Pre-Crisis Superman Overview

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #229

Notes:

- The Daily Planet building has a large "electric news-sign" on it.
- Superman encounters some phenomenon which makes his presence dangerous so he has to stay away from Earth... this is the third time we've done this kind of plot so far, just in this title. Couldn't they think of any new ideas? This one has a bit of a twist (the whole thing was a hoax), but still.
- A PSA in this comic said that the first satellite was planned to be launched in 1958 from Cape Canaveral. The USSR beat them to it.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into space and smashes an asteroid, making sure to reduce each fragment to dust
- In seconds, flies out into space, finds an iron meteor, uses "super-pressure" to melt it, makes it into a mile-long cable, returns to Earth, and uses it to lift an iceberg before a ship can crash into it
- Takes the iceberg to a drought-stricken area in the southwest and uses it to irrigate the farmers' fields there
- Identifies one house in Metropolis that is lined with lead, which he can't see through with his X-ray vision
- Flies to the moon in seconds, takes a large chunk of moon rock, polishes it with his hands on the way back to Earth, then uses it as a mirror to scare away a herd of elephants before they can trample a village
- Makes another round trip to the moon, this time faster than light, and grabs a mountain, shatters it into rocks, and throws them down precisely to dam a valley and stop a flood
- Stops a runaway test rocket before it can hit Metropolis, then throws it down to the area where it was supposed to land
- Uses more meteors to make a long steel tube, and squeezes rock into glass to make lenses, and turns the whole thing into a giant periscope to see into the lead-lined house through the chimney
- Can read lips
- Lifts the lead-lined house and carries it next to the jail

Spoiler: Molten iron wouldn't actually cool instantly in space

Spoiler: He sure loves vandalizing the moon

Weirdness:

- One dialogue balloon has a repeated word: "Wild elephants stampeding towards that village - and I have to stop them from from up here-!" It could have been intended, but then there would probably have at least been a comma.
- The electric sign on the Daily Planet building seems to change positions and get bigger every time we see it
- We've previously seen Superman hear things he shouldn't have been able to (such as from across vacuum), but in this issue he had to read the lips of criminals in a lead-lined house to know what they were saying.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Some fairly nice feats here, but nothing groundbreaking, so still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #230

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses his "super-memory" to trap some escaping crooks by visualizing a mental map of Metropolis
- Uses deduction skills to find some criminals' hideout
- Having had his powers artificially boosted, an attempt to do a slight jump almost causes him to collide with and destroy the moon, and then he has to spend hours slowing down in space to return to Earth
- Trying to punch an empowered criminal with as little force as possible, the criminal uses his own super speed to dodge, and the punch sets the air around them on fire
- Jumping down as gently as he can, he creates an earthquake that shakes all of Metropolis and flies straight through the Earth and out the other side
- Finds a piece of Kryptonite that he once threw in the ocean with super-long tongs
- Once his powers are back to normal, sees the criminal at his hideout with his telescopic vision, while in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean
- Uses a giant metal pole to push the island back underwater, without getting close enough for it to affect him again

Spoiler: Strategy

Spoiler: Must have been taking lessons from Batman

Spoiler: Don't you just hate it when stuff like this happens?

Weirdness:

- An underwater Earthquake caused a portion of Atlantis (no clue on whether Aquaman was involved in any way...) to rise from the sea, and due to experiments once conducted there, anyone touching that land would gain powers similar to Superman's. Okay...?
- Superman somehow finds out about this and tries to push the land back undersea, but it multiplies his powers, so now he can't use them at all without threatening to destroy the Earth and everything around him
- Also, while going around without using his powers, he wears a parachute in case he falls from a tower (this is also shown on the cover). But just letting himself fall wouldn't hurt him or endanger anyone else.
- He eventually ends up using Kryptonite to reduce his powers back to their normal levels... because it can do that. The same piece of Kryptonite also removes the powers the criminal gained... why it works on science-granted powers from Atlantis, I have no clue. Even more strangely, the Kryptonite doesn't seem to bother him at all after his powers return to normal.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Interesting one. If his powers really were multiplied 1000fold like he said (and that's not so unrealistic, considering what his attempts to hold back as much as possible were still doing), he may have been around High Herald Level while his powers were boosted (although it was effectively useless as he couldn't control them). Still Low Herald Level for his base, of course.

Action Comics #231

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into the clouds to intercept lightning bolts, then spins around in mid-air while charged with lightning, creating "super-fireworks"
- Faster than anyone can see, removes Jimmy from a magician's cabinet and takes his place, then does the same, switching places with Jimmy again
- In a split second before Jimmy unmasks the girl he saved, Superman uses his X-ray(heat) vision to fuse broken glass into a mirror he specifically created to alter the girl's reflection to make her look younger, and places it so Jimmy only sees the reflection when he takes off the veil
- Watches criminals from above the clouds with his telescopic vision, then "next instant" flies downward and breaks into their underground hideout.

Spoiler: Great speed, reaction, and precision, but a little sexist, don't you think?

Weirdness:

- More quintessential Silver Age wackiness, as Jimmy Olsen is apparently the last living heir to the throne of the medieval kingdom of "Vumania" (which is now just a small, abandoned island), but in order to claim the throne he has to dress up like a knight and perform 3 "knightly deeds".

Superdickery:

- Jimmy Olsen's plan to "slay a dragon" involved puncturing a balloon used in a parade in Chinatown. There was no indication that he ever asked the Chinese if they were okay with this, though, and Superman didn't seem to care.
- Swings around an escaped zoo tiger by its tail... severe animal abuse
- For Jimmy's next feat, "breaking a wizard's spell", he tries to sneak in and ruin a professional magician's act. Superman sees no problem helping him here, either.
- Jimmy's third task is to "rescue a fair maiden". The villains try to replace Lois with a middle-aged woman for this stunt, because apparently they're too ugly to count as "fair". Superman seems to agree with this assessment.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing all that notable here. Kind of disappointing after we were getting so close to Mid Herald a few issues ago, but he's still Low Herald Level.

Action Comics #232

Notes:

- Earlier in this thread (the version in the OBD at least), someone posted a scan of Superboy deflecting a planetary mass in space, early in his title. That very feat might be the same one referenced in this issue.

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees what he describes as a "strange rocket" (more like a spherical space capsule) land in a deserted field, miles away, while in Metropolis
- Changes to Superman and reaches said field "a moment later"
- In a flashback, as Superboy, saves the Earth from a collision with a giant rogue planet that would have destroyed it
- Still in the flashback, searches billions of miles of space for a spaceship (although he doesn't find it)
- After losing his super strength, he is somehow still able to use super speed to spin around and create a miniature hurricane in order to stop a runaway train
- Still without super speed, and also without much of his durability, he races two lightning bolts to their target (an explosives plant), flies through one window and out the other, melting the glass with friction, and making it into an insulating suit that protects him from the lightning as he intercepts it.
- Summoning the last vestiges of his waning powers, he actually manages to propel himself into space by using a tree as a slingshot (wut) and reach a meteor

Spoiler: A lot of these things seem to head towards Earth in the DCU...

Spoiler: But without super durability, wouldn't that speed kill him?

Spoiler: What is that tree made of?

Weirdness:

- A pretty wacky plot even for the Silver Age. A hermit astronomer sees a giant planet about to collide with Earth, so he sends his only son into space on a spaceship that he was somehow able to build, and after Superboy saves the Earth, the ship is so far away that he can't find it. Meanwhile, it passes through a strange energy cloud that grants the human boy Kryptonian - like powers, and he lands on another planet (filled with dinosaurs) where he grows up, and then somehow uses the astronomy books his father put in his spaceship to find his way back to Earth. Also, Superman is appointed as his legal guardian.
- An encounter with a strange "super-poison" from outer space (that was carried back to Earth by the kid's rocket) is somehow taking all of Superman's powers away one at a time, but he somehow knows it will just end up depowering him to human levels and not killing him
- Superman regains his powers due to yet another weird meteor, which has the ability to transfer the kid's powers back to him, restoring him to full strength

Spoiler: Meteors can do anything

Superdickery:

- Takes the identity of the kid's dead father without even thinking about how bad that might seem

Power Tracker:

- Hard to measure his power when he was losing his powers one by one, but for his overall level, I think the planetary deflection feat is finally enough to upgrade him to Mid Herald Level. It's not really that great on its own, but combined with all of the other feats he has been getting recently, and the fact that he did it as a kid, with little to no visible effort, I think this is just what is needed to finally push him over the edge to the next tier, after a span of 108 issues.

 

[Solar Sailor]

It actually makes me think that the Superboy comics seem to have crazier feats, oddly enough.

 

[Endless Mike]

It actually makes me think that the Superboy comics seem to have crazier feats, oddly enough.

Perhaps, but it will be a while before I cover them (if I get that far).

Anyway, Action Comics #233

Notes:

- The fictional nation of Borgonia, which is the primary setting of this issue, had previously appeared in Superboy #5 and would later appear in Superman #187. Hopefully I'll get to both of those in this thread eventually.

Feat Catalogue:

- Spots a leak in a plane's gas tank with his X-ray vision
- After jumping out of the plane, uses his super breath to gently guide it to a safe landing on the other side of a mountain range
- Flies up and intercepts a supersonic missile
- Uses "super-memory" to remember the exact angle the missile was fired from and track it back to its source
- Digs underground and shifts some rock to support a bridge, preventing it from collapsing
- Carries a model of Krypton into space and destroys it by throwing an asteroid at it
- The model was filled with coal, and when it is destroyed the coal is compressed into diamonds that fall to Earth
- Flies out over the ocean, digs underground from the ocean floor, and collapses the land underneath the diamonds so they fall into a river
- Fixes an entire country's worth of rigged voting machines on election day so they will return proper results

Spoiler: The physics of this are actually less questionable than your typical Silver Age feat

Weirdness:

- You can probably tell from the cover that this is another goofy one. A South American dictator enacts a law that everyone in his country has to wear Superman costumes, or be executed. His plan is to make the fake uniforms slightly different from the real one, so then he can easily identify the real Superman, then blackmail him into destroying a model of Krypton he made filled with coal, so it would become diamonds and make him rich... yeah, it makes no sense.
- We get the whole X-ray vision = heat vision thing again, with lead being immune to both. I'm not sure when they eventually changed this.
- Superman was worried that a model that the villain made of Krypton, if it exploded in space, would become Kryptonite, if it was made of the exact same materials. Ignoring for a moment how some tinpot dictator could have possibly made an exact replica of Krypton out of the exact same elements and materials, it wouldn't have been destroyed by an atomic reaction anyway, so there was no reason to worry about such a thing happening. Then again, with wacky Silver Age physics, you never know...
- Superman tricks the villain by claiming that he took his lead safe 1000 years into the future and back, so the evidence inside it would "crumble with age". He didn't, but how would that even make sense, since the safe itself wouldn't be experiencing that duration of time?
- The dictator rigged the voting machines in his country, but Superman un-rigged them, so he ended up losing the election. And somehow he accepted that and just allowed a peaceful transfer of power. Somehow I don't think that's very realistic.

Spoiler: Galaxy - brained plan here

Spoiler: Lead is immune to heat?

Spoiler: Everyone knows tyrants will just accept election results they don't like!

Superdickery:

- Panics Lois and the other passengers and crew of the plane he's on by opening the doors in mid-air and diving out as Clark Kent (although he did have a parachute). It was part of a plan to save the crashing plane, but there were probably better ways to do it.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to really change his newly-acquired Mid Herald Level status.

Action Comics #234

Notes:

- The shapeshifing alien in this issue, who you would think would just be another one-shot character, actually returned almost 28 years later, in one of the last issues of Action Comics before COIE. I'll hopefully get to that one eventually.
- There's an environmentalist PSA in this issue, which is surprisingly progressive for 1957. It also features Teddy Roosevelt.

Spoiler: We haven't exactly done so well on this front...

Feat Catalogue:

- Finds a runaway kid fairly quickly after he hears about him being missing, with his only clue being that he was probably in "open country"
- Stops two ferry boats from colliding with one another
- Pulls a steamboat to shore at super speed
- Searches all of Metropolis in a seemingly short amount of time
- Flies the alien back to his home planet (although I'm not sure how he knew where it was... maybe the alien told him?)

Spoiler: As easy as a walk down the street

Weirdness:

- A childlike shapeshifting alien isn't so weird compared to lots of the things we typically see in these comics. Although it is rather strange that Superman deduced that the only reason he would be so far away from home is if he had run away... what if his planet was doomed just like Krypton and he had been sent away too? It wouldn't be the first time in this title we would have seen another being's story paralleling Superman's origin.

Power Tracker:

- Another casual FTL travel feat is the only real notable thing here. He keeps his status of Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #235

Notes:

- This issue features an island of Amazons, but it has nothing to do with Wonder Woman or her homeland. Apparently, at this point, Batman and his mythos were coexisting with Superman in the same continuity, but Wonder Woman wasn't. Of course, that would be retconned later.
- Lois actually had a chance to make Superman marry her in this issue, and didn't take it
- There's an ad in this issue for comics featuring Superman, but interestingly it says that he appears in 4 magazines at the time: Action Comics, Superman, World's Finest, and Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen. The Superboy title isn't included (perhaps because he wasn't technically 'Superman' yet in that?)

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses an old anchor, ship's mast, and cable to make a giant fishing rod and catch a shark from miles away
- Flies thousands of miles in a few seconds in response to a radio SOS
- Repairs a damaged boat and carries it back to the water
- Searches billions of miles in space to find an undiscovered comet
- When he can't find one, he smashes a bunch of meteors together to create one, the ignites it with X-ray vision, creating a coma that stretches for millions of miles
- Flies to the Sahara desert, finds a mirage of an oasis, then flies to a jungle thousands of miles south and somehow directs a spray of water from a natural spring all the way to the mirage, filling the imaginary lake
- Flies to a jungle, finds four wild lions, takes them back to the island, puts them in an arena, and flies around them at super speed, making them dizzy
- Carves a bunch of holes in some cliffs to somehow allow an echo there to last for centuries
- Blows the Amazon queen's crown off her head with super breath and melts it with X-ray vision while it's still in mid-air

Spoiler: Could have gone to the Oort cloud, but apparently this was easier

Spoiler: The physics of this are questionable

Spoiler: But not as much so as the physics of this. What?

Weirdness:

- The opening narration refers to Superman as "mightiest human being in all the world." Except he's not a human being, and it's still rather unclear at this point which other superheroes are living in the same continuity with him.
- Lois Lane is the chairperson of the "Super Sorority", a group of women (essentially fangirls) who have all been saved by Superman
- A Kryptonite meteor just happened to crash on the Amazons' island, and the Amazons made chains out of it for some reason, which just happened to be the perfect thing to hold Superman when he showed up. How convenient.
- When Superman realizes that the Kryptonite chains don't affect him, he immediately jumps to the conclusion that there is some kind of antidote for Kryptonite on the island, so he allows himself to be captured in order to try to find it. He never even considers the possibility that just because the chains were green and glowing, they weren't actually Kryptonite. It later turns out that they were, and there was an antidote, but he ended up inadvertently destroying it.
- The Amazons hold a slave auction for Superman. Lois wins by bidding $1,000,000.00, despite the Amazons not knowing what a dollar is, and her obviously not having that much money.

Superdickery:

- More animal abuse with what he did to the lions
- Destroys a priceless Amazon relic, which ends up badly for him too, as it had the ability to negate the effects of Kryptonite.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here. Mid - Herald Level, still.

Action Comics #236

Notes:

- On the cover, it's stated that Superman's costume is immune to fire, acid, and bullets
- Lex Luthor builds a robot that he calls 'Metallo' in this issue. The actual Metallo, the Kryptonite-powered cyborg you are probably much more familiar with, wouldn't debut until the following year, in issue #252. There was a Golden Age Superman villain known as "Metalo" (with one 'l'), though, a man who wore a suit of Iron Man - style power armor. He appeared in different titles that I haven't covered yet.
- Apparently, "many chunks of the exploded planet Krypton drift near Earth"
- Lead foil is actually shown to completely block Kryptonite radiation in this issue

Spoiler: Metallo, but not really

Feat Catalogue:

- An atomic - powered robot self-destructs while wearing Superman's costume, and an explosion stated to be capable of wiping out half of Metropolis is rendered mostly inert by the indestructible uniform.
- Superman hears the ultrasonic sounds from Jimmy Olsen's signal watch
- Intercepts a lightning bolt before it hits the ground
- Somehow built a giant lance that he uses to pick up and move a shipwreck from the Metropolis harbor while in mid-air
- Flies into space and throws a meteor at a Kryptonite asteroid, knocking it down to Earth
- Uses super breath to clear away some icebergs from the path of a ship
- Fixes a weakened bridge
- Sees through intense fog at night with his X-ray vision
- Lex Luthor, wearing Superman's original costume, is unharmed by bullets fired at it
- While weakened by Kryptonite, taps out an ultrasonic signal that is picked up by Jimmy Olsen's signal watch

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor uses a realistic mask to disguise himself as another scientist. Superman never bothers to check with X-ray vision since he has no reason to be suspicious.
- Lex builds a robot he designed to self-destruct. Apparently the explosion would have been powerful enough to destroy half of Metropolis, had it not been dampened by Superman's costume
- Builds a new uniform for Superman, made of flame-proof synthetic cloth, with a helmet radio and an "atomic motor" to power a flight device that's completely silent. It also apparently includes an "Anti-Kryptonite Belt" (which was actually a trap)
- Creates a piece of fake Kryptonite that could fool Superman

Spoiler: I'm guessing that making Superman look ridiculous was also part of Luthor's plan

Weirdness:

- At one point, believing his costume to have been irreparably damaged, Superman wears a suit of medieval armor instead.
- One of his new suit's features was a built-in radio to pick up distress calls and emergency broadcasts. But can't he hear those anyway? Or was it only the Golden Age version that could do that?
- Superman tricks Luthor by "flying" while being weakened by Kryptonite, but it was a complex trick using Jimmy Olsen's help and a giant magnet. Wouldn't it have just been easier to use the atomic - powered flight device in his new suit, which was previously shown to work just fine?

Spoiler: The bottom panel is why I love the Silver Age

Spoiler: This seems unnecessarily complicated

Power Tracker:

- Again, nothing notable to change his status from Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #237

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision and super hearing to determine that a man is about to die (although it was a hoax caused by a chemical formula that induced the appearance of death)
- Uses super strength to fuse a door lock together so it can't be opened
- Checks a room thoroughly with X-ray vision for any listening devices
- Draws a realistic portrait from memory at super speed
- Spins a chair stool around so fast that it becomes red hot from friction (but somehow doesn't harm the guy a few feet away...)

Weirdness:

- Funny line of dialogue: "Something's wrong! In fact, it suddenly looks as if I've just pulled the boner of my life!" (Yes, "boner" meant 'mistake' back then. See Batman #66 for perhaps the most famous example of this).
- The plot in this one is pretty crazy too. Some old rich scientist creates a formula to make him appear to be dying, and tricks Clark Kent into revealing his secret identity to him on his 'deathbed', but then recovers and prepares to print it, so Clark decides to tell Perry and Lois his identity and have the Daily Planet print it first, but then he finds out that the formula made the scientist confused while under its influence, so he didn't have the right identity, so then he had to convince everyone at the Daily Planet that he was just pretending to reveal his identity and he wasn't really Superman. Somehow, everything worked out

Superdickery:

- Smashes Perry's desk to try to prove that he's Superman

Power Tracker:

- Another one of those issues where nothing really notable happens, feat-wise. Still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #238

Notes:

- The intro narration has a few new comparisons: "Faster than a guided missile! Harder than armor plate! More powerful than an atomic engine! Only one man on Earth fits this super-description!"
- At one point in this issue, Superman wonders if he will be defeated "for the first time in his life". Except we've seen him defeated several times so far. I guess maybe he means in a one - on - one contest of pure strength and power without tricks like Kryptonite, but even then there are some previous instances in this title alone that could fit that description
- There's an ad in this issue for the first issue of Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, another one of the most infamously wacky Silver Age DC comics. I'll try to get to it eventually.

Feat Catalogue:

- While in America, instantly picks up the ultrasonic distress signal from Jimmy Olsen's signal watch in Africa (somehow showing he can hear sounds before they reach him... wouldn't be the craziest thing his hearing has done)
- Again from America, uses telescopic vision to see that Jimmy is in danger in Africa.
- Flies to Africa in what appears to be a span of seconds to rescue Jimmy (although the narration refers to it only as "supersonic speed", but that could just be the speed he slowed down to as he was arriving)
- Rips up abandoned railroad tracks and builds a cage out of them at super speed around a gorilla
- Uses telescopic vision to see a crashed Kryptonian ship in the jungle
- Fixes a plane in mid-air by pushing the wings back in place and welding them with his X-ray(heat) vision
- Uses super breath to quickly move a boat from boiling to cold water to save it
- Intercepts a Kryptonian gorilla's super breath (don't ask) by tying his cape between two trees, saving an entire village.
- Fights the gorilla, in what is described as "the greatest super-battle ever seen on Earth". They create an earthquake from colliding in mid-air.
- Is said to burst out of the ground "with the force of a hydrogen-bomb's explosion"
- He also hits the gorilla with what he describes as 'my best super-blow', but it doesn't do much

Spoiler: Hearing sound... faster than sound. One of those things you just have to shrug and accept.

