Our recent discussions of Supergirl have made me want to re-read these. i'm not as good at this sort of thing as Jeff is, but I'll try my best.
We start with Volume One:
The cover art isn't bad, but I have to say that Miller isn't who i would pick to draw an Adventures of the Silver Age Supergirl book. (I mean because I don't think that his art style suits the character, not for any other reasons that you might not want to hire him.)
We begin with a foreword by Diana Schutz. I'd never heard of her, but she seems to have been an editor for Dark Horse. She talks about how she loved Supergirl when she was little, at a time when there were few good role models for little girls in superhero comics. She also mentions meeting artist Jim Mooney, and claims that she was one of the driving forces behind getting DC to publish Supergirl Archives (which would explain why she was asked to write the foreword, i suppose), and that she persuaded Miller to do the cover art. If so, good for her, I guess.
Next: Supergirl β
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Action Comics #258: (November 1959) “Supergirl’s Farewell to Earth!!”
Writing by Otto Binder
Art by Jim Mooney
1) Supergirl reveals her identity to Krypto, but Superman chastises her for breaking her promise to keep herself secret and sentences her to spend a year in exile on an asteroid in space. This is ridiculously harsh, of course, and might well spell the end of her “Linda Lee” ID if It was carried through. She sets up a home for herself and even manages to save people on Earth remotely.
2) After a week, Superman sends her a note explaining that she should go back to Earth for a day because a cloud of Kryptonite dust will be passing through the asteroids. As Linda, she returns to the orphanage, claiming to have been lost in Dismal Swamp for a week. A group of reporters quizzes her, and one asks why she isn’t starving after a week without food. Again, she does the whole “I could have taken a lunch with me” thing instead of just saying “I had some food with me” or I knew what plants were safe to eat” or some such.
3) One reporter, Clark Kent, doubts her story, and when they’re alone starts pressing her that her story’s a lie. In an attempt to save her secret ID, Linda tires to wreck his glasses using her X-Ray vision, but instead works out that he is Superman.
4) He reveals that he didn’t really care about her telling Krypto, but that it was actually all part of a test to see how well she could protect her secret ID under stress, preparatory to him telling her his secret ID, but she surprised him by figuring it out herself.
Overall: The more that I see of Superman’s training methods, the better the “He should have sent her to Kandor” idea sounds to me.
Next: “Bugga oog dookil yuk!”
As much as I disliked "The Three Magic Wishes" I liked “Supergirl’s Farewell to Earth!!” It's so bad it's good.
As the story opens, a gust of wind blows daown a dead tree, threatening two children picking flowers. Supergirl is very "thinky" during this urgent emergency: "I have to change because only my super-costume can take the punishment when I go into super-action! My ordinary clothing would get torn!" CRASH! "Whoops! Tool late."
"Someday, [Superman] will also tell me his secret identity! I don't know it yet!"
"Trust those you trust" (a lesson I learned from a comic book) is a lesson Superman would do well to learn himself.
For revealing her secret identity to Krypto (Krypto! A dog.) Superman sentences Supergirl to solitary confinement in space for year, a punishment both cruel and unusual (not to mention excessive).
"I'll break off several of [these giant icicles] and hurl them to Earth like super-spears! My super-aim will send them down over the burning forest!"
She didn't mention taking Earth's rotation into account; it's agood thing North America wasn't on the far side of the asteroid by the time the giant icicles arrived.
"The first icicle created a vacuum when it reached Earth's atmosphere and disintigrated! That allowed the others to reach the forest!"
Say what now?
Superman sealed Supergirl in an airtight capsule specifically so Krypto wouldn't be able to track her, then he sends Krypto to deliver a message.
"Oh, dear! I... uh... forgot my long absence would cause a hunt for me! How will I show up without rousing suspicion?"
That's not on you; that's on Superman.
"Again, she does the whole 'I could have taken a lunch with me' thing instead of just saying 'I had some food with me' or 'I knew what plants were safe to eat' or some such."
