Pre-Crisis Superman Overview

Action Comics #298 (continued)

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The two stories in issue #298 were put in separate posts due to the image limit

Feat Catalogue:

- While still isolated on the desert island so she won't spread the plant scourge virus, she uses super ventriloquism to talk to the prison warden in Metropolis
- In a flashback, we see how Supergirl fought "the metal androids of Asteroid X", which she considered a simple mission
- We also see her and Superman in a flashback destroying "The Porcupine Planet"
- Along with Superman and Lex Luthor, they all use heat vision to melt and destroy the cache of Kryptonian weapons (which should be super durable, being from Krypton)
- Takes the Phantom Zone criminals by surprise by moving and using the mind-over-matter helmet before they can react, to materialize a Phantom Zone Projector and use it on them



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman is unable to break through the Kryptonian time forcefield isolating Earth, and his robots (3 of them it appears) are destroyed when crashing into it, although the real Superman is unharmed. This also suggests that the robots also have the ability to travel through time, as it didn't look like he was carrying them or anything.
- We see him and Supergirl in a flashback destroying "The Porcupine Planet"
- When the forcefield is lowered and Superman can return to Earth, he immediately locates Supergirl and Lex Luthor
- Along with Supergirl and Lex Luthor, they all use heat vision to melt and destroy the cache of Kryptonian weapons (which should be super durable, being from Krypton)
- Builds an android copy of Lena Thorul so he can use the exchange ray (similar to the one Lesla-Lar built) to switch its place with the real Lena Thorul and get her out of Kandor.

****

- The LOSH views the events happening in 1963 on their time viewer, but they also can't penetrate the forcefield and travel to 1963

****

- Another one of Kru-El's weapons is a beam that can give people Kryptonian-like superpowers, which he uses on Lex Luthor
- Kru-El refers to his weapons as "the most powerful destructive forces in the universe". Probably a bit of bias involved in that statement, though.
- Another one is a "mind-over-matter machine", which is a helmet that allows him to materialize objects from his thoughts, which he uses to create a "reptilian spider" of a type that once existed on Krypton. He is also able to make it vanish when he wants to.
- There is a "time reversal ray" that can "hurl any chosen area a million years back into the past"
- Kru-El uses the mind-over-matter machine to materialize a time viewer, with which he can monitor Superman in the past and the LOSH in the future, who both are still failing to get past the forcefield (despite Superman using his full power X-Ray vision and the LOSH using 'a dozen of their most powerful time torpedoes')
- Apparently the forcefield isolates Earth in space as well as time, as the Phantom Zone criminals say that they can't fly into space because of it
- Kru-El uses the mind-over-matter machine again to materialize a robotic "mechanical catapult" to handle Gold Kryptonite at a safe distance
- Materializes another robot to handle the Gold Kryptonite
- Supergirl uses the mind-over-matter machine to materialize a Phantom Zone Projector

****

- The now-empowered Lex Luthor breaks into the Superman Museum, steals an alien costume on display, and alters it at super speed to make his own costume
- Kru-El, despite all of his inventions, calls Lex Luthor "the greatest criminal genius of all time"
- Luthor uses his powers and intelligence to dismantle some sunken ships and build a giant tower that can supposedly attract Gold Kryptonite from anywhere on Earth like a magnet, but he actually set it to attract fake Gold Kryptonite (however that works)
- Along with Superman and Supergirl, they all use heat vision to melt and destroy the cache of Kryptonian weapons (which should be super durable, being from Krypton)







Weirdness:

- The Porcupine Planet. WTF?
- When the time reversal ray is tested on a group of marines, it not only sends them to the past, but changes their clothes and weapons to those of cavemen, seagulls around them to flying reptiles, and their boat into a log canoe. These changes come undone as they leave the area affected by the ray.
- Instead of relying on Luthor to get it for them, why didn't the villains just use the mind-over-matter machine to materialize some Gold Kryptonite they could use? They could even have made it appear inside a lead box so it wouldn't affect them.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- We don't know how large or powerful the "Porcupine Planet" was (no, I still can't get over that...), but destroying the Kryptonian weapons cache was impressive, even if it required the combined HV of 3 people with Kryptonian powers. But Supergirl is still at High Herald Level.

Action Comics #299

Superman Story

Notes:

- This story is classified as an "untold tale" - in other words, a flashback to events that happened before the 'current' point in the timeline that were never before shown. So still canon, but not contemporary.
- A response in the letters column acknowledges the mistake in issue #295, where they stated that there were 103 members of the UN, even though there were actually 110 at the time

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman and his new robots fly to the planet Tharrl, in a binary star system, again showing the robots can go FTL.
- The new robots neutralize a metal-eating alien creature
- While on Tharrl, Superman uses his telescopic vision to spot 3 alien ships heading for Earth
- The robots then stop the alien fleet and make them retreat back to their home galaxy
- The stretching tentacle robot reaches out into space, grabs a bunch of green Kryptonite meteors, and assembles them into a ring around the planet Tharrl to trap Superman, then grabs some red Kryptonite meteors and brings them down to the surface
- The new LL-35 robot calculates how to manipulate red Kryptonite with rare chemicals to give it specific effects on Superman
- While weakened by green Kryptonite, Superman is forced to dive into a sea of molten metal and inhale enough to spit a geyser into the air, higher than that of a native alien whale-like creature that lives in the same environment
- Recovers pretty quickly from near-death due to Kryptonite poisoning
- Travels back in time 20,000 years to avoid the planet's new ring of green Kryptonite meteors, then returns to 1963 once he is far enough away from the Kryptonite







Weirdness:

- Superman receives a new Superman robot named "LL-35" as a gift from the planet Jax (this planet probably has nothing to do with the Kryptonian criminal Jax-Ur). It is equipped with a supercomputer and miniature laboratory built into it that says for Superman to dismantle all of his older robots and build two new ones to certain specifications. He's skeptical, but does it anyway. Of the two new robots, one of them has two heads (one of which can project Kryptonite vision), and the other one has tentacles for arms, one of which is made of plastic and can stretch for miles, and another one can transmit electric shocks.
- Funny retro tech - the robots have "loyalty tapes" that can be tampered with to make them turn on Superman. These are shown as being actual tapes producing paper readouts.
- There is enough Green Kryptonite just floating around near the planet Tharrl to form a ring around it
- The robots torture Superman by making him do silly stunts, and using Red Kryptonite to make his body all stretched out, and then to give him 3 heads (both effects wear off very quickly for some reason)
- The planet Tharrl is inhabited by human-looking cavemen, and there is a weird clock device (stated to be 20,000 years old) that measures time using a 12-hour day for some reason, and causes different things to happen every hour, in order to help the cavemen. Turns out it was built by Earthlings from Atlantis who escaped before it sank and were trying to find a new planet to settle on. (They say that this explains the 12-hour system, but it really doesn't, as that only dates back to around 1500 BC in real life, although in the DCU, who knows...)
- Again, the term 'Atlantides' is used for inhabitants of Atlantis.


Superdickery:

- Most of the stuff the robots did, if that counts


Power Tracker:

- Some nice speed feats and a clever use of time travel, but still nothing to put him above High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- We see an editor's note explaining how Superman and Supergirl built a replica of the planet Krypton in a distant solar system and populated it with androids, in Superman #150. I'll get to that when I eventually cover that title (hopefully).
- We see statues of some of the gods that were once worshipped on Krypton: Telle, God of Wisdom, Mordo, God of Strength, and Lorra, Goddess of Beauty. It's unclear if these gods exist as actual beings in the DCU.
- Apparently, Kryptonians drove on the left side of the street

Feat Catalogue:

- According to the opening narration, Supergirl has traveled to "the far corners of the universe"
- Uses super breath to surreptitiously cushion a child's fall so he isn't injured
- When a Kryptonian child blows a door off its hinges with his super breath in front of a bunch of kids, Linda catches and fixes it before any of them can notice it happening
- User her microscopic vision to identify some dirt on a basket as being a specific type of clay found at a spot about 3 miles away from Midvale
- Uses her vision to scan a specific room in the Fortress of Solitude from Midvale
- Flies into space, past the moon, in seconds, and then quickly flies to another solar system
- Flies back to Earth
- Dives in and catches a thrown hand grenade shortly after it leaves the thrower's hand



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman has a shrink ray in his Fortress of Solitude that can shrink Supergirl so she can visit Kandor, and a "reverse ray" that can undo the effect (so why can't he use it on the Kandorians themselves?)
- Superman goes on a mission to the future
- There's apparently also a type of gas in the Fortress that can enlarge Kandorians to normal size temporarily

****

- The Kandorian police take Supergirl's statement on the fate of Lesla-Lar on a "mento recorder". They also have "mento movies" (presumably thought recordings. Superman and Supergirl are shown 'watching' the movie by wearing helmets that project it into their brains)
- Kandorian children are taught and expected to master the English language during their first year of school
- A Kandorian child uses super strength to compress a snowman into an ice sculpture, then shatters it
- He picks up and carries a safe while flying, and throws it onto the ground hard enough to break it open
- The Kandorian child is revealed to be a child prodigy even by Kandorian standards, with an IQ of 348

Weirdness:

- Kandorians apparently use the same IQ measurement system as on Earth
- See the Superdickery section

Superdickery:

- Two Kandorian actors and a child actor leave Kandor and pretend to reenact the events of Superman's arrival on Earth and adoption, but pretend to be teaching him to be a criminal, just to mess with Supergirl and get her to acknowledge them as good actors. In the process they cause some property damage and buy some land, a house, and a car, only to abandon it. They also drive on the wrong side of the street, which could potentially cause accidents.
- Supergirl throws a live grenade at the two, only suspecting that they're Kryptonians. If they were human, she would have killed them.


Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, still.

Action Comics #300

Superman Story

Notes:

- Superman says he's never traveled as far as a million years into the future before.
- It's shown that Earth's sun has become red due to age 1 million years in the future. While it's correct that the sun will eventually become red, it isn't projected to happen for around 5.4 billion years, and at that point it will be a red giant that will likely swallow the Earth. Even before that, it would become far too hot for life or even liquid water to exist on Earth.
- Superman, without powers, takes several hours to walk from Metropolis to Smallville. This could provide some indication of the distance between them.
- When he has his powers, Superman's hair and nails don't grow, but when depowered under a red sun, they do
- In the future, all of the ice in the Arctic has melted, but the Fortress of Solitude is shown to still exist within solid rock
- Kandor had apparently been fully enlarged some time in the future
- Red Kryptonite can still affect Superman when he's powerless under a red sun
- It's mentioned that the future he traveled to might have been one of many possible futures
- A response in the letters column confirms that Luthor really was faking insanity again at the end of issue #294, and had successfully fooled Superman
- Another response in the letters column says that the Red Kryptonite cloud that Superman flew through in issue #296 is a special type of Red Kryptonite that can grant any kind of desired physical mutation to Kryptonians, but can't cause the same mutation twice

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic vision to spot an approaching spaceship and identifies it as belonging to the Superman Revenge Squad
- Follows the ship through time to a million years in the future
- Despite being depowered under a red sun, survives a fall from what looks to be fairly high up and remains uninjured (perhaps not all of his powers had fully left him yet)
- Superman implies that if he is sent to the 5th dimension he will regain his powers, and can then return to the proper point in time and space on his own
- Still depowered, he avoids an attack from a tiger-like creature by using his cape to distract it like a bullfighter
- Quickly figures out how to use ash from a fire to reveal a group of invisible creatures
- With help from some preserved food tablets, an android copy of Perry White, and riding on a flying creature for part of the way, the powerless Superman makes it all the way from Metropolis to the location of the Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic
- Unravels some of the threads of his cape (which still remain super strong) and uses them as ropes to climb towards the entrance of the Fortress, then sneaks in through the keyhole (there were apparently booby traps set up to stop intruders from trying this, but they had stopped working after so long)
- The shrink ray in the Fortress still works after a million years, and several pieces of Red Kryptonite with known effects are still present there and still maintain their properties





Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The SRS ship can travel through time, at least a million years into the future and back

****

- Kandorian (and thus likely, Kryptonian) rockets were apparently powered by "atomic energy, capable of unlimited speed", which allows them to cross through the time barrier.


Weirdness:

- Before abandoning Earth, the human race built a memorial to Superman that involved android copies of some of his friends and foes. Despite being programmed to memorialize him, the androids didn't recognize who he was at first (malfunction perhaps?)
- New creatures had evolved on Earth, including "balloon beasts", creatures that would inflate and float away when they sensed danger, "color cats", tiger-like creatures which change colors like chameleons, whales that crawl on land, giant eagles that shoot lightning from their eyes (supposedly mutated by radioactive fallout), and invisible octopuses that walk on land.
- A response in the letters column says that Red Kryptonite does not affect Kandorians in their city because they have no powers there, but in this very issue we saw it affect Superman while he was depowered...
- Another response in the letters column says that Clark Kent's suit was made of asbestos, to reduce heat from friction. This was back before we know how dangerous that stuff was, and it was just used as an all-purpose 'fireproof' material (see many of the early Marvel Human Torch stories for example). Clark himself would have, of course, been immune to the suit's carcinogenic properties, but what about everyone who came in regular contact with him?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Superman under the red sun in the future seemed to be Low - Mid Street Level. With his powers, he's still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The opening narration says that Comet's powers matched those of Supergirl
- We get a recap of Comet's origin in this issue, in case you forgot (and it is a pretty bizarre one, if you'll recall)

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl uses telescopic vision to look at the ranch Comet was staying on, only to find that he ran away
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to search a large area of the mountains and countryside for Comet, and only doesn't find him because he's in a lead-lined cave
- Uses telescopic vision to spot Comet flying and and attacking a giant eagle that stole a child, and flies to the spot and catches the child before she falls very far
- Along with Comet, plows a farm at super speed, which would normally take all Fall
- Uses telescopic vision to see her friends in Midvale, all wearing Ancient Greek outfits (for a historical pageant)
- Arrives in Midvale with Comet "an instant" after checking it out with her telescopic vision

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl)

- Comet, still suffering from amnesia and without knowledge of how to properly use his super strength, pulls a truck so fast it overturns and breaks a steel rope tying it to him
- Still only vaguely recalling how to use his powers, he outruns a police car and swims up a waterfall
- The narration states that nothing on Earth can harm him (not sure if that's literal, or if they just mean nothing 'mundane' on Earth)
- Eventually, his memories and powers fully return
- Along with Supergirl, plows a farm at super speed, which would normally take all Fall
- Arrives in Midvale with Supergirl "an instant" after she checked it out with her telescopic vision

Weirdness:

- There is an eagle large and strong enough to pick up and carry off a toddler, in the US midwest, no less.

Superdickery:

- Superman summons Comet to the Fortress of Solitude, saying he has a mission for him that's too dangerous for Supergirl, without even explaining what it is

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #301

Superman Story

Notes:

- A response in the letters column confirms that the Superman robots have various degrees of durability, but none of them are as tough as the real thing


Feat Catalogue:

- Uses ventriloquism (oddly, not super-ventriloquism this time) to project Superman's voice from a distance while in his Clark Kent persona
- Lifts the roof of a courtroom, flies to a lumber yard, grabs a bunch of wooden planks, and builds a giant stadium for the audience for the trial before they can overwhelm the guards while trying to get in. It's later shown that during this trip, he also retrieved Clark Kent's clothing, which had been taken by the police as evidence.
- Now here's something... in a flashback, we see that Superman saved the world from a "dark star" (see issue #186 for a further explanation of these) by throwing a heavy asteroid at it and shattering it. If it was anywhere near the size and mass of the one from issue #186 (maybe it was even the Earth-1 version of the same object?), this is an insane feat.
- Uses super-ventriloquism (now we're back to that) to make his voice appear to come from a police radio, and then an image of himself in a window


Weirdness:

- Superman decides to leave the courtyard by lifting its roof and flying out through the gap. Somehow this doesn't damage the building.
- For being supposedly so conflicted over having to try Superman, the jury is pretty quick to declare him guilty

Superdickery:

- Thinking she and Clark are about to die, Lois kisses him, but not before stating out loud that she wished it was Superman instead. Wow.
- Superman tricks Lois and some criminals into thinking that he murdered Clark Kent right in front of her. It was ostensibly as a stunt to catch the criminals' boss, but it's hard to believe that at least part of his motive wasn't to get revenge on Lois for the above item on this list. Upon revealing the ruse to Lois, he even laughs at her.


Power Tracker:

- The dark star feat is at least High Herald Level, further reinforcing his placement there.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- First appearance of the Sorcerers' World, Zerox, which would go on to become an important place in DC cosmology. Notably, it would also be the homeworld of the LOSH villain Mordru (who is actually one of the most powerful magical villains in all of DC).
- The opening narration states that Super-Horse has powers greater than those of Supergirl. I'm not sure if they were just talking about his immunity to Kryptonite, or his level of power overall.
- The POTUS at the time, John F. Kennedy, is referenced in this issue.


Feat Catalogue:

- Streaks across a rodeo arena "at lightning speed" and subdues a wild bull

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- The "space monitor" in Superman's Fortress of Solitude alerts him that an enemy is trying to conquer the Sorcerers' World. Since this was an attempted coup unknown to the planet's rulers at the time, this wasn't something as simple as receiving a distress signal. Not sure how it's supposed to work, though.
- Since Zerox has a red sun, Superman gives Supergirl a space suit to protect her when she loses her powers there. Notably, the "space suit" consists of just a bubble helmet and a thin, transparent bodysuit, much less bulky than a real life spacesuit. Probably Kryptonian technology.

****

- Comet flies Supergirl from Earth to Zerox (not sure of the exact distance, but the DC wiki says it's somewhere in the Milky Way, so it's an interstellar feat at least)
- While turned into a human and depowered, he manages to aim and fire an arrow precisely to knock a cup of a dangerous potion out of Supergirl's hand before she can drink it (she was depowered too at the time)
- Transformed back to a horse, he flies Supergirl back to Earth

****

- The inhabitants of the Sorcerers' World were originally from Earth, but migrated there via magic in the past, taking many mythical creatures with them
- Prince Endor, the current ruler of Sorcerers' World, casts a spell that temporarily turns Comet back into a centaur and then a full human, although he lacks powers during the transformation.

