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cantsayidont · 6 months

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April 1960. In the first 15 years of the Superboy strip, Lex Luthor appeared only once, in a 1957 story in SUPERBOY #59 that showed him as an adult while Superboy was a teenager. This story in ADVENTURE COMICS #271, written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel, completely redefined Superman's relationship with Luthor, showing that the two were about the same age (rendering the 1957 story apocryphal), had first meet as teenagers, and for a time were actually friends.

This story says almost nothing about Luthor's family (about which more would be established later), although Luthor is described as "a recent newcomer" to Smallville, and he describes himself as a farmboy. When Superboy first meets him, Luthor is driving a tractor on his family's farm, which proves fortuitous; a Kryptonite meteor lands in the field, immediately paralyzing the Boy of Steel, but Luthor saves him by using the tractor to push the meteor into a quicksand pit. Afterward, Luthor reveals that he has idolized Superboy for years, calling him "the greatest boy in the world," and explains his interest in science, conducting experiments in a laboratory in his family's barn. In gratitude for Luthor saving his life, Superboy builds him "a modern experimental laboratory" and stocks it with "rare chemicals, some still unknown, which I burrowed out of the ground, at super-speed!"

Superboy jokes, "I could easily peek at your formula with my super-vision-- ha, ha-- but I wouldn't do anything to... er... snoop!" Luthor replies, "Of course, you wouldn't... ha, ha!" Superboy then flies away, as Luthor marvels at his good fortune. Then:

Later recaps of this story (with the notable exception of Elliot S! Maggin's 1978 prose novel SUPERMAN: LAST SON OF KRYPTON) tend to omit or skim over the details of Luthor's experiment, but this is obviously quite significant: Luthor has created a living being, a crude protoplasmic entity. Naturally, he's ecstatic, and grateful to his benefactor for making this possible:

Then, disaster:

This story is often mocked for attributing Luthor's bitter, violent enmity toward Superman to the loss of his hair, but as these panels make clear, that is expressly not the only thing Luthor is angry about, nor even the most important one:

Superboy's contrition notwithstanding, this is a pretty reasonable thing for Luthor to be angry about: He created a living creature that is now destroyed because Superboy tried to put out a chemical fire by blowing on it. The loss of his hair, aside from the social impact of being rendered permanently bald at the age of 15, is also a reminder of Luthor's more consequential loss. In the LAST SON OF KRYPTON novel, Maggin describes his reaction like this:

He would never grow hair or a beard again. He would laugh or cry or become enraged when pansy philosophers wondered, in the future, whether laboratory life could have a soul. He knew that such life would have no less than the soul of its creator. Lex Luthor chose, from the moment his creation died, to hate the being who had saved his miserable life, who was responsible for the loss of his brown curls and his child. It was the only way he could walk slowly, one millimeter at a time, from the abyss of madness.

Written 18 years later for a different audience, Maggin's prose version is more emotionally charged than Siegel's, but it's mostly quite consistent with the original account, although Maggin doesn't mention the paranoia that's evident in this story. Luthor's insistence that Superboy deliberately sabotaged him out of envy is irrational, but not wholly without basis; Superboy's response to the fire (which he should have immediately known was a chemical fire, since he was the one who stocked the lab) was not at all sensible, and Luthor has paid a heavy price for it.

Luthor pretends to calm down, but he then retrieves the Kryptonite meteor and attempts to use it to kill Superboy, which fails, ironically, thanks to the last dregs of Luthor's Kryptonite antidote. Afterward, Luthor challenges Superboy to arrest him, but Superboy refuses, declaring, "No! You saved my life once! Now we're even!" Then:

(I believe the final panel of this story may have been the first time that Luthor had ever been given a first name; his earlier appearances, and some after this, just referred to him as "Luthor.")

At first blush, Luthor's protoplasmic creation is an odd feature of this story, which is probably why it was often dropped from subsequent accounts. However, it's tempting to see it as a kind of echo of Siegel's own feelings. It was Siegel who had first conceived the idea of Superboy in the mid-1940s, and the character was a significant factor in Siegel and Shuster's first unsuccessful lawsuit against National-DC over the rights to Superman in 1947. According to Les Daniels (in SUPERMAN: THE COMPLETE HISTORY), Siegel had intended Superboy to be quite different, a kind of mischievous super-brat, but editor Whitney Ellsworth hadn't liked that, and had had Don Cameron rewrite Siegel's initial script (for the story published in MORE FUN COMICS #101, pictured below) without Siegel's knowledge or approval, an unwelcome reminder that Siegel and Shuster didn't really have control of their creation. (DC now officially credits the story solely to Siegel and Shuster, although that may reflect the outcome of their most recent settlement with Siegel's family.) After the failure of their lawsuit, Siegel and Shuster were shown the door, although a decade later, editor Mort Weisinger hired Siegel as a freelance scriptwriter for a while. Much of that would probably have happened anyway (Siegel and Shuster were also unhappy that their work was diminishing as National was raking in money on Superman adaptations and merchandise), but Superboy was certainly one of the catalysts.