Spoiler: Superman vs. Kryptonian gorilla

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Some Kryptonian scientists invented an "evolution accelerator" that could supposedly evolve a creature a million years in mere minutes. (A very common misconception about evolution, but like I said before, I'm willing to give 1950s comics a pass since even 1990s sci-fi shows made this same mistake).

Spoiler: At least he didn't turn into a salamander

Weirdness:

- Another ape/gorilla gimmick (I told you these were popular). This time it's a Kryptonian gorilla that actually acts like an animal, and doesn't seem to have human intelligence and speech like the one in issue #218. However, it's revealed that it was actually a Kryptonian scientist who was transformed into a gorilla by an experiment gone wrong.
- At one point, Superman asks Jimmy Olsen and his guide to go and find some Kryptonite, while they're in the middle of Africa. They don't find any, noting that "Kryptonite meteors that fell on Earth are rare." Could have predicted that. But then...
- What they do find, however, is a tribe of Roman descendants living among ancient Roman ruins, who have had no contact with the modern world (but of course they speak English). And they just happen to actually have Kryptonite, having made their weapons out of it
from a meteor they found.
- The Kryptonian gorilla-man's body is able to shield Superman from Kryptonite rays, despite not even covering all of the Kryptonite

Superdickery:

- He saw nothing wrong with bursting out of the ground with the force of an H-bomb in close proximity to Jimmy Olsen and several other humans. Luckily, that either wasn't literal, or just didn't cause the kind of damage it should have for some reason.

Power Tracker:

- (Nearly) losing to a gorilla with Kryptonian powers is hardly an indictment of his strength. If anything, he did a lot better than any normal human would have done against an Earth gorilla. We're keeping him at Mid Herald Level for now.

Action Comics #239

Notes:

- The opening narration states that "The best-known face in the world is that of Superman, the mighty Man of Steel!" Even in-universe, it's hard to tell if that's true or not.
- There's an ad in this issue for the premier issue of The Challengers of the Unknown, a rather obscure DC team that I mostly know from them being merged with the Fantastic Four in Amalgam Comics, to form the "Challengers of the Fantastic"

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to determine that an experimental atomic reactor is overloading and about to explode
- Flies the reactor into the stratosphere in "an instant", where it explodes, creating Kryptonite (as the scientist who built it was apparently trying to do), but Superman survives with only an injury on his face
- Somehow builds a "super-chemical laboratory" on an isolated mountaintop, grinding ores into powder with his bare hands to try to create a chemical solution to fix his scars, but it's no use
- He states that no known chemicals can harm him or fix his scars
- Tries to remove the scars by sticking his face in an erupting volcano. Predictably, it doesn't work.
- Intercepts lightning bolts with his face, again attempting to remove the scars. This doesn't work, either.
- A gas tanker ship catches on fire and is abandoned, so he pushes it underwater to put out the fire
- Pulls the tanker back up to the surface and safely to shore
- Uses concentrated X-ray vision to destroy the fuses in the building and shut off all the lights in the office.
- Flies to "a far region in the starry universe" and finds a planetoid made almost purely of uranium, and detonates it on himself in "the mightiest atomic explosion of all time", which doesn't harm him but successfully removes his scars, then flies back to Earth.

Spoiler: Pretty good showing against Kryptonite

Spoiler: SCIENCE!

Spoiler: I think that I've seen this feat before...

Weirdness:

- It's stated in this issue that "no natural force is stronger than lightning". That isn't even remotely close to being true, even with only the scientific knowledge of 1958 to go on.

Superdickery:

- Damages the Daily Planet building and cuts all the lights just to hide his identity

Power Tracker:

- If he hadn't reached Mid Herald Level already, that planetoid feat would have done it. It might even be close to High Herald Level, depending on how large it was. The narration also implied he flew a significant distance across the universe too, but there's no way to quantify that.

Action Comics #240

Notes:

- An astronomer says he is tracking a new "Sputnik" as a synonym for a satellite, referencing the first artificial satellite which was launched a year previous to the publication of this comic.
- Lead is again shown to block Kryptonite radiation in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Built a Clark Kent robot to help conceal his secret identity. He can control it remotely from far away with signals from his X-ray vision.
- Uses X-ray vision and super hearing to see Lois discovering the robot after he left the Daily Planet
- Falls 500 miles to Earth, but is uninjured
- Built another Superman robot, remote controlled the same way, and launched it into space
- Carved a giant Sphinx with his own face and installed military heat ray weapons in it, as well as a device he invented that shoots "false Kryptonite" rays, then threw it into Earth orbit

Spoiler: Maybe you shouldn't have left it just sitting around in a closet like that...

Spoiler: What kind of warped mind would come up with a plan like this?

Weirdness:

- Superman is somehow able to use a walkie-talkie to not only talk in space to someone on Earth, but over a distance of 500 miles
- It's stated in this issue that Kryptonite doesn't remove or affect Superman's durability, even though it has shown to be able to do so in previous issues, even the very last one.
- Weird cover, weirder plot. A mysterious Sphinx statue orbiting Earth, with Superman's face, blasting heat rays and "Kryptonite", was actually built by Superman to test some military weapons, as he pretends it's an extraterrestrial threat to disguise its true purpose

Spoiler: Kryptonite doesn't affect his durability? He was only faking his weakness here, though

Superdickery:

- Panics the entire world by making them think there's an alien satellite that can shoot Kryptonite rays that he's helpless against, and makes it bombard the surface with heat rays. He never reveals the truth behind it.

Spoiler: The entire world thinks they could be wiped out any second by an orbital death ray that Superman is powerless to stop. I bet he finds that to be a funny prank.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing all that notable here, aside from more of his technological and engineering prowess. Still Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #241

Notes:

- First appearance of the Silver Age (Earth-One) Fortress of Solitude
- First appearance of Batman in Action Comics (in an actual story, not counting ads, PSAs, and such), although it wasn't the first time he was mentioned
- This is also the first time that the Joker is mentioned in Action Comics (along with his likeness being seen), although he doesn't make a direct appearance
- Lead is again shown to block Kryptonite radiation, as Superman says that he is immune to the stuff while inside a suit of lead armor

Feat Catalogue:

- Carves writing into giant stone tablets with X-ray(heat) vision
- Can read and write the Kryptonian language, which he claims that no one else in the universe knows (although this isn't true)
- Uses X-ray vision to find pearls in oysters to make a necklace for Lois
- Flies to his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic at "meteor speed"
- Built a giant key for the giant door to his fortress, which both weigh many tons, and he claims no human on Earth could lift the key or move the door an inch
- He has many "trophies and dangerous souvenirs" that he has collected from other worlds. These include:

* "Bubbling, colored crystals from Planet X"
* An "interplanetary zoo" with alien animals from other planets

- Builds a functioning sports car out of raw materials with his bare hands
- Builds a "robot detective", with a "lightning fingerprint classifier", "electronic clue analysis", and a "crime probability predicter" to try to help Batman.
- Paints a realistic picture of a Martian landscape observed by his telescopic vision
- Punches through a new type of metal that a scientist created, who claimed that it might be unbreakable even to Superman
- Engraves words on solid metal sheets with his fingernails
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt the door to the Fortress of Solitude and fuse it with the surrounding mountainside, sealing it shut
- Digs up water mains from underground and uses them to put out a fire
- Flies through fifty feet of solid rock "as a hot knife slices through butter"
- Uses the rock debris to repair the hole he just created
- Plays "super-chess" (basically just seems to be chess with a giant board and pieces, played at super speed) with a robot he built that can "think and play with the speed of lightning and plans a million moves at once". They move the pieces so fast they are a blur, and Superman wins by thinking faster.
- Carries a large disabled ocean liner to port
- Eventually figures out Batman was the one messing with him, and tricks him by making him think that they're both trapped in the Fortress due to himself being weakened by (fake) Kryptonite
- Creates a localized earthquake from the vibrations from a "super-clap", controlling it so it only collapses rock in one room of the Fortress and doesn't damage the overall structure
- Says that he can eat solid steel

Spoiler: Batman probably already has one of those... and it's a deluxe model, too

Spoiler: Sounds impressive... until you realize that Deep Blue in 1996 could calculate 100 million positions per second, and Kasparov still beat that version

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor built a machine that was supposed to "summon beings from the fourth dimension". Unknown if it would have worked or not.

****

- Batman sneaks into the Fortress of Solitude, confounding Superman as to how he did it. He first got in by creating a compartment in the giant key, then hides within a giant lead penny he gave Superman
- Batman can apparently read and write the Kryptonian language
- Without knowing who is behind the intrusions, Superman refers to him as "the cleverest, most cunning opponent I've ever faced"

Spoiler: How does Batman know Kryptonese? He's Batman, that's how

Spoiler: A relationship based on trolling and deceiving each other... some friends

Weirdness:

- The Fortress of Solitude has a bunch of rooms dedicated to each of Superman's friends, including Lois, Jimmy, and Batman. These rooms contain life-size statues/mannequins of them too. Kind of creepy.
- A vision of the surface of Mars apparently has green arms growing out of the ground. Some of J'onn's friends?
- While the chess robot probably seemed impressive and fantastical for the time this was written, calculating a million moves simultaneously is actually pretty slow compared to modern chess engines. They had to get significantly faster than that before they were able to consistently beat the best human players.

Superdickery:

- Apparently he kidnapped a bunch of animals from other planets and stuck them all in small cages to make a zoo, just for his own amusement
- Tricks Batman into thinking that he's in danger from Kryptonite, and they're both trapped underground
- Some from Batman, as he sneaks into the Fortress of Solitude and leaves messages taunting Superman that he knows his secret identity and will reveal it. He claims he was just trying to give him a puzzle to solve, but it did really shake him up.

Power Tracker:

- Lots of intellectual/science feats in this issue, but nothing in terms of physical feats to change him from Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #242

Notes:

- First appearance of Brainiac
- Also the first appearance of the Bottle City of Kandor
- Interestingly (this could go in the Weirdness section, too), the diode - like structures on Brainiac's head, which later became a trademark part of the character's appearance, are present on the cover but not in the actual story
- A rocket called the Columbus is launched from Earth in this issue, which is apparently "the first experimental spaceship with humans aboard". In real life, it was Vostok 1 (carrying Yuri Gagarin) that took that honor, almost 2 years after this comic was published
- Brainiac says that the population of his homeworld was wiped out by a plague. This was later retconned.
- Interestingly, Superman implies that he could be harmed by his own X-ray(heat) vision, indicating how powerful it is
- The narration says that Superman was enraged for the first time in his career when fighting Brainiac, although I'm pretty sure we've seen him angry before
- The DC wiki says that the reason Superman loses his powers in Kandor is because the environment is powered by an artificial red sun. However, the comic itself only mentions "Krypton's gravity-conditions" being duplicated. This is because the red/yellow sunlight mechanism hadn't yet been introduced. There is an artificial sun shown, but its color isn't mentioned, and it appears both yellow and red.
- It's stated in this issue that Kandor was Krypton's capitol city
- On the cover, Brainiac states that Superman will be destroyed if he comes in contact with his Ultra - Force shield, but in the actual comic this is shown to be untrue, as he flies at it, hits it, and bounces off

Spoiler: Brainiac's very first appearance

Spoiler: First appearance of Kandor

Feat Catalogue:

- On the splash page, throws a "giant meteor" at Brainiac
- Uses X-ray vision to see Brainiac inside his ship, and also hears what he is saying
- Pushes the Earth - made rocket at super speed until it's out of range of Brainiac's ship's weapons
- Uses X-ray vision to see that Paris is missing while in space, then spies on Brainiac's ship again and overhears his plan to capture more cities
- Grabs a stalagmite and throws it at super speed at Brainiac
- Rips up a planetoid and throws its fragments at Brainiac and his ship, to no avail, though
- Despite being shrunk to miniature size, opens the cork (made of "super-hard metal") on the bottle containing Metropolis and flies out
- After entering Kandor, where the conditions of Krypton are replicated, he loses his powers and falls to the ground, but is still uninjured
- Using Kryptonian technology and an alien metal-eating mole (yeah...) escapes from Kandor and uses Brainiac's machine to restore all of the cities (save Kandor) back to normal size and return them to Earth

Spoiler: Rips up a planetoid and throws it at Brainiac's ship

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Brainiac's "Ultra - Force Shield" no-sells a giant meteor thrown by Superman on the splash page
- Also on the splash page, Braniac says that even if Superman threw the Earth himself at him, it would bounce harmlessly off his shield
- The splash page also says that Brainiac's powers are greater than Superman's
- Fires a ray from his ship that causes a bunch of test animals aboard a rocket to dance and whirl madly
- Fires another ray from his ship that causes the rocket to shake
- Superman tries to smash the ship but bounces off the shield. Brainiac claims that nothing in the universe can penetrate it.
- Brainiac uses "Hyper-bombsight" to lock in on Paris and shrink it from orbit, transporting it into a bottle on his ship
- Proceeds to miniaturize and steal Rome, London, and New York (possibly along with other cities as well, as he says he plans to take a dozen from Earth)
- Even while outside of his ship, wears a "power-belt" that throws an "ultra-shell" around him (presumably a smaller version of his ship's forcefield), which reflects Superman's X-ray(heat) vision back at him.
- His personal forcefield no-sells a thrown stalagmite, and then, after retreating to his ship, does the same to massive chunks comprising an entire planetoid
- Shrinks and captures Metropolis, not knowing that Superman (as Clark Kent) is inside it

****

- The inhabitants of Kandor have created rockets, robot laborers, and an artificial sun, even after being captured by Brainiac

Spoiler: Back in his first appearance, Brainiac was basically a green Lex Luthor

Spoiler: Technically this claim about the shield was never disproven...

Spoiler: Kryptonians apparently need Superman there to actually take initiative and do something about their captivity

Weirdness:

- The first experimental manned spaceflight carries multiple people in rows like a commercial airliner, and most of them are not trained astronauts (Lois and Clark are aboard to cover it for the Daily Planet). It also has test animals on board.
- Brainiac has a pet white alien monkey named Koko. This character would later be phased out, but is still referenced sometimes
- The rocket also has an emergency spacesuit for escapes, with supersonic jets built it, and it can apparently allow the occupant to survive reentry.
- Superman is able to see into Brainiac's ship with his X-ray vision, despite it being shown that the shield could repel his heat vision. This was back when they were still considered the same power.
- Brainiac puts himself into suspended animation for the 100 - year trip back to his homeworld. This is odd because most (if not all) later versions of Brainiac will show him to be either a pure machine or cybernetic organism, who is not susceptible to aging. The DC wiki chalks this up to hypertime/alternate universe shenanigans again.
- The comic goes out of its way to show that the Kandorians have a metal-eating mole in their zoo, and show nothing else in said zoo. On the very next page, after Superman asks to borrow "a certain animal from the zoo", the narration asks "Can you guess what animal Superman takes along in the rocket, later?" Maybe... the only one that was mentioned?
- After returning the stolen Earth cities, Brainiac's machine only has one charge left, which can be used to either return Superman or Kandor to normal size. The Kandorians also are able to fire a rocket out of their city to activate the machine remotely, but for some reason, neither they nor Superman ever think of just having him return to the city and enlarging it with him inside it

Spoiler: You could have returned to the city and then enlarged it, you know

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level. Ripping up the planetoid and using it for ammo was nice, but I'd only call that a Low Herald Level feat, probably.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #243

Notes:

- Hoo boy. This is a pretty infamous one, featuring one of the most WTF covers in the series. Superdickery had a field day with it. The story itself barely makes any more sense.
- Referring to the events of the last issue, Superman says that he "eventually defeated" Brainiac. As I remember it, he couldn't beat him in a head-on fight and only managed to steal his miniature cities back and let him go
- I split this one into another post instead of doing 4 issues in a single post because, for the first time in this thread, I went past the limit of 20 images per post.

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts an elephant "like a feather", with one hand
- Puts his head in a lion's mouth, is bitten, and unharmed
- From the Fortress of Solitude in the North Pole, sees an earthquake wreck a temple and endanger a girl on a Mediterranean island with telescopic vision
- Flies from the North Pole to the island in the time before a few falling pillars can reach the ground to save the girl
- Claims he is invulnerable to any poisons or serums. It's later shown that the serum only affected him because it included Kryptonite that weakened him first.
- Digs underground from outside Metropolis city limits to enter Jimmy Olsen's office
- Switches places with an actual lion at super speed so fast he can't be seen, then later switches back while giving the lion antibiotics to cure its disease
- Uses telescopic vision to see a movie crew being attacked by lions in Africa, from Metropolis
- Flies to Africa and saves the movie crew before the lions can reach them
- Has a "super-telescope" at his Fortress, which he uses to search 100 worlds for a specific person. This telescope would logically have to be even more powerful than his telescopic vision in order to be useful to him. Or maybe it's just a normal telescope that amplifies the effects of his telescopic vision?
- Uses microscopic vision to read through a library in Kandor to find the antidote to Circe's serum
- Successfully creates the serum and cures himself

Spoiler: Hardly his best, but I like to collect these little speed feats

Spoiler: How does that telescope work?

Weirdness:

- Lion-headed Superman. All that really needs to be said.
- The antagonist of this issue is a woman who claims to be a descendant of the mythological sorceress Circe. She also says that the original Circe was an alien (Kryptonian, even!) who used science, not magic, to accomplish her feats. However, the DC wiki lists the Circe mentioned in this issue as being the same one who often serves as a foil to Wonder Woman, and that Circe does use magic, and is certainly no Kryptonian. Either the wiki is wrong and these are two different Circes, or it's another hypertime/alternate universe situation.
- A lion tamer at a circus dressed up his lion like Superman for an act. When this lion becomes sick, Superman (transformed into lion form) is conveniently able to substitute for him.
- The comic states that the original Circe, who arrived at Earth from Krypton in ancient Greek times, used Kryptonite in her serum. Also, there are records of her serum and its antidote, involving the Kryptonite, on Kandor, which was stolen before Krypton exploded. But Kryptonite didn't exist until after Krypton exploded.
- The villainess in this issue escapes and suffers no punishment or comeuppance whatsoever. I thought that kind of thing was forbidden by the Comics Code Authority at the time. At least Brainiac lost all of his stolen cities in issue #242.

Spoiler: What?

Spoiler: WHAT

Spoiler: WHAT!?

Spoiler: Let's ignore how little sense this makes, at least things are back to normal

Superdickery:

- Those stunts at the zoo probably hurt the elephant and broke the lion's teeth
- Lifts Perry and his desk and melts a window in the Daily Planet just to prove he's really Superman
- Digs up through the floor of the Daily Planet building, just so people don't see him with his lion head (he couldn't have just used super speed to avoid that?) He does repair the floor later, but still.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here. Mid Herald Level still.

Action Comics #244

Notes:

- Jimmy Olsen is shown to know about Superman's Fortress of Solitude in the North Pole in this issue
- The villains in this issue plan to melt the polar ice caps, and submerge the Earth. In reality, this would only raise the sea level by about 70 meters. Devastating for sure, but a lot of land would remain.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic vision to spy an alien rocket crash-landing in the ocean from Metropolis
- Flies to the crash site "in moments", then quickly flies to the bottom of the sea
- Stays underwater for weeks
- Hollows out an undersea cliff to make a new Fortress of Solitude, creating enough disturbance in the water that it causes the surface to churn like a whirlpool and erupt like a geyser kilometers above him
- Builds a "super-crystalizer" that can extract materials from ocean water, and an "electronic seven seas scanner" that somehow allows him to monitor all of the Earth's oceans at once
- Builds a remote - controlled robot whale to gather specimens of sea life
- Builds an underwater castle
- Gathers a bunch of huge pearls from giant deep - sea clams
- Built a chariot out of a giant clamshell pulled by dolphins (that look more like fish for some reason)
- Spins a wrecked ship's propeller at super speed to create underwater turbulence to force a bathysphere back up to the surface
- Helped the alien Vul-kor build an "infra coil" that would create a heat ray to melt the polar ice caps
- Secretly built a giant lens with the ability to transform the heat ray into harmless rainbow colors, however that's supposed to work
- Moves the lens to intercept the heat ray (depending on if the heat ray is electromagnetic in nature or not, this could be an FTL feat... underwater? That would be new)
- Tricks the aliens by gathering a huge concentration of salt to make them think Earth's oceans are a lot saltier than they actually are, and they can't live in them

Spoiler: SCIENCE!

Spoiler: Moving this fast underwater should have probably destroyed the planet...

Spoiler: If these alien invaders ever did any research on Earth, these tricks wouldn't fool them

Weirdness:

- Superman exiles himself under the ocean and pretends to marry a mermaid in a convoluted plot to thwart an alien invasion. Another one of those rare sentences.

Spoiler: Typical Silver Age

Superdickery:

- Effectively rips off Aquaman's shtick
- Steals a bunch of undersea relics for his new Fortress, including a statue of the King of Atlantis
- Releases a bunch of crude oil into the ocean to escape from pursuers

Spoiler: You just can't let Aquaman have anything, can you?