****

- Concentrating on trying to contact Comet telepathically, Lena Thorul gets a vision of him in his human form riding a horse at a rodeo

Weirdness:

- Supergirl apparently doesn't know what a chimera is. You'd figure she would, having studied Earth culture and mythology extensively, and even taken many trips into the mythical past. She even correctly identifies Cerberus directly afterwards.
- She also seems surprised that said creatures are real, even though she encountered a minotaur and a unicorn as recently as issue #289.
- Prince Endor says that his spell will activate every time a comet passes through Earth's solar system, turning Comet into a powerless human. Except that would be 100% of the time, since there are always comets in the solar system. I suppose he probably meant every time a comet is visible to the naked eye from Earth.
- Supergirl knew about one of Lex Luthor's laboratories in an abandoned warehouse near the edge of Metropolis, which still had his scientific devices in it. No one had confiscated them yet... and she also told Comet its location for some reason.
- Apparently having been a centaur gives Comet in human form an amazing talent for horseback riding
- Supergirl unwittingly ends up kissing "Bronco Bill", Comet's human identity


Power Tracker:

- Supergirl spent most of this issue depowered under a red sun, so she didn't do much of note. Under the red sun she would probably be Low Street Level, and with her powers back, High Herald Level.

Action Comics #302

Overall Notes:

- This issue had the archive error, so sorry about the messy scans

Superman Story

Notes:

- Perry White's wife, Alice, appears briefly in this issue. I think this might be her first appearance in this title, but I'm not sure.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses microscopic vision to identify that a hole in a water tank was deliberately drilled
- His cape is able to protect Perry White from the environment and air friction of being flown at super speed to the Arctic
- Apparently the Fortress of Solitude has "special conditioned air" that promotes faster healing and recovery.
- Is unharmed by the electricity from a power line channeled through Perry White's phone
- Some more things seen in the Fortress in this issue include:

* An "Air-whirl weapon from the rainbow world Zar" which creates a multi-colored tornado
* A "Projector for dematerializing any matter for one minute"
* A "Flying belt" given to Superman by aliens (one wonders why they would think he would need it)

- Seeing a sniper about to shoot Perry White from a building across the street, and while weakened from Kryptonite, Clark dives into an open elevator shaft, falls far down enough so that the Kryptonite doesn't affect him anymore, changes costumes, and flies up and intercepts the bullet before it hits Perry


Weirdness:

- Finding that criminals are after Perry White's life, Superman decides to kidnap him and take his place, but is then outed as being Superman while in Perry's identity, so Superman has to pretend to be Perry White pretending to be Superman. Meanwhile, Perry finds a flying device in the Fortress of Solitude and uses it to escape and then pretend that he is Superman.

Superdickery:

- Kidnaps Perry White and locks him in his Fortress while taking over his identity. Ostensibly to protect him, but he didn't give the guy a choice in the matter.
- Directly admits that he enjoys his ruse of pretending to be Perry White just for the purpose of messing with Lois and Lana
- Bullies Jimmy Olsen by acting like a worse boss than the real Perry White



Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable here, so still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Atlantis is again referred to as a continent. Also, its existence and location are apparently known to the public, and the ocean above it (called "Zone X") is forbidden to fishing ships.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic vision to spy the fishing ship that caught Lori and Jerro from across the ocean and quickly arrives there to free them
- Fixes the lighthouse that Comet is wrecking at super speed before it collapses, and then replaces its light with a boulder that she lit up to glow brilliantly with her heat vision (a temporary fix but it works)
- Fixes an atomic submarine by welding it back together with her heat vision, saying that the hull is now stronger than it was originally
- Follows Comet back through the time barrier to the past
- Fixes the damage he did to the Panama Canal, and returns to the present
- After learning that Vostar is responsible for Comet's behavior, she locates his lair and flies to it from Metropolis "in the next instant"
- Overpowers Vostar and uses his helmet to free Comet from the mind control


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- According to Supergirl, Superman is currently away in a distant galaxy

****

- Comet grabs the anchor of an illegal fishing ship and drags it to a UN patrol boat
- While under mind control, smashes a lighthouse and undermines the island it's on, nearly toppling it
- While under mind control, destroys an atomic submarine
- Proceeds to smash a dam, the Statue of Liberty, and the Washington Monument
- Is completely unharmed by US military weapons including cannons and missiles
- We see that Comet can also time travel, as he flies back to the era when the Panama Canal was being built
- Kicks over a mountain to try to block the Panama Canal
- Travels back to the present (1963), while the spell from last issue is starting to change him to a human

****

- The Atlantean mad scientist Vostar has a "mental command helmet" that implanted a telepathic suggestion in a group of fishermen, and was later used to control a mutated creature he created, and then to control Comet and make him go on a rampage


Weirdness:

- The issue begins with a visit to a "sea circus", featuring an octopus trained to juggle objects above water
- We see a "sea spider" that spins webs to catch fish underwater. That's not how real life sea spiders behave or look like.
- Vostar commands Comet to travel back to 1910 to sabotage the Panama Canal. He does so, but when returning to the present, he begins to change to a human due to the comet spell, which was caused by Halley's Comet's appearance in 1910, even though the effects didn't start until he was already traveling back to the future, and the transformation lasts for a while in the present even when there is no comet

Superdickery:

- Comet wrecks a lot of stuff. He was under mind control, but we count that kind of thing for Superman, so why not him too?

Power Tracker:

- Supergirl shows the ability to track and follow another being through time, although it could already be inferred that she could do that since we've seen Superman do something similar already. Anyway, she is still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #303

Superman Story

Notes:

- Apparently there are samples of Green Kryptonite kept in a lead vault in the Pentagon
- A response in the letters column states that before its destruction, Krypton's civilization was "one of the most enlightened in the universe"

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super-ventriloquism to make it seem as if Perry is calling Lois from another room
- Using "his amazing ability of total recall", he remembers a conversation his father had with another scientist on Krypton that he saw and heard when he was a baby

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Six members of the Kandorian Superman Emergency Squad, enlarged to only a few inches tall, manage to hold the Fortress of Solitude's door closed against the transformed Superman trying to open it. (It's possible he could have forced his way in, but just didn't want to damage the Fortress).

Weirdness:

- Jor-El and other Kryptonian scientists fire the eggs of destructive creatures called Drangs into space. One of them passes through the cosmic Red Kryptonite cloud (the one that can transform a Kryptonian into anything they're thinking about once) and its shell is converted into Red K, then it lands on Earth. An earthquake uncovers it, Superman finds it, and since he was thinking of the Drang at the time, it transforms him into one. Everyone thinks the egg hatched and the creature killed him. Weird plot, but we've seen weirder.
- The military is so desperate to destroy the 'monster' that they attack it with fighter planes in the middle of Metropolis and even launch nukes at it, over American soil. All before they finally think of using Kryptonite.


Superdickery:

- Superman has apparently gotten Lois into a toxic, dependent relationship, as she states: "I don't care what happens to me, now that Superman is dead", and seems suicidal. After it's revealed that he's alive, this is never brought up again.
- Vandalizes the Daily Planet sign in an attempt to reveal that he's Superman transformed into the creature
- Vandalizes a statue and memorial to himself in another attempt to communicate

Power Tracker:

- Considering that the Drang was shown in a past record as going on a kaiju-like rampage destroying buildings on Krypton, and due to its size, when empowered by the yellow sun it is probably significantly stronger than a humanoid Kryptonian, but I'm not sure if this transformation would put Superman in that form above High Herald Level. Still High Herald Level for his base form.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- A place named "Chu-Li Island", supposedly near Korea, is mentioned and shown in this issue. As far as I can tell, this isn't a real place.
- Supergirl apparently has a basement laboratory

Feat Catalogue:

- Cleans the house at super speed
- Uses X-ray vision to read an ID card in a guy's wallet
- At super speed, takes a bunch of rails from an abandoned railway track and builds a pen around two escaped tigers
- Makes a "lightning switch" back into her civilian identity, which she is shown to be in "an instant later"
- When the family car falls over a cliff, she switches to Supergirl, catches it, puts it back on the road, and then switches back before her 'brother' can notice she's gone.
- Uses a combination of heat vision and super breath to dry a bunch of clothes at super speed
- Catches a runaway car "at lightning speed" before it crushes a guy
- Creates a pill that can give someone powers similar to hers for one hour
- Catches and stops a smugglers' jet plane in mid-air
- Flies to Korea, uses telescopic vision to locate and read a specific gravestone, then flies back to Midvale "at lightning speed"
- The powers granted to someone by the pill also don't come with the Kryptonite weakness


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- The Atlanteans were able to see what was happening on their monitor screens, and used their telepathy to figure out the entire situation

Weirdness:

- Does it strike anyone else as weird that Supergirl can make a pill to give someone powers like hers, even temporarily, using just normal chemicals and equipment in a suburban basement? What if a real villain found out about this process?

Superdickery:

- Making those pills and allowing people to potentially have access to them probably counts

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #304

Overall Notes:

- This issue had the archive error again. I'm sorry about this, it's so frustrating.

