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Supergirl: The Silver Age Vol. 2
After years of hiding her powers and heroic deeds from the public, Supergirl is finally revealed to the world! The story of one of history's greatest heroes continues as Kara Zor-El defends the planet from the likes of Lex Luthor, Mr. Mxyzptlk and more, while teaming-up with Superman, the Legion of Super-Heroes and her new pet, Comet the Super-Horse.
Supergirl: The Silver Age Vol. 2 collects Supergirl's backup stories from Action Comics #285-307, by such talented writers and artists as Jim Mooney, Leo Dorfman and Jerry Siegel.
Supergirl: The Silver Age Vol. 2 collects Supergirl's backup stories from Action Comics #285-307, by such talented writers and artists as Jim Mooney, Leo Dorfman and Jerry Siegel.
304 pages, Paperback
Published August 7, 2018
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44 people want to read
About the author
Jerry Siegel
623 books82 followersJerome "Jerry" Siegel, who also used pseudonyms including Joe Carter, Jerry Ess, and Herbert S. Fine, was the American co-creator of Superman (along with Joe Shuster), the first of the great comic book superheroes and one of the most recognizable icons of the 20th century.
He and Shuster were inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.
He and Shuster were inducted into the comic book industry's Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame in 1992 and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1993.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 31, 2021
Dorfman, despite an early error with Fred Danvers's first name (as Robert) in his fill-in for Jerry Siegel before taking over as regular writer really makes an effort at ongoing continuity and supporting cast rather than the one-offs of Siegel. He doesn't do cliffhangers, but he does focus on having a continuous supporting cast that includes Lena Thorul (Lex Luthor's younger sister, whose name was changed when she was little), Biron the Centaur (becomes Comet the Super-Horse), and regular appearances by Lori Lemaris, her nephew Jerro, Dick Malverne (the latter two both love interests, the former in her Kara identity and the latter in her Linda identity), and numerous appearances byLegion of Super-Heroes members, and plenty of appearances by villains Lex Luthor, Mr. Myzptlk, Jax-Ur, General Zod, and Kru-El. Dorfman kills off Lesla Lar, one of Supergirl's foes from Kandor, murdered by fellow Kryptonian criminal, and replaces her with her friend, Zora, whom the caption promises will return despite her exposure to Gold Kryptonite. Kara sure is gullible.
Zora calls herself the Black Flame and claims to be Kara's descendant from the year 4000 (nobody knew in 1963 that Kara was going to die childless fighting the Anti-Monitor, then be erased from existence after a worldwide mourning) living on a pirate planet with its land masses in the shape of a skull and crossbones. As silly as these stories could be, that planet is a lie, but Jim Mooney still got to draw it. It was probably more fun than drawing Kara or Biron's origin over and over, which happens a lot. Circe in these stories seems quite kind despite a claim by an alien posing as Mr. Myxzptlk. I'm not sure if that would be reconciled with the Wonder Woman version of Circe any time soon. In the same story, in which Kara is tricked into thinking that she has a death touch because she doesn't notice that "Comet" is speaking to her rather than communicating through telepathy (one of Lena's speech bubbles is erroneously done as a thought balloon rather than a speech balloon, but here Comet speaking to Kara with speech balloons rather than through telepathy is a narrative clue. Stan Lee used to call these "hangnails" on which DC's plots ride, while he preferred to write in a more epic style that wasn't so dependent on twisting clues. Part of the problem is that a lot of these are done incorrectly. For example, Zora is trying to trick Kara into exposing herself to gold kryptonite (which in this story they start to call "gold-k," which seems more contemporary), and it appears she does so, but she's also not wearing her belt. Kara's clue that Zora is not from the future but rather from Kandor is because she sees dental fillings. While the story shows a dentist in Kandor, it doesn't show Zora's dental fillings to the reader until Kara explains that she saw them. So, in this story, the reader is given one hangnail but denied the ultimate one.
