Adventure 393 – Supergirl and the crime predictor

The story in Adventure 393 (May 1970) is not great.  In fact, considering it was written by Robert Kanigher, it’s not even good.  But there are a couple of things that make me include it in this blog.

First of all, Dick Malverne makes his only appearance during Supergirl’s run in Adventure Comics in this story.  That’s the back of his head there. Had it not been for the text, there would be no way to know it was him.  He next appears in Supergirl’s first, short-lived series a couple years later.

Professor Miles Morrison comes to Stanhope College to show off his crime predictor.  It accurately foretells an assassination, and a scandal ruining an actress’ career.

Supergirl does her best to prevent both incidents, but the victims turn on her, and she is prevented from helping them.  Superman shows up to dump on her, and all of Stanhope is against her by the end of the story.

She figures out the professor is really Mr Mxyzptlk, using a huge guess, really.  And then tricks him into saying his name backwards.  Somehow this makes everything not have happened, even the assassination, which really doesn’t make much sense.

But it has Dick Malverne and Mr Mxyzptlk, so despite its crappiness, it’s in the blog.

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Adventure 390 – Supergirl`s all-romance special

Adventure 390 (Mar/April 1970) is an 80 page giant that reprints 5 stories from her run in Action Comics.  I will be talking about those individual stories when I cover Action, but I included this to highlight how much of a romance comic the Supergirl series was in the 60s and 70s.

This issue has stories of two of her main boyfriends from this era, Dick Malverne, who she met while in the orphanage, and later went to high school with.  He was essentially her `Lois Lane`, in that many of the tales had him trying to prove she was Supergirl.

Two of the stories in this issue deal with her romance with Comet, the Super-Horse. Somehow the bestiality element never seemed to occur to the writers.

This issue also reprints the tale in which Supergirl finds an alien double of herself, and matchmakes the woman and Superman.

From bestiality to quasi-incest, the path of true love never did run smooth for Supergirl.