Superman Story

Notes:

- This story seems to be a rehash of the one in issue #220. Some of the scenes are even near-identical. I would say that this could be the Earth-1 version of the same events on Earth-2, except issue #220 was already the Silver Age, and took place on Earth-1. It seems like they're just getting lazy and repeating ideas. There are some major differences though, for example in issue #220, Superman seemed weak in the competition because there was Kryptonite nearby, but in this issue he was deliberately holding back in order to avoid playing into the villains' plans.
- One of the contestants participating in the 'interplanetary super-olympics' is named Borko, from the planet "Gorn". No relation to the Star Trek species, which wouldn't debut for 4 more years.

Feat Catalogue:

- Similar to the scene in issue #220, Superman resists the pull of an FTL tractor beam all day, and then finally lets it take him to another star system in space. Except this time, Lana Lang is pulled along with him.
- Lana refers to a recent mission where he went through the time barrier into the past
- Superman is referred to as 'the most powerful man in his solar system'. Not sure if they're taking into account other DC heroes on Earth, though.
- Uses super senses to determine that all of the contests are rigged
- Uses X-ray vision to determine that a "power crystal" is actually a device that absorbs his power every time he exerts himself
- Uses the "space-monitor" in his Fortress to spy on the the Olympic planet Vorn in real-time
- Even though he hardly used any of his strength at all in the competition, the criminals still absorbed enough from him to power the engines that moved their (small) planet, at least for a bit (they were planning to accelerate it fast enough to travel through time. Superman acknowledges that they could have done so if he had cooperated and used his true strength in the games).



Weirdness:

- We see a space law enforcement agency known as the "Intergalactic Police". Presumably they have no relationship to the Green Lantern Corps. I don't know if they are ever mentioned again.

Power Tracker:

- It's quite impressive that, even when deliberately holding back as much as possible, he was emitting enough energy to move a planet like that. But it doesn't really give any kind of hint to his full power, so for now he's still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic vision to see a Coast Guard ship catching an illegal gambling ship off the shore, then sees Black Flame arrive and save the criminals.
- She tries to track Black Flame and sees her enter the time barrier, but can't track her further.
- Follows Black Flame at super speed to the Sahara desert
- Flies to the future (the year 4000) in seconds, and uses microscopic vision at super speed to check through a bunch of historical photographic records
- Flies back to the present
- Uses telescopic vision to locate Comet
- Tricks Black Flame by using a fake piece of Gold Kryptonite to make her think that she lost her powers and died. She created it by wrapping a rock in her gold-colored belt and using X-ray vision to make it glow (a power we've seen Superman use before too), then uses real Gold Kryptonite to remove her powers
- Grabs the (still super-powered) miniature Black Flame before she can react




Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Apparently Superman is away in a distant galaxy
- The Fortress of Solitude has something called a "zone-o-phone" that lets people see and communicate with those in the Phantom Zone

****

- The Kryptonian villainess Black Flame melts a steel tow cable with her heat vision and tows a criminal ship further out to sea
- She uses a "brain command ring" to control Comet and make him go on a rampage (didn't we just do this plot?)
- Carves her name in a cliff with heat vision
- Has a "mento-dome" which can record and replay thought recordings, and she uses it to tell Supergirl a false version of her history
- She was apparently watching Supergirl investigate her identity. I'm not sure if that means she could see her travel into the future or not, or if she was using some kind of technology to view that part
- She built an android copy of herself to take her place in Kandor to avoid suspicion
- She also had a "pulse-ray gun"
- While still miniaturized, flew into space and used the Red Kryptonite cloud to become human sized

****

- Comet uses his telepathic powers to find Black Flame and read her mind from across the world

****

- A Kandorian dentist uses something called a "Kress beam" to fix cavities by creating a "permalloy filling"
- The Kandorians can apparently watch any of their populace on a "visi-screen" at any time. Some serious implications for privacy there.
- The Kandorian monitors can scan something as far away as the Red Kryptonite cloud in space




Weirdness:

- There is a bootleg version of Mount Rushmore in this story, called "Monument Mountain", which has carved images of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and... Superman and Supergirl
- Black Flame threatens to destroy a single government rocket fuel depot, which, according to Supergirl, would "halt our country's space program for months"
- A few tiny grains of Gold Kryptonite were apparently too small to effect Supergirl, but worked on the miniaturized Black Flame

Superdickery:

- Comet, under mind control again, wrecks some statues

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level here.

Action Comics #305

Overall Notes:

- This issue had the archive error again. I'm getting really sick of this.

Superman Story

Notes:

- Most of this part of the issue consists of several "Imaginary Stories", which, as the wiki notes, were not given alternate Earth numbers like many others later were, so we can consider them to be completely non-canon.
- In one of the imaginary stories, Superboy is shown rescuing a Zeppelin, with an editor's note saying that those were used back when he was a kid, showing that those stories take place several decades before the 'present' (1963)
- It's also shown in one of the imaginary stories that Green Kryptonite has no effect on Superman when he's under the red sun of Kandor and without powers... but doesn't this contradict Supergirl's origin story, where the inhabitants of Argo City (who had no yellow sun to give them powers) were killed by Green Kryptonite?
- Star City is shown in one of the stories, on a computer monitor. This place is best known as the hometown of Green Arrow.

Feat Catalogue:

- Too fast for the people in the room with him to see, he uses heat vision to soften the glass of a syringe and molds it into a nearly invisible straw, and then uses it to drink a bottle of nitroglycerin "super gently and at super speed" without anyone seeing. It then explodes inside his body but only makes him burp.


Weirdness:

- The driver of a getaway car for bank robbers seems to have a skull for face, for some reason. It was implied to be a mask, but it's an odd - looking one.
- At one point, Lex Luthor ambushes Superman with Kryptonite, and while he's weak and helpless, he performs a jewel heist. Wouldn't it make more sense to use the Kryptonite to finish him off?
- Superman plays "Super-chess" with 4 of his robots. This seems to involve life-sized pieces on a board which is at least 16 squares wide (as opposed to an 8x8 standard chessboard) and somehow it's possible to make a move that captures 15 pieces at once.
- Some criminals confess to using Gold Kryptonite to remove Superman's powers, claiming that they can't be arrested since there's no law against it. But I'm pretty sure it would count as assault or endangerment, and even so, they had to swap out a gold key for a Gold Kryptonite key to do it, so that involves theft and tampering with others' possessions.
- In another one of the stories, Superman goes through a physical exam and does 1000 push-ups without tiring, carries a 200 lb bag while running an obstacle course (and beating the record time, presumably for someone without carrying any extra weight), and a needle breaks when trying to take a blood sample from him. But no one finds this in any way suspicious, and they believe that he's just in really good shape.



Superdickery:

- Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen both mock Perry White for contracting Measles

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- We get another recap of Supergirl's origin in this issue. Seems like it was just thrown in to pad out the story.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to pick out a specific name in a giant drum of paper slips containing the names of every inhabitant of Midvale
- Ricochets a burst of super breath off the bottom of a cliff and causes it to safely lower a falling car to the ground.
- Uses her "super-memory" to memorize all of the details of a device she saw in the past and creates blueprints to build a new one


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl)

- A random human scientist built a "hyper-ray transmitter" to allow him to communicate in real time with aliens from a distant galaxy

****

- Superman invented a "chronoscope" that can "overtake light rays that left Earth years ago" in order to see into the past. It's capable of zeroing in on a specific time and place on Earth and even somehow recording audio


Weirdness:

- In the Fortress of Solitude, we see a "cactus creature from the dark star Valtor"
- We have a literal Alien Space Bat, which looks more like a fish...

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #306

Superman Story

Notes:

- This story features a fictional South American country called "El Salmado" (which is Spanish for "The Salty")
- Apparently "every nation knows exactly how to get in touch with Superman through the White House"
- A response in the letters column says that if Perry White had tried to search the Fortress to find out Superman or Supergirl's secret identities in issue #302, Superman's robots would have stopped him. So why didn't they stop him from stealing that flight belt and escaping?
- Another response in the letters column clarifies that people trapped in the Phantom Zone don't age, and don't feel pain, hunger, cold, or any other material sensations, and are unaware of the passage of time.
- The DC wiki says that Superman wipes Lois' memory of his secret identity with a kiss in this issue, like he did in the movie Superman II. However, no such thing happens in this issue (she never learns his identity, and while he kisses her, it doesn't do anything to her memory).


Feat Catalogue:

- At the Daily Planet Christmas party, Clark gives Lois a "super-kiss"... which seems to just have the effect of making her slightly woozy.
- While exposed to Green Kryptonite, he uses his heat vision to melt a brass hook, releasing a lead vest that covers the Kryptonite and protects him from it
- Compresses a fake Superman costume to a ball the size of a pea
- Moves at invisible speed in front of multiple people and freezes some water from a fountain with his ice breath to form a sheet of ice, which he passes off as a piece of bulletproof glass
- Creates two rubber masks at super speed and switches places with the foreign president
- Knocks out some assassins by instantly inhaling most of the air in a room
- Uses heat vision through a floor to heat up a guy's feat (the heat/X-ray vision combo again, aka internal heat vision)



Weirdness:

- When someone tries to kidnap him in his Clark Kent identity, he randomly decides that the best way to investigate their motives is to crash his own car, wrecking it, and then pretend to have amnesia.
- The villains' plan in this issue is pretty silly, as they want to hire someone to impersonate Superman to guard the guy they're trying to assassinate, in order to lull him into a false sense of security so they can assassinate him more easily. But even if they hadn't picked Clark Kent to be their imposter, you'd figure the real Superman would hear about an imitator being the bodyguard of someone as important as the president of a country and investigate.