A nice twist in these stories is that Lex Luthor is willing to help Supergirl, despite it being established early in the volume that he hates her worse than Superman for saving his life (a humiliation) so that he can serve his sentence after accidentally shooting himself with a "nuclear kryptonite ray-gun" (the first notion that kryptonite radiation can hurt a human, although it would largely be ignored subsequently), when it involves keeping her younger sister out of a life of crime. In these silver age stories, when Luthor is shown, he's usually using his scientific knowledge in often implausible ways (I wonder how many kids made themselves sick my mixing orange juice and mouthwash with aspirin and holding radio parts, as he does here) to escape from prison, then seems to have access to vast technology he uses in order to commit crimes. It's not quite so bad here, as he has a secret lab that Supergirl later goes to because she knows it's there, but it's not the evil businessman idea that John Byrne initiated in 1986 and has really seemed to take hold in the public's idea of who Lex Luthor is.
Probably the most important new character in these stories is Biron the Centaur, whom Circe intends to turn into a man as per his wish but accidentally changes into a horse because an evil wizard named Maldor switches the potions (Maldor doesn't appear in the subsequent retellings, but it continues to be portrayed as an accident) who later gets the ability to become a man when comets pass near earth (at one point he is sent through time and is affected by Halley's comet). People have made fun of this a lot on the internet because Kara kisses him in human form. One of my Facebook friends said that she regularly kisses her horse on the muzzle, so she doesn't see a big deal. He's not in horse form, and he's a sentient humanoid--a centaur in his natural form. I don't think too many people would find hugging and kissing a centaur disgusting, although things beyond that, perhaps... Much creepier was Kal saying he'd marry her if they weren't first cousins, which he mentions was illegal on Krypton but legal in many countries on Earth. This panel has also been pointed out on the internet as creepy, so I won't belabor it forward.
The beginning was confusing because I was damn sure the Danvers family already knew Kara was Supergirl in the first volume, and I remember the tunnel into the forest and Fred Danvers expressing pride at being Supergirl's legal guardian (which they always mention needing to keep secret to pull new readers up to speed), but the story presented it as something Superman didn't want revealed until the right time, but exposed by an accident. It's not a big deal because in this issue, Superman, as promised in the previous issue, is going to make Supergirl known to the public (not her secret identity, just Supergirl and Kara Zor-El--she freely calls Superman Kal-El when she tells her origin to a girl who thinks Supergirl caused her father's death. This issue was used as the grand finale of [[The Supergirl Archives, vol. 2]], but presumably DC had already decided to go forward with a second volume, and it works better as an introduction to the volume than a conclusion, unless, as with the archive editions, you're actually stopping (leaving readers with strong memories of Supergirl fighting giant feet, revealed in two panels to look like the insipration of Ponda Baba in Star Wars. I don't know if DC plans to do any more volumes in this series. Supergirl continued to appear regularly until her famous death scene during [[Crisis on Infinite Earths]] in Action Comics until the end of the sixties, then switched to Adventure Comics, then her own title for ten issues in the seventies (half of which I have), then in The Superman Family, an anthology that continued the numbering of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen when separate series were deemed unsustainable, then The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl.
The last story was a bit confusing in light of what's come before, which has an ominous cover warning that Supergirl is going to inadvertently marry a supervillain. In Action #267, Kara was denied membership to the Legion of Super-Heroes because red kryptonite had aged her to a woman at a point when they admitted only minors. Considering how slowly people age in comics, her being old enough to get married is surprising--she is still portrayed attending high school, even in the story. The villain, An-Tar, poses as her new science teacher. This made me think of the short documentary film AP Biology that I saw in the Women in the Director's Chair film festival, in which a young woman recounts an experience in which a young male biology teacher teaches the girls about doing kegel excercises and proceeds to more inappropriate themes like feeling them up in the janitor's room. I'm sure this most likely has to do with Dorfman taking over as regular writer and not having a clear fix on Supergirl's age or how quickly they want to portray her aging giving that the stories, particularly of his tenure, certainly don't occur a month apart from each other.
Overall, this is a fun volume, well illustrated. It isn't great, but it is entertaining, occasionally poignant, introduces many more continuing ideas than the previous volume looking forward to more Bronze-Age style serial comics, so it's worth a read for any DC fan who doesn't expect anything too serious.
