Tag: Supergirl Surprise

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.

This month’s endeavor into my boxes of comics lead me to an issue in Supergirl’s 40ish issue run in Adventure Comics, specifically issue 398. I can’t remember entirely how long it was, but for a portion of Supergirl’s Adventure run each issue would reprint a previous Supergirl story as well as a brand new story and issue 398 is one of those. The reprint issue for this issue is a 14 page story from Action Comics #306, and the new story is comprised of 6 pages. There is a nice parity between these 2 stories as they both feature an unknow alien antagonist that Supergirl has to overcome, but are otherwise quite unrelated. This issue was released with a cover date of October 1970 and the Action Comic story is from 1963.

Coming in first is “The Maid of Doom” from writer Leo Dorfman, artist Jim Mooney, and letterer Milt Snapinn. This story is both the reprint story and also the cover story. Initially it feels odd, to me at least, for the reprint story to be the feature on the cover, but further reflection it makes a lot of sense. Supergirl in Action Comics was always the backup feature and hardly ever got the cover spotlight, so when reprinting the stories it makes a lot of sense for this story to show up on the cover. This cover is particularly striking, from Dick Giordano, showing the Super Pets lying dead around Supergirl as Superman is banishing her to the phantom zone.

The story opens with Linda on a movie date with everyone’s favorite non-super boyfriend, Dick Malverne, before Supergirl remembers she has a peace keeping mission to do out in space. Supergirl goes to 3 distant planets; Mutor with it’s shape changing inhabitants, The Mole World with it’s metal eating moles, and finally Erg who’s lifeforms all emit a bluish radioactive glow about them. Remember these planets and their life forms for later.

After landing back on earth near her secret entrance to the Danvers’ home, she is met by her trusty Super-Cat Streaky. Unfortunately for Streaky, it seems Supergirl has brought back a deadly virus back to earth which has tragically ended the life of the unsuspecting cat. Krypto, also nearby, comes over to see what’s going on and meets the same fate. Both of the super-pets had a bluish glow about them as they passed leading Supergirl to believe the root of the deadly virus came from the planet Erg. Thankfully the virus only seems to affect super-beings which is revealed when Supergirl tells her adoptive mother, Edna, what happened. This is not the end of tragedy though as Mr. Mxyzptlk and Comet both fall to the Maid of Doom before Superman shows up and tells her the only safe place for her is the Phantom Zone.

After our hero is subjected to the same fate as Mon-El, we get a surprising image of Superman turning into a fish before diving under a lake. From here we find out that wasn’t Superman at all but one of the Plasmos from the planet Mutor! We find out from Sklor, the Plasmo, that he had just successfully executed a plan to rid Earth of it’s heroes Supergirl and Superman so that the rest of their race can take over the planet. Sklor retells the story from his point of view and we find out that Supergirl is not the deadly menace we were led to believe and all the deceased super-beings were actually Sklor shape changing and acting. He was also able to convince Superman and the Super-Pets to go to the future as to not disturb his plans.

All looks pretty dire for the girl of steel when suddenly she shows up again in the Plasmo’s lair! Supergirl, through some rather convoluted reasoning, was able to thwart Sklor. After realizing the best plan they ever could’ve thought of ended in failure, the planet Mutor decides to sign a treaty with Earth and also to not conquer any other planet. The UN celebrates by raising a Supergirl flag and everyone is happy aside from probably Sklor who probably doesn’t have many friends left on Mutor.

Before we get to the 1970 story, we get a full page of Supergirl letting you know the story you just read was old and she doesn’t dress like that anymore. This is a nice transition between the A and B stories and also serves to highlight the fan costume designs for the maid of might which were featured in the issues around this time.

“Catcher in the Sky”, by Mike Sekowsky with inks by Dick Giordano and letters by John Costanza is a brief little 6 page story with some really exceptional imagery of Supergirl. Linda is sat bored at home watching reruns on TV when she hears of a mysterious tragedy as the US Carrier Whitney has vanished into thin air. Supergirl suits up and rushes to the scene.

While the story doesn’t have a lot of real estate in regards to page count, that hasn’t stopped the art from producing some great sweeping images of Supergirl in action. Although she looked good doing so, she too was met with the same fate as the Whitney as she suddenly vanishes. Supergirl has now found the Whitney along with everyone and everything else that vanished and soon gets on the case to find out what happened and how to fix it.

