This discussion continues directly from Supergirl Archives, Volumes One & Two.
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This discussion continues directly from Supergirl Archives, Volumes One & Two.
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Happily, posts can be edited beyond 15 minutes now.
You sure you don’t want to rephrase that?
Done.
This is truly suspicious. This is only done in wartime when you don’t want to be spotted.
Actually, he buried it under a pile of leaves, so it's only half suspicious.
Wouldn’t it make more sense for Supergirl (not Linda) to turn him in to the FBI?
That was my contention.
She didn’t just use super-hypnosis? Or wasn’t that a thing yet?
I don't know. Linda wore the space crystal as a necklace and asked Jeff's opinion of it.
I’m sure he had quite a reaction.
"My brother-in-law! Ha! He's in the FBI. I recognized Jeff Colby on the monitor screen! Hmm... Wonder what Lena would say if she knew she was marrying the FBI agent who once arrested her own brother?"
ACTION COMCIS #318 - "Supergirl Goes to College!"
The story opens with Linda's graduation from high school. Dick Malverne wins a medal "for excellence in science and mathmatics" (sounds like Adric). Linda reflects that she could have won every award, but it "would be unfair to compete agsainst other students with my super-intellignece." Nevertheless, she is awarded a scholarship to Stanhope College for "perfect conduct in all classes, and for modesty and an excellent character." Months later, Dick drops her off at Stanhope. He himself is attending State Tech, just a few miles away. He reminds her that he will be taking her to the Freshman Welcome Dance tomorrow night.
The first thing Linda witnesses is a girl on her hands and knees pushing a peanut uphuill with her nose as part of her innitiation to the Alpha Lambda Sorority. The president of Alpha Lambda, Donna Storm, is in charge of the hazing. (There's a word to describe her, but it's not one generally used in polite company.) Lidna uses her super-breath to help the pledge complete her task. Next, Donna makes another pledge stand in a cold fountain, but Linda warms her with her heat vision. Some of the other girls nominate Linda to pledge the sorority based on her scholorship, but Donna takes an immidiate dislike to her and resolves to make the tests too difficult to pass.
The first test: "The town department store is running an entertainment for charity in the front window. You're to kiss the star of the show and date him!" Doesn't sound so hard. But the "star of the show" is a monkey! It turns out that the monkey is Superman's pet, Beppo, in disguise. He recognizes her as Supergirl even in her Linda disguise and plays along, letting her kiss him and flying her around the city. My knowledge of Beppo extends to a handful of "Legion of Super Pets" stories. I don't think I've ever read Beppo's origin story (although I have seen it recapped), and I have no idea why he's masquerading as a performing monkey in a department store window.
The next task Donna sets for Linda is to attend the Freshman Welcome Dance in a shabby dress. "But as night falls, Linda switches to Supergirl and swoops into space" where she mashes space rocks into a large planetoid and hurls it into orbit. That night, she and Dick are supposed to dance in the moonlight. she's wearing a coat, but Donna reminds her that she must take it off when the dance begins. Just as the dance is about to start, the orbit of the "planetoid" Supergirl created carries it in front of the Moon creating an eclipse that lasts the duration of the dance, so Dick never sees Linda in her shabby dress. Donna is incensed.
The next day, Donna sets the task for Linda of finding a "mascot" for the team. First of all, the team doesn't already have a mascot? Second, the choice is left up to a random freshman? the problem is "all of the animals in town have been quarantined because of [an] epidemic." Linda, though, arranges for Super-Horse to perform at the pre-game show. As careful and Linda generally is guarding her secret, she's playing it pretty fast and loose with these stunts. Comet warns her of "someone nearby who dislikes you and is suspicious of your identity," so Linda pulls the ol' "pretending to fall off the horse" trick. (That always works.) Donna is not the sharpest tool in the shed but, although she no longer suspects Linda of being Supergirl, she accuses her of being friends with her, which Linda admits ("Ha! Ha! That's no lie!"), so Donna challenges Linda to take some new tests without Supergirl's help.
First up: "That campus bus will pick up twelve foreign exchange students from twelve different nations at the airport tomorrow. When they get here, you are to name the countries each came from... without questioning them or getting any help from Supergirl!" But Linda remembers that, two years ago, Stanhope College hosted an international track meet, so she borrows the flags and poles from which were displayed at the time from the athletic depatment and displays them on campus. When the exchange students disembark from the bus, each goes to the flag of his home country and salutes. Thus Supergirl is able to determine that the students are from Indonesia, Nigeria, Arabia, Switzerland, Greece, Argentina, Spain, India, Ceylon, Japan, Pakistan and Sweden. (Luckily, the flags and students matched.)