Zora calls herself the Black Flame and claims to be Kara's descendant from the year 4000 (nobody knew in 1963 that Kara was going to die childless fighting the Anti-Monitor, then be erased from existence after a worldwide mourning) living on a pirate planet with its land masses in the shape of a skull and crossbones. As silly as these stories could be, that planet is a lie, but Jim Mooney still got to draw it. It was probably more fun than drawing Kara or Biron's origin over and over, which happens a lot. Circe in these stories seems quite kind despite a claim by an alien posing as Mr. Myxzptlk. I'm not sure if that would be reconciled with the Wonder Woman version of Circe any time soon. In the same story, in which Kara is tricked into thinking that she has a death touch because she doesn't notice that "Comet" is speaking to her rather than communicating through telepathy (one of Lena's speech bubbles is erroneously done as a thought balloon rather than a speech balloon, but here Comet speaking to Kara with speech balloons rather than through telepathy is a narrative clue. Stan Lee used to call these "hangnails" on which DC's plots ride, while he preferred to write in a more epic style that wasn't so dependent on twisting clues. Part of the problem is that a lot of these are done incorrectly. For example, Zora is trying to trick Kara into exposing herself to gold kryptonite (which in this story they start to call "gold-k," which seems more contemporary), and it appears she does so, but she's also not wearing her belt. Kara's clue that Zora is not from the future but rather from Kandor is because she sees dental fillings. While the story shows a dentist in Kandor, it doesn't show Zora's dental fillings to the reader until Kara explains that she saw them. So, in this story, the reader is given one hangnail but denied the ultimate one.
A nice twist in these stories is that Lex Luthor is willing to help Supergirl, despite it being established early in the volume that he hates her worse than Superman for saving his life (a humiliation) so that he can serve his sentence after accidentally shooting himself with a "nuclear kryptonite ray-gun" (the first notion that kryptonite radiation can hurt a human, although it would largely be ignored subsequently), when it involves keeping her younger sister out of a life of crime. In these silver age stories, when Luthor is shown, he's usually using his scientific knowledge in often implausible ways (I wonder how many kids made themselves sick my mixing orange juice and mouthwash with aspirin and holding radio parts, as he does here) to escape from prison, then seems to have access to vast technology he uses in order to commit crimes. It's not quite so bad here, as he has a secret lab that Supergirl later goes to because she knows it's there, but it's not the evil businessman idea that John Byrne initiated in 1986 and has really seemed to take hold in the public's idea of who Lex Luthor is.
Probably the most important new character in these stories is Biron the Centaur, whom Circe intends to turn into a man as per his wish but accidentally changes into a horse because an evil wizard named Maldor switches the potions (Maldor doesn't appear in the subsequent retellings, but it continues to be portrayed as an accident) who later gets the ability to become a man when comets pass near earth (at one point he is sent through time and is affected by Halley's comet). People have made fun of this a lot on the internet because Kara kisses him in human form. One of my Facebook friends said that she regularly kisses her horse on the muzzle, so she doesn't see a big deal. He's not in horse form, and he's a sentient humanoid--a centaur in his natural form. I don't think too many people would find hugging and kissing a centaur disgusting, although things beyond that, perhaps... Much creepier was Kal saying he'd marry her if they weren't first cousins, which he mentions was illegal on Krypton but legal in many countries on Earth. This panel has also been pointed out on the internet as creepy, so I won't belabor it forward.
The beginning was confusing because I was damn sure the Danvers family already knew Kara was Supergirl in the first volume, and I remember the tunnel into the forest and Fred Danvers expressing pride at being Supergirl's legal guardian (which they always mention needing to keep secret to pull new readers up to speed), but the story presented it as something Superman didn't want revealed until the right time, but exposed by an accident. It's not a big deal because in this issue, Superman, as promised in the previous issue, is going to make Supergirl known to the public (not her secret identity, just Supergirl and Kara Zor-El--she freely calls Superman Kal-El when she tells her origin to a girl who thinks Supergirl caused her father's death. This issue was used as the grand finale of [[The Supergirl Archives, vol. 2]], but presumably DC had already decided to go forward with a second volume, and it works better as an introduction to the volume than a conclusion, unless, as with the archive editions, you're actually stopping (leaving readers with strong memories of Supergirl fighting giant feet, revealed in two panels to look like the insipration of Ponda Baba in Star Wars. I don't know if DC plans to do any more volumes in this series. Supergirl continued to appear regularly until her famous death scene during [[Crisis on Infinite Earths]] in Action Comics until the end of the sixties, then switched to Adventure Comics, then her own title for ten issues in the seventies (half of which I have), then in The Superman Family, an anthology that continued the numbering of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen when separate series were deemed unsustainable, then The Daring New Adventures of Supergirl.
