Tag: Supergirl Surprise

Since the Supergirl movie is coming out at the end of this month, I knew I wanted to cover an issue of Woman of Tomorrow for this month’s Supergirl Surprise. For those unaware, Supergirl Surprise is a monthly look at a random Supergirl comic from my collection. Normally all my Supergirl comics are fair game but because I wanted to confirm a WoT issue this month, I instead picked a random issue exclusively from that series. The randomizer landed on Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow chapter 5 “The Lake, the Trees, and the Monster” written by Tom King, art by Bilquis Evely, colors by Mat Lopes, and letters by Clayton Cowles. For the most part the issue takes place on Barenton, a planet with a green sun which causes Supergirl to be powerless. Also there’s dinosaurs. Shenanigans ensue.

Supergirl and Ruthye do not start on Barenton, actually they start hot on the heels of Krem of the Yellow Hills who they’ve been chasing for the past few issues. Instead of finally catching the fiend that murdered Ruthye’s father and poisoning Supergirl’s dog, Krem instead hits the heroines with a Mordru Globe which launches them across the galaxy via magic and whatnot. The Mordru Globe exposition is a good way to set the girls back after catching up to Krem (which lets the story last a few more issues) as well as helping Krem seem even more awful since to use the Mordru Globe, Krem must’ve purposefully slain thousands of innocents.

After being subjected to the globe, the pair find themselves on a wastland of a world and Supergirl is immediately showing that her powers are dwindling before Supergirl looks up and reveals to Ruthye (and the reader) that the sun is green. As we all know, the color of the sun affects Kryptonian’s powers with yellow suns giving them spectacular powers, red suns making them powerless and human, and green suns weakening them. This specific planet, Barenton, was specifically made to weaken Superman and while I’ve always just taken that at face value, I figure now is as good a time as any to actually look into this planet and see if this is a specific reference to an earlier comic.

Turns out Barenton first appeared in a story titled “Superman Under the Green Sun!” from Superman #155. While this story doesn’t specifically name the planet as Barenton, it is generally sited as the green sun planet in reference to this issue of Woman of Tomorrow because of the planet also having a green sun. I will counter that however because, after reading, the facts don’t seem to line up. One of the main things that people seem to draw from this book, often from fans that don’t love Supergirl’s depiction in this story, is the “Superman’s a Bitch” line and that of course comes from this issue. As told here by Kara to Ruthye, when Superman was stranded on this planet with a green sun he only lasted for 45 minutes before being saved by the Justice League. These facts don’t line up with how Superman #155 plays out. Superman was there for days suffering under the green rays of the sun and was blind for most of it but still worked hard to free the planet from slavery which makes Supergirl sleeping for 10 hours a bit less impressive. With this new knowledge, this reference to Superman here feels like it’s just an invented scenario to put Superman down.

In general I do think I prefer the Woman of Tomorrow version of a green sun planet mostly because of the antagonistic threat that’s presented here. Dinosaurs. The Superman story just has him facing off against a benevolent dictator, but the dinosaurs make a much more exciting and thrilling feat for Supergirl and Ruthye to overcome without super powers.

Dinosaurs are just cool in anything, that is an indisputable fact. I played through the original Tomb Raider game a few years ago (as part of the remastered trilogy collection I think) and at one point you’re in some sort of abandoned subterranean city when suddenly you’re assaulted by a velociraptor and of course being a badass babe with 2 pistols there is nothing else to do but shoot down a previously extinct animal. It was just a crazy sequence to experience blind. This issue of Woman of Tomorrow is equally as exciting in regards to dinosaur killing with Ruthye successfully fends off the beasts to protect the otherwise helpless girl of steel and even Supergirl in her weakened state is able to get the hoard of not quite birds away from her and her compatriot.

Eventually the green sun sets, and Supergirl gets her powers back and the pair are back on their way to track down the menace of Krem. I’ve gone into my overall thoughts of the story in a dedicated post to Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow but this issue specifically seems like a lower point in the mini-series that only gets bonus points for having dinosaurs, and the absolutely exquisite Bilquis Evely art. I guess my main issue with this specific story is that there wasn’t much interaction between the 2 leads since Supergirl is rather unconscious for the majority of these 24 pages.

