Legion of Super-Pets – Page 2

August 28, 2023August 25, 2023

Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes volume 3

By Jim Shooter, E. Nelson Bridwell, Otto Binder, Curt Swan, George Klein, Pete Costanza, Jim Mooney & George Papp (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-4012-2185-0 (TPB)

Once upon a time, in the far future, a band of super-powered kids from a multitude of worlds took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and formed a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited their inspiration to join them…

And thus began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder and artist Al Plastino in early 1958, just as the revived comicbook genre of superheroes was gathering an inexorable head of steam. Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten over and over again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim.

This third sturdy, action-packed monochrome compendium gathers a chronological parade of futuristic delights from October 1966 to May 1968, as originally seen in Adventure Comics #349-368, and includes a Legion story from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #106 (October 1967).

During this period the Club of Champions finally shed the last vestiges of wholesome, imaginative, humorous and generally safe science fiction strips to become a full-on dramatic action feature starring a grittily realistic combat force in constant, galaxy-threatening peril: a compelling force of valiant warriors ready and willing to pay the ultimate price for their courage and dedication…

The main architect of the transformation was teenaged sensation Jim Shooter, whose scripts and layouts (usually finished and inked by veterans Curt Swan & George Klein) made the series accessible to a generation of fans growing up in the Future…

The tense suspense begins with Adventure #349’s ‘The Rogue Legionnaire!’ (Shooter, Swan & Klein) wherein Saturn Girl, Colossal Boy, Shrinking Violet, Chameleon Boy and Brainiac 5 hunt hypnotic villain Universo through five periods of Earth’s history, aided by boy-genius Rond Vidar, a brilliant scientist with a tragic secret…

This is followed by a stellar 2-parter from #350-351 scripted by E. Nelson Bridwell which restores a number of invalided or expelled members to the team. In ‘The Outcast Super-Heroes’, a cloud of Green Kryptonite particles envelope Earth and force Superboy and Supergirl to retire from the Legion just as demonic alien Evillo unleashes his squad of deadly metahuman minions on the universe.

The Kryptonian Cousins are mind-wiped and replaced by armoured and masked paladins Sir Prize and Miss Terious in ‘The Forgotten Legion!’ but quickly return when a solution to the K Cloud is found. With Evillo’s eventual defeat, the team discover the wicked overlord has healed one-armed Lightning Lad and restored Bouncing Boy’s power for his own nefarious purposes, and together with the reformed White Witch and rehabilitated Star Boy and Dream Girl, the Legion’s ranks grow and might swell to bursting point.

That’s a very good thing as in the next issue Shooter, Swan & Klein produce one of their most stunning epics. When a colossal cosmic entity known as the Sun Eater menaces the United Planets, the Legion are hopelessly outmatched and forced to recruit the galaxy’s most dangerous criminals to help them save civilisation.

However, The Persuader, Emerald Empress, Mano, Tharok and Validus are untrustworthy allies at best and form an alliance as ‘The Fatal Five!’, intending to save the galaxy only so that they can rule it…

Adventure #353 reveals how the Five seemingly seal their own fate through arrogance and treachery with the true cost of heroism paid when ‘The Doomed Legionnaire!’ sacrifices his life to destroy the solar parasite…

Issue #354 introduced ‘The Adult Legion!’ when Superman travelled into the future to visit his grown-up comrades – discovering tantalising hints of events that would torment and beguile LSH fans for decades to come – before the yarn concluded with #355’s ‘The War of the Legions!’ as Brainiac 5, Cosmic Man, Element Man, Polar Man, Saturn Woman and Timber Wolf, accompanied by the most unexpected allies of all, battled the Legion of Super-Villains.

The issue also included an extra tale in ‘The Six-Legged Legionnaire!’ (by Otto Binder, Swan & Klein) wherein Superboy brings his High School sweetie Lana Lang to the 30^th century, where she joins in a mission against a science-tyrant as bug-based shape-shifting Insect Queen. Disaster soon strikes though when the alien ring which facilitates her changes is lost, trapping her in a hideous insectoid incarnation.