Mort Weisinger, who was notoriously brutal with talent and staff and had a low opinion of many of the writers and artists who worked for him, called Siegel "the most competent of all the Superman writers" and "the best emotional writer of them all." One of the reasons for that was that Siegel put a lot of himself into his stories, and in this respect, his relationship with Superboy was not unlike Luthor's in this story: He had created something crude but vital, with enormous possibilities, and Superboy had effectively destroyed it.

Besides Maggin, one of the few later creators to remember the actual details of this story was, surprisingly, John Byrne, who incorporated it into his origin of the post-Crisis Supergirl. In SUPERMAN #22 (October 1988), the final issue of Byrne's run, Superman learns that Supergirl is really a protoplasmic matrix, an artificial life form created by the Lex Luthor of the Pocket Universe in the image of his world's late Lana Lang. (In the Pocket Universe, Luthor didn't arrive in Smallville until after Superboy was dead, so the accident depicted in the Siegel story never took place, and Luthor completed his protoplasmic experiments in Superboy's own lab.) This is why that version of Supergirl, whose powers included the ability to change shape, was subsequently called "Matrix."

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supergirlarchives · 2 years

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Action Comics #284

Cover Date: January 1962 | Written by Jerry Siegel | Art by Jim Mooney

Read on DC Universe Infinite | NOTE: These commentaries are going to be very spoiler heavy.

Before going into this issue, I did want to mention that in the gap between the last issue I read and this issue, poor Linda Lee finally got adopted by the Danvers. Which is good, no more sad endings of Linda watching all her friends go off and have happy lives while she’s stuck in the orphanage.

The Supergirl story in this issue is called “the Strange Bodies of Supergirl!” and it’s all about everyone’s favorite Super random plot generator, red kryptonite!

(For those that don’t know, unlike green kryptonite, which weakens and hurts Kryptonians, red kryptonite affects them in random and odd ways, usually by causing some sort of temporary physical mutation. No two pieces of red kryptonite are the same, meaning that every time a Kryptonian comes into contact with a piece, there’s no telling what it’ll do or for how long. It’s a really easy way of putting your characters into some interesting situations.)

Right off the bat, we’re teased with a two-headed Supergirl. Strange bodies indeed. We’re also told that in the previous issue (which I wasn’t able to read) Supergirl already went through three transformations after being exposed to six pieces of red kryptonite, leaving three more transformations to go.

So to take her mind off of the dread of whatever impending body horror that’s in store for her, she does what any of us would do if we were waiting for our bodies to spontaneously and physically transform, she goes to the Midvale Fair. I’m not sure if going to a public, busy place would be my idea, but I’m not Supergirl.

While at the fair, Linda feels bad for the “carnival freaks”, such as “the bearded lady”, a woman with a hairy face, and “the human needle” which is literally just a really skinny dude. OOF, yeah sometimes poor aging of the cultural norms of the time period these books were made really smacks me in the face.

Moving on from that uncomfortableness.

Linda goes to the lady��s room to freshen up, and wouldn’t you know it, she starts tingling, which is usually the warning that a red kryptonite’s effects will soon take effect. And suddenly, POP! Linda has a second head.

The new head isn’t wearing a brown “Linda Lee” wig, making it easy to tell them apart. Also it’s a totally sentient being of its own, and very confused about suddenly popping into existence. Thankfully Linda explains everything to... I’m just going to call this new head “No. 2″

Linda wants to go home immediately so they’re not seen, but No. 2 wants to see the fair first because of course she does.

No. 2 gets her way, and they go back out to the fair. There’s a lot of staring and gawking, but everyone thinks she’s just part of the freak show and using a fake head. They get approached by the head of the freak show about getting a job, which they turn down. Then they get watermelon, which No. 2 absolutely loves.

After that they leave the fair and go window shopping. The two compare which hats in the window each like. No. 2 likes a hat with flowers on it, and Linda likes one with a feather. Really driving home that these two aren’t one consciousness in two bodies, but for real two wholly separate people.