The story is published without any ad breaks which is nice, and after that there’s a 5 page preview of the new (at the time) Batgirls comic which was a lot of fun. The rest of the ad space is filled with advertisements for some of the DC television shows at the time like Doom Patrol, Legend’s of Tomorrow and Batwoman. There’s also an interview with Kelly Sue DeConnick and Phil Jimenez on the last page about Wonder Woman Historia which really got me interested in the book, especially DeConnick saying it’s a “history book for a young Amazon where she learns the history of her people, from the perspective of her people.” As always this month’s entry has been a fun experience and the episodic nature of the Woman of Tomorrow series definitely helps when reading in isolation.

“Supergirl In Concert!”, as it says on the cover, is not Supergirl singing in a stadium full of adoring fans but instead fighting a handful of Female Furies and a mysterious Twilight person. She is in a stadium though and there are a lot of fans there just not necessarily for her and the concert doesn’t raise the roof so muh as bring it down.

Written by Peter David, with art by Leonard Kirk, inking from Robin Riggs, letters from Patricia Prentice, colors by Gene D’Angelo, and separation by Digital Chameleon. While the cover does read “Supergirl in Concert” the story is titled “Hell Hath No Furies” on the title page. We get pretty immediately into the action where we see a large crowd of Space Girls fans quickly making their way to the exits to get away from the new stars of the show; Supergirl, Twilight, and 5 Female Furies (Artemiz, Stompa, Bernadeth, Mad Harriet, and Lashina specifically). It seems like Supergirl is trying to bring Twilight down for something she did in North Carolina, Twilight trying to track down someone named Jane, and the Furies just there to further stir up trouble.

It’s issues like this that really make Supergirl Surprise interesting because I absolutely remember that Twilight is someone important and plays a fairly large role in the Supergirl series by Peter David as a whole, but when just reading issue #28 I cannot remember what her deal is at all. The Furies on the other hand haven’t forgotten who Twilight is, and snatch her up and boom-tube back to Apokolips with her leaving Supergirl left in the rubble of the Space Girls concert.

A lot of this comic is taken up with scenes of Supergirl fighting the Female Furies and it definitely makes for some great action sequences. Supergirl gets to show off a wide array of her powers and she does a great job of outsmarting her foes too. She takes Stompa out by breaking her ankles, and uses Lashina’s whips (ribbons?) to make her bring lights down on top of her all while delivering a pun “what could be more angelic than helping those who are evil see the light?”. She doesn’t face off directly with Bernadeth, Mad Harriet, or Artemiz here but taking out 2 of Darkseid’s elite by yourself is a pretty impressive feat on it’s own.

I mentioned earlier that Supergirl was left behind while the rest of her dance partners boom tubed away to Apokolips, she didn’t stay put for long though. Somewhere around this time, Supergirl started developing new powers tied to her being a fallen angel (that’s too much to explain here just take my word for it). Powers like fire wings and flame vision and a teleportation power called “Shunting”. She uses this Shunt power to follow the Furies to Apokolips however she is not prepared for the agony that would come with Shunting into such a hellish realm. A really interesting side effect that is presented here is that when not using a boom tube to access Apokolips, earthlings show up much smaller than they normally would. I’m sure I’ll talk about this more whenever Supergirl Surprise lands on Issue 29, but I really like the idea of Apokolips and all it’s residents existing on a larger scale than our main heroes and the size discrepancy is adjusted via boom tube. I’m not sure if this has ever been explored past this story, but it really puts the 4th world characters on a higher level to me.

Ads time! The big one I noticed was the ad for the infamous Superman 64 game. This ad does show that the game also has Playstation and Gameboy ports and I wasn’t familiar with those. Turns out there is a reason for that, only the Nintendo 64 version came out. I’ve never played the game but I’ll probably check it out at some point in my life. There is also a Powerpuff Girls ad, and also an ad for Subway which seemed to have DC toys. The Subway toys are interesting, you get keychains of Superman, Batman, Flash, and Wonder Woman and the 3 boy characters are all just in full form but Wonder Woman is in her invisible jet which feels like a weird choice and makes her keychain stand out. I hope you had a fun time checking out this action packed issue of Supergirl with me, and I look forward to seeing you come back for the next entry of Supergirl Surprise. For the rest of the Supergirl Surprise entries check them out here: https://blogofsupergirl.com/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.