Supergirl and Team Luthor #1 (1993)
Supergirl and Team Luthor #1 (1993)
Superman is still dead (and always will be, obviously, because that's how death works), so a brave, long-haired beauty steps up to take his spot: I'm talking, of course, about young Lex Luthor II. Lex presents Metropolis with a formal proposal to make his #TeamLuthor armored police force the city's official new protectors – with him as the leader. Oh, and his flying, super-strong girlfriend from another dimension would be there, too, in case she's useful.
Just as Lex Jr. is pitching this idea to Mayor Berkowitz and his staff, some terrorists hijack S.T.A.R. Labs. Lex jumps into a flying armor he happened to have nearby (probably because he tipped off those terrorists in the first place), heroically flies into action at Supergirl's side, and… almost instantly gets his butt buried in rubble for showing off instead of actually fighting bad guys.
In view of this embarrassing performance, the city passes on Lex's proposal. Lex, who broke his leg during his little demo, mopes around in a floating Professor X chair for a while, until Supergirl cheers him up with her shapeshifting powers: she morphs into Lucille Ball, Princess Leia, and Luthor Sr.'s old flame, Dr. Gretchen Kelley (because what guy wouldn't want to see his girlfriend transform into his "mom"?). Seeing S-girl use her abilities gives Lex an idea…
In a seemingly unrelated scene, LexCorp board member George Markham is confronted by Hellgrammite – the bug-like mutant hitman Markham once hired to murder Lex Jr. Once the spooked Markham has confessed his crimes, we find out "Hellgrammite" is actually a disguised Supergirl, and Lex was standing out of view with a camera the whole time. PUNK'D!
So Markham is arrested, and that's the end of that old plotline and this somewhat scattered story. But wait, there's more!
Bonus Story:
There's an extra tale co-starring everyone's third or fourth favorite cave-dwelling genetic aberrations, the Underworlders. Since the tunnels where they live were recently dynamited and flooded, a bunch of these mutant hobos decide to leave the Underworld and head to a shelter Lex Jr. recently opened in Metropolis. Unfortunately, the people in the shelter aren't very welcoming to the ugly freaks, on account of them being ugly and freaks. Long story short, a guy pulls out a gun, the scared Underworlders lose control of their powers, and the shelter starts burning down. Sounds like a job for Superman! (Or the next best thing.)
Supergirl saves the Underworlders and then… doesn't do much, actually. They say they're going back to those cold, damp caves because the people up here hate them, and Supergirl is like"whelp, good luck." THE END!
Character-Watch:
I mentioned Dr. Kelley, Lex Jr.'s personal physician and fake mom (long story). I've always thought she's a pretty interesting character: she's clearly not evil like Lex or his other main lackey, Dr. Happersen, but she puts up with all their shenanigans. In this issue, Kelley gets a little more character development when Lex snaps at her (which I'm using as an excuse to show his floating chair):
This short scene is planting the seeds for Lex Jr.'s eventual downfall, which is over a year away (or like five years away, considering this blog's update schedule). In fact, this whole issue is packed with little teases for future stories…
Plotline-Watch:
Both stories end with Lex embracing Supergirl while staring into the distance and saying something ominous. In the main feature, he says "I wish I had a hundred like you", which is a tiny spoiler for the premise of the 1994 Supergirl miniseries. Then, in the backup tale, Lex gives us a shifty look as he expresses interest in the Underworlders. (See? I'm not the only one who gives a crap about them!)
Luthor has a meeting his new mole at Project Cadmus: Dr. Packard, the shady scientist guy we met recently. Lex apparently just wants to double check that Cadmus didn't clone Superman after all, but future writers will use this meeting as the basis for some pretty dramatic developments.
While giving his sales pitch to Mayor Berkowitz, Lex throws a passive-aggressive dig at Superman by mentioning all the alien threats Supes' presence attracted to the city. Roger Stern uses this opportunity to remind us of the existence of the Eradicator, for no particular reason.
Speaking of asshole alien villains, there's a scene with Supergirl rescuing some people still trapped under the destruction Doomsday left, and it's mentioned that it's gonna take a while to find everyone. Stern is cleverly setting up a possible explanation for why a character (like, say, a mild-mannered Daily Planet reporter) would go missing for several weeks and come back, should that ever come in handy.
There's also a heartbreaking conversation between Supergirl and the grieving Lois Lane, who can barely look at her. Don Sparrow says: "I hadn't considered that it would be difficult for Lois to see the red and blue of Supergirl's costume,but of course it would, particularly as she's so often whizzing by.Lois' mind would automatically and instinctively hope it was Superman." Anyway, they talk about Batman and stuff.