The other girls are impressed by Linda's ingenuity and insist that Donna let her join their sorority, but Donna has one more test in mind. "The college has just built a brand-new library high upon that hill. It will replace this old building behind us. But the school can't afford the high trucking expenses to move these thousands of books to the new library! You're to find a way to transport the books without cost." With her super-powers that would be a snap, but she promised not to use them. Instead she calls an emergency meeting of the student body at the old library building (again, that's a lot of power for an unknown freshman) and asks each student to check out ten books from the old library and return them to the new library.
Everyone is pleased: the librarian, the students, the sorority girls... everyone except Donna Storm. Donna is again convinced that "only someone with super-intelligence couldn't devised a stunt like that," and concludes, "I'm certain that Linda must be Supergirl, and I'm going to prove it." She invites Linda for a ride in her convertible to "talk things over" and trusting Linda accepts. But so certain is Donna that Linda is Supergirl that she deliberately drives her car off a cliff. "if I save her," Linda thinks, "she'll know I'm Supergirl! But there's a way out!... I'll twitch this rear-view mirror back and forth at super-speed so the reflected light rays will hypnotize her instantaneously." Donna black out and Supergirl arranges the haystacks in the filed below into one HUGE haystack to cusion the fall of the car.
When Donna wakes up she realizes she could have killed them both and has a complete change of heart. The next day, Linda is sworn into Alpha Lambda and, as a new member, moves that the sorority stops "all hazing that humiliates or embarrasses people" and Donna readily agrees. Then she asks Linda if she would ask Supergirl to speak at their sorority, and Linda agrees. "Ha, ha!" the thinks. "I wonder what they'd say if they knew that Supergirl was secretly a mamber of Alpha Lambda!"
Following her parents being discovered alive in the Survival Zone, Supergirl going to college is the second event I alluded to when I moved on to volume two of the omnibus series which signifies Supergirl "coming into her own" as a character. By the time I first started reading Spider-Man (with #73 in 1969), Peter Parker was already in college and I didn't think much of it. I would later discover that Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had Peter graduate high school in #28 and start college in #31, both in 1965. It was later still that I came to realize what a big deal that was. But Supergirl did it first, in 1964.
My knowledge of Beppo extends to a handful of "Legion of Super Pets" stories. I don't think I've ever read Beppo's origin story (although I have seen it recapped) . . .
I was going to provide chapter and verse on the Super-Monkey's history to this point for you, Jeff. But, then, I realised that there was really no point. You already know all you need to know about the Simian of Steel.
One thing the story got wrong was that Super-Monkey wasn't Superman's pet. The little ape was a stray, and that free-agent status allowed Mort's writers to use him as a plot device wherever it was convenient.
Incidentally, at this point in the Superman mythos, the monkey was not named "Beppo". Point of detail: aye, the first time that the name Beppo was applied to the super-monk was in Tales of Green Kryptonite № 1", from Superman # 173, (Nov., 1964), which came out a week before Action Comics # 318. But, the little ape would have four subsequent appearances in which he was referred to simply as "Super-Monkey". It wasn't until Adventure Comics # 351 (Dec., 1966) that the Super-Monkey was continually named Beppo.
ACTION COMICS #319 - "The Super Cheat"
If you think Donna Storm learned her lesson after that issue, this story will disabuse you of that notion. It starts by establishing that Supergirl has a secret entrance to her dormitory through a sealed up chimney which she converted, then quickly gets down to business. Donna and Linda's math professor has assigned some particularly difficult homework. Linda and some other classmates decide to work on it together. They invite Donna to join them, but she refuses. Suspicious, Linda watches with her x-ray vision as Donna solves the problems using an electronic computer her father gave her. ("Electronic computers" were much less common in 1964 than they are today; this one looks like an adding machine.)
Next, in chemistry class, the proffessor assigns the students to figure out which chemicals need to be added to a tank in order to make some tropical plants thrive. It will take the other students a week to solve the problem, but Donna blows off the study group. Linda follows Donna's movements using her telescopic and observes as she drives to her father's factory, the Storm Plastics Plant. Using her super-hearing, Linda overhears Donna threaten to have her father's employees fired if they don't do her homework for her. In both of these cases, Linda feels she cannot notify the school authorities without revealing her secret identity. But the faculty are suspicious anyway, because Donna's answer mentions "experimental chemicals still unknown to the public." they don't do anything about it, though, because Mr. Storm donated $100,000 to Stanhope the previous year.
