Supergirl Archives, Volumes One and Two (SPOILERS)

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- Richard Willis > Captain Comics January 27, 2025 at 5:18pm
  
  Captain Comics said:
  
  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.
  
  When one of my teachers told us that aluminum foil would block or interfere with radio waves, I knew better than to say that I had learned that from one of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck comics. Another teacher was pointing out some typically misspelled words. He said that the word “lightning” had an “e” in it. Since the word being discussed was the weather event, I knew he was wrong. I bit my tongue and let another student tell him he was misspelling in a spelling lesson.
  
  I’m not sure that open contempt for primitive people is a good attitude for a museum guide to have.
  
  Agreed.
  
  Today, I often see stories about scientists being surprised to find unexpectedly advanced artifacts among the remains of Neanderthal dwellings. It is increasingly apparent that they weren’t stupid. We now know that they are part of many/most people’s DNA. Also, for a century dinosaurs were thought to be just oversized lizards who were cold-blooded, stupid and dragged their tales. Now we know that many were warm-blooded and their tales weren’t all dragging. The opinion that all animals (including dinos) were as stupid as goldfish except that some could do tricks has been discredited. A range of intelligence is present in all animals and, like people, some of the same species are more of less intelligent than others.
- Commander Benson > Richard Willis January 27, 2025 at 11:04pm
  
  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.
  
  When one of my teachers told us that aluminum foil would block or interfere with radio waves, I knew better than to say that I had learned that from one of Carl Barks’ Donald Duck comics. Another teacher was pointing out some typically misspelled words. He said that the word “lightning” had an “e” in it. Since the word being discussed was the weather event, I knew he was wrong. I bit my tongue and let another student tell him he was misspelling in a spelling lesson.
  
  I expect most of us who read DC comics in the Silver Age have similar tales to relate. In my case, I remember two occasions from elementary school.
  
  Once was when the teacher asked if anyone could say what was the fastest animal on land. My hand shot up. "The cheetah!" I blurted, having remembered reading that in one of the Flash Facts pieces. She was impressed, probably because I didn't tell her where I had learnt it.
  
  The other time was when the teacher stressed that the sun always rose in the east and set in the west. Again, my hand shot up. "Not everywhere!" I said.
  
  "Oh, really?" she replied. Even as a kid I knew the look she was giving me, the look that conveyed she was about to tell me how wrong I was. "Where doesn't it?" she challenged.
  
  I remembered what I had read in "Challenge of the Weapons Master", the second Justice League story, from The Brave and the Bold # 29, so well that I almost quoted it verbatim. "The Isthmus of Panima!" I said. "The isthmus twists and turns in such a manner that its eastern tip is on the Pacific Ocean, while its western tip is on the Atlantic Ocean. So there the sun rises in the west and sets in the east."
  
  I felt like a genius---until my teacher told me I was wrong and that the sun always rose in the east and set in the west everywhere in the world. I was stung enough to protest that I wasn't wrong, but she shut me off.
  
  I felt a little better, though, when I came back to the classroom after lunch and caught my teacher looking up Panama in the "P" volume of the encyclopædia. I was smart enough to keep my mouth shut that time. I knew there was no winning an argument with adults.
- Jeff of Earth-J > Commander Benson January 28, 2025 at 6:35am
  
  I never did quite get what Gardner Fox was getting at with that one...?
- Luis Olavo de Moura Dantas > Commander Benson January 28, 2025 at 8:51am
  
  I can only assume there was a misunderstanding at some point. Or, most likely, Gardner Fox outsmarted himself.
  
  The Ishtmus of Panama does have places were the Atlantic Ocean is to the west of the Pacific Ocean, but that doesn't change sun behavior, of course, nor understandings of East and West.
  
