The Amalgam Universe was born from the cross dimensional being known as Access during the pages of Marvel vs. DC back in 1996. This birthed a total of 24 one-shot comics spread across 2 waves that showed stories of characters that were amalgamations of characters from the DC and Marvel universes. The Amalgam universe has several numeric designations such as 1996, 962, 9602, and 496 as well as just being referred to as the Amalgamverse. My coverage of this universe will feature 5 entries for Supergirl in the Multiverse and my initial plan was to use some of these alternative number designations for each. However, to make categorizing them easier I will just be using what seems to be the most likely DC designation of 496.
As mentioned above, the Amalgam universe would take a character from the DC universe and one from the Marvel (sometimes more than 2 characters would merge). There are 2 canonical Amalgam characters that fit the Supergirl role, but I am also going to be putting together 3 of my own amalgamated Supergirls. This is the last of my original Amalgam Supergirls, with Spidergirl! Young Spidergirl, Mayday Ross, hailing from the near future, comes to meet Spider-Man (well he was still Spider-Boy back then) who she claims is her father and Mary Jane “Insect Queen” Watson is her mother. The young bachelor, Pete Ross of course wants nothing to do with this supposed daughter and tries to brush her off but Spidergirl still jumps into the scene and becomes a hero in her own right.
It would later be revealed, after one crisis or reboot or possibly when heroes got reborn, that Spidergirl wasn’t actually the daughter of Spider-Boy but is the long lost cousin of Mig-El Gand the Spider-Boy 2099. Cir-El Gand was taken from her family as a baby and locked in stasis until she was found by the Legion of Galactic Guardians 2099 and now meeting her cousin as the new Spider-Boy, she too undergoes the Super-Spider transformation allowing her to become Spidergirl and join the Legion herself. Unfortunately for her, on a mission back to the early 21st century she gets captured by the Futuresmiths and they brainwash her into believing she was the daughter of Spider-Boy. Now that she’s got her memory back to sorts, she returns to using the name Cir-El, but adopts the surname of Parker to honor the fallen scientist who fell in the creation of the Super-Spider. Cir-El Parker would return to the future and continue on in the fight against evil along with the rest of the Legion of Galactic Guardians.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Spidergirl is crouching while sticking to the side of a building. There is a city scape behind her including the Daily Bugle building. The entire scene is skewed making Spidergirl look upside-down. There is a motif of Spidergirl’s S with a 496 in the top right corner.
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 Amalgam Universe was born from the cross dimensional being known as Access during the pages of Marvel vs. DC back in 1996. This birthed a total of 24 one-shot comics spread across 2 waves that showed stories of characters that were amalgamations of characters from the DC and Marvel universes. The Amalgam universe has several numeric designations such as 1996, 962, 9602, and 496 as well as just being referred to as the Amalgamverse. My coverage of this universe will feature 5 entries for Supergirl in the Multiverse and my initial plan was to use some of these alternative number designations for each. However, to make categorizing them easier I will just be using what seems to be the most likely DC designation of 496.
As mentioned above, the Amalgam universe would take a character from the DC universe and one from the Marvel (sometimes more than 2 characters would merge). There are 2 canonical Amalgam characters that fit the Supergirl role, but I am also going to be putting together 3 of my own amalgamated Supergirls. This week’s entry is not a canonical Amalgam character, but it is a fairly obvious amalgamation of Carol “Captain Marvel” Danvers and Kara “Supergirl” Danvers.
As we all know, Krypton was destroyed decades ago and a rocket with what was meant to be a survivor was sent to earth. This survivor didn’t survive the journey, but his DNA was used in the Super-Soldier program that brought us heroes like Super-Soldier and American Girl. What you may not know however, is that another survivor made it off the planet. This rocket didn’t go to earth and instead traveled in stasis for many years before landing on the planet Kree which was in the midst of the infamous Kree-Thanagar war. The young child grew up and was raised as a Kree and was given the name Kar-El. She would enlist and fight in the Kree-Thanagar war and would help lead her planet to victory moving her way up the ranks to captian. Now with the war over, Kar-El would look into her past and learn more about Krypton and hope to find her family. Unfortunately she instead finds the desolation of her home-planet and thinks all is lost when she picks up the trace of the other rocket that was sent to Earth. She follows after it but she instead finds the Super-Soldier that informs her of her predecessor’s fate. Instead of returning home she would work alongside the heroes of earth, maintaining her title of Captain. Captain Kar-El of Krypton would continue on as a quite Marvelous hero honoring her Kryptonian heritage.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. Captain Kar-El is walking towards the viewer with her eyes burning with heat vision. Behind her we see her space ship landed on a rooftop helipad and a cityscape in the background. The top right has a motif of the Captain’s symbol with a 496 on top of it.
Sometimes when picking a random Supergirl comic to talk about sometimes I’ll re-roll the random number generator if it’s from a series I’ve covered recently or a book I’ve talked about recently in another post. So when it came up that I should read Adventure 401 as the next entry in Supergirl Surprise after reading Adventure 398 just last month I almost skipped it. However, I did take a look at the cover and saw one of my favorites, Nasty Luthor. Now Nasty hasn’t shown up so far in any major capacity on my blog, but along with Lesla-Lar and Reactron, she’s one of my favorite foils to the girl of steel so I figured I’d dive into what would surely be a wonderful battle of wits between the enemies. Boy oh boy was I wrong. This issue was not particularly good but I think that’s some of the fun of Supergirl Surprise, it’s always a surprise which story I’ll read so let’s dive in and see what this issue has in store.
