whole was a 6 issue mini-series as well as a handful of tie in issues but the cover I always think of when thinking of this event is the one show above from Supergirl (Vol 5) #20 which I’m pretty sure is when the event the entry is referencing happened.

Much like the last entry, “Supergirl at the End of the World” also references a “bad Supergirl” that wasn’t under the influence of anything and was doing what she thought in her heart was right. Unfortunately what she thought was right was heavily influenced by H’El who was obviously manipulating her throughout the H’El on Earth crossover which ran for a handful of months through all the Super titles in 2013, specifically Supergirl (Vol. 6) #14-17.

“Raging Out” of course refers to Kara’s brief stint as a Red Lantern and my personal favorite Supergirl arc from the New 52. The arc started in Green Lantern #28 and would continue on in the Supergirl and Red Lantern titles for the next few months until Supergirl would remove the ring and return to her normal red/blue slightly-less-angry self. The story arc would explore Kara’s anger about her home world being destroyed and all the nonsense that she had gone through since landing on earth.

The final entry is one I am familiar with and is shown referenced on the page, from Supergirl (Vol. 7) #36, although I don’t think I’ve read the whole event. “Supergirl the Infected” is referencing the Year of the Villain and specifically Supergirl the Infected. In my defense however, this is an event heavily influenced by the Batman Who Laughs and I cannot stand that loser.

And that brings us to the end of the list. I think this was a fun look and it was an interesting thing to list in regards to the girl of steel. This sort of off-the-wall list grouping is pretty common in this book and it makes for a much more exciting and fun read as opposed to a strictly referential text. As I mentioned before, my main issue with the book is that it doesn’t list issue numbers all the time. I will say that when I went through the Supergirl entries, it was hard to nail down a single issue for some of the entries so I can see where sometimes it would be tricky. Another minor issue, for the Supergirl list specifically, is the exclusion of Satan Girl! Satan Girl is like the epitome of Supergirl going bad (and if you want to read more about her check out my blog post on her here). Thanks so much for reading and if you’d like me to go over the rest of Supergirl’s mentions from the book let me know and be ssure to check out this book as a whole if you can.