Power Tracker:

- No real notable feats aside from the lens thing, although it's hard to quantify the speed of the 'heat ray'. The lens turning it into a rainbow suggests it was made of EM radiation, and even if it wasn't, it was expected to reach both polar ice caps fairly quickly, so I don't know. Anyway, Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #245

Notes:

- Again, the environment of Kandor removing Superman's powers is attributed to "Krypton's non-Earthly gravity conditions", not red sunlight
- There's an ad in this issue that mentions that Superman also appears in Adventure Comics. Another title that I'll hopefully cover in this thread at some point.
- This is the first issue (at least in the copies I have) that includes a letters column, "Metropolis Mailbag"
- This issue had the archive error, so sorry about that

Feat Catalogue:

- Built an atomic-powered robot with a punch that would "cave in the side of a battleship", but it doesn't even move him
- Built a crystal ball that's actually a two-way TV
- Reaches Lois and saves her and her car from falling off a cliff right after escaping Kandor
- While powerless in Kandor, used a Kryptonian material to shrink himself to a size small enough to slip between atoms and escape the bottle, then, while at atomic size (with his powers restored), was strong enough to activate the machine and return himself to normal size.

Spoiler: How is it a good sparring partner if it can't even move your head?

Spoiler: Moving and activating that machine while at that size could be a planetary level or higher strength feat...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Kryptonian Zak-Kul, disguised as Superman, chews up and swallows metal swords
- Zak-Kul also had a device in his laboratory on Kandor that could remotely monitor events from long distances on Earth (such as in Metropolis, while Kandor was in the Fortress of Solitude in the North Pole)
- Zak-Kul (still disguised as Superman) punches a hole in a cliff to create a gap in a road so anyone driving over it will fall to their doom

****

- Kandor has robot policemen, "flying carpets" run by anti-gravity, and weather control towers that broadcast heat. Superman indicates that these existed on Krypton before its destruction as well.

Weirdness:

- Lois accidentally knocks Kandor over onto the floor. This apparently doesn't cause any damage to the buildings or the people. It's established that within the bottle, they have no super powers, so such an impact would have certainly killed them all.
- Inside the Fortress is an "electronic plastic surgery" machine that can change the user's face to any of several pre-set settings, including to look just like Superman. This was apparently confiscated from a criminal (Luthor?) It even works on a Kryptonian who had escaped from Kandor and regained his powers.

Spoiler: Yep, no harm done...

Spoiler: How convenient

Superdickery:

- Nice out - of - context panel where it looks like Superman is trying to murder Lois (although it's not really him)

Spoiler: Panels like this would be right at home on Superdickery

Power Tracker:

- Not sure about quantifying the feat where he uses the machine while shrunk to atom size, but it seems fairly impressive. Still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #246

Notes:

- "Krypton Island" is maintained as a housing project, resembling Krypton, after its criminal founder is arrested. Not sure if we'll see it again, though.
- A response in the letters column says that Superman does need oxygen to breathe, but taking one lungful can last him for an indefinite amount of time. Weird.

Feat Catalogue:

- Twists the head of a giant statue of himself to prevent its X-ray vision from burning a ship (see Weirdness section)
- Uses his own X-ray(heat) vision to fuse the statue back together and repair it
- Breaks a giant buzzsaw while standing in front of it, saying it tickles
- Lifts two elephants in a weird barbell - like device, "as though they were as light as feathers"
- Uses super breath to blow a steel ball through a bunch of barriers that would stop a cannonball
- Somehow uses super speed to become a "continuous streak" in the sky, spelling out the word "KRYPTON" with his afterimage
- Squeezes a dozen pieces of coal into diamonds, then melts them with his X-ray(heat) vision (although what he really melted were fakes made of glass)
- Moving faster than lightning, ties his cape to posts around a stadium (he can apparently stretch it with super strength since it's indestructible) and uses it like a giant tent to shield the stadium from falling debris
- Uses super-memory to near-instantly identify some fingerprints as belonging to those of a criminal he saw in FBI files
- While weakened by Kryptonite, uses X-ray(heat) vision to pop some balloons keeping a flag in the air so it drifts down towards him, then he grabs it and a gust of wind blows on the flag, carrying him safely away from the Kryptonite
- Melts the real diamonds with his X-ray(heat) vision

Spoiler: Advanced application of afterimages

Spoiler: The old coal - to - diamonds trick again

Spoiler: Cape flexibility

Weirdness:

- A criminal posing as a real estate agent somehow gathered enough information about Krypton to make a recreation of one of its cities, its people's clothing, and knew of its history and historical figures. He even managed to build an atomic power station, implied to be based on a Kryptonian model.
- A lighthouse is built in the form of a giant Superman statue, with two searchlight beams in its eyes. Some wires cross, causing a short circuit, and this somehow changes the light beams into X-rays which are powerful enough to boil the ocean water they hit and endanger a large ship. WTF?
- The cover has Superman discovering that a pair of human scientists are sending their child on a rocket away from Earth, and he wonder if Earth is doomed like Krypton was. It even advertises a story called "The Doom from Krypton!" The actual story, though, is called "Krypton on Earth", and there is a rocket used in a recreation of the scene of Superman's escape from Krypton as part of a pageant, but other than that, nothing implied on the cover happens at all in the story.

Spoiler: ELECTRIC LIGHTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too notable here, so still Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #247

Notes:

- It's clearly established here that, like in the Golden Age (Earth-2) continuity, the Silver Age Jonathan and Martha Kent are dead.
- Clark tells his "parents" that he may marry Lois someday

Feat Catalogue:

- Has a swimming pool filled with molten lava in his Fortress, which he takes baths in to clean his costume
- Found a dinosaur - like creature from another planet and brought it back to ride it like a horse
- Easily wins a tug - of - war game with a dozen atomic powered robots he built
- Uses super hearing and telescopic vision to see a runaway train car, holding an elephant and its trainer, from a long distance
- Uses his hand as a break by placing it against the wheel of the train car to safely slow it down
- He is shown to have more robot duplicates here, this time specialized ones built with one of his powers each (I guess to make them overall more efficient at the expense of versatility?)
- Uses X-ray vision to locate a Kryptonite meteor at the bottom of the ocean
- Takes sheet lead from a shipwreck and builds a submarine out of it at super speed, complete with a periscope and robotic claw arm to grab the Kryptonite
- Finds a lost Egyptian pyramid under the sand and tunnels into it to take a bunch of gold statues
- Uses super breath to blow mud and ooze off an ancient sunken city
- Flies through an underground pool of molten silver and lets the silver harden into a coating around him, then breaks free of it. He does this multiple times.
- Builds robot copies of Ma and Pa Kent (unclear if he had these already for some reason or just built them after being tricked for this specific instance)
- Is able to use the robots to transmit "super-hypnotic forces" from his eyes, as well as using super ventriloquism, to hypnotize the criminals impersonating his parents and make them forget his secret identity

Spoiler: What a showoff

Spoiler: I wonder what possible use the robot with just X-ray vision could have

Spoiler: So smart, yet so gullible...

Spoiler: Seems he finally remembered that he had this power

Weirdness:

- The plot of this issue has two criminals figure out Superman's secret identity, and trick him by pretending to be his parents who are visiting from the past in a time machine. Superman completely falls for this, but it's hard to blame him considering that this is the Silver Age so stuff like this would hardly be out of the ordinary
- The giant key used to open the Fortress of Solitude appears a lot smaller, and differently shaped, than usual in this issue

Superdickery:

- More kidnapping and imprisoning of alien animals for his own amusement
- Vandalizes an ancient Egyptian pyramid, and commits graverobbing, just to make money to pay off criminals to keep his secret identity hidden
- Vandalizes a lost underwater city and takes precious jewels from it for the same purpose

Power Tracker:

- Staying at Mid Herald Level, although knowing that the Earth - One Superman also has this kind of hypnosis power is nice.

Action Comics #248

Notes:

- We get another ex-Nazi scientist for a villain here, like in issue #177. Not as weird as the Hate-Monger in Fantastic Four #21 actually being Hitler, though.
- Another issue with the archive error. I really hate that.
- Because of the archive error, I had to take scans by print screen, so for one of them I joined some panels at the end of one page to the first panel from the following page, just to clarify the feat and not waste two images on it. Hope you don't mind.

Feat Catalogue:

- Spots a tiny satellite (smaller than his head) in space while orbiting the Earth
- Uses super hearing to track radio waves from the satellite to the point they are being broadcast to on Earth
- Takes off his costume, compresses it into "a ball as hard as a rock" and throws it so fast that it won't come down for 3 hours (into a decaying orbit, I guess)
- Drills into an iron ball with his index finger and hollows it out at super speed, too fast to be seen
- Calculates precisely where his costume will fall 3 hours later and catches it
- Uses super breath to gather a bunch of thunderclouds to create a lightning storm, and intercepts a bunch of lightning bolts to charge his body with electricity
- In the span of time it takes a bolt of lightning to strike, smashes a bunch of rocks at super speed
- Squeezes sand into molten glass in his hands, forms it into a boomerang that is nearly invisible, and throws it to catch Jimmy Olsen on a raft
- Manages to damage his indestructible costume by removing some threads from it
- Takes buttons off his shirt, uses the threads from his costume to color them, and spins them around to hypnotize a guard (doesn't he have a simpler way of hypnotizing people? He did it just last issue)
- Repairs his costume at super speed
- Tunnels to the center of the Earth at super speed to find a giant lodestone, then brings it just below the surface to attract the Nazis' guns and swords
- Moving too fast to be seen, grabs a giant rocket and throws it into space, but not before rescuing Jimmy Olsen from inside of it
- Turns sand into glass again, this time to make a kaleidoscope
- Flies up into space and places the kaleidoscope on the lens of the Nazi's satellite, making him think it's broken
- Destroys the Nazi work camp, frees the prisoners, and compresses all of the iron balls and chains used to hold them into a giant one, which he ties up the Nazis with.

Spoiler: Tracking radio waves

Spoiler: Throws the costume

Spoiler: Catches the costume

Spoiler: Lightning speed rock smashing, and being a dick to Jimmy

Spoiler: Not sure if this means he couldn't tear it with all of his strength

Spoiler: Hypnosis and tunnelling

Spoiler: The rocket won't launch for some reason, so he throws it into space himself

Spoiler: And then sabotages it

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Deliberately prevents Jimmy Olsen from escaping a Nazi work camp just so he can keep investigating it

Power Tracker:

- We get some decent speed feats and a casual Earth's core feat, but nothing to change him from Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #249

Notes:

- First appearance of the concept of "The Kryptonite Man" as a villain, although in this case it's just an alias for Lex Luthor. The name would be used by other characters later on.
- There's an ad in this issue for a new Flash title. Interestingly, it refers to him as the "World's fastest human", maybe implying that Superman (being a Kryptonian) was faster at this point? Assuming they were both in the same continuity at the time. It's kind of hard to tell.
- A response in the letters column says that it takes several minutes of Kryptonite exposure to make Superman unable to use his X-ray vision and super breath
- Another response in the letters column says that Superman can't alter fate, so if he went back in time to try to prevent Krypton from exploding, it wouldn't work out. Although we do see him change the past at later points, so maybe only certain events are unalterable, like in Doctor Who?
- Yet another response in the letters column says that the universe is infinite, and if Superman attempted to find and gather every fragment of Kryptonite in the universe, it would take him years
- Probably in jest, a fan writes asking if there would ever be a comic published starring Perry White. The editors say maybe it could happen one day. Oddly, it did happen, just recently.

Feat Catalogue:

- Hears Luthor's rocket damaging a statue from miles away
- Sees it happening too
- Can still fly at supersonic speed (although not fast enough to outpace Luthor's rocket) when under the influence of Kryptonite from a moderate distance
- Digs underground while affected by Kryptonite (again, at a moderate distance)
- While really close to Kryptonite (the point where he can't even move), he somehow determines that a nearby drainpipe is made from lead
- Again, while nearly paralyzed from Kryptonite exposure, uses his super breath to blow a banana out of a kid's hand and into a drainpipe, aiming it precisely where he wanted
- Wears a suit made out of lead to counter the Kryptonite. Even though he can't see through it (at least they got that right this time), he navigates by using his super hearing to home in on radio signals
- Gathers lead ore on the moon, using his X-ray(heat) vision to smelt it into a new lead suit, then equips the suit with cameras and an interior TV screen from his Fortress of Solitude in order to be able to see while wearing it
- While wearing the new lead suit, kicks Luthor's satellite out of orbit and into space
- With the help of Jimmy Olsen, tricks Luthor into thinking he's become immune to Kryptonite
- Sees in the dark with X-ray vision, which Luthor somehow forgot he could do

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor created a serum from a Kryptonite meteor and made it drinkable, which turned a test monkey (and then himself) into living Kryptonite emitters
- Lex has a rocket ship, which he claims can't be shot down by the air force because of its special armor
- His rocket has a battering ram which he uses to decapitate and then systematically demolish a Superman statue
- The rocket can also fly and maneuver at supersonic speeds
- Created an antidote for his Kryptonite serum (it may seem like a silly thing to do, but considering how Kryptonite radiation is shown in later comics to actually injure and kill humans with long-term exposure, perhaps it was actually a smart bit of foresight on his part)
- Various weapons and devices that Superman captured from Luthor previously include:

* A "money magnet"
* A "vault-blaster"
* An "earthquake maker"
* An "atomic death ray"

- Has a "super-telescope" that he uses to see Superman flying in his lead suit from a significant distance across the planet. Later, he is able to use it to see him wearing a lead suit on the moon.
- Launches a rocket to place a satellite in orbit, which somehow creates rings around the Earth that transmute all of the lead on Earth into glass. The satellite is also coated with Kryptonite so Superman can't destroy it (apparently he never thought of using heat vision or super breath at range, or just throwing an asteroid at it...). When the satellite is disabled, though, the transmutation is reversed.
- Makes a statue of himself out of "indestructible metal"
- Has some kind of bazooka which he uses to destroy Superman's lead suit

Spoiler: Cue the Dr. Evil 'just shoot him' scene

Spoiler: You probably could make a lot more money by just selling this stuff, Luthor...

Spoiler: One of the most impressive things we've seen Lex do so far

Spoiler: You could just destroy the satellite from long range...

Spoiler: Or you could have used one of your robots for this... and Lex, that's a stupid reason to take the antitode.

Weirdness:

- Superman thinks that only Luthor could have built a "super - scientific rocketship like that". How about any of the other mad scientists you've encountered so far, even just in this title?
- At one point, Luthor suspects that Superman "bored his way through the Earth clear down to China." He didn't, but it's worth noting that this is actually a common misconception, as the antipodal areas of the US East Coast (where Metropolis is strongly implied to be) are actually in the Indian Ocean near Australia. You'd figure a genius like Luthor would know this.
- The monkey that Lex tested his serum on somehow escaped from its cage and found its way back to the zoo he got it from. When Superman encounters it there as Clark Kent, he immediately guesses exactly what happened. How?
- The key to the Fortress of Solitude again appears similar to how it did in issue #247. Maybe this is a permanent change, although it certainly doesn't match up with the key's supposed disguise as an airplane marker.
- Superman has a bust of Luthor in the same room in his Fortress where he keeps his confiscated inventions, almost as if he's honoring the guy.
- Both Superman and Lex make so many mistakes here, as they both had multiple opportunities to completely defeat the other and just kept missing them... it's kind of funny actually

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing really worth noting here, so still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #250

Notes:

- The opening narration says that "up till now, no eye has ever seen the truth - that mild - mannered reporter Clark Kent masks the Herculean person of Superman!" Yet we know this isn't true, as we've seen that Batman knows.
- Clark Kent is apparently such a famous reporter in-universe that he's chosen to be on a TV interview show in this issue
- A letter in the letters column requests that a Supergirl character and title be introduced. They replied that they already have that in the works, as you'll soon see.

Feat Catalogue:

- In a flashback, falls into an erupting volcano as Clark Kent but is unharmed, changes to Superman, rips the top off a nearby mountain, and plugs up the volcano
- Switches the bullets in a gun with blanks so fast that no one sees it happening
- In another flashback, bends metal bars and covers himself with them, then flies up into a thundercloud, is struck by lightning, and becomes an electromagnet, pulling criminals' guns away from them
- Carries a small boat and its passengers safely to the mainland from an island during a hurricane
- Somehow vibrates his hand in order to send a blast of cold air precisely at a lie detector to temporarily disable it

Spoiler: Is this a new power?

Weirdness:

- At one point, he tricks a lie detector test by deliberately exposing himself to Kryptonite for a minute, in order to truthfully answer that he did not have super powers. Yet it was established in the previous issue that it takes several minutes of exposure for his X-ray vision and super breath to disappear
- An answer in the letters column of this issue seems to contradict one in the previous issue, by saying that Kryptonite rapidly weakens all of Superman's powers except for his X-ray vision and invulnerability, specifically mentioning that his super breath is rapidly weakened too. I think the writers and editors were mostly just making up excuses to answer these questions instead of actually thinking them through.

Superdickery:

- Tries to act like he has never lied before, when he certainly has

Power Tracker:

- Almost nothing worth noting here, still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #251

Notes:

- There's an ad in this issue for the next issue of Action Comics, where Supergirl debuts. Notably, it says that thousands of readers have been requesting such a character for years.
- A response in the letters column says that Captain Marvel (Shazam) is "obviously not as invulnerable as Superman". However, in context, they seem to be referring to the fact that Captain Marvel's book was cancelled several years before this issue was published, not saying that he is less physically durable. DC would later acquire the rights to the character and incorporate him into their continuity. In terms of actual durability feats, I think Golden Age Captain Marvel had Superman beat, from what I've seen and heard.

Feat Catalogue:

- The splash page has a poster of Superman, saying he is flying faster than the speed of light (notably, it appears to be within Earth's atmosphere).
- Uses his X-ray vision to perform a "cosmo-spectrum analysis" on a serum, discovering that it has a very strange combination of elements, including isotopes of something very similar to Kryptonite
- It's implied that the serum, which causes those who drink it to rapidly age overnight, would not have affected him had it not contained the Kryptonite - like element
- While artificially aged and with his powers severely weakened, uses X-ray vision to see an act of piracy occurring at sea
- Unless otherwise noted, all of the following feats take place while he was weakened under the effect of the serum:

* Deliberately snaps his walking cane in half
* Saying he can only fly for short distances, he grabs on to a plane's landing gear and lets it carry him through the air to his destination
* His new beard can't be cut by scissors
* Hitches a ride underwater on a whale, and then a submarine
* Falls to the bottom of the sea and is unharmed
* Uses his beard like a file to saw through the chains binding him
* Is hit by a cannonball at close range and it bounces off him, although he is hurt, comparing it to a stomachache
* Uses telescopic vision to see two crooks about to rob a department store from across town
* After losing the last of his super strength, uses his X-ray vision to activate a toy ring launcher and then uses super breath to guide the rings to tie up a criminal
* Becoming even weaker, he still manages to use his super breath (or what remains of it) to blow out 100 candles on a birthday cake at once
* Uses super hearing and telescopic vision to locate a criminal's hideout (even as those powers are starting to fade, too)
* Somehow builds an electromagnet in the shape of a scythe powerful enough to attract bullets fired at him so they don't hit him

- After the serum wears off and he regains his youth and powers, he is fired out of a cannon a mile away into a mountain, and is unharmed

Spoiler: Does he really need to go FTL to outrace a plane?

Spoiler: That's what you get for taking untested drugs

Spoiler: Decent for a frail old man

Weirdness:

- Clark drinks an experimental anti-aging serum in order to test it, because he assumes that even if it is dangerous, nothing other than Kryptonite can harm him. It's later shown that the serum had Kryptonite-like particles in it and thus it did harm him, but even if it didn't, that's a pretty foolish assumption to make
- The villain in this issue is a gangster who has taken on the role of a modern-day pirate, styling himself "Captain Cutlass" and even raiding boats with a sailing ship flying a Jolly Roger flag. Because why not, right?
- When he tries to use voice commands to order one of his robots to take care of the criminals, it doesn't work because the robot can't recognize his aged voice. Isn't there any other way to control it?
- Disguises himself as "The Old Man of the Sea" to trick the pirates... and it works
- More than halfway through the story, we are suddenly introduced to a criminal known as "The Clock" who is obsessed with time and uses clock gimmicks in all of his crimes. I thought that was one of Batman's villains?
- When trying to foil The Clock, he disguises himself as Father Time, and an unlikely coincidence helps his ruse work. He then speculates that there might be an actual "Father Time" helping him. In the DCU, you never know.
- There's a rather odd PSA in this issue, which I've seen floating around the internet before. It tries to have a good message, but it pretty awkward about it.

Spoiler: I guess criminals really are a superstitious and cowardly lot...

Spoiler: Um... no comment

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- While under the influence of the aging serum, his powers were steadily diminishing, going from maybe Low Meta Level to Mid Street Level before it wore off. After which, of course, he was back to Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #252

Overall Notes: As of this issue, one of the features in Action Comics was replaced with a Supergirl series, so from now on (at least for a while), I will be covering two stories in each issue, the Superman and Supergirl stories. That probably means that I might be covering fewer issues at a time, since there is more material to go over.

Superman story

Notes:

- First appearance of Metallo (John Corben, the cyborg version most people are familiar with)
- The opening narration states that Metallo is "the most incredible and dangerous of" all the villains Superman has faced. I'd think Mxy, Brainiac, and Lex as the Kryptonite Man would have something to say about this, just going by a few from this title only
- Superman says that he successfully melted Kryptonite with his heat vision for the first time in his career in this issue. Not sure if that's true, though.