Then Linda decided to show No. 2 their superpowers by burrowing a tunnel all the way to the Air Force base. No. 2 is astonished at their abilities.

Also while they’re there, an Air Force jet is passing overhead, but their H-bomb accidentally gets dislodged, which, ARE YOU KIDDING ME? The Air Force is so shoddy that they just have hydrogen bombs randomly fall off their planes??

The Supergirls spring into action, catching the bomb and making sure to move so quickly that no one sees them, and takes the bomb to a remote desert where they safely detonate it.

I love how Kara is just showing off to No. 2 at this point.

It’s not to last, though. Almost new sooner were they done with the bomb that head No. 2 began to disappear. No. 2 pleads with Supergirl to save her, which honestly just seems so sad! It’s all for naught, though, as the head disappears. Kara is thankful to have her solo-head back, but says that she will miss No.2, thinking of her almost like a sister.

Honestly, that’s kind of messed up! A sentient creature just appeared out of nowhere and then died like a couple hours later. Red kryptonite is weird and traumatic.

Once again possessing the standard number of heads, Supergirl changes back into her Linda Lee disguise and returns home just as her parents return from an emergency trip to Europe. I wonder what the emergency was?

Anyway, some time later, Linda looks at the flower in her room and the thing instantly wilts in front of her. (There’s these brown lines coming from Linda’s eyes that are there to tip off the reader what’s happening, but I’m assuming that they’re not actually visible in-universe.)

Linda then turns her attention to her goldfish, who instantly dies in its bowl. And then the Danvers walk in and as soon as Linda looks at them THEY BOTH DIE ON THE SPOT!

SUPERGIRL JUST KILLED HER PARENTS OMG! That’s so horrific!

At this point Supergirl puts it together that this red kryptonite has given her “Fatal Vision”, which will kill any living thing she looks upon.

Distraught, Supergirl decides that the only thing she can do is to fly out into space and be alone.

She changes into her Supergirl outfit and flies out the window, accidentally killing the mailman on the way out, which OOF, poor guy.

When Supergirl gets to space she’s immediately met by Krypto, who’s probably like “hey Supergirl, let’s hang out.” But he can’t because KRYPTO IS NOW DEAD.

So Supergirl breaks down crying while she flies through space, proclaiming herself “The Most Dangerous Girl Alive.”

The narration then refers to Supergirl as the “Girl of Doom”, which, let’s be honest is a badass nickname.

The Girl of Doom decides that if all she can do is cause death, she might as well go to a planet that’s populated by evil monsters and destroy them. She heads to a planet full of “jet-propelled monsters” that look like spikey basketballs with angry faces and tentacles and lays waste to them.

After destroying them all, Supergirl sits down on the planet and begins crying about how much she loved her mom and dad and Krypto and how guilty she feels.

Then suddenly, Linda wakes up in her room in the Danvers’ household back on Earth. Her parents, her goldfish, and her plant (and presumably the mailman and Krypto) are all fine. That’s when Linda realizes that the actual effect of the red kryptonite was that it caused her to hallucinate the entire thing.

WHEW. Like, I knew that most likely Kryto and her parents weren’t actually dead, they’ve been around a lot longer than just until 1962, but still, what a traumatic hallucination!

At the beginning of the story we were promised (threatened with?) three remaining red kryptonite effects, meaning that we’re down to the last one, but let’s be real, what could be worse than hallucinating that you killed a bunch of people you loved and had to seclude yourself into the desolate, dark reaches of space?

Nothing could be worse, and thankfully they don’t even try to one-up that, instead ending with something fun.

Trying to take her mind off of the impending effect of the sixth red kryptonite piece, Linda turns on the news and hears about a drought that’s hurting farmers’ crops. So she changes into Supergirl and blows rainclouds into the region.

(And we’re going to ignore just how many things about this don’t really work and the implications of changing a region’s entire weather pattern.)

As Supergirl flies through the rain that she’s caused, the sixth transformation occurs, turning Supergirl into a mermaid! A SUPER-mermaid! Their words, not mine.

And since she’s a mermaid she figures she might as well go and visit her mer-friend Jerro, who lives in Atlantis.

While Supergirl’s traveling to see Jerro, we get a brief lesson about Atlantis, in case any of us weren’t up-to-date with it. Apparently, when the ancient city of Atlantis was starting to sink into the ocean, their scientists built a huge dome around it to protect it as it sank, keeping the water out and the air in. Then, years later they figured out how to change themselves into merfolk, and smashed the dome since they didn’t need it.