The last story was a bit confusing in light of what's come before, which has an ominous cover warning that Supergirl is going to inadvertently marry a supervillain. In Action #267, Kara was denied membership to the Legion of Super-Heroes because red kryptonite had aged her to a woman at a point when they admitted only minors. Considering how slowly people age in comics, her being old enough to get married is surprising--she is still portrayed attending high school, even in the story. The villain, An-Tar, poses as her new science teacher. This made me think of the short documentary film AP Biology that I saw in the Women in the Director's Chair film festival, in which a young woman recounts an experience in which a young male biology teacher teaches the girls about doing kegel excercises and proceeds to more inappropriate themes like feeling them up in the janitor's room. I'm sure this most likely has to do with Dorfman taking over as regular writer and not having a clear fix on Supergirl's age or how quickly they want to portray her aging giving that the stories, particularly of his tenure, certainly don't occur a month apart from each other.
Overall, this is a fun volume, well illustrated. It isn't great, but it is entertaining, occasionally poignant, introduces many more continuing ideas than the previous volume looking forward to more Bronze-Age style serial comics, so it's worth a read for any DC fan who doesn't expect anything too serious.
April 21, 2024
This is a fun collection of stories from 1962-63. I had to continue on my Silver Age Supergirl reading journey to get to the introductions of Comet the Super Horse and Lena "Thorul" - and these stories did not disappoint!
The Super Horse tales are hilariously weird - not a Kryptonian, Super Horse was a centaur named Biron in Ancient Greece who dreamed of becoming a human man, but was instead given a potion that transformed him fully into a horse. Feeling bad about the mix-up the sorceress who gave him the potion gave him a second elixir to make him immortal and give him superpowers. Then he got stuck in outer space, trapped in orbit for thousands of years until Supergirl's passing rocket dislodged him. He has multiple secret identities - as Comet the ordinary horse, as a Hollywood stunt horse, as the superhero "Super Horse," and as a human rodeo champion (a space wizard makes it so that every time a comet passes near the Earth Comet turns human for a couple days.) Oh, and he's in love with Supergirl.
Meanwhile, Supergirl's new friend Lena is Lex Luthor's secret sister. She doesn't know she's related to Lex because their parents changed their name to "Thorul" and were subsequently killed in a car accident. Lena has ESP which is such a fun addition and I really wish we got to see more of her! I also love that even though Lex is a criminal he has a soft spot for his little sister and will work together with Supergirl to save her when she is in trouble! That was one of my favorite parts of this collection.
We also see the introduction of "Black Flame" a super villain pirate queen who claims to be a far-future descendant of Supergirl! In an era when heroes were constantly travelling backward and forward in time via the "Time Barrier" this poses an interesting idea and dilemma (even if it turns out .)
The collection ends on a rather uncomfortable note, as a villainous Kryptonian who manages to escape the Phantom Zone decides to get revenge on Superman by marrying Supergirl(?) and so launches a plan to seduce her by...disguising himself as her science teacher?! She's in high school - also her parents are cool with this?! Wh - why?
Anyway, for the most part these stories are wacky and fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed my dive into the Silver Age of DC comics. I've got the recently reprinted Superman: the Silver Age omnibus up next!
The Super Horse tales are hilariously weird - not a Kryptonian, Super Horse was a centaur named Biron in Ancient Greece who dreamed of becoming a human man, but was instead given a potion that transformed him fully into a horse. Feeling bad about the mix-up the sorceress who gave him the potion gave him a second elixir to make him immortal and give him superpowers. Then he got stuck in outer space, trapped in orbit for thousands of years until Supergirl's passing rocket dislodged him. He has multiple secret identities - as Comet the ordinary horse, as a Hollywood stunt horse, as the superhero "Super Horse," and as a human rodeo champion (a space wizard makes it so that every time a comet passes near the Earth Comet turns human for a couple days.) Oh, and he's in love with Supergirl.
