If you have never read Silver-Age Supergirl, you are missing an inventive, entertaining, charming, fun and insane series. It’s one of the highlights of the DC Silver Age. (This is an objective FACT!)

I’m a bit of a newcomer to the joys of Silver-Age Supergirl. When I started reading comics in the 1970s, I was mostly a Marvel fan, and didn’t read much DC. I was indifferent to most DC characters (except Batman! I picked up Batman and The Brave and the Bold every so often), but I had a strong dislike for Superman back then, so I didn’t read very many Superman Family stories until much later.

 
But as the years went by, I saw enough random reprints that the Weisinger-era Superman grew on me after a while, and I became a little more open to reading stories about Superboy, Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Krypto, Bizarro, Lex Luthor, the Legion of Super-Heroes, etc.

And Power Girl! I had a friend who had a few issues of the 1970s All-Star series and I became a big fan, partly because of the Wally Wood art but mostly because Power Girl is hilarious. And when I read Justice League for a short time in the early 1980s, I always looked forward to the JSA cross-overs because Power Girl is just one of a large group of great Earth-2 characters.

However, none of that could really prepare me for the sheer dopey comic-book awesomeness of Silver-Age Supergirl when I finally got around to reading a few of those crazy crazy tales from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

It was only four or five years ago that I was bit by the Supergirl bug. On a whim, I bought Action Comics #447, an all-Supergirl 80-Page Giant. After I read a few of those stories, I felt like I had been clubbed into unconsciousness with a goofy bat, a super-goofy bat! It was wall-to-wall Silver-Age crack! One of the things that I love about comics is how often I can read something that I never heard of from 50 or 60 years ago, and it’s AMAZING! Supergirl has to cope with an amnesiac orphan who discovers her secret because he can mysteriously see in the dark! Then she witnesses the amazing origin of the Supergirl Emergency Squad! Next, she discovers the unbelievable backstory of Comet the Super-Horse! Not to mention the death of Bizarro-Supergirl, one of the saddest moments I’ve ever seen in a comic book. (That is one of the craziest stories ever. The main Bizarros have a normal-looking baby, and they abandon him on Earth. He ends up at the Midvale Orphanage where Supergirl (in her secret identity as orphan Linda Lee) has to keep anyone from finding out that he has super-powers. Then the baby assumes a Bizarro-like appearance, prompting all the Bizarros to invade Earth to get him back! And it’s all drawn by Wayne Boring!)

Yeah, that Midvale Orphanage is a weird place, quite possible the weirdest orphanage in the world. The whole set-up that places Supergirl in the orphanage in the first place is weird.

You see, Supergirl is Superman’s cousin. Her scientist father is the brother of Jor-El, Superman’s father. When Krypton explodes, Supergirl manages to survive through the contrivances of her father. When she shows up on Earth, Superman is so happy that he has a long-lost cousin that he immediately tells her to keep her existence a secret (so he can use her as backup as a secret weapon). He gives her the identity of Linda Lee, covers her blond hair with a brunette wig and puts her in an orphanage.

And he also doesn’t want her to get adopted. So there are several sequences where she has to wear dirty clothes or pretend to be a bad cook because she’s trying to persuade her prospective parents that she shouldn’t be adopted. (These are simultaneously funny and sad. Poor parentless Linda has to scare off adoptive parents because … well, it really comes down to “Superman is kind of a dick.”)

Every episode is full of complications, and Linda has to come up with a solution despite being hampered by a number of Superman-imposed restrictions. She’s in an orphanage, for one thing, and she has no privacy. And not only does she have to hide the fact that she has super-powers, she also has to keep the very existence of Supergirl hidden to the outside world!

A lot can happen in nine pages when you have to cope with so many obstacles. (Fortunately she has a hollow tree where she conceals a Lina Lee robot and a Supergirl robot, and they help out in emergencies.)

You have to admire Linda’s optimism! Despite the occasional melancholy and Red-Kryptonite-induced psychosis, Linda is incredibly positive, and she accepts every challenge with a smile and a can-do attitude. And she never for a second assumes that Superman is hampering her on purpose because he is an egotistical dick, despite all the evidence.