That evening, Linda passes by Donna's room and overhears her apparentkly studying aloud. the next day in class, however, Linda realizes that Donna had been recording the lesson into a miniature tape recorder concealed in an earring and is playing it back to herself while she's supposed to be reciting from memory. "Next day, on a geology field trip," the professor announces, "The student who finds the most valuable mineral gets the highest mark." This system of grading seems particularly arbitrary to me, based more on luck than knowledge, but Donna has come prepared with a piece of gold ore which she "finds." Linda, however, has finally had enough of Linda's cheating, so she decides to engage in some of her own. Swithing to Supergirl, she plunges into the earth, finds a seam of coal, compresses itinto a handful of small diamons, and peppers them about for the rest of the class to find. "Diamonds are the most valuable mineral of all," declares the teacher. "You'll all get top marks for your find."
For Donna's biology class, each student is supposed to turn in a project on rare fish, but Donna is so rich that she bought an expensive set of books just to cut out pictures of fish to illustrate her report. Linda is not in that class, however, which gives her the prefectopportunity to take the rest of the class to Atlantis is a glode-shaped glass classroom she built. It's equipped with cameras, so the students can take photos of everything they see. In addition, Lori Lemaris delivers a telepathic lecture. Back in class, the other students get the highestmarks. (At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if the "super-cheat" of the title refers to Donna or Supergirl.)
For their history class, each student is assigned to prepare an essay on an event in American history. Donna flies to Hollywood to observe the filminig of a movie about the Battle of New Orleans. "I'll just take notes as they shoot," she brags, "and I'll have the best essay in class!" after Donna leaves, Supergirl arrives on the scene with something she calls a "time bomb" (actually a bomb-shaped time-travel device invented by Superman). She takes the entire class back in time to the dual between Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton. "Hamilton was one of America's greatest man," points out of of the students. "According to history, he's fated to be shot in this duel! Can't you use your super-powers to save him?"
"No one can alter the facts of history," Supergirl explains, "but I'll try!" Moving at super-speed, she puts herself in front of the bullet, but "the lead ball broke and half of it struck Hamilton, killing him." One of the students concludes, "You're right, Supergirl. No one can change history... not even you!" Back in the future, Donna gets a poor grade because the movie was not histotically accurate, so she decides to take it out on supergirl and her friend Linda. That night, Donna slips into the science building during a pep ralley, steals the college's valuable mineral collection, and plants it in Linda's room. When the minerals are found in Linda's room during a campus-wide search, Linda is expelled.
But Linda notices that Donna is still wearing the gimmicked earrings, so she sends to the future for Shrinking Violet who, shrinks into the earrings and alters them from recording to broadcasting. After that it is an easy matter to manever Donna into broadcasting a confession over the school's P.A. system. Linda is reinstated and Donna is expelled, so I guess we've seen the last of her. On her way back to the 30th century, Shrinking Violet says, "By the way, our time monitors have seen you in some amazing adventures that will happen to you in the near future at Stanhope," and the story ends with a caption plugging the LSH in Adventure Comics.
Linda watches with her x-ray vision as Linda solves the problems using an electronic computer her father gave her.
I think you may wanna correct that.
Also "They [i.e. Linda and some classmates] invite Linda to join them, but she refuses." I suspect it's Donna who refuses.
Done and done. (I also fixed "Loru Lemaris" while I was at it.) Thanks for being so forgiving of the (multiple) typos.
Playing catch-up again.
Jeff of Earth-J said:
ACTION COMICS #318
"Supergirl Goes to College!"
…. it "would be unfair to compete against other students with my super-intelligence."
Too bad that she doesn't always use it.
You're to kiss the star of the show and date him!" Doesn't sound so hard. But the "star of the show" is a monkey! It turns out that the monkey is Superman's pet, Beppo, in disguise.
The disguise being not wearing his cape?
He recognizes her as Supergirl even in her Linda disguise and plays along, letting her kiss him and flying her around the city.
So everyone finds out that he’s the (famous?) super-monkey?