She sounds like Scott Free when he explains Mister Miracles tricks: "It just isn't cricket for Mister Miracle to reveal his amazing secrets! However, we could do some supposing! Now, you take that trunk in which Mister Miracle was bound--falling to certain death--fifty floors below! It was indeed a time to panic! But was Mister Miracle that type? Suppose he wasn't! Suppose he cooly inched his bound hands to his belt--and opened one of its crcular buttons. Now, imagine a tiny, powerful, compact utility instrument called a 'multi-cube'! Suppose one of its components was a miniature laser beam. Why, even in mid-fall, Mister Miracle could have lanced his way out of a fine split in that trunk! Suppose the multi-cibe could also eject a long steel cable to imbed itself where it could break our hero's fall and reel him in so fast he would hardly be noticed!"
Except everything Scott Free says in the truth. Someone needs to explain to Supergirl that a lie of omission is still a lie. He story fails the truth test on the "whole truth" as well as the "nothing but the truth" criteria.
"Aha! No marks! Only one other person could go without food, escape wild animals, and ignore mostiquito bites... Superman! Therfore, I suspect you might be..."
...Superman's transgender secret identity?
"The more that I see of Superman’s training methods, the better the 'He should have sent her to Kandor' idea sounds to me."
Me, too. I had forgotten what an @$$hole he is in these stories. Superman has proven himself unfit to be a parent. There's no way I would have put up with his $#!t when I was 14, especially if I had had superpowers. (Then again, my parents weren't @$$holes.) Also, his excuse that he had planned to use this opportunity to tell her his secret identity all along ("Uh... yes, Supergirl! Only you... er... found it out by yourself! Is my face red!") doesn't ring true, and Supergirl is just naive enough to accept it at face value.
Superman sentences Supergirl to solitary confinement in space for year, a punishment both cruel and unusual (not to mention excessive).
To clarify, I don't think that Superman ever intended that Supergirlshould actually spend a year in exile. It was just part of his admittedly somewhat convoluted plan to test her ability to protect her secret identity.
I suspect that Mort came up with the cover to sell copies and the story had to be (difficultly) written to include that scene.
Superman has proven himself unfit to be a parent.
I'm not prepared to agree in full with you there, Jeff. But I'll stipulate to it because of the contradiction it raises in some arguments.
I'm talking about the camp that insists Superman should not have placed Kara in an orphanage or remanded her to Kandor or turned her over to anyone else, but that he should have taken her in, himself. That, it's insisted, would've been best.
Even though he's an unfit parent?
"I don't think that Superman ever intended that Supergirl should actually spend a year in exile."
No, but as far as she knew, he did.
Commander: "Even though he's an unfit parent?"
Bob: "The more that I see of Superman’s training methods, the better the 'He should have sent her to Kandor' idea sounds to me."
Jeff: "Me, too."
ADDENDUM FROM THE FAR FUTURE OF 2025
Before we get to the main event, a couple of thoughts:
1) Supergirl bores into a tree to deflect it from some children. I don't think her training has gone so well, since she could have just blown the tree away from the kids. After all, it was wind that blew it toward them, and they attributed Supergirl's save to wind anyway.
2) Once again, Supergirl avoids directly lying by allowing people to make assumptions ("Hmm ... muddy shoes, eh? You must have been lost way over in Dismal Swamp!") or by suggesting alternative scenarios ("I could have taken a lunch"). As I've said before, Superman uses these sorts of dodges in his own books to avoid breaking his "I never lie" pledge. It doesn't look good on either of them, because as Jeff says, it's still a lie of omission. But that's what served as truth in Mort's books.
As to the main point, of Superman exiling Supergirl for a year for revealing her existence to a dog (yeah, he wasn't going to follow through, but Supergirl thought it was for real) ... hoo-boy. Hard to defend! I can't figure out any in-story explanation. And what did he think her reaction was going to be when he said, "Just kidding! It was a just a test!" She'd go crazier than that horse she blew.
I'm going to have to go with Richard's out-story reason:
I suspect that Mort came up with the cover to sell copies and the story had to be (difficultly) written to include that scene.
Thank you, Richard. And now I'm never going to think about it again.
Action Comics #259: (December 1959) “The Cave-Girl of Steel!”
Writing by Otto Binder
Art by Jim Mooney
1) Supergirl surreptitiously saves a baby from suffocating in a plastic bag. This feels like a PSA warning kids not to play with plastic bags, which is fine.
2) She observes Superman “getting rid” of a killer shark by tossing it out to sea, apparently hoping it won’t just swim back to shore.