Superdickery:

- Uses heat vision to burn the foreign president's feet to make him react as if he was in pain from Kryptonite

Power Tracker:

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

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies from Earth to the planet Mutor "in a distant galaxy". Seemingly very fast timeframe.
- Flies to "the mole world" after a long space journey
- Shortly after, travels to the planet Erg in still another galaxy
- The planet Erg and its inhabitants all give off deadly radiation, but Supergirl is unharmed by it
- Flies back to Earth
- Supergirl figured out the shapeshifting aliens' scheme and built a fake Phantom Zone projector to fool them
- Pretends to be sent to the Phantom Zone by the fake projector by moving at super speed into the past (perhaps similar to what Superman did in issue #285?)




Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman invented a device that can detect whether super-beings are under the influence of Red Kryptonite
- Superman (carrying Kandor), Krypto, Streaky, and Comet all travel through time to the 40th century, and then later travel back

****

- We see a note from Adventure Comics #305 showing that Brainiac 5 eventually freed Mon-El from the Phantom Zone and created an antidote that can protect him from the harmful effects that lead has on his body



Weirdness:

- Some rather cringy and sexist internal dialogue: "Dick has often suspected that I'm Supergirl! So I'd better act frightened to show I'm just an ordinary member of the weaker sex!" Dick Malverne later says "Girls shouldn't be allowed to see horror shows like that! It's too much for their nerves!" While it was made clear that Linda was just pretending to be scared, the comic does seem to imply that this is a reasonable thing to think about any woman who isn't Supergirl.
- The UN tasks Supergirl to deliver capsules containing films and tapes with messages for 3 hostile alien civilizations, asking them to make peace with Earth.
- After being outsmarted by Supergirl, the Mutorians instantly decide to destroy all of their weapons and never make war against another planet again. (Even defensive weapons? What if someone attacks them?)
- Apparently Supergirl can't tell Comet's telepathy apart from the actual sound of a voice speaking

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald level, but it's interesting that Superman and Supergirl tend to both show the capability to use rather obscure powers the other used many issues ago (in this case, the stationary/phasing time travel ability).

Action Comics #307

Superman Story

Notes:

- This issue features a villain known as "The Executioner". Not to be confused with the Thor villain, who wouldn't premiere over in Marvel until the following year.
- Superman disguises himself as a criminal assassin named "Dead-shot Daniels". No relation to the other DC villain Deadshot, who originally appeared in a Batman story in 1950.
- A response in the letters column states that Superman deliberately disguises his handwriting when signing autographs so they can't match it with Clark Kent's handwriting

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to locate and identify a specific gun buried in mud at the bottom of a bay, which was thrown there by a criminal attempting to hide the evidence
- Flies out from under a truck "at lightning-like velocity", grabs a manhole cover and uses heat vision to reshape it into a 'bulletproof shield', puts it on under his civilian clothes, and then returns, all in under a thousandth of a second
- Spies a wire connected to his typewriter set up as a trap to electrocute Clark Kent, and uses heat vision to destroy it before Lois can touch the typewriter
- Searches all of the flower shops in Metropolis to find the Executioner, who is known for buying wreaths for his victims
- Uses heat vision to precisely target a strip of wet rawhide on the trigger of a gun in a tree from many meters away, while driving a car, in order to make the rawhide contract from the heat and pull the trigger, shooting himself


Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- The title of a newspaper article written by Clark Kent: "Police nab accused killer. Clark Kent gives vital evidence." Way to toot your own horn.
- While masquerading as a criminal, randomly insults a bouncer in a pool club and then punches him out, just to establish a tough reputation
- Writes fraudulent news articles about his criminal alter-ego, blaming him for various murders


Power Tracker:

- What can really be said here? Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Apparently divorce was illegal on Krypton
- The Phantom Zone Projector in the Fortress of Solitude is destroyed in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies into space, gathers up some meteors and crushes them into space dust, then combines them and ignites them in the atmosphere with her heat vision to form a giant whirling fireball display surrounded by glowing rings. This somehow opens a temporary portal into the Phantom Zone.
- Carries a submersible 25,000 feet underwater and then back to the surface, with no discomfort
- Builds a time machine at super speed, in the form of a Kryptonian wedding jewel


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Three Phantom Zone criminals combine their mental powers to send a telepathic suggestion to the mayor of Midvale

****

- The criminal Kryptonian Tor-An defeats 4 Superman robots simultaneously
- Tor-An hypnotizes a guy and gets him to obey his orders by spinning a lantern at super speed, then puts him into a hypnotic coma for weeks, which he says is the result of a "Kryptonian technique".
- He then does the same thing that Black Flame did in issue #304, using a thought helmet to transmit false memories of an imaginary past to Supergirl. You'd figure she would catch on to this sort of thing by now.
- Instantly dries some wet dishes with heat vision
- He was able to block Comet's attempt to telepathically scan his mind
- Created a "chemical android" copy of Superman to fool Supergirl

****

- Saturn Girl uses "make-up chemicals of the future" to disguise herself as Supergirl
- Claims that her telepathic abilities are "the most powerful of all time", and is able to read Tor-An's mind despite his mental shields

****

- Comet, Jero, and Lori Lemaris combined their telepathic powers to send a mental signal into the future to contact Saturn Girl


Weirdness:

- See the first feat. How does that work?
- Supergirl mentions a planet called "Floridar". Space Florida?
- Tor-An disguises himself as Linda's science teacher, and then begins to romance her in that identity. Creep. (The narration even notes that he is much older than her).
- Supergirl's time machine sends Tor-An into the future, right into a Kryptonite cage. I guess maybe Superman and/or Supergirl traveled to the future first and somehow set that up? But how could they build that cage without it affecting them? Maybe the LOSH built it?


Superdickery:

- Supergirl is so obsessed with her new boyfriend that she lowers a submersible way deeper than she was supposed to and nearly gets the crew inside killed

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #208

Notes:

- Apparently Superman can't get a suntan (at least, not under a yellow sun)

Feat Catalogue:

- Squeezes a red and black typewriter ribbon to create red ink
- Intercepts a lightning bolt before it hits Lana
- Uses super breath to push the Nemean Lion (or rather, a version from an alternate reality) up a valley
- Creates a fake Stymphalian Bird out of rock and wood so Hercules can 'slay' it
- Dives into the lava of a volcano unharmed
- Takes some strands of cloth from his cape out "in the split second it takes Hercules to blink"
- Said strands from his cape can't be cut by swords, and he re-weaves them back into the cape
- Intercepts another lightning bolt, this time heading for Jason
- After returning to his own universe, uses super speed to grab another set of clothes, change, and fly back under the whirlpool as Clark Kent and emerge to preserve his secret identity

Weirdness:

- This is one of the weirdest ones in a while. After being struck by lightning and falling into a (presumably) magical whirlpool, Superman is transported into the past of a parallel universe where Jason and Hercules look like David and Goliath and are hanging around the Middle East with Ben-Hur (who is a fictional character, BTW), and Red Kryptonite (which exists there thousands of years before Krypton exploded) is harmless to Superman but weakens Hercules (who only has 6 labors to perform instead of 12, and one of them is completely made up) like Green Kryptonite (but the effects last longer), and everyone speaks English (the oddness of which is even directly acknowledged in the story). It's like they created this plot from a Mad Libs game or something.
- Also, it's never explained why Jason and Hercules were fighting, and being struck by another lightning bolt returns Superman to his own reality, where only a split second has passed since he left.
- The ending narration says: "Coming soon - another mighty adventure of Superman in the parallel world!" As the wiki notes, this is never followed up on.


Superdickery:

- Laughs at a guy being hit with a (potentially deadly) rock between the eyes

Power Tracker:

- No change from High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- We again see the phenomenon of a human gaining temporary superpowers from eating Kryptonian food, as we previously saw in issue #217. Interestingly, this also renders them temporarily vulnerable to Kryptonite, as well (Red K in this case).

Feat Catalogue:

- Digs underground, finds a huge ruby, polishes it into a gem with super-friction, and throws it at a statue in the distance, precisely aiming it so it fits in the hole in the statue's forehead
- "At lightning speed, too fast for the eye to follow", switches a glowing red hot coal with a piece of Red Kryptonite in front of Dick Malverne's eyes
- Uses her vision to search the jungle and finds a lost child's mother

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- We see another use of the transport ray that Superman invented that can miniaturize people temporarily and send them to Kandor

****

- The Kandorians were observing Supergirl and her interactions with a super-powered child from a distance on their monitors
- They also have a "Predictograph" that can predict how someone will look when they get older

Weirdness:

- Supergirl is flying over "a jungle country" in order to stop "a native uprising", where a bunch of stereotypical - looking tribesmen in loincloths wielding spears threaten to "destroy every outpost of civilization in the area." Yikes.
- Supergirl randomly had a piece of Red Kryptonite in a lead-lined box in her home. It was one that had already affected Superman, herself, and Krypto, turning them invisible, so it couldn't affect them again, though.
- The fate of the container of Kryptonian food that gave the girl powers is never addressed at the end of the issue, perhaps leaving us to think that Supergirl just left it lying in the jungle


Superdickery:

- Upon observing that a little girl has superpowers, Supergirl seems to let a bunch of spears hit her when she could have easily stopped them, just to see if the girl had invulnerability too. Luckily, though, she did.

