Scenes from the Life of an Amatuer Comic Book Collecter (21)--Supergirl's Lesbian Marriage

That Supergirl is one complex dish. Last time we talked about her intimate relationship with her Superhorse Comet, who is really a centaur. While reading through my recent 600-plus acquisition of comics, I came across another walk on the wild side for the Maid of Might. In Action #357, we learn of "Supergirl's Secret Marriage." While on her way from Stanhope College to visit her parents for the weekend, Supergirl in her secret identity of Linda Lee Danvers is accosted by a brash young man named Joaquin who boldly kisses her and claims to be her spouse. She tells him to go fly a kite, but he counters that he knows she is Supergirl and that she has had a memory lapse due to exposure to red kryptonite. Like an idiot, Linda gets in Joaquin's car and they drive to the home the man claims is theirs.

The ending is really twisted. It turns out Joaquin is a not a man at all, but a woman in disguise. In a flashback she explains that she is from another planet and that Supergirl rescued her and her boyfriend recently. He subsequently fell in love with the Blonde Blockbuster. The alien woman decides to masquerade as a male and take Supergirl off the market, thus sending her former lover back into her arms. Just like in As You Like It, Twelfth Night or Two Gentlemen of Verona.

How did Supergirl discover this sick ruse? When Joaquin kissed her "he" put "his" arms around Supergirl's neck. Supergirl claims that all men put their arms around a woman's waist while a female will place her hands on a boy's neck. Really? Don't you think Supergirl would have realized in some other less subtle way? Like maybe when she found Joaquin trying on her Supergirl costume? Or maybe she would have thought, "Well, maybe he's really an evangelist, like that Ted Haggard?"

This story is so weird on so many levels. Just from a practical point of view, wouldn't the boyfriend fall back in love with Supergirl once he realized his girlfriend was really his rival? To solve the problem of sleeping together, the disguised alien claimed "he" had to sleep in a special bed which give him a dose of radiation necessary for him to live in earth's hostile atmosphere.

The other story (featured on the cover) in that issue follows Superman as he must defeat a motorcycle driving juvenile delinquent with atomic fists. The kid takes over the government with his gang straight out of The Wild One.

Scenes from the Life of an Amateur Comic Book Collector (19)--Supergirl and Superhorse: The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Naaaah-me

A few weeks ago I acquired the largest haul of my comic book collecting career, several hundred comics from the early 1960s into the 1970s, almost all of them DC. I was at a birthday party for a neighbor when I started chatting with another neighbor. I mentioned my collecting craze. It turned out she had all her comic books from when she was a little girl and wanted to get rid of them to clean out her storage space. She wanted them to go to a good home and didn't want to have to drag them to a dealer. So I volunteered to take them off her hands.

My eyes nearly popped out of my head when I say she had four boxes stuffed to the gills with Silver Age stuff. I did have quite a lot of them already, but many I did not including a lot of Teen Titans, Aquaman, Green Lanterns, Inferior Fives, etc. We agreed on a price and with my granny shopping cart, hauled them back to my place. I haven't been able to read much else since--I did finish Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow and The Last Thing He Wanted by Joan Didion, both short novels which did not interrupt the flow of Superman, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen. I also postponed my reading of the Fantastic Fours I had recently acquired, deciding to take a break from Marvel's nonstop soap opera of the past few decades.

Among the stories I had not read before where several of Supergirl's adventures. She was the second feature in Action Comics for many years before migrating over to Adventure. Hers is in interesting saga reflecting the shifting attitudes towards women in American society. When she lands on Earth after surviving the desctruction of Argo City, she is 15 and her cousin Superman decides she is not ready to start serving mankind. She must be his secret emergency weapon and hide as an orphan. the idea of a Superwoman equally as powerul as Superman was too alien and threatening a concept for the DC creative team. If there is a female superbeing, she must be a girl, not a grown woman. Later she is sprung on an unsuspecting public, but unlike her manly cousin, the maid of might is suspectable to female failings, like romance.

In one of the weirdest relationships in comics, Supergirl acquires a pet Superhorse. You know the stereotype that all girls love horses, right? Well, this one is special, and not just because he has superpowers. Comet the Superhorse is actually a centaur from ancient Greece transformed into a full horse by a magic spell from an evil wizard. Circe the sorceress cannot reverse the spell but takes pity on him and grants him the powers of the gods like flying and superstrength. He time travels to the present and Supergirl adopts him. She is unaware of his unnatural attraction to her--he is really half-human after all. When a certain comet is within earth's orbit, the spell is broken and Comet can become a man. He assumes the guise of a cowboy and Supergirl in her secret identity of Linda Lee falls in love with him. The implications of interspecies love are lost to the comic writers. Fortunately, the comet leaves Earth's orbit and Comet reverts back to being all horse. What kind of children would they have had?? Though he is telepathic, Comet never reveals his true feelings for his human mistress. Sick, I know.

More on Supergirl: The mighty Supergirl later forgets about Superhorse. Later comics in the early 1970s reveal another weird shift in her depiction. Just as the Women's Liberation movement is gaining power, DC removed Supergirl's full strength. She falls victim to a plot by a female villainess named Starfire who arranges to have a superpower-depriving pill slipped to her by a handsome stud--again she is tricked by her female weakness for love. As a result, her superpowers come and go. Interestngly just a year or two earlier Wonder Woman lost her powers and become mortal, opening a mod fashion shop and becoming a judo expert. It's no coincidence that DC decided to weaken its two strongest female heroes just as real women were becoming more powerful and demanding to be given equal rights.

There are many more observations serious and otherwise to come based on this gigantic comic haul.