Feat Catalogue:

- Compresses Clark's clothes into a small ball and hides them in a pocket in his cape
- Flies from Metropolis to the Arctic ocean in seconds, and uses his telescopic vision to locate a damaged submarine underwater
- Inhales enough air to let 100 men breath for six days, and exhales it into the submarine to replenish its failing oxygen tanks
- Catches a person in a barrel diving off Niagara falls, and swims up the falls, carrying the barrel
- Easily shatters a bronze deer statue thrown at him by Metallo
- Uses super breath to blow the stolen uranium out of Metallo's car, and then blows the car into the parking lot of a police station
- Sees a falling part of a statue at an exhibition far off, then flies there in a split second and catches it before it falls
- Some of the trophies Superman had collected include an "interplanetary clock" and a "fourth dimensional bomb"
- Despite being weakened and dying from Kryptonite, uses his X-ray(heat) vision to melt the Kryptonite after concentrating the beams on it for 6 minutes

Spoiler: Melting Kryptonite. Also, I'd like to hear more about that "fourth-dimensional bomb"

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The surgeon who created it says that Metallo's metal body is "unmeltable and shatter-proof" and "indestructible"
- Metallo casually rips a door off its hinges
- Punches through the debris from a rockslide, while saying that his strength is "limitless" (obviously a hyperbole)
- Smashes through a wall and a vault door to steal uranium
- Steals more uranium from a hospital, a science institute, and a US army project
- Is bulletproof
- Lifts a truck
- Breaks through the door to a vault containing uranium
- Picks up and throws a bronze statue of a deer at Superman
- Smashes open a safe with one hand

Spoiler: Origin of Metallo

Weirdness:

- A random surgeon comes upon a car wreck, and to save the guy within, he performs an experimental surgery which he says has only been done on animals before. Said surgery? Replacing his entire body (save the brain) with a nuclear-powered robot. Because 1950s doctors can just do that.
- When hearing that Kryptonite can power his new body indefinitely, Metallo uses a real piece of the substance to try to kill Superman, and then steals another one from an exhibition where Superman would be presenting some of the trophies from his Fortress. He obviously didn't think this through, or else he would have realize that a piece of 'Kryptonite' that Superman was willing to stand next to must have been fake - which it was.

Superdickery:

- Rescues a woman who went over Niagara falls in a barrel expecting her to save him, but tricks her into thinking he didn't actually save her and she almost died, so she wouldn't do it again
- After Metallo dies, Superman makes a pun about his death

Spoiler: He's supposed to be against killing his enemies, but mocking them for dying is apparently fine

Power Tracker:

- Nothing that notable here. It seems that, as of these last few issues, the writers are focusing on challenging Superman mainly with Kryptonite and intellectual puzzles to solve, instead of throwing things at him that will test the extent of his powers, so we're not getting that many crazy feats. Mid Herald Level, again.

Supergirl story

Notes:

- First appearance of Supergirl (Kara Zor-El)
- The opening narration states that "The Man of Steel has always thought he was the sole survivor of the tragic catastrophe that destroyed his home world, Krypton!" Except we've seen several other survivors in this title already, even if we ignore the Golden Age stuff. Remember the scientist turned into a gorilla from issue #238? Or the entire city of Kandor?
- Kryptonian powers on Earth are again attributed to Krypton's gravity here, not yet the sun
- For the first time in this title (I believe), the weird "L.L." initial coincidence is acknowledged in-universe
- Lalisa also has a Supergirl respect thread in progress, so I figured I'd give it a shout-out, although it focuses on the character's Post-Crisis incarnations
- The last few scans for this issue aren't linked as images, because it would run over the 20 image per post limit.

Spoiler: Supergirl's first appearance

Spoiler: Her origin story

Part 2

Feat Catalogue:

- Survives the impact of her rocket hitting Earth completely unharmed, which Superman says would have killed any human
- Learns how to fly the first time she tries
- Uses super hearing to hear many names of girls on Earth and chooses one for herself (Linda Lee)
- Bends the iron leg of a bed back into its correct shape
- Uses super breath to clean all the dust from her room in one breath
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to fuse and repair a cracked mirror

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman uses super-hearing to detect a crashing Kryptonian rocket outside of Metropolis, and sees it falling with his telescopic vision, also confirming that there is a passenger inside it
- Somewhat of a low-end as he fails to reach the rocket in time before it crashes, although he does note that it was moving faster than any Earth - built rocket

***

- Kryptonians apparently had "food machines" (like replicators on Star Trek?) that could provide them with food indefinitely
- Argo City also had a "super space telescope" that could scan different planets to find a suitable one to send Kara to. They choose Earth after seeing Superman there, as well as observing all of the powers he had
- Kara's father Zor-El builds an interstellar rocket in under a month to send his daughter to Earth in
- The Kryptonians of Argo City are able to intercept Earth's radio broadcasts and decode their language

Weirdness:

- Superman questions how Supergirl can speak English. He never questioned the logic of any other aliens speaking English so far, and he's met a lot of them.
- The Kryptonians in Argo City somehow knew what Kryptonite was and what it was called even as it was first created under their feet
- Superman says that "Linda Lee" is an orphan who lost her entire community to a disaster. While technically true, he wants the owners of the orphanage to think he meant a town on Earth destroyed by a tornado or earthquake. However, he never thinks about what to do if they try to ask further questions.

Superdickery:

- Upon realizing he has a long-lost cousin, the first thing Superman does is stick her in an orphanage and tell her that no one can know about her real identity. Real nice.

Spoiler: Makes you wonder what he would do if she wasn't his relative...

Image link

Power Tracker:

- Superman has no notable feats here, so he's still Mid Herald Level. Supergirl has none either, but she is stated to be on the same level (roughly) as her cousin, so she should also be Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #253

Overall Notes:

- Two interesting responses in the letters column this issue. One suggests that Superman is faster than the Flash, as the Flash at this point couldn't go faster than light (although I'm not sure if that was true or not... I would have to review his old comics to see when he first went FTL). Another one says that Superman could conceivably gather all of the pieces of Krypton from the universe and form them back into a solid mass, although it would still be a dead planet.

Spoiler: Seems like a "hold my beer" moment for the Flash

Superman Story

Notes:

- Superdickery had a drinking game based around taking a shot every time Jimmy Olsen got superpowers or went evil. I believe this is the first time in this title that either of those has happened, though (although it's not really him)

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman's cape is apparently "weather-proof" as well as indestructible, as he wraps Jimmy in it and carries him to the North Pole with no ill effects on him
- Smashes a boulder with a punch
- Drills under the Metropolis harbor, releasing hot water from underground springs to melt the ice
- "Moments later", is back in the air, chasing "Jimmy"
- Intercepts a lightning bolt channeled through a lightning rod by the fake Jimmy Olsen
- Intercepts another lightning bolt by charging it at lightning speed, somehow reversing its direction and sending it back at the fake Jimmy
- Throws a damaged airplane on a precise trajectory so that it can safely glide to a landing on an airstrip
- Intercepts and smashes a tank that the fake Jimmy was trying to push into a building
- Digs a hole in the ground at super speed, releasing enough dirt and debris to intercept and dampen an explosion
- Tricks the fake Jimmy Olsen with fake Kryptonite and one of his robots
- Uses microscopic vision to see that the Kryptonian criminal impersonating Jimmy is back in Kandor and being placed under arrest

Spoiler: Pretty sure lightning doesn't work like that

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- A renegade Kryptonian from Kandor (masquerading as Jimmy Olsen) freezes the Metropolis harbor by using super breath to blast down cold air from the upper atmosphere
- He uses his X-ray(heat) vision to disable the motors of a plane without damaging the plane's exterior
- Said Kryptonian also built a device that could exchange his body and brain with someone on the outside of Kandor, and other Kryptonians couldn't figure out how it worked

Spoiler: Amazingly, this is actually more scientifically accurate than a certain similar scene from "The Day After Tomorrow"

Weirdness:

- One of the trophies in the Fortress of Solitude is a "Chameleon Jewel" from Venus, which changes colors when handled.
- He also has a plant from Mercury that shoots out spores which he suspects work like vitamins (okay...)

Superdickery:

- Exposes Jimmy Olsen to the spores from an alien plant that he hasn't even studied yet. No harm comes from it, but still.

Power Tracker:

- Again, nothing to write home about, so still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses ice breath (actually described as super breath, but it's clearly an application of this power) to refreeze some thawed ice cream
- Digs a bunch of tunnels underneath a farm looking for gold, jewels, or precious metals, but finds none
- Throws a boulder so fast and with such force that it digs through the Earth from America to Pisa, Italy, creating a tunnel that somehow doesn't collapse immediately and lets people see the tower through the hole with a telescope. I'd mention everything scientifically wrong with this, but we'd be here all day.
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to burn a message on a blackboard
- Breaks free from steel chains

Spoiler: Reading this page is known to make physics majors cry

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman builds a giant javelin and throws it through a mountain, creating a large hole in it
- From a newspaper headline, he also apparently smashed an iceberg to save a ship

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Kara pretends to be a snob who only wants famous parents in order to stop a couple from trying to adopt her
- See the second feat. That farm and the land it's on is now going to be completely unstable and prone to sinkholes
- She uses her powers to make some prospective adoptive parents think another orphan is a great stage magician, so they'll adopt him. What happens when they find out he can't actually do all those tricks?

Power Tracker:

- The tunnel through the Earth feat is pretty nice, despite being so silly. Still she scales to Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #254

Superman story

Notes:

- First appearance of the character most commonly known as Bizarro, however there was another Bizarro that previously appeared in Superboy #68 (which this story is a sequel to). In this issue, Lex Luthor recreates the machine that created the Bizarro Superboy to make a Bizarro copy of Superman.
- This is also the first Superman story in Action Comics that ends on a cliffhanger, continuing into a second part next issue
- A response in the letters column says that Superman's hair does not grow on Earth under normal conditions, but when he was affected by the serum in issue #251, that was not a normal condition.

Spoiler: Origin of Bizarro

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super hearing and telescopic vision to detect a giant "tidal wave" menacing a boat at sea (more likely a rogue wave), and flies there before it hits the boat and lifts the boat safely over the wave
- Stops the wave by using ice breath (still referred to as just super breath) to freeze it before it reaches and floods an island
- Melt some bullets in mid-air from point-blank range with X-ray(heat) vision
- Despite being in close proximity to Kryptonite, manages to melt a good part of a bigger chunk than he did last time, much faster. Unfortunately, it's still not enough.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor steals the plans for Professor Dalton's duplication ray and recreates the machine

***

- Bizarro catches a damaged plane and lands it safely, then uses super breath to put out its burning engines
- No-sells a bunch of military weapons, up to and including an atomic bomb
- Flies through a cliff at lightning speed (trying to commit suicide), but just drills through it and emerges on the other side unharmed
- Builds a (very poor quality) house for Lois on an uninhabited island
- Is immune to Kryptonite

Spoiler: Getting some Hulk vibes here. Also, who authorized that nuke on US soil?

Weirdness:

- Lex and his henchman first test the duplicator ray by trying to create copies of a diamond. The henchmen sensibly suggests they just keep copying the diamonds to get rich, but since the copies are imperfect and melt, they can't. Still, this is probably the closest Lex has come to actually using one of his machines in a practical way so far.
- Somehow the newly - created Bizarro has the memories of the Bizarro Superboy that was created and destroyed many years previously
- The military somehow feels the need to drop a nuke on US soil just to try to kill Bizarro. I could maybe understand if he had already done extreme damage, but so far he had only wrecked a building or two
- Lois had an "instant camera that develops a finished picture in one minute". Apparently this was supposed to be impressive back then.
- Bizarro steals the duplicator ray and uses it on himself, creating another duplicate that looks identical to Superman this time, but still thinks like Bizarro

Superdickery:

- Superman is perfectly willing to kill Bizarro, justifying it with the fact that he's not technically "alive"

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level. Bizarro should scale to that as well.

Supergirl story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- On the splash page, tows a large ship that had run aground back into the water with a chain
- Uses telescopic vision to see a rocket launch from far away, and notices that it is going out of control
- Flies into orbit in moments and pushes the rocket back on its proper course
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to burn a roast in the oven without damaging the oven around it
- Uses telescopic vision to see that the landing lights on an airport runway have gone out, so she takes a steel bar from a junkyard and rubs it against the runway at super speed to create bright sparks that the plane can use to land safely
- Catches a falling elephant and lifts it with one hand
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to soften some steel bars so a scammer thinks he bent them (not sure how the heat doesn't hurt his hands, though)
- In the time it takes the scammers to drive to a chemist's place, she lures the chemist away with a fake phone call, then creates a realistic puppet of the chemist and manipulates it, using super ventriloquism and disguising her voice to fool the scammer.
- Uses super memory to recall the faces of every person who fell for the scam, finds their homes, and refunds their money

Spoiler: Still waiting to see this internal HV trick used on some villain's insides... probably not until the 80s when they start to get grimdark, though

Spoiler: She still needs to learn to control her powers? Really?

Weirdness:

- Two scammers adopt "Linda Lee" just because they want a daughter to help them trick people into buying a fake super strength tonic
- Part of Superman's reasoning for putting Kara in the orphanage and forbidding her from revealing herself publicly as Supergirl was that she still had to learn how to properly control her powers, but she demonstrates really good control in this issue

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Mid Herald Level, not much to say.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #255

Overall notes:

- Some interesting responses in the letters column, clarifying a few things:
* Supergirl was able to master flying much faster than Superman because she was already a teenager and didn't arrive on Earth as a baby like he did
* Supergirl's rocket was also made of near-indestructible Kryptonian materials, but it was destroyed on impact because of an explosion created by the Kryptonian fuel, which could damage it
* The feat of Superman giving the air to the submarine in issue #252 was done at super speed
* And, in case anyone still doubted this, the illustrations on the covers don't necessarily portray what actually happens in the stories themselves with accuracy

- I had to link the last two images in this post due to the 20 images per post limit

Spoiler: Don't trust the covers

Superman story

Notes:

- This is another pretty crazy cover, which I believe was featured on Superdickery
- As I said in the last one, this is the continuation of the story from Action Comics #254, the first cliffhanger/two-parter in all of the Superman stories from Action Comics.

Feat Catalogue:

- Hears Lois in danger and flies into her apartment and intercepts some dangerous alien flowers (yeah) before their seed pods can injure her
- Claps his hands to create a thunderclap to drown out Bizarro's voice
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to hit Bizarro in mid-flight and burn off his Clark Kent disguise before he enters a window
- Bizarro swings a giant anchor into him, and it hits him head on but doesn't even mess up his hair
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to ignite the gunpowder in some old cannons
- Superman and Bizarro continue fighting but neither one can gain an advantage over the other

Spoiler: Superman vs. Bizarro

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Bizarro and his "New Bizarro" duplicate have a disagreement, and Bizarro punches him a mile out to sea.
- The New Bizarro grabs a navy torpedo from a target practice exercise and throws it at the first Bizarro, but it does nothing
- He then tries throwing two torpedoes at once, but Bizarro swings a battleship at him and smashes it
- The two Bizarros continue to fight, but they are unable to damage each other
- The original Bizarro flies into space, searches with his telescopic vision to find flowers on Pluto (what?) flies there, picks them, and returns to Earth. This seemed to take place all in the same morning, and he stated he traveled a distance of 4 billion miles to Pluto (which is roughly accurate, although it varies depending on Pluto and Earth's orbital positions), so this seems to be a (slightly) FTL feat
- Bizarro is shot with a harpoon gun, but it bounces off him
- Cannonballs also bounce off of him
- After Lois uses the duplicator machine to create a Bizarro version of herself, Bizarro flies her into space to settle on a planet in another solar system, a much clearer FTL feat. We'll see more of the Bizarros later on.

Spoiler: Bizarro vs. "New Bizarro"

Spoiler: There's just something charming about how people used to think there was life on every planet in the solar system

Spoiler: Let them found their own world, I'm sure they'll never be back to bother us on Earth again...

Weirdness:

- In addition to somehow having memories of the previously - destroyed Bizarro Superboy, Bizarro has an imperfect copy of Superman's memories. This includes knowing his secret identity of Clark Kent. Also, Superman even says that everybody knows that Bizarro has his memories.
- Pluto apparently has rainbow - colored flowers
- When fighting Bizarro, Superman reasons that even if he's not vulnerable to Kryptonite, he might have some kind of weakness, so he tries various things, including... a harpoon gun and cannonballs. Somehow I don't think those would be his weakness.
- A wrecked ship had a wooden figure of Superman on its prow, because it was named after him

Superdickery:

- The New Bizarro, being a perfect physical duplicate of Superman but having Bizarro - like thought patterns, was vulnerable to Kryptonite, unlike the other Bizarro. When Superman noticed this, he just sat back and let the Kryptonite kill him, without even a thought of trying to save him or just weaken and restrain him.

Spoiler: New Bizarro died? Oh no! Anyway...

Power Tracker:

- Some nice feats for Bizarro, who Superman scales to, but they're both still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl story

Notes:

- This is actually a crossover with the character Tommy Tomorrow, a Buck Rogers - esque space hero whose adventures in the future were a mainstay of Action Comics for the last 100+ issues. I never covered them because, well, they're not all that relevant, and no one really cares about the character these days. However, his stories are canon to DC, as they take place in various different future timelines, so this one is canon as well.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses microscopic vision to read Superman's message
- Flies into space "faster than any rocket", goes faster than light, and travels through time to the future
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to weld a plastic dome closed to prevent the air inside from escaping into space
- Collides with a space probe repelled by an "anti-gravity gun". The probe is destroyed, but Kara is unharmed.
- Uses X-ray vision to read the license number of a spaceship, then searches space for it with telescopic vision and quickly locates it
- Quickly flies to the location of the spaceship in the middle of an asteroid field, then smashes an asteroid
- Pushes the spaceship safely away from the asteroids
- Spins at super speed to return back to 1959

Spoiler: Travels 100 years into the future

Spoiler: Quickly scanning the solar system

Spoiler: Returning to the past

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman throws a spear with a note attached precisely next to Supergirl, all the way from Metropolis. On it he has written a message in tiny print that can only be read with microscopic vision

Weirdness:

- One of the gadgets the young Tommy Tomorrow uses to save himself is a "sky hook" that is made out of "solidified helium gas", which allows it to hook onto the air itself and allow him to climb up it. That's... not how helium works at all.
- There's a field of "crystalline mirror meteors" in space... geometric shapes that reflect images perfectly, for some reason.

Superdickery:

- Superman instructs Supergirl to test her powers of time travel. He gives no specifics or warnings about doing it responsibly and safely.

Power Tracker:

- As would be expected, Supergirl also has casual time travel just like her cousin. Some nice sensory and speed feats for her too, but she's still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #256

Superman story

Notes:

- We're reaching peak Silver Age wackiness here, as this is another cover that was featured on Superdickery, for fairly obvious reasons. The story is pretty crazy, too.
- The President of the United States makes a cameo appearance in this issue. At the time, it was Dwight Eisenhower, although it's not completely clear that the character in this issue was supposed to be him.
- The plot of this issue involves an attempted assassination of the US President, while he was in a car. Tragically, just four years after this comic was published, a similar thing would actually happen in real life, although unlike the plot in this comic, the assassination of John F. Kennedy was successful.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman states that he could travel to the year 100,000 AD under his own power
- Creates a tornado by spinning at super speed
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to fuse some scraps of metal together to form a giant windmill, implants it in the ground, and spins it at super speed to absorb and dissipate a tornado
- Triggers an earthquake by damaging a fault line
- Throws a boulder so fast that it ignites from friction and burns up in mid-air
- Uses a giant paddle underwater to create a strong current to fling a whale at an undersea dome
- Sits inside a car destroyed by a bomb and is unharmed

Spoiler: Forget storm chasing, have you ever heard of storm catching?

Spoiler: Starts an earthquake

Spoiler: Now atmospheric friction exists... and who is authorizing the use of all of these nukes!?

Spoiler: The big reveal. Surely there had to be an easier way.

Weirdness:

- Superman pretends to be "the Ultra-Superman from the year 100,000 AD" as part of a scheme to catch a spy, which also involves wrecking a bridge, getting the military to drop a nuke on a boat, and destroying a movie set. Another silly and unnecessarily convoluted plan.
- We see the realistic consequences of an object moving too fast in the atmosphere igniting and burning up from friction in this issue. But that never seemed to be a problem in any of the previous issues...
- A movie studio built a pressurized dome the size of an entire city on the bottom of the sea floor as a set. Even James Cameron didn't go that far.

Superdickery:

- Surely there was an easier way to catch the suspected spy and assassin without causing so much destruction?

Power Tracker:

- Nothing all that notable here, so still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl story

Notes:

- An answer in the letters column states that Supergirl was 15 years old during her first appearance in issue #252
- The idea to give Supergirl a pet cat is suggested by one of the writers in the letters column. This would later happen, as we will see.
- First appearance of Dick Wilson, aka Richard Malverne, who became a supporting character for Supergirl. His role here is basically similar to Lois Lane - a snoopy investigator who suspects Supergirl's secret identity and tries to expose it.

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees a small sample of radium on the ground from over a mile away, which is too small for two normal people right next to it to find
- Digs a tunnel underground for over a mile, seemingly in seconds
- Flies back into her room at the orphanage, faster than the eye can see
- Writes an entire school report in 3 seconds
- In the span of one second, changes her outfit, flies into the sky, uses super breath to move two stormclouds and directs lightning from them to strike at a specific spot
- In the span of "an eye-wink", she crushes a piece of coal into a diamond, forms it into a drill, uses it to hollow out both sides of a heavy weight, and inhales the steel dust from inside it, all without Dick seeing anything
- Uses super breath to exhale the steel dust and precisely guide it into a fake weight, making it heavy

Spoiler: Now here's a power that I wish I had... I could finish this respect thread a lot quicker

Spoiler: She is really good at this. What's all this about having to learn to use her powers properly, again?

Part 3

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman builds a Supergirl robot to help cover for Kara's identity, after using his telescopic vision to find out that someone was suspecting her

Spoiler: What's next, robot Krypto? (Don't answer that...)

Image link

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level. Want to make any bets on whether Superman or Supergirl gets a High Herald Level feat first?

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #257

Superman Story

Notes:

- From now on, I'll be including the feats of the Superman robots in the Feat Catalogue section, as they scale to Superman, being weaker than he is. Unless there is some kind of special circumstance that would cause that to be otherwise, that is, in which case I'll make note of it.
- A letter in the letters column asked why three recently - introduced villains - Bizarro, Metallo, and Titano (who appeared in another title) all had names ending with "O". The editor said it was just a coincidence.
- A response in the letters column mentions Kandor's gravity, atmosphere, and "etc." as responsible for the people there not having super powers. No explicit reference to the sun yet.

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees a fly smash through a spider web from a distance
- Types an article on a typewriter at super speed
- Spins the rollers on a printing press at super speed, so it can work without electrical power
- Sends an X-ray signal to his apartment from the Daily Planet building to activate one of his Superman robots
- The robot is capable of flying to space and exploring the dark side of the moon
- Apparently has access to 'super-plastic' that he can use to make clothing invulnerable
- Built a special camera and a giant TV screen and that can record, transmit, and project live images (and sound, somehow) from the dark side of the moon
- The robot rebuilds a ruined lunar city into a modern, functioning, Earth-like city, in seemingly a few minutes
- Uses X-ray vision to find a silver deposit miles underground and then extracts it
- Gathers a million oyster shells, many of which have pearls
- Squeezes a bunch of coal into diamonds
- From a coalyard, uses telescopic vision to see the Superman museum being robbed
- Via various uses of his powers, gathers more riches "than any king ever had" (although see the Weirdness section)
- Uses telescopic vision to monitor Luthor in prison and see him destroy his power ray projector
- Uses a signal to bring his robot back from the moon
- The robot retrieves sunken pirate treasure from the bottom of the sea

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor is referred to by the narration as "the world's most dangerous outlaw"
- By disassembling a radio and using a piece of the element "Xium" he hid in a false tooth, he creates a "super-ray projector" which can apparently give Superman - like powers to a target. He doesn't want to test it on himself because it might be dangerous, though. Said ray hits a fly and gives it super strength and durability, allowing it to fly right through and destroy a spider web. It's never proven what effect it would have had on humans.
- He also built and somehow smuggled in an "atom transmitter", which can project a solid hologram of himself through the prison walls, miles away, and allow him to see, hear, and interact with the outside world for an hour
- Dismantles his ray projector and rebuilds the parts as a radio

Spoiler: You've probably all seen Lex make that time ray from junk in jail. That kind of Macgyer-ability wasn't a one-time thing.

Weirdness:

- Lex reveals his plot directly to Clark and Lois, then disassembles the machine and hides the pieces. But if the guards suspected something, couldn't they have just moved him to another cell and left all of the machines and equipment present in his old cell?
- While pretending to be Clark Kent given superpowers by Luthor's machine, he 'treats his clothing with super-plastic so it can't be damaged'. Where did that come from?
- While exploring the dark side of the moon, the Superman robot finds a "crater with air", with the ruins of a dead civilization on it. Blue Area of the Moon? (Interestingly, that location in Marvel actually first appeared in a comic in 1948, according to the Marvel wiki, 11 years before this comic was published. Did DC rip something off from Marvel for once? Not that they wouldn't do that a lot later, but early on it was mostly Marvel stealing ideas from DC)
- An eccentric millionaire built a blimp as an "aerial yacht" and is flying it over the city, where it nearly crashes into a building. Actually fairly mundane compared to lots of stuff that happens in Metropolis.
- Despite stating that he had become the richest man in the world, the total amount of money on Clark's charity donation list only added up to $100,000,000.00 (a bit over $1 billion in modern money). There were people back in 1959 who had more than that. Although this could have just been one page of a larger donation list.
- It's shown that Clark was monitoring Luthor in his jail cell via telescopic X-ray vision. Couldn't he have just smashed the ray projector himself when Luthor revealed its location, or told the guards? (He was publicly acknowledged to have superpowers in his Clark Kent persona at the time). That would have rendered this entire complicated ruse unnecessary.

Spoiler: Uatu is going to be pissed...

Superdickery:

- Destroys an alien archaeological site (that would have been of great value to scientists and historians) in order to rebuild it into a city that humans in the future might someday live in. Technically it was the robot that did this, but Superman had obviously commanded it to.
- As part of a plot to trick Luthor, acts incredibly greedy and amasses a bunch of money and riches as Clark Kent. He gives it all away to charity at the end, but that doesn't negate the fact that he forced a normal guy to fight him and beat him up to get some of that money, and blackmailed a bunch of millionaires into giving him all of their cash and jewelry in exchange for rescuing them. He says he paid them back, but it's still a rotten thing to do, especially considering that a lot of those valuables may have had personal importance to their owners, too.
- When Lois tries to slap him, he doesn't move to avoid the blow, deliberately letting her hurt her hand

Spoiler: What a dick

Power Tracker:

- Nothing particularly worth noting, still Mid Herald Level. If anything, Luthor's tech feats are the most impressive things in this story.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Dresses up like a fairy by, well... see the Weirdness section
- Uses X-ray (heat) vision to melt and reform an old cooking pan into a crown
- Waves a sparkler at super speed, causing it to ignite from air friction
- Uses "super-pressure" to somehow transform a glass window into a magnifying glass
- Uses telescopic vision to find a horse at a stable miles away
- Makes a loop of wire from a wire cage and uses it as a lasso to grab the horse from miles away and pull it to her position in a short time (implied to be seconds or less)
- Uses super breath to propel the horse back where it came from, then rebuild the wire cage, all too fast for the kids watching her to see.
- Uses her fingernails to cut her hair, which she claims is indestructible to anyone else (probably just meaning non-Kryptonians or equivalent, though), and weaves it into a string at super speed
- Moves to the orphanage kitchen, grabs some dough, returns, and molds it into a fake nose on a kid's face at super speed, then uses X-ray(heat) vision to cause it to expand
- Hypnotizes the children, forcing them to go inside and making them think the entire experience was a dream

Spoiler: Can a normal person even cut their hair with their own fingernail like that?

Spoiler: Maybe use this power on villains instead of little kids?

Weirdness:

- For how she accomplished the first feat: Attached adhesive tape to her clothes and flew through a bunch of floating thistledown, then found a winged kite and unwound hundreds of spider webs at super speed to tie it to her clothes and make it look like she had wings. The hell?
- A girl in the orphanage, Peggy, has a photo of her mother, which just so happens to look pretty much exactly like Lois Lane. Just lazy artists reusing character designs, or what?

Superdickery:

- Read what she did to the horse in the Feat Catalogue. There's no way it wasn't harmed, or at least traumatized from that.
- Messes with a bunch of kids and then hypnotizes them to get away with it

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from Mid Herald Level, but this is one of the best hypnosis feats we've seen so far from either her or Superman.

Action Comics #258

Overall Notes:

- This is the second issue, after Supergirl's debut in issue #252, where the Supergirl story was the one featured on the cover
- The cover of this issue was featured on Superdickery, for pretty obvious reasons
- There's an interesting PSA in this comic about the history of the American flag. It's notable because, at the time it was written, the flag had 49 stars, as Alaska had just joined but Hawaii hadn't yet.

Superman Story

Notes:

- The opening narration says "Everyone knows there is only one Superman! And so it has been - up till now!" Did they completely forget all of the stories where he was duplicated or other people had his powers?
- Superman's powers on Earth are again attributed to its gravitational pull and atmosphere
- Interestingly, at one point in this comic, there is a radio signal being broadcast on a frequency that Superman says is too high for even him to hear

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees very thin wires in the air from a long distance
- Hears control signals sent to a robot via a "supersonic beam"
- Moving too fast to see, he changes to Superman and flies inside a collapsing smokestack, using super pressure to fix it before it can fall
- Uses super breath to blow Lois' notepad out of her hands without being seen
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt a chain and cause the metal ring it was holding up to fall in a precise way to knock off a robot's hand
- Easily defeats a wannabe dictator's army of infantry, tanks, and cannons
- Used super hearing to eavesdrop on the villain's plan, then raced to the palace faster than an electric signal could be transmitted wirelessly (FTL? Probably) and threw the robot into the sky before it exploded

Spoiler: Even though it says electricity was being transmitted, they're clearly talking about a wireless radio signal here

Weirdness:

- A rebel leader in the fictional European country of Borkia builds a robot superhero to try to gain enough fame to get close to the country's president and assassinate him. Middle - of - the - road in terms of wacky Silver Age plots.

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- In the letters column, someone asks why the heat from the melted steel bars didn't hurt the guy's hands back in issue #254. They give the answer that Supergirl cooled it with her super breath.
- First appearance of Krypto in this title
- Supergirl also meets Krypto for the first time in this story
- Supergirl also learns Superman's secret identity of Clark Kent in this story
- Superman says that his robots are vulnerable to magnets and electricity

Spoiler: Well at least he won't have to lie to her anymore (he probably will anyway)

Feat Catalogue:

- In the time before a falling tree can reach the ground, she changes to Supergirl, digs underground and up through the bottom of the tree and inside it, and makes it fall in a different direction so it doesn't hit some kids
- Races Krypto through a mountain, with both of them tunneling through it
- From an asteroid in deep space, uses telescopic vision to watch her friends at the orphanage
- Grabs some icicles from the asteroid and throws them to Earth at super speed, putting out a forest fire
- Watches kids on Earth having fun all over America
- Flies back to Earth
- Attempt to use X-ray(heat) vision to crack and fog up Clark Kent's glasses, but it doesn't work since they were made from Kryptonian materials and were thus super durable

Spoiler: More highly questionable physics

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman flies from the orphanage to his Fortress of Solitude and back, bringing a device he constructed, in what is implied to be a short amount of time
- He built a "transparent rocket shell" that won't melt from friction as it leaves the Earth's atmosphere
- Throws Supergirl, inside the rocket shell, to an asteroid in space

***

- It's implied that Krypto can track scents through space

Weirdness:

- There's an asteroid with air and alien plants and animals (including a "two-headed asteroid songbird"), close enough for Earth to be clearly visible in the sky
- There's also a cloud of Kryptonite dust that just happens to be passing by that asteroid (or, at least, Superman claims. It could have been part of a ruse.)

Superdickery:

- Superman exiles Supergirl from Earth for a week just as part of a test (and led her to believe it would be for an entire year). He also causes everyone at the orphanage to think that Linda Lee was missing and presumed dead.

Spoiler: A little harsh, don't you think?

Spoiler: Still a little harsh, don't you think?

Power Tracker:

- The icicle feat, despite being nonsensical, was pretty nice. When I read the summary of the story first I had thought that it would be from an interstellar distance, but it was only interplanetary. Either way she's still Mid Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #259

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Red Kryptonite. While a lot of people criticize it for being a lazy plot device, I can see why they created it, because at this point the green stuff was becoming ubiquitous, so a change of pace was welcome
- Very few feats here since the majority of the events in this story are a dream
- A pretty infamous scene that you may have seen on Superdickery originates from this comic. Context: It was a dream sequence
- I also believe this is the first appearance of Lana Lang in this title, although, again, it's only in a dream sequence
- A response in the letters column says that Krypton's population was 3 billion before it exploded

Spoiler: Red Kryptonite. Expect to see a lot of this stuff in the future.

Spoiler: I believe this was once the title image for "Schmuck Bait" on TVTropes

Spoiler: Cop-out!

Spoiler: In case the population of Krypton ever becomes relevant

Feat Catalogue:

- Intercepts a Red Kryptonite meteor before it can hit a jet plane

Weirdness:

- Being a dream sequence, this whole story is weird

Superdickery:

- In the dream, berates and insults his younger self

Power Tracker:

- After intercepting the meteor, he literally does nothing in this story other than sleep and eventually wake up. Mid Herald Level still, in case that wasn't obvious.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Hears a baby choking in another building, and uses a precise shot of X-ray(heat) vision to slice open the plastic bag the baby was trapped in without harming her or anyone else.
- Uses telescopic vision to locate Superman and see him saving people at a beach
- Flies out the window too fast to be seen
- Flies FTL and goes back in time to the stone age
- Picks up and carries a triceratops to scare a pterodactyl and save a baby
- Rides and tames a brontosaurus
- Is unharmed by a monster's flame breath and ties the creature around a rock
- Travels back to the 20th century

Spoiler: More time travel

Weirdness:

- We once again see dinosaurs and humans coexisting in the past. The weirder thing is probably how Supergirl notes that this is unusual.
- As if this prehistoric world wasn't weird enough, there's also a fire-breathing sea serpent present

Spoiler: Okay. Sure, comic. Whatever.

Superdickery:

- Superman picks up and throws a shark just because it was in the water near some beachgoers. He probably killed it.
- Supergirl picks up a triceratops, flies it around, and then dumps it from very high up into a lake.
- Harasses and annoys a dinosaur until she manages to tame it

Spoiler: That's just animal abuse

Power Tracker:

- Some more time travel feats, but she's still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #260

Overall Notes:

- A response in the letters column gives an odd detail of Kryptonian time travel - when they want to go to the future, they head in the direction of the Earth's orbit around the sun, and when they want to go to the past, they go in the opposite direction. I'm willing to be they'll forget this detail pretty soon, as it makes no sense anyway.
- Another response in the letters column says that there's no capital punishment in Metropolis (this presumably extends to whichever state it's supposed to be in)

Superman Story

Overall Notes:

- This story is dated January of 1960. That means we've officially left the 50s behind (at least for Action Comics).

Notes:

- It's stated here that Clark Kent takes an annual vacation from his work at the Daily Planet
- There's a scene in this issue where two Kryptonians are having a picnic, one of them roasting hotdogs with X-ray(heat) vision and the other cooling lemonade with super breath. This is very similar to the scene on the cover of issue #232.

Feat Catalogue:

- While in Metropolis, uses telescopic X-ray vision to locate Lois and see that she's in danger from a tornado in the "tornado belt" (presumably somewhere in the American Midwest)
- Flies to Lois' location to save her before the tornado can kill her
- Steadies the Sphinx with super breath, along with Supergirl
- Along with Supergirl, visits many parties around the world in a few hours
- Uses super hearing to somehow track the thoughts of aliens in space (see Weirdness section)
- Invading aliens say that they can't hurt Superman, but they can "demolish" Earth (whatever that means in this context)
- Implies that he could have fought the aliens in space and defeated them, but because he believes they have a legitimate grievance, he didn't want to
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to see into the alien ship again, and see that the aliens have gone into suspended animation and begun the trip back to their homeworld
- Along with Supergirl, flies into space, intercepts, and boards the alien ship
- Along with Supergirl, quickly returns to Earth

Spoiler: Don't even ask how this is supposed to work

Spoiler: Wanting to track down a murder a baby because of its race is perfectly reasonable!

Spoiler: Fairly good speed feat. Doesn't change the fact that you're a creep.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Supergirl (in disguise) near-instantly repairs Lois' car after it was wrecked by a tornado
- Steadies the Sphinx with super breath, along with Superman
- Is crushed under the Sphinx but is unharmed and lifts it
- Along with Superman, visits many parties around the world in a few hours
- Along with Superman (and no longer in disguise), flies into space, intercepts, and boards the alien ship
- Along with Superman, quickly returns to Earth

Weirdness:

- Supergirl pretends to be a hero from another dimension called "Mighty Maid" who falls in love with and marries Superman. This is part of a plan to trick some alien invaders. Adding to the already creepy incest/ephebophilia vibes (remember, she's 15), we even see "Mighty Maid's" thoughts at one point, where she thinks that Superman's eyes are beautiful. It's also revealed that she didn't even know why he wanted her to play this role until afterwards.
- Lois actually gets a bit genre savvy and figures out that this must be some scheme, but she makes the wrong assumption (that Mighty Maid is a robot) as she doesn't know of Supergirl's existence
- The aliens were using a "monitor-ray" to spy on Superman from their ship in space, but it had the unintended side effect of allowing him to hear their thoughts. He was somehow able to use his super hearing to locate their ship by tracking said thoughts. Also, for some reason, the aliens' monitor doesn't work while Superman is underwater.

Spoiler: I'd make a joke about them being from the south of Krypton, but that might not go over well...

Spoiler: STOP KISSING YOUR 15 - YEAR - OLD COUSIN!

Superdickery:

- There are many other ways that Superman could have fooled the aliens into thinking he had permanently left Earth, or otherwise foiled the alien attack. I get the feeling he chose this scheme just to torture Lois. Of course Supergirl gets the blame too for going along with it.
- After Lois cries about him proposing to "Mighty Maid", Superman delivers this little gem of sexism: "She's... crying! Women! Sentimental scenes move them easily to tears!"
- Insists that Supergirl stay at the orphanage, even though she desperately wants to leave

Power Tracker:

- Pretty good feats of speed and senses for both of them, but still Mid Herald Level, as expected.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses her vision powers to watch people all over the world, and spies a man drowning
- Digs underground, using X-ray vision to guide her to the island where the guy is drowning, and reaches it before he does
- Emerges at the bottom of the pool and uses super breath to simulate a geyser, launching the drowning man to safety
- Supergirl's costume is stated to be made of material that will always change size to fit her
- Reduced in age (and mind) to a toddler, catches a bunch of bullets fired by two criminals with machine guns, thinking she is playing catch
- Still aged down, she uses super pressure to compress the bullets into a ball of lead, and throws it straight through a cliff and out the other side, and it continues flying until it reaches where Superman was
- Accidentally melts a bag of stolen jewels with X-ray(heat) vision
- Despite reverting in both mental and physical age, once the effects wear off, she remembers everything that happened

Weirdness:

- Supergirl saves a guy from drowning in a natural pool that just happens to be the Fountain of Youth. It affects her too, because magic, I guess? Good thing the effects are temporary.
- By complete coincidence, Supergirl saves Superman from some Kryptonite
- By complete coincidence again, she creates an SOS message when playing with smoke rings
- Misspelling: "Orphange"

Spoiler: A miraculous discovery that could change the world! How much you want to bet it will never be mentioned again?

Spoiler: At least Superman didn't make out with this version of Kara...

Spoiler: How remarkably convenient

Superdickery:

- Causes a lot of mischief when de-aged, but it's hard to blame her since she had the mind of a toddler at the time

Power Tracker:

- Presumably she was weaker when de-aged, although I don't know if it would be significant enough to put her below Mid Herald Level. Obviously still Mid Herald Level at her normal age.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #261

Superman Story

Notes:

- The opening narration refers to the Fortress of Solitude as "the most glamorous hideaway in the entire universe!". I wonder how they judge that...
- In a flashback, we see that Superman used to keep his Fortress in outer space, disguised as a meteor, and after that, he tried to relocate it to the center of the Earth, before finally moving it to the Arctic.

Feat Catalogue:

- Apparently he moved his entire Fortress of Solitude from the Arctic to near Metropolis in order to give people guided tours of the place.
- We see two Superman robots standing guard over the entrance and using X-ray vision to screen the guests
- Various things seen in the Fortress in this issue include:

* A "Hall of Interplanetary Monsters"
* A "Rainbow Jewel" from another planet, which releases radiation that has "a healthful, invigorating effect upon the beholder".
* A strange creature that Superman named a "Wotsis", from another solar system. It's like a living cannonball with spikes made of steel.
* A "3-dimensional tableau" (hologram I guess) of the destruction of Krypton and his escape from it

- Is unharmed and unmoved by the Wotsis crashing into him at the speed of a cannonball (see the list in the previous feat for a description of this thing)
- One of the Superman robots detects a tiny transmitter emitting a "super-sonic signal" hidden inside a book, that a criminal was trying to smuggle into the Fortress. The robot captures the criminal and alerts Superman, then delivers him to the police on Superman's orders.
- In a flashback, staves off a simultaneous attack by 7 of the wax dummies in his Fortress that an alien has brought to life and granted powers similar to Superman's own. They are unable to harm him, but the alien then commands them to destroy the Earth.
- Uses super breath to push a giant star into the alien space cloud being faster than it can escape, destroying and consuming it.
- In another flashback, digs to the center of the Earth to rebuild his Fortress there.
- Is attacked by fire creatures that live at the center of the Earth, using what look like bazookas, but is unharmed
- Digs a trench super fast to contain water... (see the Weirdness section)
- Carries his Fortress (seemingly a much smaller version, though) back to the surface
- In the present, carries the Fortress back from Metropolis to the Arctic
- Finds a bomb planted in his Fortress and throws it far enough away that it explodes without causing damage

Spoiler: Hi, I'm Generic Doomsday Villain #4891, attacking you for no reason!

Spoiler: FUS RO DAH!