Adventure Comics #401, from November 1970, starts with a story titled “The Frightened Supergirl” Which had Jack Abel inking, John Costanza lettering, and Mike Sekowsky doing just about everything else including editing. My particular copy of this book is quite bad shape with a cover that’s nearly ripped in half but aside from a bit of a panel on page 9 missing, it’s still in perfectly readable condition and 55 years old so I can’t be too upset. The story is told from the perspective of Nasty Luthor as she relays the story of how she captured Supergirl to her uncle Lex which starts with Nasty attending a luncheon at Stanhope College honoring Supergirl’s achievements. Here is where Nasty puts her plan into action.
Nasty puts a Fear Formula, invented by the genius that is Lex Luthor, into Supergirl’s water that she needs because she’s so parched giving her speech. This Fear Formula, as the name suggests, causes Supergirl to be terribly afraid of everything like spiders and rats and even a boy dressed up like a cowboy. The Frightened Supergirl is not only frightened, but also running around like a bull in a China shop absolutely destroying anything in her path as she tries to flee to safety.
Police are unable to subdue the girl of steel, but Nasty offers her help and is able to get Supergirl into her care with gentle and kind words. Nasty then takes her back to her hideout and frightens her again with a rat. Nasty and Lex are thrilled at the success of their Fear Formula and look to show it off at the next crime convention, but not before Nasty has a bit of fun.
Nasty has acquired a special remote control car that will follow a sensor that can be clipped to anything, including Supergirl’s cape. Nasty puts the sensor onto Supergirl, which causes the car to chase her and in Supergirl’s rush to safety away from the car she can never escape she destroys the building that the Luthors are in and it seems nothing can stop the frightened Supergirl’s rampage when suddenly…
We find out it was all a dream. That’s it. Story’s over. Nothing happened and nothing mattered. Jan Butler, Linda’s roommate stumbles in with the same remote control car that was in her dream. As it may be apparent, “it was all a dream” stories kind of bother me, as it feels like the story just doesn’t matter and it’s a waste of time. I think this story especially isn’t great because it is also Nasty’s second appearance and is referenced in the Direct Currents page as a big deal that she’s back, and since it’s just a dream it’s kind of like Nasty wasn’t really in the story at all.
While we’re talking about Direct Currents, let’s take a look at the whole page. My understanding is that Direct Currents was a running feature in all the DC books being published and it served as a bit of promotion to get DC readers interested in the rest of the books in their line. The first title mentioned here is Strange Adventures which I’ve been getting into recently since they often have nice one and done science fiction stories. The Atomic Knights are also mentioned and long time followers of the blog might remember the Atomic Knights from my Earth-17 entry of Supergirl in the Multiverse. On the right side of the page, we get mention of Adventure Comics itself which has the mention of Nasty’s return to menace Supergirl. There is also mention of the backup feature starring Tracy Thompson who debuts this issue. I did read this backup story and it didn’t really interest me, it was a sort of horror/ghost story but it wasn’t particularly interesting and I can’t imagine the character stayed around for very long.
The next 2 pages are advertising “A new beginning for Superman” and it has a couple panels exploring the evolution of Superman as a character all to get readers hyped up for Superman in 1971. We do also get 1 panel previews of the other Superman related titles and Supergirl gets a panel showcasing her new costume that she began using back in Adventure 397.
Most of the letters on the Super Fe-Mail page are talking about people’s like or dislike of Supergirl’s new costume and while it isn’t my favorite Supergirl costume by any means, it has grown on me slightly, although if I was reading the comics in 1970 I probably would have been on the side against this particular costume. I didn’t notice any interesting ads this time out but before I go I did want to let you know there were 21 panels in the Supergirl story where Supergirl was screaming.
The Amalgam Universe was born from the cross dimensional being known as Access during the pages of Marvel vs. DC back in 1996. This birthed a total of 24 one-shot comics spread across 2 waves that showed stories of characters that were amalgamations of characters from the DC and Marvel universes. The Amalgam universe has several numeric designations such as 1996, 962, 9602, and 496 as well as just being referred to as the Amalgamverse. My coverage of this universe will feature 5 entries for Supergirl in the Multiverse and my initial plan was to use some of these alternative number designations for each. However, to make categorizing them easier I will just be using what seems to be the most likely DC designation of 496.
As mentioned above, the Amalgam universe would take a character from the DC universe and one from the Marvel (sometimes more than 2 characters would merge). There are 2 canonical Amalgam characters that fit the Supergirl role, but I am also going to be putting together 3 of my own amalgamated Supergirls. This time out is one of the canonical ones, American Girl. American Girl is an amalgamation of Supergirl, specifically the Pre-Crisis Kara Zor-El version, and Bucky Barnes. This character only shows up as part of the Amalgam Universe trading cards, specifically the Classic Power Blast series in a card titled Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour #7. This card, like all cards in this series, is an homage and for Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour #7, it is an homage to Crisis on Infinite Earths #7. Super Soldier stands in for Superman and the now deceased American Girl stands in for Supergirl. The back of the card mentions that “although American Girl was patterned after his old partner, the two characters had never met before this issue.” This is cleared up a bit more in the Secret Crisis of the Infinity Hour Canvas Cards set, specifically #9, which mentions American Girl was Super Soldier’s successor, as well as naming her Carol Barnes. While I couldn’t find any specific “old partner” in either Super Soldier or Super Soldier: Man of War, this seems to be referencing a Bucky Barnes type. American Girl being Super Soldier’s successor points to the possibility that after Super Soldier’s icy fate after his face off with Ultra-Metallo, perhaps the Super Soldier formula was used on another person, Carol Barnes, granting her similar super-abilities.
As with all my Supergirl in the Multiverse posts, this is my own artwork. American Girl is taking up the center foreground, running towards the viewer. She is running down a path with fields on either side of it. The top right corner has a motif of American Girl’s symbol with a 496 on top of it.
The Daring New Blog of Supergirl 