  Somehow BB #29 has an implied logical step of equating Atlantic with "East" and Pacific with "West". But that is arbitrary and not even implied on what Weapons Master actually says, nor even in what the JLA members say.
The Baron July 19, 2023 at 7:01am

^{Action Comics #260}^:^{(January 1960) “Mighty Maid!”}

^{Writing by Otto Binder}

^{Art by Al Plastino}

^{1)Superman races to save Lois from a tornado, but instead she is saved by Mighty Maid, a heroine who purports to be from another dimension. Much to Lois’ annoyance, Mighty Maid starts throwing herself at Superman, the hussy! Perry sees this potential romance solely in terms of potential circulation.}

^{2)Supes and Mighty Maid get hot and heavy, even when there’s no one else around. (More on this later.) They kiss over Milwaukee.}

^{3)Perry seems to be oblivious to Lois’ feelings. Is it a secret that she’s hot for Superman?}

^{4)Supes invites Lois along when he proposes to Mighty Maid. He then announces that he will leave Earth with her, donating his Superman robots to the FBI, which is an interesting idea.}

^{5)Lois tries to use an electromagnet to prove that Mighty Maid is a robot. Good thing there happened to be one handy.}

^{6)We then learn that “Mighty Maid” was Supergirl in disguise, which makes the scenes earlier where the two of them were acting all lovey-dovey seem creepy, since she is his underage cousin and all.}

^{7)Supes begins to explain the reason for the hoax. “It all began the day I started hearing angry voices!” Hey, that’s how it began for me, too!}

^{8)Supes says he discovered aliens plotting to destroy Earth as a way of getting at him, so he faked leaving Earth, so they’d leave us alone. It turns out that the Kryptonians once opened fire on some of the aliens’ ships without reason. It turns out that they thought the aliens were invaders, but they don’t seem to have checked very closely. Supes sends the aliens home in suspended animation with a note explaining the truth.}

^{9)Later, Supes saves Lois as she’s falling off a building she was inspecting (Is she just throwing herself off things to get his attention?) and he tells her that he ended up not marrying Mighty Maid because she was underage.}

^Overall^:^{This story had some interesting elements, but the whole thing of him using his underage cousin for this is kind of weird.}

^{Next: Baby Supergirl!}

^{--------------------------------------------------------------------------}

^{Action Comics #260}^:^{(January 1960) (continued) “The Girl Superbaby!”}

^{Writing by Otto Binder}

^{Art by Jim Mooney}

^{1)One day when the TV is broken, Linda uses her telescopic vision to spy on people around the world. She spots an islander drowning, so she flies to surreptitiously save him. It turns out to be the Fountain of Youth and she is reduced to toddlerhood. (A note helpfully explains that her costume is stretchable, so it always fits her even if she changes size.) Her mind is “toddlerized”, too, as evidenced her starting to use the “Me fly” speech patterns that I don’t recall ever hearing an actual toddler use.}

^{2)She stumbles across a pair of jewel robbers and fouls up their plans, convincing them that an invisible Indian spirit that is punishing them. She also inadvertently saves Superman from his daily Kryptonite meteor by tossing a lead ball that miraculously lands on top of the K and melts over it. (He shows a remarkable lack or curiosity about this, by the way, dismissing it as “super-luck”.)}

^{3)She accidentally starts a fire, and – in the most improbable part of the story – inadvertently causes the smoke to spell out “SOS”, attracting some forest rangers who arrest the crooks.}

^{4)Supergirl returns to her normal age (so I guess it was a Fountain of Temporary Youth) and returns to the orphanage (fortunately, no one missed her during all this), where Plot Convenience Radio reports on the capture of the robbers. We end with Linda winking at…us, I guess.}

^Overall^:^{An amusing, if implausible, little piece of fluff.}

^{Next: “Oh, they call him the Streak!”}
Jeff of Earth-J July 19, 2023 at 8:20am

"Mighty Maid" is not included in the Supergirl Omnibus and won't come up in my "Silver Age Superman" discussion for a couple of days yet, so I'll revisit your post about it at that time. The Supergirl Omnibus does, however, include "The Girl Superbaby."

"They say funny things happened when that oil pipeline was being built! It was never finished!"

Chekov's pipeline.