Power Tracker:

- No change from High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #309

Superman Story

Notes:

- Former US President John F. Kennedy appears (and has an important role) in this story. Ironically, it was published one month after he was assassinated (and obviously written beforehand).
- First appearance of Pete Ross (a Superboy supporting character) in the 'present' time as an adult.


Feat Catalogue:

- Finds the nose cone of a space rocket that crashed into the sea, swims in a circle at super speed to create a vortex, and lifts it (and a "giant squid" that looks more like an octopus) to the surface.
- Digs to the core of the Earth to retrieve "a rare metal"
- While in a TV studio in Metropolis, uses X-ray vision to look at the Batcave in Gotham City and see that Batman and Robin aren't there.


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- This is weird. Apparently, Lois and Lana are somehow able to shield their thoughts from Lori's telepathy.

****

- Element Lad has the ability to "instantly analyze all elements", which allows him to determine, just from a visual inspection from a distance, that a rock is made of Gold Kryptonite and not gold. He then transmutes it into platinum.

Weirdness:

- The cover shows many of Superman's various friends and allies lining up in front of him... including Lori Lemaris, who appears to be in an aquarium tank that is just sitting outside at the end of the line. In the actual comic, she's in an aquarium tank inside the building, which is not really any less weird.
- Clark Kent absentmindedly starts opening a letter addressed to Superman, forgetting that he's in his civilian identity, and also forgetting that he could just read it with his X-ray vision without opening it (which he later does).
- The former police chief of Smallville, who later became a sculptor, sculpted a scene from Bizarro World, explaining that when a Bizarro child misbehaves, he spanks his father. That's kind of expected for Bizarros, but the weirder part is why he chose to sculpt that and show it to Superman.
- See the Lois and Lana feat above
- Putting on a show on stage, Comet the super horse stands with one hoof atop Beppo the super monkey, who stands with one paw atop Streaky the super cat, who sits atop Krypto the super dog.
- There's a group of Kandorians called the "Look-alike Squad", who resemble all of Superman's friends such as Lois, Jimmy, Perry White, and Clark Kent.
- Batman puts on makeup to make him look like a Bizarro under his mask... for no apparent reason other than to mess with Lois



Superdickery:

- Uses his super hearing to eavesdrop on Lois and Lana's private conversation
- Makes a dig at Jimmy Olsen in his award ceremony

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The Phantom Zone projector is back and in working order in the Fortress of Solitude in this issue, despite being destroyed in issue #307. Maybe it was the extra one that was created from the Kryptonian "mind-over-matter machine" in issue #298, or maybe it was fixed somehow.
- The Phantom Zone projector can be set to automatically return someone after a period of time, in this case 10 minutes
- This issue involves a retcon of Supergirl's origin story, as previously Argo City was said to have been surrounded by a bubble of air, but now it is said to have had a plastic dome protecting it. It also retcons Zor-El not knowing about the existence of Superman before the meteor storm hit Argo City.
- Interestingly, it's implied that a parallel dimension has a spatial relationship to Earth in the normal universe, as it was drifting farther and closer to it

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl herself doesn't really do anything of note in this issue.

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Comet telepathically picks up a stray thought from Dick Malverne that Linda might be Supergirl so he informs her of the boy's suspicions
- Comet scans for and intercepts the faint interdimensional telepathic signals from Supergirl's parents, who are in a dimension similar to the Phantom Zone

****

- The Phantom Zone criminals are able to read Supergirl's mind when she enters the zone, to determine her reason for being there
- They are also able to combine their mental powers to prevent another Kryptonian trapped in the Phantom Zone from communicating with Supergirl

****

- We see that Superman's chronoscope is able to see the past of Krypton as well as that of Argo City after Krypton exploded

****

- Zor-El invented a "non-breakable plastic dome" containing a "germ-proof atmosphere" over Argo City that could wipe out all diseases within it.
- He also designed a "jet-drive" which could allow Argo City to be guided through space to a habitable planet
- This has probably been mentioned before, but Argo City had "nutrition machines" that could manufacture food and drink out of "raw chemicals" (just too bad they couldn't manufacture lead shielding)
- Jer-Em, a Kryptonian from Argo City who was temporarily empowered by its proximity to a yellow sun, flew out into space and used his super strength to redirect Argo City away from the yellow sun against the force of its jet-drive.
- Zor-El discovered another dimension on a different wavelength from the Phantom Zone, which he called the Survival Zone. He set the Phantom Zone projector to transport him and his wife there.



Weirdness:

- This story actually contains a pro-science, anti-religion message, which is pretty weird for the time. There was nothing specifically against it in the Comics Code Authority, but still.


Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #310

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of "Jewel Kryptonite", yet another variety of the stuff, formed from the remnants of Krypton's "Jewel Mountains". What it does is amplify the mental powers of Kryptonians trapped in the Phantom Zone, so they can affect the normal universe.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to scan all of Atlantis and see that its inhabitants are suffering from a plague
- Has an "Atlantis Monitor" in his Fortress, which can observe the place in real-time
- Builds a version of a Phantom Zone projector at super speed, although it can only free someone from the Zone temporarily
- Built a "Zone-shacke", which will automatically return Jax-Ur to the Phantom Zone after 24 hours, and will teleport him to a dying world under a red sun if he tries to break free from it
- Superman also has a time machine (perhaps obtained from the LOSH) in the Fortress, which he and Jax-Ur use to travel back in time to Krypton before it exploded (because if they went there using their powers, the red sun would strand them there).
- Tosses a piece of Jewel Kryptonite into space
- Flies from a suburban neighborhood to the Arctic Fortress in "instants"
- Throws a larger piece of Jewel Kryptonite into the sun to destroy it



Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Kandorians have their own "Zone-o-Phone" to allow them to view and communicate with the Phantom Zone, as well as their own Phantom Zone projector(s).

****

- Jax-Ur uses a device to transmute part of the Jewel Mountains in a way that alters their atomic structure so they will become a new type of Kryptonite when Krypton explodes, having predicted its effects, and also calculated that it would be sent towards Earth
- Jax-Ur breaks off a piece of the Jewel Kryptonite after it enters Earth's orbit. I'm unsure about the material's durability, although it was later destroyed by being thrown into the sun.
- Jax-Ur uses the piece of Jewel Kryptonite to hypnotize Jimmy Olsen (because apparently every Kryptonian knows hypnosis)
- Using their mental powers channeled through the Jewel Kryptonite, the Phantom Zone criminals are able to project destructive mental energy beams to destroy objects on Earth

****

- Lori Lemaris, after being cured of the plague, is able to read Jax-Ur's thoughts while he's in the Phantom Zone. So apparently Lois and Lana are so skilled that they can block a telepath capable of reading thoughts from across dimensions....

Weirdness:

- The Jewel Mountains on Krypton were formed from the corpses of "huge crystal birds" that all chose to die in that area.
- While depowered on Krypton in the past, Superman eats a meal prepared by Jax-Ur, not even suspecting that it's drugged (which it is)
- We see a Kryptonian "thought-beast", a dinosaur-like animal with a visual screen on its head that shows its thoughts in the form of images. One has to wonder what evolutionary advantage that served.



Superdickery:

- Upon hearing that everyone in Atlantis is dying from a mysterious disease, Superman says he'll help... after he finishes his meeting in Kandor (a meeting which was not a matter of life and death, mind you).
- To demonstrate the Zone-Shackle, Superman captures and muzzles an alien creature, then teleports it back to its dying homeworld

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Oddly, when recapping the events of last issue and the fate of Argo City, is is said to have been covered by a bubble of air again, instead of a plastic dome as shown in the previous issue
- There's a monument built to mark Supergirl's arrival on Earth at the spot where her rocket landed
- As of this issue, Supergirl's Kryptonian parents, Zor-El and Allura, are freed from the Survival Zone and move to Kandor.
- The last scan here is a link instead of an image because of the image limit on the forums.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies from Earth to a distant galaxy in moments
- Flies back, and can somehow detect the presence of her parents in the Survival Zone
- Modifies an "ultra-sensitive radar screen for national defense" to make it able to pick up her parents' images and thoughts from the Survival Zone
- Working from Zor-El's instructions, Kara builds an "ionic ray" at super speed, welding the components with her heat vision using great precision, to free her parents from the dimension




Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- The Kandorians have a "hyper-speed computer" that they used to find the relative location of the Survival Zone in relation to the normal universe.

****

- The "Memorial Planet" New Krypton that Superman and Supergirl created (this happened in another title I think, but we've seen it referenced in this title before) also has a replica of Jor-El's laboratory that Superman built, containing such devices as a "thought-casting helmet" that can amplify telepathic transmissions, and a "vibro-projector" that can send someone into any other dimension temporarily (although this one isn't perfected and doesn't work)

****

- Zor-El, now empowered on Earth, uses his super hearing to determine the combination to a vault safe

Why not keep this stuff in the Fortress on Earth?