My nephew (he’s 12) is (somewhat inexplicably) a Supergirl fan. But he only knows her from the New 52 and a few issues of the Peter David series. So for his birthday, I got him Action Comics #334, another all-Supergirl 80-Page Giant. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but I think it’s even better than the Action Comics #347 that I’ve been cherishing for the last few years.

Oh, Action #334 doesn’t have anything as poignant as the death of Bizarro-Supergirl. But it does have one of the greatest comic book-stories I’ve ever seen - “Supergirl’s Super-Pet,” the first appearance of Streaky the Super-Cat!

Things move quickly in this nine-page story. In the first couple of pages, Supergirl makes friends with a cat and also experiments with kryptonite. She finds a tiny pebble of kryptonite and decides to try to find a way to make herself (and Superman) immune to its dangerous effects. As for the cat, he is colored orange and has yellow bolts of lightning along his sides. She names him Streaky, and he shows up at the orphanage and starts around Linda Lee. (It seems cats are not fooled by wigs.)

(I love the character design for Streaky. He is a little more cartoony than the series usually went for, and I think that gives Streaky a lot more personality. He’s happy or excited or playful, and you can see it on his expressive face.)

So Linda starts messing around with the kryptonite. The caption tells us:

Was this standard issue for orphanages during the Eisenhower years? It’s too bad that the deprived Midvale orphans have to get by with one of the small orphanage chemical laboratories. Fortunately, the Midvale laboratory is well enough equipped that Linda manages to alter the small amount of Kryptonite into another substance! (The caption informs that it is X-Kryptonite.) It still gives off radiation that is harmful to people from Krypton but, unbeknownst to Linda, it has a different effect on Earth creatures …

Convinced that she’s exhausted the possibilities with her “X-Kryptonite,” Linda throws it into a nearby field. Meanwhile, Streaky is still hanging around and, as cats do, he starts nosing around and starts playing with the sample of X-Kryptonite. Much, to his surprise, he starts flying around the field!

Yes, the X-Kryptonite has given him super-powers: Flight, strength, invulnerability. And as he’s whizzing around on the orphanage grounds, he somehow gets a small Superman cape around his neck. (You see, earlier that day, Superman had given all the orphans Superman dolls, and some of them were still scattered around the grounds and Streaky got tangled up in one of them. This is not really such an amazing coincidence. Silver-Age Superman was really full of himself and was always doing things like this. If one of the orphans would have preferred a Batman or Green Arrow doll, that’s just tough! And if you’ve ever had cats, you know they’re always getting tangled up in small Superman capes.)

So Streaky flies around town, looking for ways to use his newfound powers. He spies a milk truck on the street and behind it are several dozen hungry kittens. Streaky knocks over the truck and spills buckets of milk for the cute little kittens as he says to himself:

Then he’s surprised by a mean dog, who chases Streaky up a tree!

Streaky suddenly remembers his new powers and chases the mean dog away. Ha! Take that, mean dog!

Then Streaky saves a bunch of cute little baby chickens from a diving eagle.

That’s Streaky! Champion of the downtrodden!

As he’s flying around, he runs into Supergirl, who recognizes him by the lightning bolts on his sides. She doesn’t spend too much time wondering how he got powers because Supergirl sees crazy-ass stuff like this all the time. Streaky grabs at a giant wooden spool that’s wrapped with thick iron cable, playing with it like it’s a ball of yarn. When he gets tangled up in the cable, Supergirl laughs and says:

(You should see the look on Streaky’s face! Ha!)

The X-Kryptonite wears off and Streaky goes back to being a normal cat, leaving Linda to ponder how he acquired powers in the first place.

I read this for the first time just a few days ago and I can’t believe I went this long as a comic-book fan and never read this story!

Where have you been all my life, “Supergirl’s Super-Pet”!

The Silver-Age Supergirl series is always a pretty safe bet for entertaining comic-book craziness. Just pick an issue at random and see if that’s not the truth!