Posted By Dan Greenfield on Jun 27, 2026 | 1 comment

SUPERGIRL WEEK: Pre-Kara…

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Supergirl, starring Milly Alcock, is out, so we’ve gathered up the 13th Dimension crew to bring you our first-ever SUPERGIRL WEEK! Click here for more high-flying features!

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By SCOTT TIPTON

There are a lot of stories out there about Silver Age DC editor Mort Weisinger, who shepherded the Superman comics for 20 years, from 1950 until 1970: He was a bully, he was jealous and petty, he took credit for the work of others, he abused his writers, the tales go on and on.

But one thing that can’t be taken away from Weisinger are his editorial instincts. Under his tenure, the world of Superman grew to its most expansive and mythologically rich, taking what had been a single character alone on Earth and giving him a family, a back story, and a heritage unlike anything seen in comics to that point. Weisinger was willing to make these sweeping changes and have them stick, each building on the other to create a full tapestry of characters, concepts and locales in which Superman could operate.

Everything from the Fortress of Solitude to Krypto the Superdog to the Bottle City of Kandor came about under Weisinger’s editorial hand (with much of the writing done by the great Otto Binder, who had come to DC after years of writing Captain Marvel for Fawcett), and the riskiest and overall best addition to the Super-family came in 1959 with the introduction of Supergirl.

Weisinger knew that introducing a teenage sidekick for Superman, and a girl at that, was a dicey proposition. Would the addition of another Super-character dilute the concept too much? Would young, primarily male readers accept a female character as Superman’s confidant? Weisinger decided to test the waters first with a prototype version of the character, appearing in Superman #123 (pub. date August 1958).

Curt Swan pencils, Stan Kaye inks

In “The Three Magic Wishes: The Girl of Steel,” written by Binder and drawn by Dick Sprang, Superman’s pal Jimmy Olsen is given a Native American magic totem by an archaeologist, in gratitude for Superman’s saving the man’s life. Jimmy is told that, according to the totem’s inscription, once every hundred years it can grant three wishes, by rubbing its jewel under a full moon. Naturally, Jimmy the Super-Pimp wishes for a female companion for the presumably lonely Superman, one with the same powers as him so he doesn’t have to fear for her safety. Just like that, a beautiful young blonde Super-Girl appears, and flies to be at Superman’s side.

Superman and Super-Girl seem pleased with the arrangement, but Lois doesn’t take it well. In fact, she discovers a second inscription on the totem that reveals that rubbing the jewel a second time will reverse the spell, but can’t bring herself to take Super-Girl away from Superman.

Meanwhile, the bloom is coming off the rose for Superman, who’s beginning to discover that having a Super-shadow following him around is beginning to be an inconvenience, as the inexperienced Super-Girl tends to cause as much havoc as they’re trying to quell. The neophyte even accidentally gives away Clark’s secret identity to Lois (although maybe if he’d taken the time to explain to her beforehand, she might have been a little more discreet – after all, she’s only been alive for a couple of days…)

However, the dangers of being Superman catch up with him not long after, as he becomes the target of the most unlikely and least well-thought-out assassination attempt ever, when a pair of criminals surreptitiously following the Man of Steel in a small airplane wait until he’s busy lifting train tracks over a flash flood, then drop a big hunk of Kryptonite on him from overhead. The Kryptonite wedges in the tracks, and Superman is trapped. Luckily Super-Girl flies in and retrieves the Kryptonite, cheerfully telling Superman that since she wasn’t born on Krypton, she’s immune to the stuff.

As it turns out, Super-Girl was lying, and sacrificed her life in order to save Superman. Dying of Kryptonite poisoning, Super-Girl crawls back to Jimmy Olsen’s place, and asks him to rub the jewel on the totem, returning her to oblivion before the end comes.

Naturally, Superman is pretty torn up about all this. Actually, he’s not, and is instead busying himself with salvaging his secret identity, doing so by quickly asking Lois to marry him, figuring correctly that Lois would reject the proposal, reasoning that if Clark were really Superman, he’d never propose. Yes, healthy relationships abound in Metropolis…

I’ll spare you the tale of what Jimmy does for Superman with the other two wishes, but suffice to say that neither one works out any better for the Man of Steel. Next time, Jimmy, just order yourself a pizza and a nice sports car and be done with it.

Clearly, fan reaction to Super-Girl’s life and death must have been strong (Weisinger had been one of the first editors in comics to institute a letters page, so he was always trying to look past just the sales numbers to see what the young readers reacted to), as just about a year later, the following full-page ad (unusual for the time) appeared in all the Superman books:

Next month, in March 1959, Action Comics #252 hit the stands, with a cover that said it all. Supergirl had arrived, and this time she was here to stay.

(SIDE NOTE: When this story was later reprinted, Super-Girl’s look was completely altered so as to distinguish her from the real deal.)

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MORE

— The Complete SUPERGIRL WEEK Index of Columns and Features. Click here.

— SUPERGIRL BEGINS: When the GIRL OF STEEL Was SUPERMAN’s Secret Weapon. Click here.

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SCOTT TIPTON is a 13th Dimension columnist and the site’s longest-tenured regular not named Dan Greenfield. He and Dan co-write the site’s HOT PICKS and RETRO HOT PICKS columns. He’s perhaps best known as the writer of scores of Star Trek comics published by IDW.