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Suddenly, a comet passes by and he is magically transformed back into a man. That happens, remember, in the vicinity of a comet because... I don't remember, because his name is Comet?
It was a feature/bug in Circe’s original magic spell.
Neither one, fellows.
As you'll recall, in "The Secret Identity of Super-Horse", from Action Comics # 301 (Jun., 1963), Supergirl and Comet travelled to the sorcerors' world of Zerox to aid its ruler, Prince Endor. Super-Horse enabled Endor to satisfy the annual ritual of riding a flying steed, thus preserving the prince's status as monarch.
In gratitude, Endor used his magicks to aid Comet in obtaining his fondest wish. While the prince's mystic power wasn't powerful enough to turn Super-Horse permanently into a human, he was able to affect Comet with a spell that turned him into a man whenever the world he was on came under the influence of a passing comet. Super-Horse would remain a man as long as the comet was in the planet's vicinity.
Hope this helps.
Oops! Without reading the actual story, which I don't have, and going by memory of Jeff's posts, I mixed up the two.
I was trying to make a joke, but I don't think I was wrong.
So, what happened? Did Superhorse’s cape turn into Biron’s spacesuit? If not, he would have died like any other naked man in space.
No, he felt the change coming on and got to the moon's thin atmosphere before the change was complete.
So the naked guy falls to the moon below without damage, finds and puts on one of these ancient suits (which is still airtight) and is rocketed by the space-drive in it up to save Supergirl.
Now you've got it.
So, does the spacesuit expand as he changes or almost crush him?
Once again, he feels the change coming on and strips naked. (I'm surprised the Code didn't have anything to say about this.) He could always burst out of his clothes like Bruce Banner transforming into the Hulk, but he doesn't.
ACTION COMICS #313 - "Lena Thorul, Jungle Princess!"
"One day, and Linda Lee Danvers, who is secretly Supergirl, visits her friend Lena Thorul," the postman arrives. Lena is still wiating to hear back from the FBI, and her ESP tells her that the letter he is about to deliver concerns her application, while Linda reminds herself that, "Extrasensory perception is one ability even I don't have!" Whlie the FBI continues their background check, they request her to "do a paper on criminology." She is to interview "several notorious convicts, starting with Lex Luthor!" Linda provides the exposition that this could lead to trouble if Lena discovers she's actually Lex's sister.
"Meanwhile, om Metropolis Prison," the FBI is busy bugging his cell while Luthor sets up his "rooftop garden" which the warden has somehow mysteriously agreed he could have. The FBI is aware of Lex and Lena's relationship, but they want to find out if she's secretly working with him. "As the interview begins," Lex informs her that he's "given up [his] career of crime" and is "devotong the rest of [his] life to raising these rare plant mutations." He tells her that they even call him the "Plant Man of Metropolis Prison" now. But he is unable to shield his thoughts and Lena discovers that she andLex are siblings. After a two-panel flashback to her origin, she leaves the prson in a state of distress. "*choke* Me... the sister of theimfamous Luthor! I'm disgraced forever! I'll never be allowed in the FBI now! *sob*... How can I face my friend Supergirl again?"
I think it is important to point out at thios point that her situation has not really changed significantly. The only difference is that now she knows she's Lex L:uthor's sister. All she has to do is keep her mouth shut about it and the status quo remains exactly the same as it was before. "Dazed, Lena leves the prison and wanders through the city" where she steps in front of an oncoming car. Supergirl swoops in to save her, but her "frightening brush with death has caused... guess what? (HINT: It's on of the most common ailments in the SA DCU.] You guessed it: amnesia! Supergirl drops Lena off at home, "but soon afterward, Lena turns up at an airport" and buys "a plane ticket... to anywhere... as far away as that money will take me..."