Meanwhile, Supergirl's new friend Lena is Lex Luthor's secret sister. She doesn't know she's related to Lex because their parents changed their name to "Thorul" and were subsequently killed in a car accident. Lena has ESP which is such a fun addition and I really wish we got to see more of her! I also love that even though Lex is a criminal he has a soft spot for his little sister and will work together with Supergirl to save her when she is in trouble! That was one of my favorite parts of this collection.
We also see the introduction of "Black Flame" a super villain pirate queen who claims to be a far-future descendant of Supergirl! In an era when heroes were constantly travelling backward and forward in time via the "Time Barrier" this poses an interesting idea and dilemma (even if it turns out .)
The collection ends on a rather uncomfortable note, as a villainous Kryptonian who manages to escape the Phantom Zone decides to get revenge on Superman by marrying Supergirl(?) and so launches a plan to seduce her by...disguising himself as her science teacher?! She's in high school - also her parents are cool with this?! Wh - why?
Anyway, for the most part these stories are wacky and fun. I've thoroughly enjoyed my dive into the Silver Age of DC comics. I've got the recently reprinted Superman: the Silver Age omnibus up next!
June 17, 2022
These stories from the early 1960s are exactly what you’d expect: bright, poppy, zany tales of the Maiden of Steel from a simpler time. This volume introduces her pet cat and her horse, and now she’s out to her foster parents and adored by the world, but she’s still balancing small town, American teenage life with a healthy dose of bizarre Silver Age shenanigans. Mostly she’s called to action when Superman is off planet or in the future. She, too, is often traveling through space and time. Expect lots of “gee whiz, Archie” mixed with B monster movies. Some of the stories are fun, some are lame. Read back-to-back they wear thin but they’re good little palate cleansers. The art is simple but very easy on the eyes. I’m looking forward to Kara’s Bronze Age stories being collected. Like Batgirl, that’s when things get interesting.
(Not to be confused with Supergirl - The Silver Age Omnibus v2. This and the preceding volume are collected in the first omnibus. I believe. The sameness of the titles doesn’t help.)
(Not to be confused with Supergirl - The Silver Age Omnibus v2. This and the preceding volume are collected in the first omnibus. I believe. The sameness of the titles doesn’t help.)
April 11, 2020
After spending V1 as Superman's secret weapon, here Supergirl finally goes public, becomes the idol of millions, fights Luthor, gets a steady boyfriend (Dick Malverne — bland, but no worse than a lot of heroes' boyfriends) and a super-horse and meets Luthor's long-lost sister Lena (very different than the CW show). The stories suffer from Jerry Siegel turning over the writing to the much inferior Leo Dorfman, but they're still enjoyable — though like most older comics, this is very much YMMV.
One thing that annoys me is they don't do much to give Supergirl the kind of recurring foes Superman got. Lesla-Lar, her best adversary of this era, gets killed off; her successor, Black Flame, gets one story then doesn't appear for another seven years.
One thing that annoys me is they don't do much to give Supergirl the kind of recurring foes Superman got. Lesla-Lar, her best adversary of this era, gets killed off; her successor, Black Flame, gets one story then doesn't appear for another seven years.
April 24, 2020
I'm giving this volume 4 stars, though it's probably deserving -- at best -- of 3. I know I've read some of the stories in this volume before, but I don't believe I noticed just how much repetition of Supergirl's and Comet's origins there was in those early years. Get past the endless re-tellings and there are some good stories here.
May 5, 2022
This was a pleasant surprise after the unreadable volume 1. Supergirl is still hampered by the mindset of the times in which this was written, but this collection sees here come in to her own. I was surprised by the serialized storylines too. Be warned, anything with Comet the Super Horse is both bad and uncomfortable.
September 7, 2018
More silver age fun with the girl of steel!
Supergirl, Kara Zor-el, Linda Lee, Linda Danvers, has always been my second favorite super heroine (Wonder Woman will always be number 1). While the silver age stories could be corny, they were and are FUN!
Supergirl, Kara Zor-el, Linda Lee, Linda Danvers, has always been my second favorite super heroine (Wonder Woman will always be number 1). While the silver age stories could be corny, they were and are FUN!
January 9, 2019
I like this book a lot. The paper is not glossy (I don't like glossy - it sucks under neon lights), the colors are clean and bright. The stories are corny, but that is what you can expect from a silver age superhero book.
October 28, 2018
About as good, maybe a little better than volume one.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews