The Super-Men (and -Women) of All-Planets

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 335 (March 1966)--2nd story, "The Prize of Peril" by Binder and Mooney
ACTION COMICS 336 (April 1966)--2nd story, "The Forbidden Fortress of Solitude" by Binder and Mooney; cover art by Swan and Klein:

Linda Lee Danvers again seems obsessed with glamour over heroism when she competes for the crown of Miss Universe; however, on this occasion she has a secret purpose.

Through an alien probe sent to Earth, Linda learns that the seemingly innocent beauty contest is really a scheme to bring women from different planets to compete for that year's Miss Cosmos crown.

Linda covertly uses her super-powers to win the Miss Universe title for Earth, upon which she's abducted to the world where the Miss Cosmos contest is held annually. The master of the contest, Jak-Thal, says that the winner of Miss Cosmos will never want to return to her homeworld.

There, Supergirl is attended by servants who hide their faces behind bandages.

Against the other contestants, the Midvale Marvel easily wins the crown and the grand prize--the Eternal Cabinet of Youth--which she must sleep in that night. The Eternal Cabinet is supposed to confer ever lasting youth, but during the night the servant women try to rescue Linda from this pod. They were all previous winners of Miss Cosmos and as the servant Zilya reveals, their faces were horribly disfigured after sleeping in the Eternal Cabinet.



Jak-Thal blasts the women and then reveals his true face which was deformed on a trip through space by the radiations of a spiral nebula. Supergirl defeats him handily, but upon returning to Earth, she finds that her face has become distorted.

In the next issue, the self-conscious Kryptonian heads off a collision between the Bizarro World and another planet, but the Bizarros make a duplicate of Supergirl that has Linda's regular face--although this Girl of Steel has a Bizarro brain.



The beautiful Bizarro goes to Earth, where she takes charge of the Super-Horse and bars Superman from the Fortress of Solitude.

Jak-Thal, having seen the error of his ways, sends a Miss Cosmos crown to Supergirl that restores her natural beauty.

Note: "The Great Miss Universe Contest," in SUPERMAN’S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN No. 83 (March ’65), also was a ruse for nefarious purposes--see post #69.

[Jim Kelly]

SUPERMAN'S PAL, JIMMY OLSEN 92 (April 1966)--1st story, "The Man from S.C.A.R." by Dorfman and Pete Costanza; 2nd story, "Jimmy Olsen's Journey to Nowhere" by Dorfman and Mooney:

The plastic surgeon known as "Doctor Rembrandt," for his artistic ability to create new faces, has just completed giving a new face to a S.C.A.R. agent--a perfect double for Jimmy Olsen. This "Olsen-X" is supposed to take the place of the cub reporter, but when Jimmy discovers his twin in his apartment they come to blows and a space trophy from Superman puts Olsen-X in suspended animation.

Jimmy goes into "Double-5" mode and pretends to be Olsen-X gaining entry into S.C.A.R. headquarters at the back of a costume shop. There other X agents are being trained to take the place of Superman, Supergirl, Batman, Perry and Lois. Supergirl-X is practicing with dummies of Comet and Streaky.



Double-5 meets the big boss, Mr. Nero, and as the final step in the process of replacing Olsen, the double agent is put under the knife to fit him with a disintegration device should he go rogue. Olsen has already seen this happen to Robin-X when he tried to inform on Nero.

Before the X agents, the boss reveals his true origin. He is actually an alien agent from the fire planet Pyron. His real name is Truff, a silicon-based life form who thrives on fire. The intention is for Truff to ignite a giant Thermitron bomb and turn Earth into an inferno, for a new Pyron colony.



However, first they must get rid of the Super-Cousins. At the next day's charity banquet, Supergirl-X will eliminate Superman when she honours him with a wreath containing Kryptonite. Then later Superman-X will do the same to Supergirl.



Jimmy escapes to warn Superman, but as he does so he's disintegrated by Nero's destructo implant. The Man of Steel heads to S.C.A.R. as Truff sets off the Thermitron bomb. The Action Ace inhales all the fire before it can do any harm, yet he presses the buttons of the destructo mechanism, wiping out all the remaining X agents.

In fact, none of them are gone. The mechanism never really harmed anyone, it simply made them invisible and rendered them unconscious.

[Jim Kelly]

One day as Superman demonstrates the prototype for an enlargement ray he hopes to use on Kandor, Jimmy is teleported to the world of Roban. The chief scientist, Vikkor, had hoped to bring the Caped Kryptonian, but ended up with Olsen. Their world is lit by an artificial green sun and their last remaining city is under attack by flame-breathing reptilians. Any attempt to kill the creatures simply divides them into two creatures.