"I've counted your money, miss!" says the helpful ticket agent. "It'll take you to Turumba, in tropical Africa!" She'll be flying on the same plane as a movie troupe from Superb Productions in Hollywood, but there's a certain circular kind of logic at work here. "Africa," she ponders. "That's the place! No one will know me there! I'll forget! But what is it I must forget?" In other words, she's flying to another continent to "forget" something she no longer remembers in the first place. Upon arrival, she picks up the wrong suitcase and wanders off into the jungle. "Later, she lies down to sleep, but a tropical downpour awakens her." Saoked through, she opens the suitcase only to fins a zebra skin costume meant to be worn in the film. "As the storm ends, Lena heads down a jungle trail, where" she is attacked by a lion. Using her ESP she calms the beast, then makes friends with all the other wild animals in the jungle.
Back in Midvale, Supergirl ahs discovered Lena's absence. Checking with Lex she learns that Lena found out she was related to him.
"In the weeks that follow, native rumours whisper about a mysterious jungle princess, who rules the beasts of her savage domain."
"Urtah! Itay! Itay!" she shouts, which means attack when the elephant herd she is leading comes upon a safari looting the elephant graveyard.
"Yurteh!" she shouts, which means overthrow the canoe of some poachers to her crocodile friends.
"Kabray!" she shouts to a gorilla, which means to rescue a man from quicksand.
when the rescued man return to camp, Lena follows. "Urtah! Itay!" she shouts at two gorillas, ordering them to free a captive leopard. One of the hunters fires his rifle to scare off the gorilas, but a stray shot creases Lena's skull, thereby curing her amnesia. The hunter offers her $1000 "to return to civilization and peform those tricks in Metropolis arean," Tired of jungle life, Lena agrees. "My secret will torment me no matter where I go," she reasons. "But in this costume, with my long hair, no one will remember me as Lena Thorul! I'll be able to escape the stigma of being identified as Luthor's sister!" Again, I'm not sure what "stigma" she's referring to. Only the FBI and Supergirl know of her relationship, and she doesn't even know that. Also, her hair has grown about two inches. Other than that, she looks exactly the same.
"Yagu! Hab!" she shouts, ordering her jungle animals aboard the river boat. "I only use jungle language to encourage them!" she admits to herself, now that her memory has returned. "Actually, I give them my real commands by telepathy!" which is pretty much what I figured. "Weeks later, Lena and her friends arrive at Metropolis airport... Even supergirl is on the scene, alert for possible trouble. Suddenly" an observation deck overloaded with spectators begins to collapse. Before Supergirl can react, a voice rings out from the tarmac shouting, "Turrah! Yalu! Yalu!" and an elephant and a gorilla rush over to support the collapsing balcony.
"Could that jungle princess have given her orders mentally?" supergirl suspects. "Wait! There's something familiar about her! She resembles my friend, Lena Thorul! I'd better check on this!" Sharp as a tack, that Supergirl. "Yes, I'm Lena!" she admits. "But as Les Luthor's sister I can't live a normal life. Friendship, love and marriage are not for me! As Jungle Princess, the circus is my world and the animals my only friends. Again I must ask, WHY? As far as she knows, no one knows that she and Lex are siblings. And even if they did, so what?
Supergirl reports to Luthor in prison, and he requests a favor. He needs "two rare elements for [his] plant experiments... vitagron and energite," which are "found only on a distant planet." Feeling sorry for Lex, supergirl agrees. "After a quick journey through space, Supergirl returns" and assures the warden that "those minerals are harmless... An examination with my microscopic visioon reveals that they won't dissolve metal of concrete, so Luthor can't use them to escape!" Okay, show of hands. Who here believes that?
"That evening, Supergirl attends the Jungle Princess' debut in her Linda Danvers identity... but even in the midst of the performance Lena is haunted by secret fears," namely, she is concerned about what might happen if the public ever learned her secret shame; it is the perfect paranoid delusion. It's throwing off her performance, so Supergirl joins her backstage between acts. Lena begs her to take her place and supergirl agrees.