Wait. The merfolk of Pre-Crisis Earth-One DC were just humans that figured out how to science themselves into fish people? That’s... Huh. This is odd to me.

Anyway, Supergirl finds Jerro working on a marine-farm with his friend Lenora. Jerro is immediately smitten by Super-Mermaid’s beauty. He introduces Supergirl to Lenora, and the two swim off to show Super-Mermaid around, leaving Lenora alone.

(Side note, I love how they get around the “how does speech work underwater” question by having all merfolk be able to read minds and project their own thoughts into others.)

Then we start following Lenora for a brief time. She’s devastated to see Jerro so openly into Super-Mermaid. Lenora herself is madly in love with Jerro, even though she’s hid that from him (well there’s your problem).

Lenora follows them around as Jerro shows Super-Mermaid around, introducing her to people, taking her to a museum, until she overhears Jerro profess his love and ALSO MARRIAGE to Super-Mermaid!

Slow down buddy! You two were just friends like an hour ago! Kara is caught off-guard by the sudden proposal, and Jerro tells her that he knows that even though he telepathically learns that Kara is attracted to her friend Dick Malverne (hey first Dick mention... That came out wrong, and obviously I’m not erasing it), he’s still in love with her.

Super-Mermaid does the polite thing and tells him that she’ll have to think about it, but by that point Lenora has swam off, heartbroken. She goes and cries to her sister, who encourages Lenora be assuring her that Super-Mermaid won’t be staying long, and that Jerro could still learn to love her.

Bad advice, by the way. You really shouldn’t try to make people “learn to love you”. If you have to, that person’s not for you.

A little later, Jerro and Super-Mermaid are still hanging out, but Lori (Lenora’s sister) shows up and informs them that Lenora has run away (swam away? I’m... I’m not sure what the proper term is in this instance). Lori has a feeling that Lenora’s in danger, when when Super-Mermaid uses her telescopic vision to track Lenora down, they learn that Lori’s feeling was right.

It seems that Lenora has wandered into the the “Valley of the Hands”, which is a section of the sea floor with giant hands sticking out of the ground. What are those hands? They’re the hands of giants from outer space that invaded Atlantis but the giants sank into the bogs of the valley so deep that only their outstretched hands remain above ground. And also the giants are still alive, just trapped in those bogs for thousands of years.

...OKAY. That’s... That’s certainly quite the set-up for this random location that is shown in all of two panels. JEEZ. I kind of feel bad for the alien giants. I mean, just stuck down there? For centuries? I guess they don’t need food to live?

Setting ALL the questions I have about these giants aside, Super-Mermaid goes and saves Lenora from the Valley of the Hands, and as soon as she does the effects of the red kryptonite wear off and Super-Mermaid reverts back to Supergirl.

Now that Kara has legs again, she decides to it’s time to leave and promises Jerro she’ll think about that proposal (I’d be shocked if this was ever brought up again). Lenora is happy to see Supergirl leave, proclaiming that she may still win Jerro.

You um, you do that, Lenora.

Kara flies out of the ocean and as soon as she does she a piece of green kryptonite streaks by, hurting her, which confuses Kara a great deal since she thought she was invulnerable to green kryptonite.

Also Superman literally appears out of nowhere.

Turns out Superman was coming back from visiting the Legion of Super-Heroes in the 30th century.

He explains to Supergirl that it turned out that Mr. Mxyzptlk had secretly given her superpowers, which is why Supergirl was invulnerable to green kryptonite for a time, but they’ve apparently worn off now, so it affects her again.

This is a really random thing to tack onto the end of this issue. I’m assuming that her invulnerability to green kryptonite came up in one of the issues I missed. I wonder if we actually saw Supergirl and Mr. Mxyzptlk interact or if this is just some random retcon to a decision the writers no longer liked. I might look into it, but I don’t currently know.

This issue ends with Superman promising that he’s going to announce Supergirl to the world, finally allowing her to step out of the shadows.

There’s a text panel next to this promising that this isn’t some sort of ruse or misdirect.

As Kara says, this is wonderful. Poor Kara’s been learning and practicing and doing as much as she can to help people, all while having to go through some effort to conceal herself entirely. I’m glad Superman finally came to his senses and is letting Supergirl have her day.

Which I sadly won’t get to read, as the next issue isn’t available to me.

Still, great stuff for Kara!

For my readthrough of past issues, this issue was the first appearance of Kara’s parents, the Danvers, as well as the first mention of her frequent love interest, Dick Malverne. I do wish I could have read the issue where the Danvers adopt her, but I am so happy that they did.

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