3) She decides to travel back in time to have some “thrills.” I guess Superman never warned her about disturbing the “Web of Time.” She goes back to “caveman times,” and to her credit, notes that it’s odd to see cavemen and dinosaurs together. Hey, it’s comic book “caveman times.”
4) She saves a baby from a pterodactyl, tames a brontosaurus, and saves a tribe from a fire-breathing sea serpent (!) which is threatening them. She does this by teaching the tribe to make a big bonfire to scare it off. Should a creature capable of breathing fire be frightened by fire? You’d think that its head, throat, lungs, and mouth at least would be fire-proof.
5) She returns to 1959 and the next day is taken on a museum tour, where, by an astonishing coincidence, there is a piece of cave art depicting her fighting the sea serpent on exhibit. She worries that this will somehow give her away, but the museum guide says, “Bah! The superstitious Stone Age people only imagined such a flying goddess aided them!”, which makes it alright, I guess. However, I’m not sure that open contempt for primitive people is a good attitude for a museum guide to have.
Overall: A silly but amusing story.
Next: Mighty Maid!
"The fossil hunters claim that we never met. According to them, Man missed any renezvous with the Age of Dinosaurs by several geologic eras. And truthfully, at this point in time, there is no evedence that Man--or something like him--ever co-existed with the greatest living land animals that every trod the Earth."
So begins Jack Kirby's essay justifying the use of Moon Boy in his own Devil Dinosaur series. At least Otto Binder paid lip service to that fact: "By some freak of nature, cavemen and dinosaurs exist together inthis valley." Maybe this is DC's version of Turok "Lost Land". I prefer to think of this as the Time Trapper's "pocket universe" and account for this anomaly (not to mention the fire-breathing sea serpent) due to his machinations.
"It won't matter if these primitive cave-folk see me in action! It's only the people of the 20th century who mustn't know I exist!"
Supergirl better hope Superman never sees that prehistoric stone tablet with her image on it. He exiled her to outer space (or pretended to) just for revealing her existence to a dog. Other than that, you made every observation I was gong to. I liked this story more than "The Three Magic Wishes" but not as much as "Supergirl's Farewell to Earth".
ADDENDUM FROM THE FAR FUTURE OF 2025
More animal cruelty:
Supergirl says, "This type of dinosaur is a good swimmer!" She's actually talking about Apatosaurus, and amazingly, it is currently believed that they were good swimmers. Somehow I doubt that was the prevailing opinion in 1959, and it's just more animal cruelty. But it holds up now, when a lot of Silver Age Supergirl doesn't!
To her credit, notes that it’s odd to see cavemen and dinosaurs together.
Yes, that was refreshing to see. Actually, Silver Age DC could be quite educational. I hardly ever saw misspellings or grammatical errors in Silver Age DC, which is probably one reason I grew up being good at those things. And, of course, there were "Flash Facts" and all the science bits from Adam Strange and Metal Men. Once in elementary school a teacher asked rhetorically, "Does anyone know the speed of light?" and I blurted out "186,000 miles per second!" She looked at me like I'd grown a second head. And when she asked me where I learned it, I said "Flash comics" which apparently made her instantly dismissive. Oh, well. But Marvel Comics was good at grammar and spelling, too. I see more mistakes in today's comics than I ever did in the Silver Age.
I prefer to think of this as the Time Trapper's "pocket universe" and account for this anomaly (not to mention the fire-breathing sea serpent) due to his machinations.
Ooh, that's a good idea. Wait -- which Time Trapper? I get so confused!
Supergirl better hope Superman never sees that prehistoric stone tablet with her image on it.
On the never-before-seen Page 8 of this story, Supergirl destroys the tablet, and Super-hypnotizes the museum guide and all the visitors into forgetting about it. Then she flew around the world at super-speed and destroyed every book that had a photo of it, including every caveman entry in every Encyclopedia Britannica in existence. What happened to all those books remains was a great mystery, until Superman said, "Isn't it possible a robot from the future could do something like this?" and let people draw their own conclusions.
I’m not sure that open contempt for primitive people is a good attitude for a museum guide to have.
Agreed. It's a good thing he lost his job on Page 8, when the museum director asked why he was wandering around in a daze instead of doing his tour.
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