Weirdness:

- The destruction of Krypton is referred to as an "eruption", for some reason.
- At one point, Supergirl shows some samples of imitation Kryptonite, and says that they can affect all Kryptonians. But the samples include Blue Kryptonite, which only affects Bizarros, and White Kryptonite, which only affects plant life.
- Zor-El and Allura cook "Kryptonian rainbow cake" and a "dessert of a hundred flavors" with heat vision and super breath.
- I'm not sure how Zor-El and Allura were able to shrink themselves permanently to live in Kandor, as the reducing ray that Superman and Supergirl use to visit it is only temporary in its effects.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- A nice speed feat, but nothing we haven't seen before. Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #311

Notes:

- This issue has one of the most infamous covers of the Superdickery meme, featuring Superman's trademark "Pope Hat"
- Supergirl is stated to be off in the future with the LOSH during the events of this issue
- It seems to be retconned in this issue that the same chunk of Red Kryptonite can affect a Kryptonian multiple times, just not in the exact same way
- We also see a new Phantom Zone projector, which doesn't look like the ones we've previously seen
- A "White Sands Proving Ground" is mentioned and shown in this issue. Surprisingly, this is actually a real place.
- This is the first part of a two-part story

Feat Catalogue:

- While in the tropics, uses his X-ray vision to see an alert on a machine in his Arctic Fortress
- The Fortress has an "intergalactic danger detector" that picks up an invisible menace heading towards Earth that he can't see with his vision
- He scans the universe for the danger with his telescopic vision, seeing only a swarm of Red Kryptonite meteors in the area
- Destroys a bunch of Superman robots
- The Red K - affected Superman, supposedly gone mad with power, is stated by the now-powerless Clark to have the potential to be "the most dangerous being in the universe".
- Crushes a Phantom Zone projector (good feat, assuming it has Kryptonian invulnerability)
- Is unharmed by an alien "thermo-ray" weapon approximating the effects of a nuclear bomb which destroys a mountain
- Carves a giant palace out of a marble mountain, complete with statues of him wearing his Pope Hat
- Builds a massive wall covered by a transparent dome overnight to protect his palace from Kryptonite bombs



Weirdness:

- We see a stereotypical - looking depiction of an unnamed "Minor Tropical Kingdom" (it looks to be either Islamic or Hindu, or some weird combination of the two)
- A point is mentioned as being at 250 degrees North Latitude. The scale only goes up to 90.
- A point at 50 degrees North, 50 degrees East is also mentioned, which Clark says is in "Red China". In reality, it's in Kazakhstan, thousands of km away from China.
- The Chinese built a full-size replica of New York City to test their weapons on

Superdickery:

- As Clark Kent, refuses to bow to a foreign king, because "As an American, I don't have to grovel before anyone!"
- While split into two people by Red K, the "evil" one exposes Clark to the freezing air of the Arctic to torture him. He also breaks the door to the Fortress of Solitude, but fixes it afterwards.
- Presses a button to disable Kandor's monitors and seal the inhabitants in the city.
- Smashes all of the Superman robots in the Fortress
- Flies the powerless Clark Kent so fast through the air that he blacks out
- Demands that the UN members all vote to make him king of Earth
- Destroys various trophies given to him by the people of Earth as rewards
- Carves a giant palace out of a mountain and demands that all the former world leaders give him gifts, then rejects the gifts and demands that all of the nations replace their flags with Superman flags
- Dissolves the UN and makes himself dictator of Earth



Power Tracker:

- With the Pope Hat, he's easily reached Omniversal Troll Level. But seriously, we're still at High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Apparently Linda is considered the most popular girl in Midvale, and Supergirl also gets Valentine's Day letters and gifts from all over the world, with Perry White saying she's the most popular girl on Earth.
- Maldor, the evil wizard from Comet's origin story, has his name misspelled as "Malador" in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses heat vision to cause the molecules in the air to refract light and create a rainbow

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Comet travels through time back to Ancient Greece to visit Circe
- Travels back to 1964, although he crash-lands because the effect of the potion he got from Circe starts taking hold
- After being covered in oil and set alight, the oil burns off with no damage to Comet
- He's also bulletproof
- Stops and destroys a train

****

- Circe perfected a magical potion which she claims can turn any creature into a human. She demonstrates it on a lamb.
- Circe also has a magic "oracle bowl" that allows her to see into the future
- She is able to use a magic potion to transform Biron back into Comet by dripping it into the oracle bowl, while she's thousands of years in the past

Weirdness:

- In Atlantis, Jerro trains "luminous fish" to spell out the message "LOVE TO MY VALENTINE SUPERGIRL"
- This is another issue that continues the weird shipping between Supergirl and Comet (at least he's in human form again)
- One caption reads "Meanwhile in the past" - just think about that for a moment


Superdickery:

- The amnesiac Comet obeys the commands of a criminal to help him rob a train

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #312

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from last issue (and another cover featuring the Pope Hat)
- The flashback to Metallo's origin in issue #252 shows him being powered by Kryptonite immediately after his surgery, although he was actually first powered by uranium

Feat Catalogue:

- Overhears the Daily Planet staff plotting against him, even though they were trying to do so secretly in Perry White's boat
- Some Superman robots fly from Clark Kent's apartment to Superman's palace in seconds
- Easily destroys the 3 last Superman robots
- As he was being split into two halves by the Red Kryptonite, his super hearing intercepted a message from aliens, whose "invisible space fleet" was "approaching all intelligent planets in the universe"
- Located the source planet of the invasion in space
- Monitored the invisible robot missile ship in space and found out when it would become visible
- In "a half instant", intercepts the alien missile and throws it back to its home planet, destroying it (although the planet was already devastated)




Weirdness:

- Without context, the cover is one of the weirdest ones out there, as noted by Superdickery.
- Clark somehow manages to bluff two cops into thinking he's Superman even after being shot, despite suffering an effectively fatal wound
- Two mermaids from Atlantis just happened to find the wounded Clark in the Midvale river... I guess that could be explained by their telepathy, though
- When the medical science of Atlantis can't save him, Clark randomly remembers Metallo and asks them to perform the same operation on him, making him into a Kryptonite - powered cyborg. They somehow know how to do it, too.
- It turns out that the 'evil' Superman was good all along, as he was putting on a ruse to cover up an alien attack... yeah, I don't quite buy it. This also means that every act of Superdickery in this and the previous issue's story was done as part of that ruse, and he somehow felt justified in doing them.
- When the effects of the Red Kryptonite wear off (it turns out it wasn't permanent, like was previously claimed), the Metallo cyborg Clark Kent merges back with Superman and the cyborg body is left there without a head.




Superdickery:

- The opening narration states: "Imagine Gengis Khan, Nero, Ivan the Terrible and Hitler rolled into one, and you'll begin to understand the nature of the evil creature who now menaces a world he once protected!"
- Lifts up Perry's boat and places it on a sandbar out at sea, where it will take days for the tide to lift it into the water again (however that's supposed to work)
- Caused several explosions to knock out the monitoring systems in Atlantis
- Threatens to incinerate Clark with his heat vision
- Doesn't do anything to stop any of the other robot missiles that might be out there, only saving Earth and not bothering to worry about any other planets.

Power Tracker:

- Great strength, speed, and accuracy feat with the missile. Unfortunately though, sans the almighty Pope Hat, he's back to High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This issue references Superman #157, which I'll hopefully cover eventually. In that issue, apparently an alien race gave Superman a computer that could predict the future, and now they're giving one to Supergirl too

Feat Catalogue:

- Rescues a submarine and safely brings it to shore
- Lifts a collapsing building and throws it into a swamp at the edge of the city, although it turns out to have been a movie special effect that she just ruined
- Flies off to gather materials including a giant house - sized canvas and paint, and returns "in a matter of moments"
- Paints the canvas at super speed to exactly replicate the destroyed prop building, then paints a bunch of pictures over the same canvas at super speed to make it look like it collapsed in real time, like a flip book
- Rips a telegraph pole out of the ground and throws it like a spear, overtaking and knocking a supersonic plane out of the air before it can reach the Mexican border
- Searches a cruise ship at super speed for a bomb that is lined with lead, and only finds it as it starts to smoke, then throws it into the air where it detonates safely
- Pulls the cruise ship to shore so it doesn't go over Niagara Falls
- Gives a lecture on space navigation to a bunch of aliens on a space station near Saturn
- Is unharmed by an alien lightning weapon as a demonstration of her powers




Weirdness:

- Supergirl receives a message from the "Cybern galaxy", in a missile that is labeled, in English, "Cybern Space Express for Supergirl... Planet Earth"
- Despite the "Predictor" being a super advanced alien computer that can predict the future, it prints its output on paper tape
- A bunch of rich people were gambling aboard a cruise ship, with plans to donate all of the winnings to charity. But the weird part is that they were apparently sailing on the Niagara River and about to go over Niagara Falls without realizing it.
- Supergirl visits the "New intergalactic space college". Apparently aliens from at least 20 galaxies all go to this space station near Saturn to lean "space science and navigation".
- In testing an alien spacecraft, Supergirl has to navigate it through "super-radiation" given off by an "exploding aura", whatever that is supposed to be. She also navigates it through "The Sargasso Sea of Space", where "interstellar magnetic currents" have "gathered up the space wreckage of the past ages".
- Comet was flying in space near one of Saturn's moons, for no explained reason
- Said moon had a thin, breathable atmosphere, and was once inhabited by an ancient civilization that had left space suits lying around (DC universe, go figure)


Superdickery:

- Rips a working telegraph pole out of the ground to use as a weapon, when she could easily have accomplished the same goal with her bare hands, or heat vision, super breath, or many other methods

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, same as usual.

