Guest column: Vic Chalker’s cousin, Geoff Neubee

Originally published June 30, 2000, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1389

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a guest column by superfan Vic Chalker. And it’s going to be a while longer. Instead we here at BID want to welcome to the fold Vic’s kid cousin, eleven year old Geoff Neubee. Geoff’s only been reading comics for a couple of years, but already has his older cousin’s unique perspective. Take it away, Geoff…

So okay, so, since I’m writing for Peter’s column, I’m going to write about Supergirl, who Peter writes about and she’s pretty cool. She’s like this angel, okay? She’s got these flame wings, and she’s merged with this girl named Linda Danvers. She used to be called Matrix, back when she was just a pink blob from another universe, but now she’s Supergirl. And she’s my favorite character of his that he writes. She’s got flame wings, like I said, and flame vision, and she can use these psychic blasts. Her parents are Fred and Sylvia Danvers, but she lives on her own, except now she’s going to be rooming with her friend, Mattie.

So anyway, I go to my comic book store to get some new books, and I see there’s this new Supergirl book out. It’s called Action Comics, and it’s got this weird gold seal in the upper left hand corner that I can’t make out at all. I think it says “Million” something, but if it’s about Supergirl, I am, like, so there. There’s kind of like a mistake on the cover, because at the top it says it’s the May issue, but at the bottom it says July. So I figure maybe it’s like the May/July issue.

So I buy this thing and I read it, and man, what a rip-off! IT’S NOT SUPERGIRL! The whole thing is, like totally confusing! There’s no flame wings, and no flame vision, and her cape is much shorter. I don’t know why, but DC is trying to introduce ANOTHER SUPERGIRL, and she is, like TOTALLY LAME. They’re, like, totally ignoring the comic I buy each and every month like it doesn’t even exist or something and treating this like it’s a first story. And she’s NOT EVEN AN ANGEL. She’s FROM KRYPTON TOO! Is that the lamest thing you’ve ever heard? Everybody knows that Superman is the last survivor of Krypton, and suddenly there’s this girl running around who’s ALSO from Krypton? That is so lame!

And the story, jeez, that’s the lamest thing of all! For starters, the captions are all weird. Sometimes they tell us what we’re already seeing. Like, “Clark sheds his outer garments to reveal his other dynamic costume!” while he’s changing. And what’s that supposed to mean? “Other dynamic costume!” What, he’s got Batman’s costume stashed at home? And sometimes the captions even talk right to him: “You’re due for a super-shock, Superman!” How cutesy is that?

So as Clark Kent, he’s working as a reporter, and he’s got paper in front of him, which is stupid, because real reporters would be working on computers. So he sees this crashing ship, and it gets all crumbled up, which it shouldn’t, because it turns out it’s from Krypton and everything from Krypton can’t be hurt. And out pops this blonde chick wearing a little Superman outfit who says she’s from Krypton, except she speaks English.

Listen to this origin they came up with. It’s totally lame.

She tells him that, when Krypton blew up, a big chunk of it blew away intact with all the people on it. And this guy, Zor-El, says, “Fortunately, a large bubble of air came along with this chunk! Also, this food machine is still working! We can stay alive indefinitely!” Fortunately? Try lamely! A LARGE BUBBLE OF AIR? Sh’right! And the food machine is a direct rip off of Star Trek’s food replicators! All the stuff in here is just lame or ripped off from other stuff! And even if, as crazy as it sounds, there’s air attached in a bubble… they’re drifting away from their solar system! There won’t be any sunlight to warm them in no time! They’ll all freeze to death in space! How lame! But wait! It gets better!

So then it turns out that the ground’s turned to Kryptonite, and they call it Kryptonite, which is weird, because it never existed before the planet exploded, so how do they know to call it that? And Zor-El, he just happens to have enough lead in his lab to cover the ground.

So they float along in this air-bubble piece of Krypton, and years go by. But then meteors show up and smash holes in the lead shield. They managed to refilter the air, but they don’t have some arc welders to repair the holes? In a month’s time? “We have a month before Kryptonite radiations slowly poison the air,” he says. But that makes no sense. The air should have been unbreathable long before this. Because they’ve been breathing for years, right? Breathing in oxygen… and breathing out carbon dioxide. Since there’s no new oxygen to replace the oxygen they breathed in, why haven’t they suffocated already… from CO2 build up, like they almost did in Apollo 13.

So Kara’s mom, who doesn’t get to have a name because she doesn’t rate, uses a “super-space telescope” and sees Superman with it. Now I don’t care how super the telescope is. Light only travels so fast. We learned in science that the stars we see in the sky aren’t actually the stars like they are now, but from years ago. That stars could even have blown up and we’re still seeing the light from when they were around. So if she’s looking at Superman, she’s looking at Superman from years and years ago. Oh, and the space radio teaches them the language. Pretty darned lucky that, of all the languages they picked up, it was English. Lame lame lame.

So they shoot Supergirl off into space, and she lands, and she and Superman find out they’re cousins. So here’s this girl, an alien, an orphan, just arrived on earth. And what does Superman do? He’s so worried about his identity “being jeopardized” that he DUMPS HER IN AN ORPHANAGE! And then he makes her wear a brown wig to DISGUISE HER! Disguise her WHY? No one’s ever SEEN HER! And then she says she used her super-hearing to hear earth-girl’s names. What, she never heard a SINGLE EARTH GIRL’S NAME WHILE SHE WAS BUSY LEARNING ENGLISH? At least she calls herself Linda, like the real Supergirl does, but where did “Lee” come from? What, is that, like, a reference to Stan Lee or something?

And how cruel is Superman? Instead of keeping her with him, helping to introduce her to things on earth, he’s dumped her in the orphanage. It never even occurs to him to try and take care of her himself. Or what about the Kents? He could bring her to ma and pa, like he did with Matrix! Geez, you’d think they were dead or something!

And then what does she do? She immediately risks her secret by using her super strength to straighten out the iron leg of a cot. And she uses her super breath to blow dust out of her room… like that would work. She uses her x-ray vision on a mirror and it doesn’t bounce back at her.

The only thing that makes any sense is when she says that she’s going to do stuff to help people without being seen, “like a sort of ‘guardian angel.’” Which is obviously tossed in to at least make fans of the real Supergirl feel a little better. But not much.

It just kills me that DC acts like something’s wrong with the real Supergirl, Linda Danvers, and tries to put this lame Kryptonian cousin Kara over on us, like we’re gonna accept such a lame, badly written story. And the “Metallo” story is no prize either. In the beginning of the story, when the scientist takes the uranium capsule out of his chest, Metallo almost falls down right there. But later on in the story he’s operating on a rock which he thinks is Kryptonite, but is actually just a painted rock, and he’s working fine for at least six solid minutes. The only story that made sense in the whole lame book was the one with Congorilla, whoever the heck HE’S supposed to be.

If we’re lucky, DC will quickly drop this lousy and lame notion of a new Supergirl and she’ll be forgotten fast. And I’ll tell you one thing: If DC puts out many more books like this one, forty years from now they’re not gonna have any audience left at all.

(Geoff Neubee can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705.)