Weirdness:

- The flying spiked cannonball alien should be given a mention here
- Some criminals plan to blow up the Fortress of Solitude with a combination of two chemicals in a pen and thermos, which are capable of generating an "atomic blast" 1 hour after being mixed. I'm pretty sure chemistry doesn't work like that.
- We see an attack by "Urko the Terrible", a living space cloud that just happens to take a form that looks sort of like Fu Manchu.
- There are humanoid beings made of living fire that live at the center of the Earth, apparently.
- There is an underground stream (yes, of water) near the center of the Earth. WHAT.
- The aforementioned rainbow jewel's radiation just happens to also interfere with the communication systems in Kandor, so they can't warn Superman of the plot to blow up his Fortress. Even more incredibly, the cap on the thermos that one of the criminals was using as a bomb was made of lead, and it somehow accidentally fell right over the jewel, blocking the radiation, so the Kandorians could contact Superman. And this somehow happened well after the criminals left the Fortress.
- The criminals monitor a seismograph needle to find out when their atomic blast will go off and destroy the Fortress in the Arctic. Although a powerful enough explosion could trigger such a device, it would take a while for the vibrations to reach it, not being instantaneous as portrayed in the comic
- The scene on the cover actually has very little to do with the main plot of the comic, and instead is based on one of the flashbacks we're shown

Superdickery:

- Despite saving and befriending some fire creatures that live at the center of the Earth, he decides he doesn't want to put his Fortress there after all, because they annoy him, I guess
- Destroys the rainbow jewel at the end to prevent its interference from cutting off communication with Kandor. Why didn't he just give it to a hospital or something, since it has healing properties?

Power Tracker:

- The star feat in this issue is actually one that I've seen and heard of before, although I didn't know it was this early. It's a High Herald Level feat by any metric, especially considering how casually he did it, but by now you must know my policy of not granting a tier jump based on just a single feat. Until we get some more to corroborate it, I'll still place him at Mid Herald Level (although pretty much at the top of that category). The famous solar system sneezing feat is not far off, too.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Streaky the Super-Cat and X-Kryptonite
- A response in the letters column said that the asteroid that Supergirl briefly lived on in issue #258 may have been denser than an average asteroid, explaining how it could have an atmosphere and life
- The opening narration claims that Supergirl is the most powerful girl in the entire world. I guess Wonder Woman, being an adult, doesn't really count as a "girl", and it's hard to think of any other rivals for that title at this point in DC's history, so fair enough.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic vision to identify a Kryptonite meteor in a meteor shower
- Tracks the meteor and uses super speed to reach its landing point at the very moment it lands, where she uses a lead container to safely retrieve it
- Performs various chemistry experiments in order to try to neutralize the effect of the Kryptonite, although she has no success. However, it does transform it into the new form of "X-Kryptonite"
- Uses super breath (inhaling this time) to pull a dog backwards away from a cat

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Streaky overturns a milk truck, spilling the milk for a bunch of stray cats
- Due to his "cat instinct", is able to instantly tell that Supergirl and Linda Lee are the same person
- Flies into outer space with Supergirl and plays with a bundle of telephone cable like a ball of yarn
- Gets tangled in the cables and breaks out of them by flexing his muscles

Weirdness:

- There is a "small chemical laboratory" in the orphanage, which they just let the orphans use.
- After experimenting with various chemicals on a chunk of Kryptonite, Supergirl inadvertently transforms it into "X-Kryptonite", which has the property of... giving temporary superpowers to cats?
- Judging by his thought bubbles, Streaky seems to have human-level intelligence (maybe even before exposure to the X-Kryptonite)
- A random dog is also given similar human-like thought bubbles...
- Despite having no idea what gave Streaky his powers, Supergirl just rolls with it

Spoiler: What's next, a horse and a monkey? (Actually yes...)

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #262

Overall Notes:

- Once again, the Supergirl story is the one portrayed on the cover
- This issue had the archive error, sorry about that

Superman Story

Notes:

- It's stated in this issue that Superman's hair is not only normally indestructible, but it also doesn't grow.

Feat Catalogue:

- Builds a makeshift hang glider and fights off a fire-breathing dragon while having lost his powers
- Can read lips, which he refers to as a "power". He can still do this while depowered, as would be expected.
- Breathes underwater through two reeds attached to his nose, inhaling through one and exhaling through the other so as not to create bubbles, in order to fool everyone into thinking he still doesn't need to breathe
- Tricks another fire-breathing dragon into cooking some fish for him
- After regaining his powers, intercepts a lightning bolt in mid-air

Spoiler: Once again showing that he's not helpless without his powers

Weirdness:

- A newly - uncovered Aztec temple contains a warning that anyone who disturbs it will be sent to another dimension for two days. This turns out to be true, and it's a dimension where Superman loses his powers, and there are all kinds of monsters. Even Superman's costume becomes vulnerable. Magic is implied to be involved.
- Despite being in another dimension, Jimmy assumes the signal from his watch will be able to reach Superman. When it doesn't, he assumes Superman must be off in a mission in space (of course the real reason is that Clark Kent is there with him, and has lost his powers).
- The dimension contains giant spiders that are compelled to spin thick webs whenever they see the color purple. I wonder what evolutionary advantage that could have...

Superdickery:

- Destroys a giant egg merely to make a flashy entrance and trick everyone into thinking he still had his powers. As this was in an unknown dimension, that egg could have belonged to an intelligent species for all he knew.

Power Tracker:

- Perhaps Low Street Level when depowered, Mid Herald Level otherwise.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Supergirl thinks to herself in this issue that Kryptonite is the only substance in the universe that can harm Superman or her. Not quite true...
- In a flashback, one of the Kryptonians in Argo City says that green Kryptonite had previously been studied by their scientists, indicating that it somehow had existed before Krypton's destruction (created in nuclear experiments, maybe?)
- This is the first time that the solar component of Kryptonian powers is established. The writers had to come up with this because the heavier gravity explanation had too many holes in it. Although in this issue, it's stated to be a combination of Krypton's gravity and sunlight that prevented them from having powers there.

Spoiler: A pretty necessary retcon if you ask me

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to create wind so other orphans can fly their kites
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to quickly fuse a crack in the sidewalk shut before two girls in roller skates pass over it
- Uses telescopic vision to see a Kryptonite meteor fall to Earth, and hears two forest rangers discuss it and send a warning to Superman
- Uses telescopic vision again to see Superman receive the warning and fly to his Fortress of Solitude
- Again locates Superman from a distance, this time underground, as she sees him endangered by Kryptonite
- Along with Superman, while both were weakened and dying from Kryptonite, she uses her X-ray(heat) vision to melt some gold and then somehow transmute it to lead

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- In a flashback, Superman is showing lifting a weight with 10,000 lbs on one end (and presumably the same on the other, for a total of 20,000 lbs.)
- Traveled to "the Dark World" and "a low-gravity solar system" to gather more specimens for his collection
- Uses telescopic vision to locate Kara and find her testing her resistance to Kryptonite
- Along with Supergirl, while both were weakened and dying from Kryptonite, he uses his X-ray(heat) vision to melt some gold and then somehow transmute it to lead

Weirdness:

- Superman has found more trophies for his Fortress of Solitude, including a flower from the "Dark World" that withers when exposed to external light, but generates its own light somehow. He also retrieves tiny dinosaurs and giant bugs from another planet. He also captured some metal eating creatures, which become a plot point in this story. They also eat Kryptonite, which is referred to as a metal for some reason.
- New power - elemental transmutation via X-ray vision, however that's supposed to work.

Spoiler: Reverse alchemy via eye beams saves the day!

Superdickery:

- Superman once again is kidnapping alien creatures and locking them in small cages for his own amusement.

Power Tracker:

- We're still going with Mid Herald Level for now.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #263

Overall Notes:

- This issue also had the archive error, which sucks.

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Htrae, aka Bizarro World
- It's stated in this issue that Bizarro is made of "nuclear matter"
- This is the beginning of another two-part story, concluded in the next issue. I'm not sure why all the two-parters have been Bizarro stories so far.
- A response in the letters column confirmed that Superman returned all of the other shrunken cities he took from Brainiac to their original planets
- A letter in the letters column asked if Blue Kryptonite existed. The editors said that it didn't yet, but might at some point. And indeed, it did.

Spoiler: Introducing Bizarro World

Feat Catalogue:

- Carries a radioactive meteor through space and throws it into a star
- Flies to Bizarro World (see the non-Superman feat catalogue for some idea of the distance involved)
- Squeezes a lump of coal into a diamond
- More transmutation via X-ray vision, as he uses it to 'alter the molecular pattern' of the diamond he created and turn it back into coal
- Remodels a bunch of badly-constructed Bizarro homes into well-constructed homes at super speed
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to tan the skin of a non-powered Bizarro, saving him from the harmful effects of the sun
- From Bizarro World, uses telescopic vision to see into the Daily Planet offices on Earth
- A ray that rearranges his atoms could only work on him after he was first weakened by Kryptonite

Spoiler: What you just did to that diamond is ironically the most bizarre thing in this scan

Spoiler: Probably the best telescopic vision feat yet

Spoiler: Implied transmutation resistance

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Bizarro flies Bizarro Lois to "another far-off solar system" to colonize it. This trip could have taken a few months at most, making it a clear FTL feat.
- Using the remnants of an ancient, abandoned alien laboratory, builds another duplicator ray, and uses it on himself and Bizarro Lois to populate their new planet
- Bizarro and his duplicates rebuild an ancient alien city into a Bizarro version of Metropolis
- The Bizarros also have a "non-super ray", which can remove another Bizarro's powers (and Superman's as well, it's implied). It also makes the Bizarro's costume vulnerable like normal cloth.
- They have yet another invention, a "Bizarro ray", which can transform Superman into a Bizarro after they first weaken him with Kryptonite

Spoiler: BIZARRO SCIENCE!

Weirdness:

- Bizarro's ability to make a duplicator ray is explained by a narration box saying "Though imperfect, the duplicated brain of Superman within Bizarro retains enough super-intelligence to construct an amazing device!" I guess this implies that Superman could do the same if he wanted to.
- A random meteor suddenly "turns radioactive" for no explained reason. Superman decides to deal with it by depositing it in a far-off star, which just happens to be the same star that Bizarro World orbits.
- Of course it's a Bizarro story, and the entire concept of Bizarro World is that everything is the opposite of how it is on Earth
- Superman submits to arrest by the Bizzaros because he claims it's against his code to defy authority, even if that authority makes no sense

Superdickery:

- After one of the Bizarro Lois clones decides to pay Superman's restaurant bill for him and asks him on a date, he ditches her because she's ugly
- Decides that the Bizarros have "a crazy sense of values" and he takes it upon himself to "show them how to do things right". Awfully presumptuous of him. This does come back to bite him, though.

Power Tracker:

- A few nice feats here, but still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- It's shown in this issue that Supergirl has a Linda Lee robot to fill in for her. It's presumably different from the Supergirl robot seen in issue #256

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses her super sense of smell to tell that some roast chicken is burning in the oven
- Runs out of the room, into the kitchen, switches off the oven, and returns to her place at the table at super speed, so fast that no one can see her move.
- Uses telescopic vision to see a boy clinging to a drifting piece of wood at sea after a storm
- Flies out to sea in seconds to where the boy is
- Stuns a whale with a punch and makes it seem like it surfaced right under the boy, and then steers it to a ship so he can be rescued
- Hears a tree fall, flies outside, and pushes it the other way before it can fall on the orphanage
- Uses X-ray vision to see a fire in another room, breaks through the door, puts out the fire, and blows away the smoke with her super breath, all without being seen
- Holds a car in place so it can't move
- Before a man can speak his next sentence on the phone, she flies to the local power plant and uses her super strength to stop an electric dynamo, cutting power to the phone
- While at the power station, uses X-ray vision to see that the person the guy was calling hung up
- Uses microscopic vision to determine that a medallion is made of a metal not found on Earth
- Searches a large area at sea to find a wrecked alien spaceship
- Repairs said interstellar alien spaceship within a single night
- Learns to fluently speak an alien language by reading through a book during an (implied to be short) trip to the aliens' homeworld
- Uses super speed to try over 2 million button combinations on a teleportation device in what seems to be a few seconds
- Flies back to Earth under her own power

Spoiler: Reminds me of when Superman did a similar thing a while back

Spoiler: Wouldn't she be teleporting in a bunch of other stuff though?

Spoiler: If only we had more specific distances for these interstellar feats...

Weirdness:

- Supergirl smelled the chicken burning, indicating it was already overcooked. She turned off the oven in time to stop it from burning further, but later it's shown to be perfectly cooked. Shouldn't it still be overcooked slightly?
- The boy that she rescued from a shipwreck at sea just coincidentally manages to be placed in the same orphanage as her.
- Said boy also happens to be an alien who crashed-landed on Earth, and he looks completely human except he can see perfectly well in the dark

Superdickery:

- Supergirl beats up a whale in order to preserve the secret of her existence
- In order to stop a phone message, she shuts down a power plant temporarily. There were about 100 other ways to do that that wouldn't involve cutting power to the entire city.

Spoiler: Causing a city-wide power outage just to stop a phone call? Your cousin has been rubbing off on you

Power Tracker:

- Some very nice feats here, but nothing provably above Mid Herald Level

Action Comics #264

Overall Notes:

- The letters column was 2 pages in this issue, instead of the usual 1
- A response in the letters column clarifies that Kryptonians are vulnerable to certain types of magic

Spoiler: The magic weakness is acknowledged as canon. Note that it says "occasionally", though

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue
- The cover here is a big lie, as it shows Superman transformed into a Bizarro, but in the actual comic this doesn't happen. He just dreams that it happens.
- A response in the letters column says that the robots Superman builds are made partially of materials he found on other planets that don't exist on Earth

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to freeze a lead sword and make it harder than steel
- After asking for certain materials from Bizarro World, he builds a satellite with a camera and transmitter inside it at super speed, and throws it into orbit of Bizarro World
- Remodels Bizarro World to make it into a cube, as they like it better that way

Spoiler: Okay...

Spoiler: According to the laws of gravity, it wouldn't maintain that shape for long, but whatever

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Bizarros are all able to track the satellite with their telescopic vision as it leaves their planet and deploys its cameras

Weirdness:

- Before his trial resumes, the Bizarros force Superman to fight in a gladiatorial arena against 4 other Bizarros, giving them all various weapons, with the rules that Superman's weapon (a frail lead sword) has to remain intact, and he can only use each of his powers once. Suitably bizarre, at least. He ends up losing, but to the Bizarros, that count as winning. However, his 'reward' is that the date of his Bizarro-fication is moved up.
- Superman has a giant bulldozer scoop from out of nowhere which he uses to remodel Htrae

Superdickery:

- The Bizarro Lois clones (who don't have powers) and the Bizarros who were depowered probably should have died when he sculpted their planet into a cube

Power Tracker:

- The planet sculpting feat is nice, but not past Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Kara (as Linda Lee) gets temporarily adopted in this story

Feat Catalogue:

- Frees the jammed landing gear of a jet airliner so it can land safely
- Flies from an airport to her room in the orphanage in seconds
- Thinks to herself that she could knit enough sweaters to outfit an entire school in seconds
- Uses telescopic vision and super hearing to keep track of her new adoptive father while he's at work
- Hypnotizes her foster mother into falling asleep, changes to Supergirl, flies to the orphanage, puts on a Superman disguise, flies to the subway station, and stops a subway train, all in the time it took the train to travel maybe a few dozen meters
- After putting away the Superman disguise, brings her foster mother out of her hypnotic trance so she doesn't remember anything
- While following her adoptive father with telescopic X-ray vision again, she notices two criminals about to cut an elevator cable and kill him.
- Right before they cut the cable, she uses super ventriloquism to trick her foster mother into letting her leave, changes to Supergirl while above the clouds at super speed, reaches the city, enters the elevator shaft through the basement, and catches the falling elevator car
- Cleans a kitchen at super speed
- Tracking her foster father again, she sees two criminals attempting to run him down in their cars, so she flies to where they are, puts two metal pipes through an oil drum, and uses super breath to blow the oil so it causes the cars to slip and miss him, then uses super breath again to prevent the cars from colliding with each other
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt the internal mechanisms of a bomb to defuse it

Spoiler: Pretty good feat, and the 3rd panel of the 2nd scan is funny out of context

Weirdness:

- The father that adopts Linda in this issue is a police officer who is constantly being targeted by criminals. She has to save him multiple times throughout the 30 - day trial adoption period. He and his wife eventually decide to give Linda back to the orphanage because it's too dangerous for her to stay. But if the assassination attempts continue, who's going to protect him now?

Superdickery:

- Doesn't seem to consider that her foster father will be in more danger now once she's back at the orphanage and no longer there to protect him

Power Tracker:

- Aside from another fast and effective use of hypnosis, not much to note here. Still Mid Herald Level.

 

[Solar Sailor]

Action Comics #263

Overall Notes:

- This issue also had the archive error, which sucks.

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Htrae, aka Bizarro World
- It's stated in this issue that Bizarro is made of "nuclear matter"
- This is the beginning of another two-part story, concluded in the next issue. I'm not sure why all the two-parters have been Bizarro stories so far.
- A response in the letters column confirmed that Superman returned all of the other shrunken cities he took from Brainiac to their original planets
- A letter in the letters column asked if Blue Kryptonite existed. The editors said that it didn't yet, but might at some point. And indeed, it did.

Spoiler: Introducing Bizarro World

Feat Catalogue:

- Carries a radioactive meteor through space and throws it into a star
- Flies to Bizarro World (see the non-Superman feat catalogue for some idea of the distance involved)
- Squeezes a lump of coal into a diamond
- More transmutation via X-ray vision, as he uses it to 'alter the molecular pattern' of the diamond he created and turn it back into coal
- Remodels a bunch of badly-constructed Bizarro homes into well-constructed homes at super speed
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to tan the skin of a non-powered Bizarro, saving him from the harmful effects of the sun
- From Bizarro World, uses telescopic vision to see into the Daily Planet offices on Earth
- A ray that rearranges his atoms could only work on him after he was first weakened by Kryptonite

Spoiler: What you just did to that diamond is ironically the most bizarre thing in this scan

Spoiler: Probably the best telescopic vision feat yet

Spoiler: Implied transmutation resistance

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Bizarro flies Bizarro Lois to "another far-off solar system" to colonize it. This trip could have taken a few months at most, making it a clear FTL feat.
- Using the remnants of an ancient, abandoned alien laboratory, builds another duplicator ray, and uses it on himself and Bizarro Lois to populate their new planet
- Bizarro and his duplicates rebuild an ancient alien city into a Bizarro version of Metropolis
- The Bizarros also have a "non-super ray", which can remove another Bizarro's powers (and Superman's as well, it's implied). It also makes the Bizarro's costume vulnerable like normal cloth.
- They have yet another invention, a "Bizarro ray", which can transform Superman into a Bizarro after they first weaken him with Kryptonite

Spoiler: BIZARRO SCIENCE!

Weirdness:

- Bizarro's ability to make a duplicator ray is explained by a narration box saying "Though imperfect, the duplicated brain of Superman within Bizarro retains enough super-intelligence to construct an amazing device!" I guess this implies that Superman could do the same if he wanted to.
- A random meteor suddenly "turns radioactive" for no explained reason. Superman decides to deal with it by depositing it in a far-off star, which just happens to be the same star that Bizarro World orbits.
- Of course it's a Bizarro story, and the entire concept of Bizarro World is that everything is the opposite of how it is on Earth
- Superman submits to arrest by the Bizzaros because he claims it's against his code to defy authority, even if that authority makes no sense

Superdickery:

- After one of the Bizarro Lois clones decides to pay Superman's restaurant bill for him and asks him on a date, he ditches her because she's ugly
- Decides that the Bizarros have "a crazy sense of values" and he takes it upon himself to "show them how to do things right". Awfully presumptuous of him. This does come back to bite him, though.

Power Tracker:

- A few nice feats here, but still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- It's shown in this issue that Supergirl has a Linda Lee robot to fill in for her. It's presumably different from the Supergirl robot seen in issue #256

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses her super sense of smell to tell that some roast chicken is burning in the oven
- Runs out of the room, into the kitchen, switches off the oven, and returns to her place at the table at super speed, so fast that no one can see her move.
- Uses telescopic vision to see a boy clinging to a drifting piece of wood at sea after a storm
- Flies out to sea in seconds to where the boy is
- Stuns a whale with a punch and makes it seem like it surfaced right under the boy, and then steers it to a ship so he can be rescued
- Hears a tree fall, flies outside, and pushes it the other way before it can fall on the orphanage
- Uses X-ray vision to see a fire in another room, breaks through the door, puts out the fire, and blows away the smoke with her super breath, all without being seen
- Holds a car in place so it can't move
- Before a man can speak his next sentence on the phone, she flies to the local power plant and uses her super strength to stop an electric dynamo, cutting power to the phone
- While at the power station, uses X-ray vision to see that the person the guy was calling hung up
- Uses microscopic vision to determine that a medallion is made of a metal not found on Earth
- Searches a large area at sea to find a wrecked alien spaceship
- Repairs said interstellar alien spaceship within a single night
- Learns to fluently speak an alien language by reading through a book during an (implied to be short) trip to the aliens' homeworld
- Uses super speed to try over 2 million button combinations on a teleportation device in what seems to be a few seconds
- Flies back to Earth under her own power

Spoiler: Reminds me of when Superman did a similar thing a while back

Spoiler: Wouldn't she be teleporting in a bunch of other stuff though?