"Meanwhile, in the rooftop garden of Metropolis Prison," Luthor slips away when the rest of the cons are marched to supper. The minerals that supergirl brought him from space "make a powerful plant hormone when dissolved in water." According to Luthor's calculations, the hormone causes the vine to grow "a dozen feet a minute." While Lex is waiting for the plant to grow, he picks some of his flowers but is careful to mask himself from inhaling their scent. "Moments later, Luthor climbs down the steep wall of Metropolis Prison" and makes his way to the circus where Supergirl is performing in disguise.
"Lena controls this creature with her ESP power, but I can't," Supergirl thinks as her head is inside a lion's jaws. "Lucky I'm invulnerable, because his fangs are chewing at me right now!" Later, an elephant puts its foot on her. "*gulp!*" she thinks. "They don't realize that beast is resting his enormous weight right on me. Only my invulnerability prevents me from being harmed!" After the act, Lex rushes in with a handkerchief over his face, pretending to have a cold. Mistaking Supergirl for Lena, Lex tries to get her to smell the flowers, but the scent has no effect. Supergirl agrees, however, to let Lex give the flowers to Lena before she returns him to prison.
"My mission was accomplished, Supergirl," confides Lex. "Those flowers were a mutant of the ancient lotus... a variety whose odor causes one to forget all unpleasant memories permanently!" Back ay the circus, no no longer haunted by the knowledge of being Lex Luthor's sister, Lena Thorul quit after only one performance. The last thing she remembers before coming to her senses in the circus was interviewing Luthor in his jail cell. she doesn't even remember why she was wearing a zebra skin costume. In her report to the FBI she recommends that Luthor's plant hobby be taken away because "he may use it for some evil plan," leaving Supergirl to ponder the irony of the situation.
...Luthor sets up his "rooftop garden" which the warden has somehow mysteriously agreed he could have.
Luthor gets jobs in the prison workshop, in the laundry, in the rock pile... doesn't the warden realize that when Luthor wants to work somewhere, it doesn't lead to good? How many wardens do they have to go through until one of them finally learns?
You guessed it: amnesia!
And she didn't even have to get struck on the head or hit by lightning or affected by the Joker's gas...
Upon arrival, she picks up the wrong suitcase
That's some wicked amnesia to make a woman forget her own luggage!
"But in this costume, with my long hair, no one will remember me as Lena Thorul! I'll be able to escape the stigma of being identified as Luthor's sister!"
Because with her hair two inches shorter, she's an exact double for Luthor. "Isn't Lex' long blonde hair lovely today?"
Weeks later, Lena and her friends arrive at Metropolis airport
Let me get this right. She's lost in the jungle long enough for her hair to grow two inches and then weeis pass after that... and no one notices she's been missing? Especially the FBI? They can't be keeping all that close track of her, I think.
As far as she knows, no one knows that she and Lex are siblings. And even if they did, so what?
Well for one thing, one bad date or one bad job review and that's IT. Lex comes after you, hellbent for revenge...
Supergirl reports to Luthor in prison, and he requests a favor.
Again, when has this ever turned out harmless?
In her report to the FBI she recommends that Luthor's plant hobby be taken away because "he may use it for some evil plan,"
See? Even Lena knows!
It's amazing that the FBI is still considering a paranoid (schizophrenic?) such as Lena for employment. And employment as... what? I rather doubt she'd make a very effect9ve agent. Maybe a secretary would be a good place to drop her in.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
ACTION COMICS #313
"Lena Thorul, Jungle Princess!"
….while Luthor sets up his "rooftop garden" which the warden has somehow mysteriously agreed he could have.
How many times has he broken out of prison? Even if he couldn’t misuse it, why would you give a guy like him special privileges?
Me... the sister of the infamous Luthor! I'm disgraced forever! I'll never be allowed in the FBI now! *sob*... How can I face my friend Supergirl again?"
I think it is important to point out at this point that her situation has not really changed significantly. The only difference is that now she knows she's Lex Luthor's sister. All she has to do is keep her mouth shut about it and the status quo remains exactly the same as it was before.
