The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 292: Adventure Comics #412, November 1971

I'm reading these comics slightly out of order, I know, and I certainly don't have anything close to a complete run, but it really seems like Supergirl has a new costume every single issue. While I really loved Oksner's art yesterday, I think this version of the Supersuit is the one I like most - in a lot of ways it prefigures the contemporary Superman design, though the colours are much brighter, as they should be.

The story's okay, but not great. I think the best part is that the champion Supergirl is stolen away to combat on an alien world is also a woman, which makes a nice change to this kind of challenge story. When I was chatting with Bart a few months back, he was explaining to me how he noticed particular archetypes of stories in Archie comics over the decade he was writing about - I think we could make a similar argument for Supergirl stories. It seems she's often pulled away to some alien planet to stop a mad conqueror. Unfortunately this plays into the same kind of imperial rhetoric that's got the U.S. in so much trouble in the Middle East these days, so, as I've been telling my students all term, we see the culture reflected in the literature. Supergirl's trials, however, turn out to have a far more satisfying end (or, indeed, an end at all) than the current situation(s) in the Arab world.

Backing this one up, though, is the very first story of one of my favourite superheroes, Animal Man. When I did my one hundredth post on the Doom Patrol, I noted that even though the story is over 50 years old, it still holds up as very readable. Animal Man's inaugural adventure doesn't fare quite as well. It's very dated and, to be honest, not a great piece. One can see that it was originally intended as a on-shot science fiction story, not as a superhero origin piece. There's none of the hallmarks of such a story, and Buddy Baker, though he proves his heroism, is hardly superhero material. Which, perhaps, is why he makes such a good one.

I'm running out of Supergirl comics to read, but I'll keep going for a bit. It's nice to be dipping into the Superman and related titles portion of the collection. I have 4 short boxes of Super-stuff, and there's some really interesting comics in there. More tomorrow!