Issue #356 sees Dream Girl, Mon-El, Element Lad, Brainiac 5 and Superboy transformed into babies to become ‘The Five Legion Orphans!’: a cheeky, cunning Bridwell-scripted mystery leading into darker matters as repercussions and guilt of the Sun-Eater episode are explored and survivors of that mission are apparently haunted by ‘The Ghost of Ferro Lad!’ (#357, by Shooter, Swan & Klein), after which ‘The Hunter!’ (Shooter & George Papp) sees the LSH stalked by a murderously insane sportsman with a unique honour code.

Adventure #359 depicts the once-beloved champions disbanded and on the run as ‘The Outlawed Legionnaires!’ (Shooter, Swan & Klein) thanks to manipulations of a devious old foe, only to rousingly regroup, counter-attack and triumph in #360’s ‘The Legion Chain Gang!’.

Illustrated by Jim Mooney, and with the superhero squad once more a key component of United Planets Security, the Legion are assigned as secret service to protect alien ambassadors The Dominators from political agitators, assassins and a hidden traitor in tense thriller ‘The Unkillables!’, before ‘The Lone Wolf Legion Reporter!’ (from Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #106, October 1967, by Shooter & Pete Costanza) finds the young newsman seconded to the 30^th century to help with the club newspaper. Sadly, he’s far better at making news than publishing it…

The team is scattered across three worlds in Adventure Comics #362 as mad scientist Mantis Morlo refuses to let environmental safety interfere with his experiments in ‘The Chemoids are Coming!’, culminating in a lethally ‘Black Day for the Legion!’…

Shooter & Costanza then top that gripping 2-parter by uncovering ‘The Revolt of the Super-Pets!’ in #364, when the crafty rulers of planet Thanl seek to seduce the animal adventurers from their rightful – subordinate – positions with sweet words and palatial new homes.

When the isolated world of Talok 8 goes dark and becomes a militaristic threat to the UP, their planetary champion Shadow Lass leads Superboy, Brainiac 5, Cosmic Boy and Karate Kid on a reconnaissance mission which results in the cataclysmic ‘Escape of the Fatal Five!’ (illustrated by Swan & Klein). The vicious quintet then nearly conquer the UP itself: only frustrated by the defiant, last-ditch efforts of the battered heroes in blistering conclusion ‘The Fight for the Championship of the Universe!’

In grateful thanks, the Legion are gifted a vast new HQ but before the paint is even dry, a vast paramilitary force attempts to invade, slowly reconstructing planet Earth in #367’s ‘No Escape from the Circle of Death!’ (Shooter, Swan, Klein & Sheldon Moldoff), before this volume ends on a note of political and social tension as a glamorous alien envoy attempts to suborn the diminished and downtrodden female Legionnaires in #368’s ‘The Mutiny of the Super-Heroines!’

The Legion of Super-Heroes is unquestionably one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in comic book history and largely responsible for the growth of the groundswell movement that became American Comics Fandom. These scintillating, seductively addictive stories, as much as Julie Schwartz’s Justice League, fired up the interest and imaginations of a generation of readers to underpin the industry we all know today.

If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future life as soon as possible.
© 1966, 1967, 1968, 2009 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

July 2, 2023July 1, 2023

Showcase Presents Legion of Super-Heroes volume 1

By Otto Binder, Jerry Siegel, Robert Bernstein, Edmond Hamilton, Al Plastino, Curt Swan, John Forte, Jim Mooney, & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1- 4012-1382-4 (TPB)

Once upon a time in the far future, super-powered kids from many alien civilisations took inspiration from the greatest legend of all time and banded together as a club of heroes. One day those Children of Tomorrow came back in time and invited that legend to join them…

Thus, began the vast and epic saga of the Legion of Super-Heroes, as first envisioned by writer Otto Binder & artist Al Plastino when the many-handed mob of juvenile universe-savers debuted in Adventure Comics #247 (April 1958), just as the revived superhero genre was gathering an inexorable head of steam in America. Happy 65^th Anniversary, team!

Since that time the fortunes and popularity of the Legion have perpetually waxed and waned, with their future history tweaked and rebooted, retconned and overwritten again and again to comply with editorial diktat and popular whim.

This glorious, far-and-wide ranging collection assembles the preliminary appearances of the valiant Tomorrow People, tracking their progress towards and attainment of their own feature. It re-presents in stunning monochrome all pertinent tales from Adventure Comics #247, 267, 282, 290, 293, 300-321, Action Comics #267, 276, 287, 289, Superboy #86, 89, 98, Superman #147, Superman Annual #4 and Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #72 and 76.

As already stated, the many-handed mob of youthful worlds-savers debuted in Adventure #247, dreamed up for a Superboy tale wherein three mysterious kids invite the Boy of Steel to the 30^th century. He is being vetted to join a team of metahuman champions unanimously inspired by his historic career. Binder & Plastino’s throwaway concept inflamed public imagination and after a slew of further appearances throughout Superman Family titles, the LSH eventually took over Superboy’s lead spot in Adventure: thereafter enjoying their own far-flung, quirky escapades, with the Kid Kryptonian reduced to “one of the in-crowd”…

However here the excitement was still gradually building as the kids returned for an encore 18 months later, Adventure #267 (December 1959) saw Jerry Siegel & George Papp make the Boy of Steel ‘Prisoner of the Super-Heroes!’ when the teen wonders attacked and incarcerated Superboy of Steel because of a misunderstood ancient historical record…

The following summer Supergirl met the Legion in Action Comics #267 (Siegel & Jim Mooney, August 1960) as Lightning Lad, Saturn Girl and Cosmic Boy secretly travelled to “modern day” America to invite the Maid of Might onto the team, in a repetition of their offer to Superboy 15 years previously (in nit-picking fact they claimed to be the children of the original team – a fact glossed over and forgotten these days. Don’t time-travel stories make your head hurt?).

Due to a dubious technicality, young and eager Kara Zor-El failed her initiation at the hands of ‘The Three Super-Heroes’ and was asked to reapply later – but at least we got to meet a few more Legionnaires, including Chameleon Boy, Invisible Kid and Colossal Boy.

With the editors still cautiously testing the waters, it was Superboy #86 (January 1961) before the ‘The Army of Living Kryptonite Men!’ by Siegel & Papp turned the LSH into a last-minute Deus ex Machina to save the Smallville Sentinel from juvenile delinquent Lex Luthor’s most insidious assault. Two months later, in Adventure #282, Binder & Papp introduced Star Boy as a romantic rival for the Krypton Kid in ‘Lana Lang and the Legion of Super-Heroes!’

Action Comics #276 (May 1961) debuted Supergirl’s Three Super Girl-Friends’ (Siegel & Mooney) which finally saw her crack the plasti-glass ceiling and join the team, sponsored by Saturn Girl, Phantom Girl and Triplicate Girl. We also met for the first time Bouncing Boy, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy and potential bad-boy love-interest Brainiac 5 (well at least his distant ancestor Brainiac was a very bad boy…)

Next comes pivotal 2-part tale ‘Superboy’s Big Brother’ (by Robert Bernstein & Papp from Superboy #89 and June 1961) in which an amnesiac, super-powered space traveller crashes in Smallville, speaking Kryptonese and carrying star-maps written by the Boy of Steel’s long-dead father…

Jubilant, baffled and suspicious in equal amounts, Superboy eventually, tragically discovers ‘The Secret of Mon-El’ by accidentally exposing the stranger to a lingering, inexorable death, before providing critical life-support by depositing the dying alien in the Phantom Zone until a cure can be found…

Sporting an August 1961 cover-date, Superman #147 unleashed ‘The Legion of Super-Villains’ (Siegel, Curt Swan & Sheldon Moldoff): a stand-out thriller featuring Luthor and an evil adult Legion coming far too close to destroying the Action Ace until the temporal cavalry arrives…

In Adventure #290 (November), Bernstein & Papp seemingly gave Sun Boy a starring role in ‘The Secret of the Seventh Super-Hero!’ – a clever tale of redemption and second chances, which is followed in #293 (February 1962) by a gripping thriller from Siegel, Swan & George Klein. ‘The Legion of Super-Traitors’ sees the future heroes turn evil, prompting Saturn Girl to recruit a Legion of Super-Pets – comprising Krypto, Streaky the Super Cat, Beppo, the monkey from Krypton and magical Super-horse Comet to save the world…

‘Supergirl’s Greatest Challenge!’ (Siegel & Mooney, Action #287 April) sees her visit the Legion (quibblers be warned: for some reason it was mis-determined as the 21^st century in here) to save future Earth from invasion). She also meets a telepathic descendent of her cat Streaky. His name is Whizzy (I could have omitted that fact but chose not to – once more for smug, comedic effect and in sympathy with all humans-with-cats everywhere)…

Action #289 featured ‘Superman’s Super-Courtship!’ wherein the Girl of Steel scours the universe to locate an ideal mate for her cousin. One highly possible candidate is adult Saturn Woman, but her husband Lightning Man objects…

Perhaps charming at the time, although modern sensibilities might quail at the conclusion that his perfect match is a doppelganger of Kara herself… albeit – and thankfully – a bit older…

By the release of Superboy #98 (July 1962), the decision had been made. The buying public wanted more Legion stories and after ‘The Boy With Ultra-Powers’ by Siegel, Swan & Klein introduces an enigmatic lad with greater powers than the Boy of Steel, focus shifted to Adventure Comics #300 (cover dated September 1962) where the super-squad finally landed their own gig; even occasionally taking an alternating cover-spot from still top-featured Superboy.

Tales of the Legion of Super-Heroes opened its stellar run with Siegel, John Forte & Plastino’s ‘The Face Behind the Lead Mask!’; a fast-paced premier pitting Superboy and the 30^th century champions against an unbeatable foe until Mon-El, long-trapped in the Phantom Zone, temporarily escapes a millennium of confinement to save the day…

In those halcyon days humour was as important as action, imagination and drama, so many early exploits were light-hearted – if a little moralistic. Issue #301 offered hope and role model to fat kids everywhere with ‘The Secret Origin of Bouncing Boy!’ by regular creative team Siegel & Forte. This yarn formalised a process of open auditions – providing devoted fans with loads of truly bizarre and memorable applicants over the years – whilst allowing the rebounding human rotunda to give a salutary pep talk and inspirational recount of heroism persevering over adversity.

Adventure #302 featured ‘Sun Boy’s Lost Power!’, as the golden boy is forced to resign until fortune and boldness restore his abilities, whilst ‘The Fantastic Spy!’ in #303 provides a tense tale of espionage and possible betrayal by new member Matter-Eater Lad.

The readership was stunned by the events of #304 when Saturn Girl engineers ‘The Stolen Super-Powers!’ to make herself a one-woman Legion. Of course, it was for the best possible reasons, but still doesn’t prevent the shocking murder of Lightning Lad…

With cosy complacency utterly destroyed, #305 further shook everything up with ‘The Secret of the Mystery Legionnaire!’ who turns out to be the long-suffering Mon-El finally cured and freed from his Phantom Zone prison.

Normally I’d try to be more obscure about story details – after all my intention is to get new people reading old comics, but these “spoiler” revelations are key to further understanding here and you all know these characters are still around, don’t you?

Pulp science fiction writer Edmond Hamilton took over the major scripting role with #306, and introducing ‘The Legion of Substitute Heroes!’ (quirkily, perfectly illustrated by John Forte). This is a group of rejected applicants who selflessly band together to clandestinely assist the champions who spurned them, after which transmuting orphan Element Lad joins the major team. He seeks vengeance on space pirates who had wiped out his entire species in ‘The Secret Power of the Mystery Super-Hero!’ before #308 seemingly sees ‘The Return of Lightning Lad!’

Actual Spoiler Warning: skip to the next paragraph NOW!!! if you don’t want to know it’s actually his similarly empowered sister who – once unmasked and unmanned – takes her brother’s place as Lightning Lass…

‘The Legion of Super-Monsters!’ is a straightforward clash with embittered applicant Jungle King who takes rejection far too personally and gathers a deadly clutch of space beasts to wreak havoc and vengeance, whilst #310’s ‘The Doom of the Super-Heroes!’: a frantic battle for survival against an impossible foe.

Adventure #311 opens ‘The War Between the Substitute Heroes and the Legionnaires!’ with a cease-and-desist order from the A-Team that turns into secret salvation as the plucky, stubborn outcasts carry on regardless under the very noses of the blithely oblivious LSH…

The next issue (September 1963) features the ‘The Super-Sacrifice of the Legionnaires!’ and inevitable resurrection of Lightning Lad – but only after the harrowing sacrifice of one devoted team-member, after which Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #72 (October, by Siegel, Swan & Klein) visits ‘The World of Doomed Olsens!’ Depicting an intriguing enigma as the cub-reporter is confronted by materialisations of his most memorable metamorphoses, it’s all just a prank by those naughty Legion scamps – but one with a serious purpose behind the jolly japery…

Adventure #313’s ‘The Condemned Legionnaires!’ (Hamilton, Swan, Klein & Forte) affords Supergirl a starring role after the sinister Satan Girl infects the team with a deadly plague, forcing them all into perpetual quarantine, before ‘The Super-Villains of All Ages!’ (art by Forte) reveals how a manic mastermind steals a Legion Time-Bubble to recruit the greatest monsters and malcontents of history – Nero, Hitler and John Dillinger – as his irresistible army of crime.

Why he’s surprised when they double-cross him and possess Superboy, Mon-El and Ultra Boy is beyond me , but happily, the lesser legionnaires still prove more a match for the brain-switched rogues. Then ‘The Legionnaires Super-Contest!’ in #315 finally sees the Substitute Heroes go public, for which the primary team offer to allow one of them to join the big boys. Which one? That’s the contest part…

Issue #316’s ‘The Renegade Super-Hero!’ outs one trusted teammate as a career criminal who then goes on the run, but there’s more to the tale than at first appears, after which the heroes confront ‘The Menace of Dream Girl!’: a ravishing clairvoyant who beguiles her way into the Legion for her own obscure, arcane reasons. In her knowing way she presages the coming of deadly foe The Time Trapper and even finds time to convert electrically redundant sister of recently-resurrected Lightning Lad into gravity-warping Light Lass.

Adventure #318 sees ‘The Mutiny of the Legionnaires!’ as Sun Boy succumbs to battle fatigue and became a draconian Captain Bligh during an extended rescue mission, whilst in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #76 (April 1964) Siegel & Forte describe ‘Elastic Lad Jimmy and his Legion Romances!’ wherein the plucky journo is inveigled into the future and finds himself inexplicably irresistible to the costumed champions of Tomorrow. It isn’t his primitive charm, though…

Hamilton & Forte began a strong run of grittier tales from #319 on, beginning with ‘The Legion’s Suicide Squad!’ as the Science Police ask the team to destroy, at all costs, a monolithic space fortress, whilst #320 debuts daring new character in Dev-Em, a forgotten survivor of Superman’s dead homeworld who was little more than a petty thug when Superboy first defeated him. Now in ‘The Revenge of the Knave From Krypton!’ ( Siegel, Forte, Papp, Moldoff & Plastino), the rapscallion returns as either a reformed undercover cop or the greatest traitor in history…

The story portion of this titanic tome concludes with Adventure Comics #321 and Hamilton, Forte & Plastino’s ‘The Code of the Legion!’, revealing the team’s underlying Articles of Procedure during a dire espionage flap, simultaneously testing one Legionnaire to the limits of his honour and ingenuity and actually ending another’s service forever.

Perhaps. Sort of…

An appropriate extra from Superman Annual #4, follows: featuring a 2-page informational guide and pictorial check-list illustrated by Swan & Klein which was amended and supplemented in Adventure #316 with additional pages of stunning micro-pin-ups, all faithfully included here. This fabulously innocent and imaginative chronicle also includes every cover the team starred on: mostly the work of honorary Legionnaire Curt Swan and inkers George Klein, Stan Kaye & Sheldon Moldoff.

The Legion is undoubtedly one of the most beloved and bewildering creations in American comic book history and largely responsible for the growth of the groundswell movement that became Comics Fandom. Moreover, these sparkling, simplistic and devastatingly addictive stories as much as the legendary Julie Schwartz Justice League fired up the interest and imaginations of a generation of young readers and built the industry we all know today.