Having the enlarging ray with him, Olsen uses it to expand ice cubes that freeze and encase the reptilians inside them. As the tele-transportation energizer only had enough juice for a one-way trip, Jimmy must get home the old-fashioned way, by space-ship.



At the end of his strange trek through "outer space," the freckle-faced reporter realizes he's journeyed from the centre of the Earth.



Note: Had Superman visited Roban, would he have had any super-powers? While their green sun was artificial, it seems likely he would have lost his powers just the same. In "Superman Under a Green Sun," all it took was a blue filter over a yellow sun to undermine the Man of Tomorrow. Roban is another city of the Inner World at the centre of the Earth, like Subbania from ADVENTURE COMICS 302 (November 1962).

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 337 (May 1966)--2nd story "The Green Sun Supergirl" by Binder and Mooney

The space program is working on accommodating women astronauts--what they call "astronettes"--and they want Supergirl to test out the astronette space suit. So she goes into space in a Gemini rocket. But while she's out there, some cosmic phenomenon causes the capsule to warp through space and she crash lands on the planet Lumal in another star system.



Lumal has a green sun, leaving Linda powerless, but she makes friends with a nectar farming couple. However, the people there are taxed by their evil-eyed landlords, who live underground. And when serfs can't pay their taxes, they are burned out of home by the flaming evil-eyed ones.



Linda uses good sense to retrieve some singing crystals to pay off the taxman when he comes around to her friends' house.

To get resources to fuel up her space capsule and return to Earth, she must negotiate the conditions on the planet. But her feats appear as super-powers to her new friends.

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 338 (June 1966)--2nd story "The Villain Who Married Supergirl" by Siegel and Mooney:

At an exhibition for charity in Midvale, the Action Amiga encounters Raspor, an arrogant alien, along with his partner Viperie. Although Viperie loves Raspor, he's only interested in seducing other women and he's set on winning Supergirl as his mate. As he has a long-life span of over one thousand years, he'll probably discard Kara Zor-El after a mere fifty years and then have many wives later on.



The Girl from Argo City follows the two into outer space and, aboard their spacecraft, she spies on Raspor as he plays out his three-dimensional fantasies for Viperie. He replays how, over one hundred years ago, he presented the Science Council on Krypton with an ultimatum: either they surrender to his leaders, the warlords of the planet Gryyk, or he would plant an N-Bomb at their planet's core, which would detonate at an undetermined time in the future. When the Kryptonians didn't give in to his demands, he made good on his threat.



Supergirl then makes her presence known and appears to have been overcome by his charms, despite knowing that Raspor destroyed her ancestral homeworld. They leave Viperie and travel to a paradise planet where they are married via remote video link. Supergirl flies off to take care of her super-hero duties, leaving Raspor alone, when he finds that an evil emissary from Gryyk planted an N-Bomb inside this world centuries ago.

It's all been a set-up by the Midvale Miracle. Via super-ventriloquism, she informs the alien that the marriage ceremony was faked and she has abandoned him on this planet to await his fate, which may come soon or later. Then she cuts off all communication with Raspor. She does not hear his confession that he never actually went to Krypton at all--that was just his bravado. Nor does Raspor know that Supergirl deactivated the bomb before she left.



Note: While Supergirl plotting revenge on Raspor for having destroyed an entire planet makes sense, her cold-hearted actions show another side of the super-heroine. And while Raspor is certainly a predatory philanderer, as far as we know he's never committed any actual crimes--it's a miscarriage of justice. The Maid of Might has doomed her would-be husband to solitary confinement for the rest of his days. Given his long life expectancy, Raspor will either serve his sentence for the next thousand years or more likely he will be driven insane and commit suicide to free himself from his prison of loneliness.

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 342 (October 1966)--2nd story, "The Day Supergirl Became An Amazon" by Binder and Mooney:



At Stanhope College, Linda Danvers, Millie Cole and Sue Johnston win the "Aquarium Grant" that sends them on a voyage to the South Pacific to gather specimens for the school. However, they get shipwrecked on an island of Amazons, where Queen Jarta says that all female castaways must stay on the island to become Amazons.



The weak Stanhope students are fed a nectar that should increase their strength to the same level as the sister Amazons on the island. Linda pretends that she has metabolized the nectar faster than the other two and starts to use her super-powers.



Queen Jarta is quickly vexed by Linda's hyper-activity and only wants to be rid of her. So the three students win their freedom.

Note: There's no mention of Wonder Woman in this story.

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 344 (December 1966)--2nd story, "The (Super) Girl in the Green House" by Jim Shooter and Jim Mooney
ACTION COMICS 345 (January 1967)--2nd story, "The Exile of Steel" by Shooter and Mooney:

Flying through the cosmos, on her way back to Earth, the Girl from Argo City spots a planet that looks exactly like Earth. Flying down to the planet surface to check it out, Supergirl sees a gang of teens firing guns at some adults. Believing the youths are hoodlums, the Woman of Tomorrow attacks them, allowing the adults to get away.



Only later, does Linda realize she was in the wrong. After a plague struck their world, Gaea, most of the adult population died out and teen-agers were left in charge.



Since it's summer term at Stanhope and she has two months off, Linda decides to live on Gaea in a world where teens enjoy more freedoms and responsibilities than on Earth. Supergirl has made herself a public enemy on the planet, but Linda Lee Danvers is free to do as she pleases. Mining gold for money, our heroine buys a house and adopts an adult couple, Frank and Ethel Davis, doubles for the Danvers.

A Dick Malverne counterpart--Dick Malvin--is working covertly for a terrorist group called A.R.M., the Adult Revolution Movement. After learning that Linda Danvers is really the wanted criminal, Supergirl, Malvin sets out to put Linda in the Green House--the equivalent of the White House on Earth.



When Linda stands up for the right to free speech on live T.V., she wins a ground-swell of support and a flood of write-in votes elect her as President. Naturally, she appoints Dick as her Vice President.

[Jim Kelly]

Malvin later arranges it so Linda is exposed as being Supergirl.



This leads to an impeachment trial in the next issue, where she is found guilty by the Senate. The Caped Kryptonian escapes into outer space--where she is kept busy by a cosmic catastrophe--and tricky Dick takes the presidency.



A reign of terror begins as A.R.M. terrorists seize power under martial law, threatening the teen population with acts of violence. The Girl of Steel finally returns from her mission in space. Dick Malvin's dirty tricks are exposed and teen-agers regain authority. They give the Blonde Powerhouse a ticker tape parade, before Linda must return to Earth.



Note: This two-parter is Jim Shooter's first Supergirl script and being a teen himself it must have been right up his alley. The plot sounds like something out of STAR TREK. Linda Danvers would eventually meet another teen President--a Prez--in the 1970s.

[Jim Kelly]

WORLD'S FINEST COMICS 164 (February 1967)--1st story, "Brainiac's Super Brain-Child"/"The Broken Code" by Dorfman, Swan and Klein:

Brainiac disguises himself as Batman to gain entrance into the Fortress of Solitude and swipe the bottle city from under Superman's nose. But the Caped Kryptonian is not so easily fooled.

Making his escape, the Computer Criminal from Colu holes up inside his lair and manufactures his brain-child, Genia.



Outwardly, she is a double for Madam Tru, President of Orienta, newly elected Chairman of the United Nations Security Council.



After taking the place of the real Madam Tru, Genia makes a presentation before the U.N. science commission, demonstrating a device that cleans up smog in the world's largest cities.



The actual President of Orienta does have an invention from her scientists that will mitigate some pollution, but not on the scale that Genia presents. However, the device does not actually work--Brainiac's Daughter has a vision power that induces illusions.

The devices are actually meant to shrink the cities and put them in bottles like Kandor.

[Jim Kelly]

When the Dynamic Duo help the fake Tru escape an assassin, the Caped Crusader deduces she is not the genuine article and that she is likely connected to Brainiac.





The World's Finest Trio set a trap for Genia.

But once she is captured, they are conflicted over what to do with her. The Man of Steel argues she is just a machine, a computer. But the Boy Wonder points out that she has human senses and emotions and they would be breaking their code if they killed her. Both Batman and Superman blast her with ray guns--and Genia seems to have been destroyed.



However, the Masked Manhunter blasted her with a Phantom Zone ray gun, while the Metropolis Marvel blasted Genia with a Transport ray gun. Superman was quickest on the draw, so Genia has been incepted into Kandor, where scientists will reprogram her to do good.

[Jim Kelly]

ACTION COMICS 348 (March 1967)--2nd story "The Assistant Supergirl" by Dorfman and Mooney:

Linda Lee Danvers welcomes a new roommate at Stanhope College, as another term begins. The new roommate is Kara Strange.



Grateful for Supergirl helping their planet in the past, the inhabitants of Denek created a robot assistant for Kara Zor-El. In homage to their idol, they named the robot Kara, Kara Strange.