The terrorists who attack S.T.A.R. Labs are the ones from the original Sinbad storyline, who want their silly-looking orange robot armors back. They kidnap Dr. Kitty Faulkner, who unfortunately doesn't get to hulk out into Rampage mode before Lex's goons come to the rescue.
But wait, there's more (again)! Keep reading for the great Don Sparrow's section:
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
While Supergirl's name is first, and she's front and center on the cover, this comic is really a Lex Luthor story. The cover by the way is a great one, unmistakably from Kerry Gammill,who, like Byrne later in the book, really excels at drawing a powerful female form that doesn't look like a body-builder—a tough line not to cross. It was a bold art choice (I don't know if it was dictated by the cover artist, or the interior artist) not to use the classic Lex armour look for Luthor's battle armour.
The interior artwork is an interesting mix. June Brigman (currently drawing Mary Worth, my favourite daily strip) provides layouts, and Jackson Guice and Dennis Janke provide"finishes". You can see a lot of Guice in the physiques, while the faces look softer, which I'm attributing to Brigman. The art throughout is a bit no-frills—no bad pages, but nothing jumping out, or looking like a poster, either. Brigman's Supergirl is very youthful and a little more delicate than Guice on his own, and it's a good look. While there's some odd vertical stretching to the panel, the last one on page 4 is lovely (and a nice call-back to the first Superman movie—we can hope THIS little girl isn't slapped for sharing the kitty story).
The team also does well in the near-full-pagespread of Metropolis' heroes and villains on page 7—Doomsday in particular looks great. I find it a bit telling that in this Roger Stern story we're reminded of the Eradicator, who we haven't seen since his energy was dispersed after being sucked into Mr. Z's gem a long time back. Wonder whatever happened to that guy. MOVING ON…
One weird note is that this is the first time that I can remember that we've seen under Supergirl's skirt, which I definitely noticed when I was a 12 year old boy reading this for the first time. [Max: As a 30-something reading this for the first time, I noticed that too.]
Artists up to this point had been quite careful to keep it hidden, but there are a few incidental times in this story where we see that it appears to be a blue body suit with red skirt overtop. Eventually artists like Jamal Igle would give her little bicycle shorts for under her skirt, given how inevitable it was for her skirt to move around in action.
The second half of the issue is a backup featuring the Underworlders, so it's a struggle for me to care much (is this the worst product placement ever, Kellogg's?). Visually it's interesting, as Denis Roder both penciled and inked this section. Between this and the cover of next week's Newstime issue, it's cool to see what the inker does on his own. The panel of Supergirl posing bravely after incredibly tiny bullets bounce of her (see Max's section above) is a good one.
Lastly, the issue is filled out with a pretty cool pin-up gallery. John Byrne has a great entry here, though despite his apparent predilection toward teen girls in these pages, his Supergirl has always looked like Superwoman, somehow losing her youthfulness to me.
The Art Thibert one is, perhaps unsurprisingly, not a favourite of mine, as once again I can't really tell what's going on. To me, it looks like Supergirl is saving Lex from some mercenaries,but they are inexplicably using Lexcorp technology. Then they also appear surprised by something behind them (us, the viewer? Someone else?) as not even one of them is looking at Supergirl. And, once again, there's one of those pesky dust storms helpfully obscuring those hard-to-draw feet.
The Kerry Gammill one is good—and incredibly intricate view of Metropolis (check out how they didn't crop out the pen lines on the buildings at the edge of the page! I love seeing that stuff) but the anger, and the fact that she's crashing out of LexCorp tower might be a hint of things to come. Like, say, in a mini-series that Gammill draws in a year or so.Saving the best of the issue for last, the Grummett pin-up is one of his best pieces of art in these pages, ever! Absolute home run. [Max: Yep! In fact, I'm gonna give it its own post, to show it in all its splendor.]
STRAY OBSERVATIONS
I'm trying to think what the 2016 equivalent would be to the 1992 version of an obvious bad guy,which in this case is a ponytail goatee and army jacket combo. [Max: A red "MAGA" cap?]
Interesting how snappy Lex gets with Supergirl when his leg is broken. Some of the real Lex coming through.
The scene of Supergirl changing to different forms to cheer Lex up is so, so creepy. Not only does it start with Supergirl using the word "jolly" as a verb (oh, I don't want to know what that means!) but it ends up with her taking the form of his mother, and she still calls him "handsome, powerful and incredibly sexy". And worst of all, THAT'S what snaps him out of it! Eeeeeeew. [Max: I'd mentioned this, but it bears repeating. Eeeeeeeew.]