These naive, silly, joyous, stirring and utterly compelling yarns are precious and fun beyond any ability to explain – even if we old lags gently mock them to ourselves and one another. If you love comics and haven’t read this stuff, you are the poorer for it and need to enrich your future life as soon as possible.
© 1958-1964, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

March 17, 2023March 16, 2023

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow

By Tom King, Bilquis Evely, Matheus Lopes, Clayton Cowles & various (DC Comics)
ISBN: 978-1-7795-1568-1 (TPB/Digital edition)

As a rule, superhero comics don’t generally do whimsically thrilling anymore. They especially don’t do short or self-contained. Modern narrative momentum concentrates on continuous extended spectacle, major devastation and relentless terror and trauma. It also helps if you’ve come back from the dead once or twice and wear combat thongs and thigh boots…

Although there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that – other than a certain inappropriateness in striving to adjust wedgies during a life-or-death struggle – sometimes the palate just craves a different flavour…

Once upon a time, angsty in-continuity cataclysm was the rule, not the exception, but ever since DC readmitted all its past epochs into one vastly welcoming expansion multiverse via the Dark Night: Death Metal, Future State and Infinite Frontier mega-events, a spirit of joyous experimentation has resulted in some truly memorable storytelling.

This decidedly backward-looking modern fable harks back to simpler days of clearly defined plots, solid, imaginative characterisation and suspensefully dramatic adventure, by way of an almost alternative take on redoubtable Kara Zor-El, late of Krypton’s Argo City and another illegal alien immigrant on Earth.

Supergirl first gained popularity as a back-up feature in Action Comics: a tag-along (and trademark protection device) to her more illustrious cousin. After years of faithful service, in 1985 she was killed as a sales gimmick in the groundbreaking Crisis on Infinite Earths. Since then, a number of characters have used the name – but none with the class or durability of the original.

This latest incarnation cunningly references much of the original’s trappings, but combines stellar whimsy, dark modern attitudes and an edgier twist, as befits today’s readership. Written by Tom King (Mister Miracle, The Vision, The Sheriff of Babylon, Omega Men, Strange Adventures, Batman) and delightfully illustrated by Brazilian artist Bilquis Evely (Wonder Woman, The Dreaming, Detective Comics, Shaft: a Complicated Man) in a deliriously addictive, retro-futurist pulp style, it examines the concepts of justice and power of reputation through the wide eyes of a worshipful child who is both outraged orphan and lonely sidekick/secret weapon in waiting…

After a few intriguing concept-tweaking test-runs, the first true Girl of Steel debuted as a future star of the ever-expanding Superman pocket universe in Action Comics #252 (cover-dated May 1959). Superman’s cousin had been born on a city-sized fragment of Krypton, hurled intact into space when the planet exploded. Eventually, Argo turned to Kryptonite like the rest of the detonated world’s debris, and Kara’s dying parents, observing Earth through their viewer scopes, sent their daughter to safety even as they apparently perished.

Crashlanding, she immediately and fortuitously met the Metropolis Marvel, who created a cover-identity: hiding “Linda Lee” in an orphanage in bucolic Midvale so that she could adjust to and learn about her new world whilst mastering her powers in secrecy and safety.

…And isolation. At no stage did anyone consider moving the recent orphaned newcomer in with her only surviving family. Kara reached her maturity without the closeness Clark Kent’s human parents provided …although she was eventually adopted by Earth couple Fred and Edna to become Linda Lee Danvers…

Supergirl experienced her own secret double life in the rear of Action Comics: gradually moving from Superman’s covert secret weapon to an independent star turn, and from minor player to acclaimed public celebrity. From the back of the book to the front of the house is always a reason to celebrate, right?

For decades, DC couldn’t make up their minds over Supergirl. I’ve actually lost count of the number of different versions to have cropped up over the years, and never been able to shake a queasy feeling that above all else she’s a concept that was cynically shifted from being a way to get girls to reading comic books to one calculated to ease young male readers over the bumpy patch between sporadic chin-hair outbreaks, voice-breaking and that nervous period of hiding things under your mattress where your mum never, never ever looks…

Her popularity waxed and waned until her attention-grabbing death during Crisis on Infinite Earths. However, in the aftermath – once John Byrne had successfully rebooted the Man of Steel and negated her existence along with all other elements of doomed Krypton – non-Kryptonian iterations began to appear: each accumulating a legion of steadfast fans. Ultimately, early in the 21^st century, DC’s Powers-That-Be decided the real Girl of Steel should come back… sort of…

The New 52 company-wide reboot recast her as an angry, obnoxious distrustful teen fresh from Argo, before the 2016 DC: Rebirth event unwrote most of those changes: bringing back much of that original origin material whilst aligning the comic book iteration with the popular TV series broadcast from October 2015 to November 2021. Then under the aegis of the Infinite Frontier revolution, King, Evely, colourist Mat Lopes & letterer Clayton Cowles crafted 8-issue limited series Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (cover-dated August 2021-April 2022).