It seems like the son of a scientist from an alien alternate dimension has been messing around with his dad’s equipment and has snatched stuff from our world into his. This alien race is much larger than any earth being so it takes all of Supergirl’s strength to get their attention to get her and the people of earth back home.

Thankfully the alien dad is much more accommodating to the earthlings and sends everyone back where they belong. The story then ends with the alien dad spanking the alien son. There is also a 1 page tease for the next issue which features Johnny Dee-Bum which seems to be a big deal but I don’t think he’s nearly as important as he’s made out to be.

While I didn’t see any letters that really stood out to me, I have to note that “Super Fe-Mail” is a particularly bonkers choice for a letters page. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this and it definitely won’t be the last but I needed everyone else to know about it. I also found this really cute ad for some animal figures and the cow at the top just looks really goofy. Neither of these stories are astounding by any means, but they’re goofy 60s-ish super hero alien stories and I always have a fun time with those. And between the cover and the interior art it’s a rather stunning issue visually.

As I have been doing this Supergirl Surprise series I’ve generally found the single issues hold up pretty well on their own. This issue however I was totally lost reading through it. Tempus Fugit, cover dated as May ‘97, has credits that read “David, Frank, Smith, Prentice, D’Angelo & Digital Chameleon with Pittarese” It looks like the order is writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, and finally editor with both D’Angelo and Digital Chameleon on colors. Looking into it, it seems the reason I was so lost reading through this is because this is part 2 of 2 of the Tempus Fugit story.

The story opens with a brief interlude showing the young Wally (who I’m pretty sure ends up being God) asking his grandparents to go out and see a friend – remember this for later – before cutting to what I assume is where the previous issue left off. A double scythe wielding foe named Tempus is obliterating the Danvers’ home while Buzz is sitting looking like an absolute d-bag. We get a reminder here that this is the Matrix Supergirl when she blasts Tempus with a “psi-blast”. Realizing her parents are banged up but otherwise okay, she tells Fred that she’s going to go after Tempus and try to alert Supergirl to the crisis at hand.

From here we get another interlude with Cutter at the Leesburg Tribune, before we see Buzz and Tempus having an argument. In the midst of their argument, they see Wally and an attempted fireball soon gets knocked away by Wally’s baseball bat like it was nothing. Supergirl catches up to Tempus at the hospital and this is the main action sequence of the comic. Around this point some dialogue between Buzz and Tempus reveal that their plan is to push Supergirl over the edge into murdering Tempus. Before this can happen however, Buzz stops her and asks if she wants to continue on the Linda Danvers life or change to be more like Supergirl. This moment of clarity snaps our hero out of it and Buzz gets whisked away. The story then ends with Linda waking up the morning before and it seems Wally has turned back time so that the Danvers’ house wasn’t destroyed, Dick Malverne wasn’t brainwashed to being Tempus (yeah I forgot that too!), and everything is just back to normal.

Peter David is an exceptional writer and this Supergirl series is often regarded as the best for our maid of might and this issue continues this trend. Me being lost as I read through this second part of a 2 part story doesn’t diminish the quality but it was an interesting thing to experience with this series, although I didn’t much care for the Groundhog’s Day starting over ending we got but maybe that’s just me. I’m interested to see how other comics approach the single issue vs larger storyline approach especially miniseries like Cosmic Adventures in the 8th Grade or Superman/Supergirl Maelstrom. The final panel at the end of the issue features a newspaper that while cut off can still read “Gary F Thanks R For Suppor” and it seems like this is meant as a send off since it’s Frank’s last issue doing art on the book. I don’t always like Gary Frank’s art and sometimes it falls a bit into the uncanny valley for me, but I do think there are some pretty exceptional panels in this book and the full page spreads are particularly successful. Linda does spend the first 10 pages of this issue half naked which is a weird outfit to wear to dinner with her parents but you do you.

A couple cool ads this week for the second wave of Amalgam. The first page near the front is in black and white and advertises Lobo the Duck, Thorion of the New Asgods, and The Dark Claw Adventures and the ad page in the back (full color now) showcases Bat-Thing, Spider-Boy Team-Up, and JLX Unleashed. I’m not sure exactly why the front ad is in black and white, perhaps it was part of the marketing or maybe it was a printing error. The colorless ad is on the inside front cover and the ad on the inside back cover is also in black and white so I’m leaning towards either printing error or it was intentional as possibly a cost cutting measure. Looking at some other books in my collection from around this time, it seems like DC books from cover date April and May 1997 have colorless inside covers but it seems isolated to those two months based on the Supergirl and Nightwing books I have (I don’t have any other books from those cover dates). Otherwise I didn’t notice anything notable while reading through this but I really enjoyed this different experience with Supergirl Surprise and I hope to have more surprising adventures through my collection.