The robot can change her appearance to look like Linda, Supergirl or Bizarro Supergirl. However, Linda is not happy with this over-eager robot, yet she can't ship it back without offending the people of Denek.

Frustrated with Kara Strange butting into her super-hero duties and college studies, the Midvale Marvel tries to destroy the robot by leading her into the past and through the first H-Bomb test.





When that doesn't work, Linda has Kara Strange sub in for her at college. But when the robot can't give blood at the campus blood drive, she feels she has failed Supergirl and heads back to Denek for disposal.

Note: Unlike Robin, who has empathy for artificial life forms, Supergirl doesn't care at all about Kara Strange's existence, even though it's clear that the robot has genuine emotions.

[Jim Kelly]

SUPERMAN 171 (August 1964)--1st story, "Superman's Sacrifice" by Dorfman and Plastino
WORLD'S FINEST COMICS 150 (June 1965)--1st story, "The Super-Gamble with Doom" by Hamilton, Swan and Moldoff:

When an alien spacecraft approaches Earth, the Metropolis Marvel flies out to meet the two extraterrestrials aboard the craft. They are Rokk and Sorban, who can destroy a planet with a mere glance. They threaten to use their power on the entire Earth, killing billions, unless the Caped Kryptonian kills one of his friends.

Rather than take another person's life, Superman leaves suicide notes for all of his friends and then attempts to kill himself with green Kryptonite. But Rokk uses his vision power to transmute the K-Metal into harmless minerals. The Action Ace won't get off that easy and when he returns to the Planet building, having read his suicide notes, his friends are ready to give their lives to save the Earth and spare him the choice. In fact, Lana Lang nearly kills herself with one of Professor Potter's crack-pot machines.

After saving Lana from a horrible death, the Man of Tomorrow goes to an atomic bomb testing site, where chained to the testing tower as Clark Kent, he shouts that Superman chained him there. Unable to stop the blast, the scientists watch their monitors in horror as Kent is killed by the incredible atomic blast.

People around the world are disillusioned with the Champion of Truth and Justice, that he would willingly murder another human being. When the super-hero reports back to the aliens, he discovers that it was a wager between the two of them. They are from Ventura, the Gamblers' Planet, and the last of their kind. Rokk gambled that he could make Superman kill someone. He did not win the bet, because they both know that Clark Kent is the Man of Steel.



Superman is angry that he was forced to destroy his secret identity, making him hated in the entire world, all for a stupid bet. However, Rokk assures him that he can make the world forget what has happened with his eye-beams. As their spacecraft circles the planet, Rokk's hypnotic beams blanket the Earth and all is forgotten.

The two Super-Gamblers from Ventura next show up in WORLD'S FINEST COMICS 150.

The Batman flies out to the Gamblers' Isle where gambling is legal. He suspects that the operation is crooked, but he can find nothing wrong with the games inside the lavish casino. He accepts a challenge from the two croupiers in the gambling palace to roll the giant dice and win a fortune for charity.



After dealing with a threatening asteroid, Superman flies to the small island to check in on his World's Finest Friend. As the Caped Kryptonian can see through the disguises of the croupiers, he recognizes them as Rokk and Sorban from the Gamblers' Planet.



When the Masked Manhunter rolls the giant dice, he comes up snake eyes and loses the bet. As the loser, he must go with the Super-Gamblers to Ventura.

[Jim Kelly]

On the Gamblers' Planet, although Rokk and Sorban are the last of the hereditary ruling class, Ventura has a large population of other people, whose lives are completely ruled by gambling.

As Batman is held in custody inside the National Casino, until Superman can win his freedom, the beautiful Lurala takes the Action Ace on a city tour.



She goes out of her way to show the Champion of the Oppressed just how psychological manipulation is used to undermine one's opponent on the Gamblers' Planet. Realizing that Rokk and Sorban have been psyching him out, Kal-El shows his gratitude to Lurala with a passionate kiss.



When it comes down to the final game, where the Action Ace and Rokk play on a table that has real-world consequences for our solar system, Superman wins by making a seemingly insignificant shot using the asteroid from earlier in the story.



Having won Batman's freedom and as the World's Finest Heroes prepare to leave the Gamblers' Planet, Superman promises the lovely Lurala he'll be back again but not for super-gambling (wink-wink, nudge-nudge).

Note: In SUPERMAN 171, Rokk says they're "the last of a dying race," while in WORLD'S FINEST 150, Sorban says they are "the last of a hereditary ruling class." If both statements are right, then it would seem Rokk and Sorban consider themselves as being a separate race from the rest of those on Ventura. However, most males look like Rokk and Sorban, with the orange skin and the bug-eyes; although there are some males that look completely different and they might be aliens that came to Ventura for the gambling. The native female population all seem to be like Lurala--that is resembling caucasian women on Earth.

