I’m not even sure if I’ve addressed Superman’s cousin Kara yet in this series. Well, he has a cousin. Kara. She’s Supergirl. She can do this Versus Bigots stuff too.
“The Exile of Steel”
SUMMARY
This story picks up where the last issue’s story left off. That one is less on-theme for this article, so I’ll try to sum it up quickly.
Supergirl was on summer vacation, flying through space, when she happened upon a planet called Gaea that was a near-duplicate of Earth. Investigating, she accidentally made herself seem like a villain when she tried to help some adults being accosted by teenagers (or “teen-agers” as it was rendered in those days), only to learn too late that those adults were “anarchists” and the teens were the authorities. On Gaea, a plague wiped out most of the adult population, leaving the teens in charge and the remaining adults treated like minors (for some reason). With Supergirl now branded a criminal, she decided to spend her vacation living on this planet as Linda Danvers. She met a kid named Dick Malvin, a lookalike of her boyfriend Dick Malvern back on Earth, and befriended him. But Malvin it turns out Malvin is a villain with ties to the Adult Revolt Movement, who found out her secret identity and manipulated events so that Linda Danvers was elected President with himself as Vice President. Then he arranged to have her secret revealed so she would be arrested as an ally of A.R.M.
Now begins:
Issues: Action Comics #345, January, 1967
The story opens with Supergirl on trial. Malvin testifies that he learned Supergirl was “working with Adult Revolt Movement, planning to overthrow the government” (also known as exactly what he’s doing, who would ever expect an authoritarian to accuse someone else of doing exactly what they’re trying to do?).
Supergirl testifies the truth, explaining the misunderstanding that led to her helping A.R.M. last issue, but the prosecution dismisses that. “Aside from the utter absurdity of this testimony, can we take the word of this proven fraud and traitor? Surely no jury would believe her!” And indeed the jury does not believe her, she is sentenced to be exiled from the Union of American States, though Supergirl makes a show of accepting the exile, not only from the UAS, but from the whole teen-led planet, and flies off As Supergirl leaves Gaea, the story remains there to watch Malvin take on the role of President.
Considering how juvenile this story’s whole setup was, things go dark amazingly quickly.
Malvin appoints A.R.M. agents to all corners of the government and before long they have their stormtroopers goose-stepping through the streets and assaulting people. They burn books. They establish a curfew. They take over the nuclear weapons cache to threaten states that don’t comply with them.
As non-cartoonish as all that villainy is, they also decide to pile all the money they’ve stolen from the populace in a big pile in the treasure just to revel in it. Suddenly an earthquake occurs, creating a sinkhole into which all that treasure falls.
That really pisses Malvin off. He blames the earthquake on saboteurs and rounds up some “suspects” (a random assemblage of non-loyal persons) for execution, intending to hang them in front of the senate to make show of what happens to those who oppose him. The hanging goes awry when all the ropes break at the same time, causing the senate to laugh and Malvin to command they be killed by firing squad. That also fails when the bullets can’t reach their targets. Then Malvin finds out why.
Supergirl was the one who caused the earthquake. Supergirl was the one who stopped the hangings and the firing squad. She was waiting for Malvin to show his true colours before overtly stopping him, so nobody could argue against getting him out of office, and his attempt to kill the senators pretty much guaranteed that.
With Malvin arrested, the populace of the UAS wants Supergirl as President again, but she has to get back to Earth in time for school, so they just end the story giving her a ticker tape parade.
SUPERMAN VS BIGOTS?
Technically, no. I’ll admit that when I made a list of potential stories for this series of articles, I put this one on because of the Nazi imagery and a misremembered idea that the adults were an oppressed minority on Gaea. That’s not it, though. The adults, at least the ones in A.R.M. are the bad guys here, which muddies any attempt at finding an easy allegory for bigotry in this one.
But they’re sure as hell fascists.
The story repeatedly calls them “anarchists” which is annoying, but we’re actually given a surprisingly frank depiction of the fascist playbook for a Silver Age Supergirl story. And sadly, it’s still depressingly relevant almost six decades later. Lying to and manipulating the voters. Book burnings. Meeting any opposing idea with violence. These guys have remained cartoon villains for so long, and yet we’re still not done with them.
But what pleases me most is that Malvin is also depicted as kind of a loser. He just wants respect for no good reason and gets so angry about being laughed at. Such an accurate depiction of these people.
STRAY THOUGHTS
- For all it sets up Gaea as a world where teens rule and adults are their dependants, it doesn’t do much with the concept after showing how different things are in the first story. Things just veer from “things are different here, isn’t that neat!” to “Uh oh, Nazis!” so suddenly. Oh, I didn’t even find a reason to bring it up, but during this story, while Supergirl is living on Gaea, she adopts an adult couple. Why do that, Supergirl? You know you’re only gonna live there for a couple months tops! I don’t care if a teenager adopting parents is a novel scenario to show the children reading! It’s irresponsible!
- The first part of this story is full of a thing I’ve taken to thinking of “shutupper” notes, which were very popular in this era. It’s captions or thought balloons that inelegantly over-explain some part of the story just to make sure nobody writes in to complain or correct. Things like “Unlike our country, the Union of American States on Gaea holds its inaugurations two days after the election!” so we can easily have Supergirl made President without having to exceed the months of her summer vacation passing. And “On Gaea, the baseball season doesn’t begin until mid-summer” to explain why President Danvers is throwing out the first ball of the season at that time. They’re basically saying to the audience “shut up and accept the story as is.”
- I also didn’t find a time to mention it, but instead of the White House, the UAS has the Green House. Aren’t alternate worlds so wacky?
- I do wish the title of the story was more relevant to the context of the story. Sure, Kara is exiled, but that’s minor compared to what happens.