Moving on to the rest of the comic,
The Anti Supergirl Plot, by… whichever combination of Henry Boltinoff, Otto Binder, Leo Dorfman, Jim Mooney and Wayne Boring didn’t work on the Superman story.
And with a splash page like that you’d naturally think “Woah, what could be causing Supergirl to come into conflict with her good friends, Batman, and the Greens Arrow and Lantern?”
Then you might think “Well, maybe not friends, but they certainly work in the same field”
Luckily for those of us who can’t handle stress of the unknown, this is a Silver Age Superman book so that enticing mystery doesn’t really have time to cook before it’s explained.
While attending the first of a
weird number of school dances in this 8 page backup story that takes place in a college, the organizer reveals the band she hired to play; in the style of the Beatles and the Monkees, we have The Heroes.
But the name is spelled correctly, and “Heroes” aren’t animals (well, except, like, Detective Chimp) and those are hardly the first band to be named after a concept. So it’s not *really* in the style of those bands at all.
Also their band includes a harpsichord and a xylophone/tapdancer and their songs have lyrics like “Block Busting Baby, I’m going Batty for you” so… they’re not quite offering the same level of gifted lyricism of Maxwells Silver Hammer either.
Anyway, the band, which includes members dressed like Green Lantern, Green Arrow, Batman and Supergirl captivates the audience with their terrible songs, and admittedly impressive prop work. In fact they captivate them entirely too well, so much so that nobody notices three quarters of the band run off stage while the ersatz Supergirl performs a soft-shoe tap routine on a xylophone. And we learn the horrifying truth; the
so called heroes are nothing more than dang dirty
crime guys; planning on sneaking through the mansion that’s… hosting a college dance for some reason and looking for stuff to steal.
A plan which works wonders thanks to the Green Arrow having an arrowhead full of “Hyper Acid” that can burn through a safe wall!
Which sounds more impressive than it is since it takes hours to eat through the wall so they had to Come back later to rob the mansion a second time. And hope that nobody, over the course of several hours, noticed the overwhelming toxic scent of melting steel.
Luckily nobody did, it was the perfect crime.
The next day they decide to do the same thing again; this time the Heroes are playing at Stanhope College itself during a pledge drive to raise money for scholarships.
It’s the mid 1960s and don’t know enough about college finances to know if that’s weird or not. The sheer amount of school dances this college has is weird though, right?
Anyway, same thing happens again, Fake Supergirl takes the stage, the Heroes run out the back door and Fake Green Lantern uses the metal detector in his ring to find treasure and Fake Batman and Fake Arrow steal it; this time making off with the chemistry labs Rare minerals and… umm… blue prints for top secret military weapons.
Stanhope works with DARPA, I guess? Also, maybe lock those up a bit more securely than a combination lock that a guy dressed like Batman can break open real easily?
Anyway, after stopping a traffic accident on the level of the opening of Final Destination 2 (not relevant to the story but there needs to be something like that happening every couple of pages) Supergirl learns that Stanhope was robbed of its WMD plans and rather than saying “Wait… we were building
what?!?” SGs main concern was with the head of the… umm… weapon development lab possibly losing his job because he’s been deemed a security risk.
He absolutely should lose his job because he’s a security risk.
I think doing that bad of a job hiding weapon Design plans counts as treason.
Anyway, hearing that a
second place that the Heroes have played at has been the victim of a major robbery that same night is all the clues Supergirl needs to decide that this band might be worth questioning (the police did not and do not show any awareness of this significant piece of information), so she decides to follow up on it in the most efficient way possible; by going from hotel to hotel to see if she can see any Members of the band sitting in any of the rooms.
Luckily she guessed right on her first try.
She finds the bands Supergirl crying on a bed , and she explains to the *real* Supergirl that she was hired for her spellbinding tap dance/xylophone skills *before* being aware that the band was using her as a distraction to perform very deliberate and methodical robberies, and then they just blackmailed her into continuing to help them commit felonies/out right treason.
Supergirl comes up with a plan; to replace the Fake Supergirl in the band then, when the Heroes sneak off to do more crimes, interrupt the show to catch them doing crime. And luckily Stanhope has its third school dance that week scheduled so she doesn’t have long to wait.
The plan works well-ish and SG punches the absolute bajeezus out of half the band, but then the thing on the cover page happens and the fake Green Arrow pulls out a rock of Kryptonite he decided to bring along when he realized that the bands Supergirl was putting on a better show than usual so it was probably the real Supergirl!
The fake one performed so well that an entire audience full of people didn’t notice three quarters of the band sneak off stage and Kara hasn’t had any music training so… make of that as you will.
Anyway, Kara is being poisoned to death and the rest of the Heroes resume stealing stuff. They’re already on the hook for treason, what’s a little murder on top of that.
Luckily this is when the real Batman, GL and GA pop in to punch their doppelgängers and arrest them.
Turns out the On Stage Supergirl knew that the gang had some Kryptonite on hand but kind of… forgot to mention it when she and Kara were putting together the plan, so she tagged along in secret and got Kara away from the Kryptonite when the rest of the Heroes left her to die in silence.
Then using the most poorly explained of a Kryptonians abilities; Super Telepathy, she contacted the rest of the Justice League, told them what was up and they teleported right over to pulverize the guys who stole their valuable IP, as she was currently still mostly dead from radiation exposure.
And presumably had them sent off to The Hague because of the stolen military plans they were planning on selling to enemy countries.
Another Super End to a Super Day!