Not "
our"
Supergirl, of course...
this Super-Girl:
About 9 months before
Kara Zor-El debuted,
Superman #23 (1958) featured the arrival of a very similar yet different
Girl Of Steel.
It's not hard to imagine that, given the similarities in costume and appearance, that this Super-Girl went over pretty well with readers, and inspired DC to create a permanent,albeit hyphen-less, version.
We begin with the boilerplate "
oh, my life is too dangerous for me to ever take up with a mere mortal" spiel from
Kal-El.
Well,
Jimmy gets his chance, when he and Superman rescue a trapped archaeologist.
Quite a racket you have going there,
Superman: "
I'll rescue you if you give a priceless artifact to my pal as a 'souvenir.'"
And it really
is priceless, because...
Well, this is the
Silver Age DC Universe, so of course the legend is true!!
Thus:
Then the titans meet:
Look, I know it's sniggery and low-hanging fruit, but that panel just said that
Jimmy wished a beautiful young woman into being by rubbing his magic totem last night.
Wertham was right!!
Kal-El continues to be quite shy about his heterosexuality...
And it turns out that every time Super-Girl tries to help out, it
backfires!
D'oh!
And...
D'oh!!
And...
D'oh!!
And then poor naive Super-Girl unveils
Clark Kent's secret identity!
To see how Kal-El got out of this one,
check out how he emotionally manipulates Lois!
Geez, no wonder he made Kara hide herself when she got to Earth--female super-heroes are nothing but trouble!!
Until, of course, Superman
needs her, when some crooks throw some kryptonite at him while he's trying to save a train.
But...
"
Must...use...all my remaining strength!"
Thus endeth the brief life of Super-Girl. We'll get a new one soon, but Superman will still treat her like crap...
There's a lot of talk and writing about how Kryptonite is so necessary to the Superman mythos because otherwise he's so ridiculously powerful that he's never in any peril. I submit that in the Silver Age the peril was far more often involving the loss of his secret identity, with so many plots based on putting Superman in nearly impossible situations where it seemed like his identity just had to be exposed (only for contrived plot twists and the use of his already admitted near limitless powers to preserve it in the end).
ReplyDeleteUm... Jimmy sure does seem to like rubbing that totem.
ReplyDeleteThis was a constant in the Silver Age. A character - Lois, Jimmy, Perry, etc - gets super powers and makes mistakes, thus demonstrating that only Superman is worthy of being super. Of course, the characters who gain super powers have about 10 minutes to learn how to use them, while Clark had, at a minimum, 10 years - but let's not acknowledge that.
ReplyDelete