How is this a disgrace for her? She’s not responsible for his crimes. She had no control over her birth parents.
"Urtah! Itay! Itay!" she shouts, which means attack when the elephant herd she is leading comes upon a safari looting the elephant graveyard.
The last I heard, the elephant graveyard was only a legend. If they’re after ivory, better that they get it from elephants that are already dead than killing live ones.
One of the hunters fires his rifle to scare off the gorillas, but a stray shot creases Lena's skull, thereby curing her amnesia.
“Creasing” the skull is an overused cliché in fiction. If a bullet bounces off your head, you’re going to get a bloody wound. If your memory is tweaked, that probably means you got a concussion, which is no joke and could mean permanent damage (like all the people in movies who are hit on the head - hard! - with no apparent damage).
Before Supergirl can react, a voice rings out from the tarmac shouting, "Turrah! Yalu! Yalu!" and an elephant and a gorilla rush over to support the collapsing balcony.
I don’t buy that the elephant and gorilla could react faster than Supergirl.
Again I must ask, WHY? As far as she knows, no one knows that she and Lex are siblings. And even if they did, so what?
Without their stating it, this is directly related to the false belief in “bad blood.” It would be nice for the story to debunk this fallacy, just in case one of the readers would think it applied to them.
Supergirl reports to Luthor in prison, and he requests a favor. He needs "two rare elements for [his] plant experiments... vitagron and energite," which are "found only on a distant planet." Feeling sorry for Lex, Supergirl agrees. "After a quick journey through space, Supergirl returns" and assures the warden that "those minerals are harmless... An examination with my microscopic vision reveals that they won't dissolve metal of concrete, so Luthor can't use them to escape!" Okay, show of hands. Who here believes that?
How does Lex Luthor, who would happily destroy her, deserve a favor from Supergirl? Just get him some potting soil and fertilizer from a nearby store. (This is before fertilizer was known to be dangerous in the wrong hands.)
"Moments later, Luthor climbs down the steep wall of Metropolis Prison" and makes his way to the circus where Supergirl is performing in disguise.
What? The circus is set up walking distance from the prison?
In her report to the FBI she recommends that Luthor's plant hobby be taken away because "he may use it for some evil plan," leaving Supergirl to ponder the irony of the situation.
Didn’t anybody notice the huge vines and figure out how Lex got out? Lena may be paranoid, but she’s smarter than the warden and Supergirl.
ACTION COMICS #314 - "Supergirl's Tragic Ordeal!"
"Will [Zor-El and Allura] be involved in future stories or will they forget to write them?"
"Time will tell."
Well, that didn't take long.
"In the city of Kandor, once shrunken to tiny size and imprisoned in a bottle, a heart-breaking drama takes place." Essentially, Allura has come down with a case of writer's fiat so severe that she "must be reunited with her duaghter or she'll die!" She is admitted to the hospital where at first they find nothing wrong. The "psycho-probe" reveals her problem, though, through several pages of flashbacks. The situation comes to a head when. "that night, a distrought, confused Allura slips into the children's section" and steals an android doll from a little girl patient thinking it is Kara as a little girl.
TRIVIA: The psycho-probe reveals several hitherto unknown details of Kara's past, including that she was named after the ancient Kryptonian goddess of beauty because she was born under that constellation, she contracted the thighly contagious "virus alpha" when she was a child, and her first pet was a six-legged lumir.
"Rarely again will Linda's foster-parents stand out as much in the Silver Age."
Case in point: Allura's doctor sends a message to Supegirl, but she is not there to receive it. It is recorded by a Supergirl robot, but Fred and Edna Danvers overhear. At this point, they make a couple of really bad decisions. Edna decides, "There's only onethingto do. We must destroy Supergirl's love for us. If we canmake her thinkg we don't wnat her, she'll rejoin her own parents." Then Fred destroys the message tape so Supergirl won't guess what they're up to. They spend the next page or so being real heels to Linda, but she soon catches on after overhearing a conversation with her super-hearing. After that they come clean, which is what they should have done in the first place. As Supergirl flies off to the Fortress, Fred offers, "If there's anything we can do to help... we'll make any sacrifice," to which Supergirl responds, "Thanks, Dad! I'll remember that!"