Spoiler: If only we had more specific distances for these interstellar feats...

Weirdness:

- Supergirl smelled the chicken burning, indicating it was already overcooked. She turned off the oven in time to stop it from burning further, but later it's shown to be perfectly cooked. Shouldn't it still be overcooked slightly?
- The boy that she rescued from a shipwreck at sea just coincidentally manages to be placed in the same orphanage as her.
- Said boy also happens to be an alien who crashed-landed on Earth, and he looks completely human except he can see perfectly well in the dark

Superdickery:

- Supergirl beats up a whale in order to preserve the secret of her existence
- In order to stop a phone message, she shuts down a power plant temporarily. There were about 100 other ways to do that that wouldn't involve cutting power to the entire city.

Spoiler: Causing a city-wide power outage just to stop a phone call? Your cousin has been rubbing off on you

Power Tracker:

- Some very nice feats here, but nothing provably above Mid Herald Level

Action Comics #264

Overall Notes:

- The letters column was 2 pages in this issue, instead of the usual 1
- A response in the letters column clarifies that Kryptonians are vulnerable to certain types of magic

Spoiler: The magic weakness is acknowledged as canon. Note that it says "occasionally", though

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue
- The cover here is a big lie, as it shows Superman transformed into a Bizarro, but in the actual comic this doesn't happen. He just dreams that it happens.
- A response in the letters column says that the robots Superman builds are made partially of materials he found on other planets that don't exist on Earth

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to freeze a lead sword and make it harder than steel
- After asking for certain materials from Bizarro World, he builds a satellite with a camera and transmitter inside it at super speed, and throws it into orbit of Bizarro World
- Remodels Bizarro World to make it into a cube, as they like it better that way

Spoiler: Okay...

Spoiler: According to the laws of gravity, it wouldn't maintain that shape for long, but whatever

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Bizarros are all able to track the satellite with their telescopic vision as it leaves their planet and deploys its cameras

Weirdness:

- Before his trial resumes, the Bizarros force Superman to fight in a gladiatorial arena against 4 other Bizarros, giving them all various weapons, with the rules that Superman's weapon (a frail lead sword) has to remain intact, and he can only use each of his powers once. Suitably bizarre, at least. He ends up losing, but to the Bizarros, that count as winning. However, his 'reward' is that the date of his Bizarro-fication is moved up.
- Superman has a giant bulldozer scoop from out of nowhere which he uses to remodel Htrae

Superdickery:

- The Bizarro Lois clones (who don't have powers) and the Bizarros who were depowered probably should have died when he sculpted their planet into a cube

Power Tracker:

- The planet sculpting feat is nice, but not past Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Kara (as Linda Lee) gets temporarily adopted in this story

Feat Catalogue:

- Frees the jammed landing gear of a jet airliner so it can land safely
- Flies from an airport to her room in the orphanage in seconds
- Thinks to herself that she could knit enough sweaters to outfit an entire school in seconds
- Uses telescopic vision and super hearing to keep track of her new adoptive father while he's at work
- Hypnotizes her foster mother into falling asleep, changes to Supergirl, flies to the orphanage, puts on a Superman disguise, flies to the subway station, and stops a subway train, all in the time it took the train to travel maybe a few dozen meters
- After putting away the Superman disguise, brings her foster mother out of her hypnotic trance so she doesn't remember anything
- While following her adoptive father with telescopic X-ray vision again, she notices two criminals about to cut an elevator cable and kill him.
- Right before they cut the cable, she uses super ventriloquism to trick her foster mother into letting her leave, changes to Supergirl while above the clouds at super speed, reaches the city, enters the elevator shaft through the basement, and catches the falling elevator car
- Cleans a kitchen at super speed
- Tracking her foster father again, she sees two criminals attempting to run him down in their cars, so she flies to where they are, puts two metal pipes through an oil drum, and uses super breath to blow the oil so it causes the cars to slip and miss him, then uses super breath again to prevent the cars from colliding with each other
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt the internal mechanisms of a bomb to defuse it

Spoiler: Pretty good feat, and the 3rd panel of the 2nd scan is funny out of context

Weirdness:

- The father that adopts Linda in this issue is a police officer who is constantly being targeted by criminals. She has to save him multiple times throughout the 30 - day trial adoption period. He and his wife eventually decide to give Linda back to the orphanage because it's too dangerous for her to stay. But if the assassination attempts continue, who's going to protect him now?

Superdickery:

- Doesn't seem to consider that her foster father will be in more danger now once she's back at the orphanage and no longer there to protect him

Power Tracker:

- Aside from another fast and effective use of hypnosis, not much to note here. Still Mid Herald Level.

Never in my life did I believe I would ever see Superman straight up deepthroat a sword

 

[Endless Mike]

Never in my life did I believe I would ever see Superman straight up deepthroat a sword

This is the Silver Age. That's nothing compared to the stuff you'll be seeing.

Action Comics #265

Overall Notes:

- Again, the cover is based on the Supergirl story instead of the Superman story

Superman Story

Notes:

- This story features the only appearance of a character named "Hyper-Man". This name (or variations of it) would later be used for several other characters, including a child of Superman and Wonder Woman in a future timeline, who became the guardian of hypertime.
- Superman states in this issue that there are 100 million galaxies in the universe, each containing more than 200 billion stars. The actual numbers are larger (currently estimated to be several hundred billion galaxies in the observable universe, although many galaxies are smaller than 200 billion stars - the estimated average is around 100 million per galaxy). However, the figure given in the comic does roughly reflect the scientific knowledge contemporary to when it was published, so it probably shouldn't be taken as indicating a difference from RL. A more likely in-universe explanation is that Superman had just never collected data on galaxies any further away than that. Although it does imply he's been quite a distance in the universe.
- An editor's note says to refer to Action Comics #44, but it actually meant #244.
- Oddly, the narration says that Superman and Supergirl are unable to pick up voices across space, so they read lips instead. But they have heard voices across space before...
- A response in the letters column says that Superman was given an honorary citizenship by the UN and has jurisdiction to travel to and operate in any country without needing a passport or other red tape.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to remotely activate one of his robots in his apartment from a hospital, then uses it to see that Lois has borrowed a robot detector device. He then sees a mysterious character appear and destroy his robot with a punch in order to substitute for it.
- In his Fortress of Solitude, he has a computer referred to as a "super-univac" that can quickly sort through data of every planet orbiting over 200 quintillion stars and find pictures of each one. It's also somehow capable of 'working out a complete history' of an alien's future life, if it has access to certain 'personal factors'. It was able to predict that Hyper-Man would die within a year from exposure to "blue Zoronite" and would lose his superpowers in one day
- Flies through space to the planet Oceania in another star system. Timeframe is less than a day, but exact length is unknown.
- Flies into a plastic dome under the ocean through a door that's only open for such a small amount of time that not a single drop of water can flow inward (sketchy physics, but we're long past the point where it's useful to complain about that)
- Uses an "atomic roman candle" to shoot down a swarm of meteors before they hit a satellite, but specifically deflects one towards the satellite
- Flies back to Earth, and while en-route, uses telescopic vision to observe specific people on Oceania
- When back on Earth, uses telescopic vision to observe events on Oceania again

Spoiler: This is impressive even compared to modern computers

Spoiler: Interstellar travel is becoming such a casual thing

Spoiler: As is interstellar observation

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Supergirl also uses her telescopic vision to observe events on Oceania from Earth

Weirdness:

- The opening narration claims that the question of "is there only one world like Earth in the whole universe?" will be answered in this issue, but we've already seen tons of Earthlike planets with alien civilizations in previous issues.
- A random scientist builds a lifelike robotic copy of himself in order to test out an electronic 'robot detector' he built, in order to protect the country against foreign robot spies. In this universe, that's not so far-fetched.
- An alien from a heavy gravity planet that exploded was sent to a light gravity planet and gained Superman - like powers (no mention of the sun factor here). What's weird is that on the planet he was sent to, people had Earth names like "Chester King". He took a job as a TV reporter in the city of "Macropolis", along with the suspicious co-reporter "Lydia Long", and had a hidden "Fortress of Secrecy". He's vulnerable to radioactive emissions from "Zoronite", chunks of his destroyed homeworld. Also, he looks identical to Clark Kent/Superman. These facts are commented on as being strange in the comic, but no explanation for them is ever offered other than sheer coincidence.
- The alien planet, Oceania, has an atmosphere containing a gas called "zillium", which "short-circuits any delicate electronic brain", explaining why Hyper-Man doesn't use robot doubles of himself like Superman does.
- The country Hyper-Man lives in on Oceania (The "O.S.A") has an Independence Day celebration on July 5th, which is celebrated with "atomic fireworks" detonated in space, and observed via a "sightseeing satellite". It also has 48 states, as opposed to 50 on Earth (Alaska and Hawaii were added in 1959, a year before this comic was published)

Superdickery:

- Exposes Hyper-Man's secret identity to his world, including deliberately subjecting him to the effects of his version of Kryptonite. He did this because he knew the guy was going to die in a year and wanted him to live the last year of his life in peace with a normal identity and a wife. But what if his planet was in danger before that? Also, he didn't bother telling him about it.

Spoiler: "What a heart of gold" - give me a break

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level, going to need more feats to achieve High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- There's apparently a Superboy Museum in Smallville, similar to the Superman Museum in Metropolis.
- There's an editor's note explaining how the "amnesia gas" used in this issue originated in the April 1957 issue of Adventure Comics (issue #235). I might cover relevant issues of that series at some point in this thread. I do like how they use continuity here rather than just making up the gas from whole cloth.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to condense cloud moisture into droplets to create a rainbow
- Along with Superman, digs underground to reach some criminals' hideout
- Follows Superman to a deserted area outside Metropolis by tunneling underground
- After being knocked out by Red Kryptonite, falls down to Earth and is unconscious for days, but when she wakes up her only symptom is a loss of some of her memories
- Rubs the bottom of a frying pan at super speed to cook eggs in it, and is careful not to go too fast so the pan doesn't melt
- Changes to Supergirl faster than the eye can follow and stops a large concrete cap before it can wreck some cars
- Carries the concrete cover back to its proper location and places it there
- Intercepts an "electric bolt" from an alien robot before it can hit a chemical plant
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to melt the robot's internal mechanisms, disabling it

Spoiler: Internal HV on a villain, although it's a robot

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman uses telescopic X-ray vision to see that the walls in his apartment are being painted, while inside of a bank vault
- Uses super ventriloquism to project his voice to Supergirl at the orphanage, from inside the bank vault
- Along with Supergirl, digs underground to reach some criminals' hideout
- Transports the criminals and their loot to a police station "in the twinkling of an eye"
- Superboy carved a statue of himself out of "the world's biggest diamond"
- Superboy also brought a giant robot back from another world
- Superman tries to build a ray device to return Kandor to its original size, but it fails
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to quickly scan all of Metropolis for trouble, and then switch to Smallville, where he sees Supergirl doing her thing in public, then uses super-hearing to overhear that she has lost some of her memories
- Uses telescopic and microscopic vision to identify the Red Kryptonite particles in the comet Supergirl ran into
- Flies from the North Pole to Smallville, and burrows underground to find a canister of "amnesia gas" that he created as Superboy and buried years ago
- Takes the gas back to his Fortress of Solitude at super speed, embeds it with green Kryptonite particles, hooks it up to a spray device, and flies back to Smallville, spraying it over the town in order to make everyone (including Supergirl) forget about how she revealed her existence to the world
- At super speed, prints new issues of the past several days of Smallville's newspaper to hide the existence of Supergirl, then replaces all of the original newspapers throughout the town with the new ones.

Weirdness:

- A comet and its tail are apparently inside the Earth's atmosphere in this issue
- A strange exclamation from a random kid: "Hot ziggety dog!"

Superdickery:

- Apparently Superboy was so vain that he used the world's largest diamond to carve a statue of himself and put it in his museum
- Superboy also brought a "robot warrior" back from another planet and carelessly placed it in his museum. Lightning striking it was enough to activate it and cause it to go on a rampage
- Superman was trying to re-enlarge Kandor... while it was still inside his Fortress of Solitude. It didn't work, but if it did, did he ever think that might cause some serious damage to the city?
- Erases the memories of the past few days from all of Smallville and Supergirl by using Kryptonite - laced amnesia gas, just to keep her existence a secret

Spoiler: Mass brainwashing is no big deal!

Power Tracker:

- Nothing really notable here, so still Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #266

Overall Notes:

- Again, the cover is based on the Supergirl story, although I have noticed that when they do this, they usually choose a scene from the story where Superman is involved as well, because I guess they want both of them on the cover
- There's an ad in this issue for a Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) series, which was just starting at the time.

Superman Story

Notes:

- Another story with a race of Amazons that have nothing to do with Wonder Woman. Although it's more understandable in this case, since they're from another planet.

Feat Catalogue:

- Saves a crashing jet by placing himself inside the malfunctioning jet exhaust valve and propelling the plane with super breath
- Uses X-ray vision to determine that the motors inside a rocket are powerful enough to let it break orbit
- Is unaffected (although he pretends to be) by a 'mystic love potion' that was speculated to maybe have a Kryptonite base (although it actually didn't). I guess that's a magic resistance feat, if it was actually magical in nature.
- Sees a diamond underground on an alien planet with his X-ray vision and digs underground to retrieve it, destroying a subway tube in the process
- Uses the vibrations from his voice to destroy a crown and several other priceless artifacts
- Eats a meal meant for a large crowd all by himself at super speed, including the bones in the meat, then drinks multiple huge vats of water, and burps with enough force to send the crowd flying.
- Is immune to the "force-rays" of rebelling robots, and easily defeats them
- Flies into space, extracts metal ores from meteors, and creates a "colossal chute" (like a lasso, sort of), which he uses to grab and tow a planetoid of solid ice into orbit of the Amazons' home planet, replenishing their water supply.
- Flies to the location of the alien Amazons' planet-destroying weapon in seconds and destroys it with X-ray(heat) vision
- Flies back to Earth on his own power, the narration saying that he "streaks past spinning galaxies", so I think this is our first confirmed intergalactic travel feat

Spoiler: Just better hope it doesn't all come down at once...

Spoiler: Confirmed intergalactic travel

Weirdness:

- Lois and Clark are sent to cover a story of a movie being made, and, as part of a publicity stunt, they have to wear space suits and go up in an experimental jet-powered aircraft. All courtesy of the movie studio.
- The princess of a planet of space Amazons was observing Superman through their telescopes for years, so she came to Earth, created a fake identity as a movie star, and lured Clark Kent (who she knew was Superman) into her rocket to take him to her home planet and marry him. Typical Silver Age plot.
- Apparently on the Amazon planet, all of the men are weak and cowardly, yet the princess has to answer to her father, the king.

Superdickery:

- Causes a lot of trouble and damage on the alien planet, including poisoning almost all of their water supply (although their princess was holding the Earth hostage)

Spoiler: Never invite Superman to dinner

Power Tracker:

- We're well on our way to High Herald Level, with that intergalactic feat. The planet-towing feat is pretty nice too (although the visuals are a bit off in terms of scale). However we still need a bit more, so for now he's still at the very top of Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The cover implies that there will be some kind of competition between a team of Superman and Krypto and one of Supergirl and Streaky. No such thing happens in the comic.

Feat Catalogue:

- At super speed, changes to Supergirl and flies past some boys in the orphanage entering a room without them seeing her
- Fixes a broken lamp at super speed, splicing the broken wires, welding the metal parts together with super-friction, and cooling them with super breath, all in what is described as "the twinkling of an eye-lash"
- Catches a tree that Streaky threw thousands of feet into the air, and plants it back where it originally was, replacing the ground around it at super speed so it looks like it was never uprooted
- Grabs a toy mouse at super speed and flies off with it, so fast that no one can see her
- Flies into space and uses telescopic vision to see an animal attack in an African jungle, then flies back down and stops the animals before they can hurt anyone
- Quickly digs a pit for a rampaging elephant to fall into
- Ties up a gorilla with vines before it can react
- Uses super vision to scan the Earth and locate Krypto just before he was about to depart for outer space, and uses super ventriloquism to send him instructions

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Krypto catches a boulder that Superman threw at super speed, and balances it on his nose
- Superman flies in a circle so fast that he appears to be a solid hoop in the air
- Streaky (empowered by X-Kryptonite again) bites straight through a metal lamp, and is electrocuted by the wires within but remains unharmed
- Streaky uproots a large pine tree and flies while carrying it, then tosses it thousands of feet into the sky
- Streaky flies through a falling space probe missile, destroying it
- Streaky follows Supergirl when she grabs a toy mouse and flies off at invisible speed
- He then follows Supergirl into space
- He digs a moat around a leopard and panther, stranding them on a makeshift island

Weirdness:

- At one point it looks like a gorilla is trying to cop a feel on Supergirl. She tosses him off into some bushes.
- Some African natives are portrayed in a rather stereotypical and racist manner

Spoiler: Take that 5th panel out of context and you'd have a great Superdickery entry

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing too wild here, still Mid Herald Level

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #267

Superman Story

Notes:

- This is another two-part story, to be concluded in the following issue.
- The DC wiki states that it's unknown if the version of Hercules featured in this story was the same one that existed in the past of Earth-One, or if he is from an alternate reality. This same version of Hercules, however, did appear before this in Adventure Comics #257, and that instance is referenced in this issue.
- You may have seen a certain scan of Lex Luthor building a time machine from common items while in prison before. He does that in this issue too, but those are actually two separate instances. Yeah, he has done this at least twice.
- A magical being from the past, with powers linked to the Greek Gods, steals the gold from Fort Knox in this issue. The same thing would happen later in issue #351, which I covered as part of my Zha-Vam thread.
- Hercules refers to his father in this issue as "Jove" (Jupiter). As the Greek and Roman versions of the gods were shown to be separate beings in some other Pre-Crisis stories, this contributes to the confusion explained in the first note in this section

Feat Catalogue:

- Spies Hercules and Lois with telescopic vision as they are about to be hit by artillery shells on an army testing range, then changes to Superman and intercepts the shells before they hit them, melting them with X-ray(heat) vision
- Deflects more shells with super breath, and intercepts and tanks yet more of them
- Hercules acknowledges that he's inferior to Superman, mostly because of Superman's multiple powers

Spoiler: Maybe there should have been more than just a little flag there?

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor builds a "time ray" out of random junk while in prison, and uses it to bring Hercules from the past to the present
- Lex Luthor can speak Latin
- He also built a "learnograph helmet" that was able to teach Hercules English while he slept

***

- Hercules lifts the foundations of Fort Knox and steals one ton of gold from it, which he refers to as a small amount
- He tosses a chunk of Kryptonite into space
- He is empowered by the ancient Greek/Roman (it's unclear) gods with various powers, and the ability to summon certain magic weapons one time each. Sort of like a weaker, proto - Zha-Vam.

Spoiler: You'd think they'd learn not to let Luthor have access to as much as a toothpick by now

Spoiler: I see no way this could possibly go wrong - Lex Luthor

Weirdness:

- The opening narration declares "Out of the dim past, have come the renowned names of super-strong heroes... Atlas, Samson, Goliath, and others!" Goliath wasn't exactly a hero, at least from the perspective of the writers of the story he's known from.
- Lex's Macgyver powers
- Hercules apparently speaks Latin. Shouldn't he speak Ancient Greek instead?
- Lex bothers to teach Hercules English, which allows him to discover that he's being duped. Wouldn't it have made more sense to remain one of the only people who could communicate with him? Then he could have actually gotten away with this scheme.
- Apparently, Kryptonite "doesn't burn from air friction because it can't combine with oxygen." I'm pretty sure that's not how that works...
- When Hercules returned to the past after the Adventure Comics #257 instance, it conveniently caused him to lose his memories of the future.
- We see a zoo with a lion, tiger, two elephants, a zebra, gorilla, wolf, rhinoceros, and a bear all in the same enclosure together. I somehow doubt that's a smart arrangement.
- Hercules remembers the location of an Oracle's Cave near Athens, travels there, and there just so happens to be a magic-using Oracle there who is able to summon the ancient Greek gods for him. In 1960.

Superdickery:

- Superman observes a "celebrity singer" being mobbed in the streets by a crowd of fans, and merely comments on it, not doing anything to help him, even though the guy looks genuinely terrified

Power Tracker:

- Nothing really notable here, so still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- First appearance of the Legion of Super-Heroes in this title. They first appeared previously in Adventure Comics #247.
- First appearances of Legion members Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, and Invisible Kid.
- Supergirl's first meeting with the Legion.
- The Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, and Saturn Girl in this story are stated to be the children of the originals that Superboy previously met in this issue. However, this idea was later dropped/retconned, and they were stated to be the same characters.
- Supergirl states that her costume can stretch to any size

Feat Catalogue:

- While on a school bus, changes to Supergirl and leaves the bus faster than the eye can follow, then dives underwater and pulls a large ship lower in the water and pushes it under a drawbridge so the bridge doesn't have to lower
- Uses super speed/vibration to near-instantly shake every drop of water off of her costume and hair
- Chases the Legion's time bubble through time to the year 2960 AD
- Digs a tunnel through the surface of the future Earth, building a tunnel as she goes large enough for jet aircraft to fly through, completing it in minutes
- Travels back through time to 1960

Spoiler: A potentially dangerous stunt and a somewhat useful power

Spoiler: More time travel (including tracking an object through time)

Spoiler: Wouldn't that cause way more problems than... you know what, forget it

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl)

- Superman is unharmed by billions of volts of electricity from a cyclotron passing through his body, "enough to destroy an ordinary living thing".