"But as night falls, Linda switches to Supergirl and swoops into space" where she mashes space rocks into a large planetoid and hurls it into orbit. That night, she and Dick are supposed to dance in the moonlight. she's wearing a coat, but Donna reminds her that she must take it off when the dance begins. Just as the dance is about to start, the orbit of the "planetoid" Supergirl created carries it in front of the Moon creating an eclipse that lasts the duration of the dance, so Dick never sees Linda in her shabby dress.
Wouldn’t the scientific world (and the media) go nuts wondering where this planetoid came from? Since there was no moonlight, wouldn’t Donna want the dance to happen after the eclipse? Wouldn’t it be easier to hypnotize Donna into liking Linda?
The problem is "all of the animals in town have been quarantined because of [an] epidemic."
An epidemic that effects ALL animals? I don’t think that’s a thing.
Everyone is pleased: the librarian, the students, the sorority girls... everyone except Donna Storm. Donna is again convinced that "only someone with super-intelligence couldn't devised a stunt like that," ….
I dunno. Leo Dorfman thought of it.
But so certain is Donna that Linda is Supergirl that she deliberately drives her car off a cliff. "if I save her," Linda thinks, "she'll know I'm Supergirl! But there's a way out!...
Linda is thrown clear? Sad about Donna?
ACTION COMICS #319
"The Super Cheat"
Suspicious, Linda watches with her x-ray vision as Donna solves the problems using an electronic computer her father gave her. ("Electronic computers" were much less common in 1964 than they are today; this one looks like an adding machine.)
In reality, back then they were still enormous in size and would have cost way too much.
But the faculty are suspicious anyway, because Donna's answer mentions "experimental chemicals still unknown to the public." They don't do anything about it, though, because Mr. Storm donated $100,000 to Stanhope the previous year.
A touch of reality.
"Next day, on a geology field trip," the professor announces, "The student who finds the most valuable mineral gets the highest mark."
Kryptonite? It would be valuable on the black market if it wasn’t basically everywhere.
Switching to Supergirl, she plunges into the earth, finds a seam of coal, compresses it into a handful of small diamonds, and peppers them about for the rest of the class to find. "Diamonds are the most valuable mineral of all," declares the teacher. "You'll all get top marks for your find."
Maybe that was still true in 1964, when I think gold was still capped at $35 an ounce. Diamonds have a lot of different sizes and qualities that cause their value to be drastically different.
Linda is not in that class, however, which gives her the perfect opportunity to take the rest of the class to Atlantis is a globe-shaped glass classroom she built. It's equipped with cameras, so the students can take photos of everything they see. In addition, Lori Lemaris delivers a telepathic lecture. Back in class, the other students get the highest marks. (At this point, I'm beginning to wonder if the "super-cheat" of the title refers to Donna or Supergirl.)
Both. How does she justify not taking Donna?
For their history class, each student is assigned to prepare an essay on an event in American history. Donna flies to Hollywood to observe the filming of a movie about the Battle of New Orleans. "I'll just take notes as they shoot," she brags, "and I'll have the best essay in class!"
Somebody once did a book report on Breakfast at Tiffany’s by just watching the movie. Bad idea, because the male lead is heterosexual in the movie and homosexual in the original story.
Moving at super-speed, she puts herself in front of the bullet, but "the lead ball broke and half of it struck Hamilton, killing him." One of the students concludes, "You're right, Supergirl. No one can change history... not even you!"
In the Mort-verse, aren’t travelers to the past phantoms?
Moving at super-speed, she puts herself in front of the bullet, but "the lead ball broke and half of it struck Hamilton, killing him." One of the students concludes, "You're right, Supergirl. No one can change history... not even you!"
In the Mort-verse, aren’t travelers to the past phantoms?
Not usually, no. The phantom effect has nothing to do with travelling into the past, per se.
Mort's Time-Travel Rule № 1, established in the story "The Town That Hated Superman", from Superman # 130 (Jul., 1959), stipulated that, if a time-traveller should travel within his own lifetime, then, to avoid the paradox of physically existing in two places at the same time, the time-travelling version of himself becomes a phantom, unable to be seen, nor heard.
For example, if Superman travels into the past to witness William Howard Taft throw out the first baseball on opening day, he will arrive as his usual physical self. That's because Superman was not yet born and did not exist on 14 April 1910.
But, if the Man of Steel travels back to Clark Kent's first day of school, his adult time-travelling self will become a phantom. Because he already exists in that time.
The same holds for when he travels into the future. He would not physically materialise on a future date until he passes the time of his death.
Hope this helps.
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