Adventure Comics #424 was released in 1972 and was the last issue of Adventure Comics where the maid of might was the star of the comic. This story, titled “Crypt of the Frozen Graves” follows Linda much more than Supergirl as she is working at the KSF-TV station. Linda has been in contact with a Bruce Ryan who has been leaking information about his connection to the Frisco Syndicate to Supergirl (Linda’s heroic secret identity).

While Bruce had been giving Supergirl more and more information about the gang, he was starting to pull back on the information he was giving and decided to stop altogether when he gets shot at. This causes our heroine to take a different approach and talk to Bruce not as Supergirl but as Linda Danvers. As Linda she is able to play up her femininity to get close to Bruce Ryan and she notices that he is rather cowardly. His cowardice isn’t totally unwarranted and results in a grenade getting thrown at him while at dinner with Linda. Instead of trying to protect his date or get rid of the grenade, Bruce instead flees the scene leaving a live grenade in a full restaurant.

Linda thinks quickly however and throws herself on the grenade to save the other patrons at the restaurant. to protect her identity she is forced to act dead after having a grenade explode under her but she is able to slip away before the police arrive to ID her. Linda uses this encounter to try to scare Bruce straight, or at least make him a bit less cowardly. Linda, having not actually died, dresses as a ghost and pays the former gang member a visit. While Supergirl does her best to scare Bruce, the pair are met by another ghost (at least he seems like a ghost) who startles Supergirl and kills Bruce Ryan.

Back at work the next day, Linda is taken away by the Syndicate and brought right to Mr. Big himself, the leader of the Frisco Syndicate. Here she finds out that the Syndicate has been using teleportation technology to get rid of any witnesses and also how a supposed ghost broke in and shot Bruce Ryan earlier. Now with all the facts, Supergirl comes back down to earth, trashes the teleporter and gets the syndicate tied up for the appropriate authorities.

The story isn’t quite over yet however, we get 1 more page of Linda back at KSF-TV where she tells the team she’s quitting and blames the death of Bruce Ryan for her abrupt departure. Although us readers know it’s actually because of her brand new “Supergirl” title starting up that she’s leaving. That’s right, after nearly 4 years as the star feature of Adventure Comics, Supergirl is now getting her own brand new comic magazine! As such we also have to say goodbye to some of the frequent supporting cast members including my favorite, Nasty Luthor.

Unfortunately Nasty doesn’t get a whole lot to do here as she does in previous apperances. She is however still antagonistic to her co-worker Linda Danvers as they are both shooting for the same promotion at KSF-TV. It is also stated by Linda that she thinks Nasty let slip to the Frisco Syndicate about Bruce Ryan being a rat and therefore causing the death of Bruce. It’s hard to say if Nasty actually did such a thing or if Linda just lashed out at her in anger. I wouldn’t put it past Nasty to pull a stunt like this just to beat out Linda, but there isn’t much in the story itself to support it. This is also tragically the final issue where Nasty shows up and she doesn’t even get a proper send off in my opinion.

While none of the letters or the ads in this issue really caught my attention, there was a backup story here titled “The Invasion”. This is a brief 6-page sci-fi story following an undefeated crew of alien invaders on another mission to invade and conquer a planet called “Earth”. While the first 5 pages are all building up this crew as a major threat to our planet, there is a very well executed twist at the end where we find out that the invaders are actually quite small and are taken out by an average Joe watering his lawn. He then spots the invader’s spaceship, but due to its small size he guesses it’s a toy and discards it which of course eliminates this terrible threat before it can even be known.

The creative team on this book, Steve Skeates, Tony De Zuniga, and Bob Oksner all did brilliantly and led to an engaging story, although as Supergirl’s final adventure in Adventure Comics it felt rather underwhelming. Aside from the final page, this story could’ve easily been any other issue of the series and I would’ve much rather had Nasty Luthor play a larger role in the story to really secure her as a rival to Linda. All in all, a perfectly serviceable Supergirl story with plenty of good Supergirl and Linda Danvers moments. Join me next month for another random look at a single issue from my personal Supergirl comic collection.