Weirdness:

- When a cyclotron 'malfunctions' and starts to cause a dangerous overload, Supergirl thinks that she'll have to expose her secret identity to stop it. Yet Lightning Lad stops it by just destroying the fuse box, something that she could have easily done with heat vision without anyone realizing
- Supergirl fails to join the LOSH only because she accidentally exposes herself to Red Kryptonite which temporarily ages her too much to join, although it quickly wears off

Superdickery:

- That ship obviously wasn't designed to be pulled nearly underwater like that, and was probably damaged by that stunt.
- The Legion causes deliberate sabotage and danger just so they can show off their powers to fix it and mess with Supergirl.

Power Tracker:

- The tunnel feat is nice, and the ability to track another object traveling through time is useful, but nothing here to go beyond Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #268

Superman Story

Notes:

- This is the continuation of the story from the last issue
- It's clarified here that, of the new powers Hercules gained, only the powers of Mercury and Achilles can be used more than once
- Some of the powers seen here are from the same gods (or at least gods with the same names) that later granted their powers to Zha-Vam, so some of the feats here might scale to him.

Feat Catalogue:

- Built a flying saucer. We never get to see it actually fly (under its own power), though.
- Throws the burning flying saucer off into space
- Is knocked miles away by a magical mace powered by the god Mars, but is unharmed
- Chews up a nail and reforms it into the shape of a tiny boomerang that he directs to hit Hercules in his heel (which has the Achilles weakness), throwing off the aim of another one of his magical weapons
- Shatters a tree and carves the debris into thousands of tiny arrows to confuse Hercules before he can find his magic arrow (and Hercules too has super speed at this point)
- Intercepts and tanks magic lightning bolts from Jupiter, and then uses suction breath to divert many others to hit him instead, saving Metropolis from destruction
- In one of the most scientifically ridiculous feats yet, Superman moves the moon into close Earth orbit to create a tidal wave to return water to a dried - out gulf, then uses one hand to throw it back into its proper orbit. With no other negative consequences.
- Flies at FTL speed and travels in time back to ancient Greece, luring Hercules after him

Spoiler: Weird feat, but impressive in its precision

Spoiler: Considering Hercules was also FTL with Mercury's power, this is pretty good

Spoiler: No-sells magic lightning from Jupiter

Spoiler: *Inner astrophysicist screams incoherently*

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Hercules uses the flames of Vulcan to destroy Superman's flying saucer. Their magical nature prevents Superman from extinguishing them with his super breath or by using water. The flames also keep burning in outer space.
- Uses a mace from the god Mars to knock Superman miles away
- Summons the flute of Apollo which can play a magic lullaby, targeted specifically at Superman so only he can hear it, and will put him to sleep for 100 years. There's also no way to block the sound.
- When using the strength of Atlas combined with his own, Hercules is physically stronger than Superman
- When chasing Superman using the speed of Mercury, he follows him at FTL speeds and ends up traveling back to the past

***

- Supergirl notices and observes the fight between Superman and Hercules from her orphanage with telescopic vision

Spoiler: One of the same powers Zha-Vam would later have?

Spoiler: I wonder how long that will keep burning...

Spoiler: Should have used that one to begin with, Herc

Spoiler: And the fight resumes

Spoiler: Deus ex Machina time travel saves the day

Weirdness:

- When the gods finally cotton on to what Hercules is up to and take his powers and weapons away, he says that they still can't free Superman from the sleeping spell. Yet he just said that he could do so by playing another song on Apollo's flute. But the goddess Venus, instead of using the flute herself or summoning Apollo to use it, wakes Superman up because Lois was willing to sacrifice herself for him, and that somehow gives her the power to break the spell? What?
- After Hercules is returned to his own time without any memory of the events in the future, Lois asks Superman on a date, but he refuses, saying that he has to patrol the city. Then Lois wonders why she didn't accept Hercules' offer in the first place. Uh, maybe because he caused wanton destruction, nearly demolished Metropolis, tried to kill Superman multiple times, tried to brainwash you, and tried to put Superman to sleep for 100 years? But I guess Lois' standards are very weird.
- A response in the letters column has an editor saying that they try to make their stories "seem true to life". Excuse me while I nearly die from laughter.

Superdickery:

- Pretty much everything Hercules does, if that counts.

Power Tracker:

- Some very good feats here, but none convincingly above Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- A fictionalized version of Supergirl in a movie in this issue is shown fighting a dragon that, again, looks a lot like "The Arctic Giant" from the Fleischer Superman cartoons
- The last scan is just a link due to the 20 images per post limit.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to blow a windstorm out to a deserted part of sea, changing the local weather
- Squeezes a metal bottlecap into a thin wire half a mile long
- Uses telescopic vision to watch a fake "Supegirl" performing in London, from her orphanage near Metropolis
- Monitors the entire world from inside a locked metal vault, until she hears someone speak in French about a Supergirl, so she instantly zooms in on Paris and sees what's happening there

Spoiler: Weather manipulation

Spoiler: A bottlecap into a wire half a mile long? How thick is it, a few molecules?

Spoiler: Good senses

""

Weirdness:

- Supergirl, in her Linda Lee identity, takes a temporary job as an intern for the Daily Planet. Her assignment is to write an article on what she considers to be "Superman's five greatest feats". Sounds like they should have hired me, instead. (If I ever finish this thread I might very well write that, actually...)
- A movie studio hires a bunch of actresses to dress as "Supergirl" for a publicity stunt to promote their new movie, even giving them jetpacks and various other high-tech gadgets so they appear to have powers. They also stage several fake disasters that cause potential danger and panic people too, and get away with it scot-free.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from Mid Herald Level here.

 

[Darth Nihilus]

Ngl you should do more respect threads @Endless Mike

For the quality

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #269

Overall Notes:

- There's an ad for the Justice League of America title in this issue, which I also might eventually cover

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- After receiving a phonecall from Lois, changes to Superman and leaves the building so fast no one can see him, then arrives at Lois' place in time to intercept a bullet and save her
- Uses X-ray vision to find a miniature bomb inside a watch, then puts the watch in his mouth where the bomb explodes harmlessly
- At his Fortress of Solitude, quickly builds two robots, one that looks like a skinny version of himself and another that looks like an ugly version of Lois
- Replaces the mirror in Lois' apartment with a pane of glass at super speed
- Still working at super speed, engraves a message on the back of the mirror frame with his fingernail, and uses super breath to artificially age it so it looks like it was there originally
- The two robots he built were capable of moving at super speed as well

Spoiler: A bit overly complex of a plan, but it worked

Weirdness:

- The premise of this one is that Lois gets an old mirror from her "Uncle Ned" in England, that once belonged to Merlin and has the magical ability to reflect anything seen in it as its true self. Naturally, this is another 'Superman's secret identity is almost revealed' plot.
- Lois has a run-in with what she refers to as a "midget burglar". Another one of those funny scenes that wouldn't exactly fly today...
- A bomb is planted on an airplane which is only carrying passengers heading for a "practical joker's convention". When Superman arrives to try to find the bomb, everyone there thinks it's a prank.

Spoiler: Oh, 60s...

Superdickery:

- The splash page has Superman trolling Lois with a hilarious expression that's worth posting
- Destroys the magic mirror, even though it could potentially be very useful, to him or others

Spoiler: Classic shit-eating grin

Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable here, so still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Lori Lemaris in this title

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl defeats several ancient Atlantean weapons, including:

* A freeze ray that was going to freeze the entire ocean in seconds. She melts the ice and the ray with her X-ray(heat) vision
* A "hypno-robot" that is capable of "destroying the mightiest mind". She dismantles it before it can use its power on her (unknown if it would have worked or not)
* A "protoplasmic ray" that can transform algae into a monster, which she throws into the core of the sun

- She then destroys the vault carrying the rest of the weapons
- Creates a loud, thunder-like crash by snapping her fingers (perhaps an early predecessor to Zoom's "thundersnap?")
- Shakes her head at super speed, removing all of the water from her wig in a few seconds

Spoiler: One has to wonder who in Atlantis thought building a device to freeze the entire ocean was a good idea...

Weirdness:

- We get a bit of a tour of Atlantis, or at least one version of it. I think it's the same one Aquaman hails from, although he's not mentioned in this story. Either way, it is pretty weird, with underwater farms, an artificial sun, and statues of people they've been observing on the surface via telepathy.
- The judge of the Atlantean "sea-shell chariot race" suddenly declares that the prize for the winner includes a kiss from Supergirl - without arranging it with her first. Also keep in mind she's still 15. Luckily, the winner was a boy her own age that she liked, so she happily obliges.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Throwing the algae monster not only to the sun, but to the core of the sun, is a pretty great strength/speed feat. However, it still doesn't exceed Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #270

Superman Story

Notes:

- This issue is mostly just a dream sequence
- In the dream, an older Lex Luthor reformed and created a serum that could cure cancer. Interestingly, in a more modern comic, Luthor actually did create just such a serum from average household products, just to prove he could, then created another one to give his patient their cancer back, because he didn't want to actually help them.
- A response in the letters column states that super-hypnosis only works on people willing to let themselves be hypnotized. Yet we've seen multiple instances throughout this title where that wasn't the case, such as the two criminals who impersonated Clark's parents and tried to blackmail him in issue #247. It seems like the writers were just trying to come up with an excuse to cover why he doesn't use this power to solve every situation where his secret identity is in jeopardy.

Feat Catalogue:

- As almost everything in this issue is a dream, there are no noteworthy feats

Weirdness:

- Superman dreams that he's become old, powerless, and forgotten, while Supergirl has grown up and taken his place. Strangely, he doesn't end up resenting her at all.

- Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Everything that happened here was a dream, and he had no powers in said dream. Dream state old man Superman would probably be Low Street Level or below. The actual Superman would still be Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is the second Supergirl story in a row where Superman was (seemingly) unavailable to help her because he was off on a mission in space. They're going to need to come up with a better excuse soon.
- A rogue Atlantean (really Superman in disguise) steals the magic trident of Neptune and uses it on Supergirl in this issue. She's unable to overcome it, so she has to trick him to defeat him (but see below).
- Kara celebrates her 16th birthday in this issue
- Batman and Robin know of Supergirl's existence
- Superman unveils a room in his Fortress of Solitude dedicated to Supergirl in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to change the trajectory of a golf ball during a windstorm to get a hole in one, and does this multiple times
- Creates dozens of copies of Neptune's trident out of scrap metal at super speed to trick the 'rogue Atlantean'
- Can use her microscopic vision to tell apart the real trident from the fakes
- Inhales all of the air in a room to instantly render everyone there unconscious, but makes sure to leave enough air so that they don't suffocate
- Opens a door and closes it so fast that more air can't enter the room to revive the unconscious people
- Flies to Gotham City faster than the eye can follow
- Digs underground into the Batcave, fixes the hole she entered through, and repairs a cave-in, all at super speed so fast that Batman and Robin can't see her
- The whole process of knocking the people unconscious, traveling to Gotham City, rescuing Batman and Robin, and returning took 3 seconds total

Spoiler: Good speed/reaction and control

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman builds a remote-controlled spaceship carrying fake Kryptonite and makes it seem like it's abducting Krypto and a lot of other animals

****

- Krypto melts a mountaintop from orbit with his X-ray(heat) vision

****

- Batman's belt radio is able to cut into and override public radio broadcasts

Weirdness:

- Despite Batman and Robin knowing of her existence, she somehow felt the need to remain invisible while saving them so they couldn't see her
- For some reason, Supergirl doesn't use X-ray vision to identify her cousin in his Atlantean disguise
- Batman gives Kara a Batgirl costume for her birthday. Okay...?

Superdickery:

- See Krypto's first feat in the feat catalogue. He did this just to get Supergirl's attention (and as part of a ruse as he didn't even need to be rescued). There were probably less dangerous and destructive ways of doing that.
- Supergirl finds a remote-operated alien ship abducting Krypto (using Kryptonite to capture him) and other animals in space. She frees Krypto but doesn't bother to help the other animals, just letting the ship abduct them. It turns out it was a ruse, but she didn't know that at the time.
- Superman, Batman, Krypto, and the Atlanteans arranged a bunch of really dangerous stunts for Supergirl to perform just as tricks while preparing for her birthday celebration. People could have been hurt or her secret identity could have been revealed.

Spoiler: And in the process you interrupted a radio broadcast, destroyed a mountain, fooled around with a dangerous magical artifact, and damaged the Batcave, just for starters...

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from Mid Herald Level here.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #271

Superman Story

Notes:

- While yellow sunlight contributing to Kryptonian powers was already established in issue #262, this is the first time that a red sun is shown to explicitly depower them. It was stated here that a combination of Earth's light gravity and yellow sunlight gave Superman his powers. Although this was in a false story told by one of Luthor's henchmen...
- A response in the letters column jokingly claims that Bizarro is the one who comes up with the answers to the questions asked by readers, possibly implying they're not to be taken all that seriously

Spoiler: Lex made this up and it then became canon somehow

Feat Catalogue:

- As a mountain lion is pouncing on 2 forest rangers, Superman flies back and intercepts it, then throws it a far distance
- While in the Sahara desert, uses super hearing to hear Big Ben chiming in London, buzzing from a sawmill, and a train whistle
- Implies that he could shout loudly enough for the sound to get past the lead shielding and reach Supergirl from the Sahara desert, but only doesn't because it would expose her existence to the world
- Uses super hearing (while still in the trap in the Sahara) to discover Luthor's scheme as he's discussing it with his henchmen
- Escapes from Luthor's trap by - get this - spinning at super speed to create heat from friction, heating up the air inside the lead sphere, which causes it to rise into the sky, where he aims it into a thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt strikes the radio transmitter, shorting it out, so it can't send the signal to detonate the bomb. The fuck!?

Spoiler: You'd think he'd stop falling for this kind of thing, but no

Spoiler: Just say you escaped by magic. It would make more sense.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor builds a hovering craft that he fools the entire world into thinking is an alien spaceship. Abilities demonstrated by this craft include:
* Firing an "energy ray" (that seems to not actually do anything, although it is made to look as if it does by tricks)
* Its hull is lead-coated so Superman can't see through it with his X-ray vision
* It was seemingly able to operate for multiple days without needing to refuel or recharge (as if it had, Superman would have seen it do so, as he was tracking it)
* It is able to broadcast a voice, and open a hatch, revealing a creature composed of a "formless glow" (a holographic image projected from Luthor's base). The creature also appears to speak.
* It can reach escape velocity and orbit Earth, then quickly land in the Sahara desert, in seemingly no more than a few minutes

- Lex later built a second copy of the ship, which could also hover and fly, although it's unknown if it had all of the capabilities of the first one. However, the second ship was equipped with an electromagnet that let it easily lift nuclear bombs, though, as well as the ability to reach orbit and drop the carried bombs on any target on Earth
- Lex built a robot double of himself to replace himself in prison (using parts taken from the prison machine shop and assembled while in solitary confinement)
- He built an "exchange cabinet", which allows him to switch places with the robot via teleportation
- He planted a neutron bomb under Metropolis, set to go off if Superman tries to break out of the craft he was tricked into entering
- Used plastic surgery to make one of his minions look just like Superman

Spoiler: I see no reason not to trust the nice glowing skeleton...

Spoiler: There have to be better ways to use such inventive skills

Weirdness:

- Lex knew Superman's face well enough to give one of his minions plastic surgery to look exactly like him, but somehow never cottoned on to the fact that Clark Kent has the exact same face, too.
- Lex tricks all of the nuclear-capable nations of the world to give up all of their atomic bombs in order to save a fake alien civilization. They agree to this surprisingly readily.

Spoiler: Cold War? What Cold War?

Superdickery:

- Throws a mountain lion to a distant mountain range. He claims that he aimed for it to land safely on a soft bed of pine needles, but at that distance and speed, I somehow doubt it

Power Tracker:

- Still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- In real life, there are several places in the Middle - East called "Gaz", but nothing like the one that is depicted in this story.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies all around the world to gather material for her own Fortress of Solitude, then builds it in a few minutes in the desert, and covers it with sand to hide it
- Flies to another solar system and back, then flies to various other worlds to gather souvenirs and trophies, returning in an unspecified timeframe (but probably not more than a few days)
- Flies to a coal mine and squeezes lumps of coal into diamonds
- Uses X-ray vision to search the sea for oysters with pearls and gathers them
- Goes back in time to "The ancient land of Gaz" to terrorize its inhabitants and steal a golden idol, then buries it in the ground to retrieve back in the present
- Travels to 1223 AD to steal Genghis Khan's treasure
- Builds a palace out of emeralds in the Arabian desert
- Coats herself with clay as a disguise and carries the palace to another area of the desert
- Uses X-ray(heat) vision to destroy her Fortress of Solitude

Spoiler: Post-scarcity civilization?

Spoiler: Casual interstellar travel

Spoiler: Messing with the past is fine as long as you can convince yourself they deserved it!

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Streaky, empowered by X-Kryptonite again, locates Supergirl's new Fortress, flies to it, and causes the whole thing to shake by breaking into it
- Streaky finds Supergirl in the Arabian desert and flies to her from Midvale in seconds
- Via sheer happenstance, Streaky uses X-ray vision that specifically burns out the brain cells of Supergirl's foster parents that held the memories of her identity

Spoiler: Considering she doesn't know the source of his powers, she's very blase about all this

Spoiler: So many weird things happening here, I'm not sure what to comment on

Weirdness:

- There's a broadcast on public TV announcing that Superman is leaving the Earth to go on a mission in space for several weeks. Wouldn't he not want criminals to know that?
- Some archaeologists randomly stumble on Supergirl's Fortress of Solitude shortly after she builds it. They all immediately agree to hypnotize themselves to erase the knowledge from their minds (save for the leader, who came up with the idea). Huh?
- A group of random "Arabian bandits", portrayed pretty stereotypically, suddenly show up to raid Supergirl's emerald palace
- We never find out what happened to the palace. Apparently she just left a huge emerald building filled with all kinds of treasures worth billions of dollars sitting by itself in the desert.

Superdickery:

- Carelessly uses her powers to make her foster parents money, without realizing they are tricking her, but she should know better
- Terrorizes some ancient people and steals their golden idol, justifying it by claiming that their entire civilization was evil and cruel
- Carelessly messes with the past, even though she's convinced she's only stealing things from evil people

Power Tracker:

- Some pretty good speed feats here, but nothing beyond Mid Herald Level.

Action Comics #272

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance (and, I believe, first mention) of Aquaman in this title
- If the whole "Mental Man" plot seems familiar, see issue #196. As that was the last Golden Age (Earth-2) issue, I guess this one can be considered the version of the same events that transpired on Earth-1 instead. Of course, due to recent retcons, apparently the same characters experienced both versions of events... wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff.
- Lois Lane was apparently the "class artist" in college
- Also, the first appearance of Lana Lang in this title

Feat Catalogue:

- Temporarily stops his own heart to fake his death

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Aquaman makes a whale turn away from a boat to avoid crashing into it

Weirdness:

- Superman and Aquaman's plan involved creating a hoax that a fictional superhero came to life, and then assuming that a criminal would try to recruit him to help his gang rob an armored car. Somehow this actually worked.

Superdickery:

- Superman and Aquaman mess with Lois by making her think her fictional creation has come to life and wants to marry her, and then trick her into thinking that Superman is dead, as part of a convoluted plot to catch a criminal.

Spoiler: We've seen Batman and Aquaman, now all we're missing is GL, Flash, WW, and Martian Manhunter

Power Tracker:

- Aside from the (interesting) capability to purposefully stop and restart his own heart, there are no notable feats in this issue, so he's still Mid Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is a 2-part story that continues next issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Quickly flies "far across the universe" (exact distance unknown, though) to the planet Terra
- When an extraterrestrial Supergirl known as "Marvel Maid" opens the door to her space fortress, Supergirl flies inside at super speed, remaining unperceived even by the other being with similar powers to her own.
- Uses precisely targeted super breath to shatter a rock from high in the air, making it look as if a man with a hammer did it
- Squeezes a chunk of coal into a diamond

Spoiler: Not quite sure how "far across the universe" this is, but seems impressive

Spoiler: Faster than a... subterranean Supergirl?

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- We see the return of Superman's "Super-Univac" computer, as it is able to identify a near-duplicate planet to Earth after examining some data

Weirdness:

- Again, we have a planet almost exactly like Earth, with its own Superman and Supergirl, as well as a city called "Macropolis", and a Daily Planet newspaper run by a double of Perry White called "Perry Waite"
- The computer says that the planet Terra "duplicates most earthly phenomena, including two persons with super-powers!" I'm pretty sure there are more than 2 on Earth. Didn't we just see Aquaman in the previous story? Although it could mean that it has two specific analogs for Superman and Supergirl. Weirdly enough, they are affected by diamonds the way Kryptonians are vulnerable to Kryptonite.
- The Kryptonian analogs on Terra came from a civilization in the core of the planet

Spoiler: Are you sure you're not just on a drug trip?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Some good, if unquantifiable speed feats, but still Mid Herald Level.