"Yipes! Our shaving lather... right in our faces-- glurp!"

"Unwittingly, the Babe of Steel has used super-squeezing" to create giant bubbles, covering her escape from the trunk of the crooks' car. The crooks are disguised as hobos to explain why they're carrying shaving cream with them in the first place, but not why they kept it in the trunk.

"Elsewhere, Superman lies helpless!"

This "plot development" came out of nowhere. The plot is credited to Otto Binder but it sounds as if it were written by Snoopy: "The maid screamed. A door slammed. Suddenly, a pirate ship appeared on the horizon! As he touched her hand, she sigged..."

"It's too big for my x-ray vision to melt... and I'm too weak to blow it away with my super-breath!"

That has become a common refrain. I'll bet DC regrets those previous escapes, because now they have to account for why Superman doesn't use them to escape "the daily Kryptonite meteor" (as Bob puts it) every frikkin' time!

"Great Scott! That chunk of lead came flying from nowhere! Air friction made it melt! It's dripping and covering the Kryptonite, stopping the deadly radiations!"

What are the odds? Superman is not only "elsewhere" but, judging from the catus and the animal ribcage, he's somewhere in the American Southwest.

"More black magic by the Indian spirit!"

"Now behind bars, the two jewel thieves insist that a mischievous Indian spirit caused their capture."

Batman was right: criminals really are a "superstitious and cowardly lot."

And I guess this "temporary" fountain of youth is magic...? The story doesn't specify, but how else could it have affected Supergirl?
Richard Willis July 19, 2023 at 2:52pm

The Baron said:

Action Comics #259: (December 1959)

“The Cave-Girl of Steel!”

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.

A kid reading and understanding this probably wouldn’t be in danger of suffocating. But maybe if they see a younger child about to play with one, they will take it away.

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.

That was my reaction, too. A sea-serpent version of Godzilla?

Jeff of Earth-J said:

"The fossil hunters claim that we never met. According to them, Man missed ant 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."

That would have been more food for the meat-eaters. Very tiny mammals were coming up (and ducking dinosaurs) during the latter ages of dinos. All dinos weren’t coexisting at the same time.

Supergirl better hope Superman never sees that prehistoric stone tablet with her image on it.

Her image actually looked like her? That’s a heckuva cave painting! And it happened to be removed (which I don’t think is allowed) and wind up in the museum closest to her.
Richard Willis July 19, 2023 at 3:21pm

^{The Baron said:}

^{Action Comics #260}^{: (January 1960)}

^{“Mighty Maid!”}

^{We then learn that “Mighty Maid” was Supergirl in disguise, which makes the scenes earlier where the two of them were acting all lovey-dovey seem creepy, since she is his underage cousin and all.}

^{What were they thinking?}

^{Supes begins to explain the reason for the hoax. “It all began the day I started hearing angry voices!” Hey, that’s how it began for me, too!}

^{Superman is schizophrenic? That’s a little scary.}

^{Later, Supes saves Lois as she’s falling off a building she was inspecting (Is she just throwing herself off things to get his attention?)}

^{She sure falls down a lot for someone in her 30s.}

^{and he tells her that he ended up not marrying Mighty Maid because she was underage.}

^{What did Lois think of this?}

^{Action Comics #260}^{: (January 1960) (continued)}

^{“The Girl Superbaby!”}

^{One day when the TV is broken, Linda uses her telescopic vision to spy on people around the world.}

^{That’s what I do when the TV is broken.}

^{She stumbles across a pair of jewel robbers and fouls up their plans, convincing them that an invisible Indian spirit that is punishing them.}

^{She is a toddler with a toddler’s mind, but understands jewel theft?}
The Baron July 19, 2023 at 3:43pm

She is a toddler with a toddler’s mind, but understands jewel theft?

No, she did it all inadvertently, by the power of Comic Book Coincidence.
Jeff of Earth-J July 19, 2023 at 4:10pm

"Her image actually looked like her? That’s a heckuva cave painting!"

It's more impressive than you think: the image was actually chisled!

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