Over in ADVENTURE COMICS 343 (April 1966)--1st story, "The Evil Hand of the Luck Lords" by Hamilton, Swan and Klein--in the 30th century, the Legion of Super-Heroes encounter a trio of baddies who claim to be the Luck Lords. Later continuity establishes the Luck Lords as making Ventura their home.

[Jim Kelly]

WORLD'S FINEST COMICS 167 (June 1967)--1st story, "The New Superman and Batman Team" by Cary Bates, Swan and Klein; r. THE BEST OF DC [Blue Ribbon Digest] 19 (December 1981):

In this imaginary story, on the path from the destroyed Krypton to Earth, baby Kal-El's rocketship happens to pass a gold Kryptonite meteoroid which robs him permanently of any super-powers. He still lands near Smallville and is adopted by the Kents, but he grows up without powers.

In Smallville High, Clark Kent and Lex Luthor are best friends. While Clark excels in sports, Lex is a scientific genius. One day, in his lab, Lex concocts a formula that gives him super-powers. He dons a costume and springs into the air as Superboy.

Then on a fateful night, as Jonathan and Martha are closing the general store, they are held up by a gunman. When Mr. Kent stands up to the robber, the thug fires on both of them, leaving them for dead. Clark and Lex discover the grisly scene. Martha is dead, but Jonathan is still clinging to life. Switching to Superboy, Lex flies the storekeeper to the hospital, but it's too late to save him. As Clark visits his dying father in the hospital, Jonathan tries to tell him he came from another planet, but he expires before he can get all the words out.

Just then, a macabre omen appears in the window of the hospital room--a bat. Criminals are superstitious--he'll be a Bat-Man. After the funeral, Clark goes off to Gotham City to live with rich Uncle Kendall.

After graduating from Metropolis University, Lex lands a job at the Daily Planet as a mild reporter. Meanwhile, Uncle Kendall has died and left his fortune to his nephew. Along with his butler, Alfred, Clark builds a Batcave under stately Kent Manor and goes into action as Batman.

Some time after, Lex Luthor and Lois Lane are sent to interview the Planet's major stock holder, Clark Kent. As soon as she sees him, Lois sets her cap to marry him. And Clark is just as interested in her.

Driving back to Metropolis, Lois happens to be abducted by Brainiac into his saucer ship. Lex switches to Superman and he's soon joined by Batman. Meeting for the first time, they quickly hatch a plan to save Lois. Not long after that Lois and Clark get married. On the honeymoon, Clark and Lex disrobe in front of her to reveal themselves as the World's Finest Heroes.

As fate would have it, Supergirl's rocket comes to Earth. Lex investigates as Superman and brings her to his friends, Lois and Clark, who take her in as cousin Linda Kent.



A few weeks later, when Toyman is on a crime spree, the team of Superman, Supergirl and Batman foil his schemes; however he gets off a blast at the Caped Crusader from his molecular dissolver ray. Clark begins to glow gold. Supergirl recognizes this as a symptom of gold Kryptonite exposure.

Suffering from gold K. fever, Clark is dying but Lex knows how to save his friend, using an apparatus that transfers the fever to him and his super-powers to Clark. Thus the status quo is restored with the right man in the Superman costume. However, because he still radiates gold Kryptonite, Lex must leave the Earth to protect Linda and Clark.





Note: Although Cary Bates had sent in story ideas before this one--this is the first that he actually scripted himself. Notably, neither Bruce Wayne nor Dick Grayson are anywhere in this story--yet Alfred is! One wonders what happened with the Waynes in this imaginary reality.

In this yarn, Kara Zor-El is the first Kryptonian on Earth that becomes a super-hero not Clark. I wonder if she made her cousin keep on the quiet, as her secret weapon, before revealing him to the world as the new Superman.

That gold Kryptonite can later cause gold K. fever is a novel idea that was never explored further. For example, Quex-Ul never developed gold K. fever.

[Jim Kelly]

Compare Jonathan's deathbed scene in "The New Superman and Batman Team," with a similar scene in "The Origin of Superman"--by E. Nelson Bridwell, Carmine Infantino, Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, THE AMAZING WORLD OF SUPERMAN [Metropolis Edition] (1973)--and another deathbed scene (Jor-El's father) in "This Planet is Doomed"--by Paul Kupperberg, Howard Chaykin and Murphy Anderson, WORLD OF KRYPTON 2 (August 1979).