Supergirl considers moving to Kandor and living with her parents permanently, but Allura's doctor says that her mother would never allow Supergirl to give up her career. Instead he suggests, "Why not use the exchange ray to bring your parents into the outer world to join you?" It is at that point Supergirl remembers, "Hmm... the Danvers said they were ready to make any sacrifice..." Next thing you know, Supergirl's parents and foster-parents have exchanged places. Allura needed to be reminded that, "as Kryptonians, you and father are super in this environment" (or at least Supergirl felt her mother needed to be reminded). She concocts a story that Fred was offered a job abroad, her mother has already joined him there, and now Linda is leaving her firneds in Midvale to join them herself.
Because her parents are super, Kara no longer needs to maintain a secret identity and they build a fortress of their own in an "isolated spot" on an "inaccessible rock formation." There first mission as a family is to repell an invasion of liquid fire creatures from space. "They're inexperienced at using their super-powers," Supergirl thinks, "but they'll learn." Meanwhile, back in Kandor, Fred and Edna sttle into their new life. they are invited to a dinner in their honor, byut when the Supergirl Emergency Squad marches by on their way to their weekly meeting, Edna asks Fred to take her home. "But at home, when they watch their monitor screen for news of the outside world," they see "the reception, as Metropolis officially greets the new super-family." Right about now, Fred must really be regretting his offer to "make any sacrifice."
"The next day, in the garden of the Danvers' Kandorian home," the Council of Elders has arranged for the Danvers to adopt Dar-Lin, a Kara-lookalike from the Kandor City Orphanage, but Edna is not too keen on the idea. "Will the Danvers adopt a new daughter? What does the futurehold for them in Kandor? And what is the strange destiny awaiting Supergirl and her super-family? See the next issue of Action Comics!"
The Danvers in Kandor was never expanded upon the way I would've liked (and, at the time of these stories, hoped to see). The concept is fertile with plot developments.
Sylvia Van-Zee, also an Earth immigrant, would orient the Danvers to life in Kandor. At rhe same time, Sylvia is eager to hear word from Earth. She and Van-Zee become good friends with the Danvers. ("Uncanny," thinks Fred, "how much Van-Zee looks like Superman!")
Fred, an electrical engineer, would marvel at the scientific advancements of the Kryptonians. But, at the same time, he realises how "uneducated" he is, next to the Kandorian scientists. ("That Earther, Danvers, is a nice enough fellow, but I'm afraid his scientific knowledge is primitive!")
Edna, who's been happy as a housewife all these years, is thrilled at the automated labour-saving devices Kandorians have for maintaining a home---at first. Soon, she becomes bored with nothing to do, and actually misses cooking and cleaning the "old-fashioned" way. ("Strange how that Earth woman refuses to use the robo-chef! She insists on cooking their meals herself, by hand!")
The Danvers become foster-parents to Dar-Lin. They try to love her as much as they do Supergirl, but they can't---until they see how Dar-Lin is hurt by the awareness that she's the "second-string" daughter, chosen not for herself, but as an imitation Kara.
I can even envision a scene in a Nightwing and Flamebird story, where the Danvers take Flamebird aside and address him as Jimmy Olsen.
("How did you know?"
Chuckle! "You speak Kryptonese with almost as bad an Earth accent as we do!"
"Fred, that must mean that Nightwing is Superman!")
Weisinger and his writers missed a bet by not persuing the Danvers-in-Kandor plotline longer.
All entertaining scenarios Commander - but the Danvers, it seems, were only used as a foil for Supergirl and her adventures - far more so, I think, than Jonathan and Martha Kent ever were.
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