This focussed on a major moment in the hero’s life and how it changed everything…

King was inspired by Charles Portis’ 1968 novel True Grit – and both movie adaptations – to cast Supergirl as mentor to a vengeance-obsessed child: tracing how a united quest/journey reshaped both of them. Employing the latitude afforded by IF’s umbrella premise, he incorporated iconic characters and trappings from various iterations of Kara’s many super-lives. The result is pure magic, made real by Bilquis and her visual collaborators.

Wordy and wondrous, colours and calligraphy are key components of this space opera, which opens with youthful narrator Ruthye Marye Knoll disclosing how she first met an alien voyager after merciless bandit Krem of the Yellow Hills butchered her father…

Intent on rightful retribution, little Ruthye tracks the killer to a tavern in ‘Men, Women, and Dogs’, encountering a violent drunken woman from another world. Supergirl was on this unnamed backwater red sun world with frivolous intent: it was her 21^st birthday and she wanted to get really, really drunk…

Things go bad when Supergirl tries to help her get justice. The intergalactic warrior seriously underestimates Krem, and nearly dies when he puts three arrows through her chest, before apparently killing her dog Krypto and stealing her spaceship…

Barely alive, Kara agrees to let Ruthye help her hunt Krem down: travelling so very slowly by commercial starship and encountering the full annoying range of sentient lifeforms – and a deadly space dragon – in ‘Wounded, Stranded, and Impotent’, before finally reaching a region of space where yellow suns can recharge her…

Stranded on tourist trap Coronn for weeks, they jointly expose appalling racist atrocity in ‘Modest, Calm, and Quiet’ and learn the quarry has joined Barbond’s Brigands: a marauding fleet of space plunderers who become Supergirl’s greatest concern after their latest raid exterminates an entire species in ‘Restraint, Endurance, and Passion’.

Repeated close encounters with them result in furious frustration as Krem has mastered a mystic banishment spell that deposits his pursuers all over the cosmos. Slowly, steadily, Supergirl and Ruthye close in, with the latter honing her skills in eager anticipation of bloody revenge, despite anything Kara can say to dissuade her. Repeatedly fighting a succession of colossal lizard beasts, and enduring a slow painful death and resurrection, does nothing to help their moods either in ‘The Lake, the Trees, and the Monsters’…

Finally – reinforced by magical superhorse Comet – the seekers capture Krem and spectacularly engage the brigands in ‘Home Family, and Refuge’ and ‘Hope, Help, and Compassion.’, but the outcome is shockingly unexpected …and tragic.

Final chapter ‘Ruthye, Supergirl, and Krem of the Yellow Hills’ delivers major emotional and conceptual payoffs as antagonists and protagonists take their vendetta to its foregone conclusion. The vengeful child fulfils her quest, but learns some adult truths…

Supplemented by a covers-&-variants gallery by Evely, Lopes, Gary Frank & Alex Sinclair, Lee Weeks, David Mack, Rose Besch, Amy Reeder, Steve Rude, Nicola Scott & Annette Kwok and Janaina Medeiros, this book includes a stunning swathe of character and costume designs, to augment a tale profoundly and consciously mythic in scope and execution.

The apparent maiming and deaths of beloved characters – and animals at that! – and epic transitions and evolutions of the twin leads are potently and evocatively depicted against a universe of inspirational wonders and casual horrors, allowing us to see how heroes are forged, and the device of using a childlike Boswell to define Supergirl’s humanity is both compelling and revelatory.

A cosmic odyssey in the grandly poetic idiom of Jack Vance and Samuel R. Delaney, realised via retro-futuristic visuals reminiscent of Roy G. Krenkel, Jack Katz and Michael William Kaluta, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is a mesmerising mix of space opera and superhero drama exploring the mechanics of myths and power of storytelling on a multitude of levels.

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