Action Comics #313

Overall Notes:

- This is another famous Superdickery cover

Superman Story

Notes:

- Jimmy Olsen(?) desires to be made king of "Bardonia". I can't find any references to this place on the DC wiki, so it was probably invented and mentioned only in this issue. There is a village of that name in New York State, but somehow I doubt that's what Jimmy was talking about.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman has to handle both his and Supergirl's patrols, since she's currently away on a distant planet
- Catches a bunch of grenades thrown by criminals, which detonate in his hands harmlessly, while simultaneously blocking their bullets
- Makes "a lightning-swift change" to Superman, while simultaneously building a snowman and putting his Clark Kent clothes on it to try to fool Jimmy.
- Built a "brainwashing machine" to erase the memories of people who know his secret identity
- Inhales a roomful of tear gas and blows it out the window safely so it doesn't harm anyone
- Uses super ventriloquism to project his voice to the inside of a spaceship over the ocean while in Metropolis.
- Somehow obtains a tank full of "hyper-energized oxygen" that he uses to revive his friends from suspended animation
- Used super ventriloquism to contact Supergirl in space and arrange a plan with her before she returned to Earth


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Superman Revenge Squad manages to capture all of Superman's friends (including Batman) and hold them in suspended animation in a cave under Metropolis. Then, a member of the squad calling himself the "Android Master" is able to build android duplicates of them that Superman can't tell apart from the real ones with his vision powers.

Weirdness:

- Pirates in a submarine raid a ship off the shores of Canada. For some reason, Perry White assigns Clark Kent and Jimmy Olsen to track them down in a news helicopter. Even ignoring the fact that that is absolutely not a reporter's job, how do they expect to track a submarine from a civilian helicopter (sans the super-senses no one is supposed to know Clark has, of course)?. And they somehow actually manage to do it, as well (with no indication that Clark used super senses to help... the submarine was just on the surface and they found it).
- Superman discovered the android duplicate ruse when 3 of them were affected by the tear gas. Despite being so realistic that his X-ray and microscopic vision couldn't tell them apart from the real thing, they apparently weren't built with the ability to shed tears, which gave them away.
- Apparently Superman forgot about his own hypnotic abilities, as he tried to build a machine to do it instead. It didn't work, but only because the targets were androids.

Superdickery:

- Supergirl(?) betraying Superman on the cover
- Perry(?), Jimmy(?) and Lois(?) blackmailing Superman on the splash page since they know his secret identity
- In the comic itself, Supergirl(?) betrays Superman's identity to Perry White(?)
- Superman patrols Gotham City. That's Batman's turf, and there's no indication that Batman asked for his help.
- Batman(?) also betrays Superman's identity to Lois Lane(?)
- As does Lori Lemaris(?) to Jimmy Olsen(?)
- The blackmail part also happens in the comic as well
- Superman captures Perry(?), Jimmy(?), and Lois(?) and appears to fly them over the deep sea and throw them in to drown

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Part of this story takes place in "Turumba, Africa". As far as I can tell, there is no such place in real life.
- Despite one of my humorous captions, Poison Ivy wouldn't actually debut until 2 years after this issue was published.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to a distant planet and back to retrieve two rare elements in what is described as "a quick journey through space"
- Uses microscopic vision to determine that the two elements aren't corrosive
- Shown to be immune to the vapors of a flower that can erase memories

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Lex Luthor is able to temporarily shield his thoughts from Lena Thorul's telepathy, although when he gets distracted his defenses fail
- Luthor uses the mutated plants he's been working on to escape from prison, after getting Supergirl to retrieve two rare elements from space for him.
- Created a "variety of the ancient lotus" that releases a scent that "causes one to forget all unpleasant memories permanently", making Lena forget that she's his sister and that she was ever the "Jungle Princess".

****

- Lena Thorul stops and befriends a charging lion with her telepathy, then uses her powers to control a bunch of other animals and make them bring her food and obey her commands, including making them fight poachers, board a ship to Metropolis, and do circus stunts including jumping through a flaming hoop




Weirdness:

- The prison warden allows Lex Luthor to work with "rare planet mutations" and even let him set up a garden on the prison roof. Considering all of the ridiculous ways he's escape from jail before, isn't this just asking for him to create Biollante or something to help bust him out? And he does end up using the plants to escape.
- After discovering that Lex Luthor is her brother, Lena Thorul nearly gets hit by a car and is saved by Supergirl, and this somehow gives her amnesia, and she decides to pay for a plane ticket to Africa, where she accidentally grabs the wrong suitcase, which contains a zebra-print leotard costume intended for a movie set in the jungle, and after she wears it, she uses her telepathic powers to make friends with various wild animals and assumes the identity of the "Jungle Princess". I'd say that you can't make this shit up, but someone did.
- Lena commands the animals using made - up "Jungle language" ("Urtah! Itay! Yagu! Hab!") to cover for her actually controlling them via telepathy. Also, after spending her time as the "Jungle Princess" stopping poachers and criminals, she has absolutely no hesitation about kidnapping all of the animals from their native environment and taking them back to Metropolis to perform in a circus act.
- Lex Luthor asks Supergirl to fetch him two rare elements, "vitagron" and "energite" from a distant planet, for his plant experiments. Supergirl immediately does it without even questioning him. She does analyze them with her microscopic vision to determine that they're not corrosive, but that's not the only way they could be dangerous, as is proven.

Superdickery:

- Lena Thorul uses her powers to kidnap native animals from Africa and make them perform dangerous circus stunts.
- Supergirl is absolutely fine with Luthor erasing his sister's memories without her permission
- She also implies that Lena shouldn't recommend that Luthor be denied access to his plants in prison, even though he used them to escape once already

Power Tracker:

- Also High Herald Level.

Action Comics #314

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of the Justice League of America in this title, as well as Green Arrow, the Flash, and the Atom. Now all we're missing are Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and Martian Manhunter.

Feat Catalogue:

- In a potential hypothetical future predicted by a Kryptonian computer, if Kal-El was sent to an ocean world instead of Earth, he would somehow develop telepathic powers like Aquaman


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Green Arrow fires a "siren arrow" what looks to be a very high distance into the sky from an island to catch Superman's attention, and it's accurate enough to pass right by him while he's flying

****

- A Kryptonian scientist named Zhan-Zar invented a "computer forecaster" that can predict the future with a great degree of accuracy when fed enough information



Weirdness:

- A Kryptonian recording device uses a 3D hologram projector, but the actual message is stored on a record that is read like an old record player
- The advanced Kryptonian computers use physical tapes to store and retrieve data
- The premise of this issue is that Jor-El used a Kryptonian computer to predict what his son's life would be like on various different planets, then recorded the results on a machine he attached to Kal-El's rocket, which fell off as it reached Earth and landed in the ocean, and Aquaman just found it and is showing him the recording. It includes scenarios where:
* He lands on a planet of giants and dresses in a costume like the Atom (although he is called "Birdman" - no relation to the Hanna-Barbera character, who wouldn't debut for another 3 years)
* He lands on an ocean planet, develops telepathic powers (somehow) and dresses like Aquaman
* He lands on a primitive planet with a red sun, and, without powers, becomes the greatest archer in the world, invents many new types of trick arrows, and dresses like Green Arrow
* He lands on a planet under a permanent eclipse and becomes like Batman, except dressing as a native flying creature called a "diro"
* He lands on another planet with a red sun, yet it's otherwise almost identical to Earth, where his adoptive scientist father uses an experimental device on him to give him Flash-like powers, except he can't control them and runs into space and suffocates (and strangely, this scenario was the one chosen for the cover)
- The planet Saruun has a satellite that is tidally locked to it, causing its sun to be permanently eclipsed. But it seems like the artist misunderstood the writer here, as what was likely intended to be a natural satellite is instead drawn as a giant artificial one


Superdickery:

- Superman refers to the Flash as "The fastest Earthman alive", as if to imply that, not being from Earth, he's faster

Power Tracker:

- The Earth Superman is still High Herald level, as would be the Atom and Aquaman versions. The Green Arrow and Batman versions would probably be High Street Level. As for the Flash version? Hard to say since he can't even control his own powers.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Apparently Kara Zor-El's name was chosen because she was "born under the constellation" of the "ancient Kryptonian goddess of beauty, Kara"

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl and Comet fly off into space to fight "alien space brains"
- She was apparently off in a mission in the past at one point during this issue
- Carries the Danvers on "a lightning-fast journey" from Midvale to the Fortress of Solitude
- Uses telescopic vision to detect space creatures made of "liquid fire" invading Earth
- Along with her Kryptonian parents, freezes the alien fire creatures and throws them into space


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Kandorian doctors have a "psycho-probe ray", which they can use to examine a patient's brain for abnormalities
- The Kandorians also place a monitor next to Allura's hospital bed so she can constantly monitor her daughter, even when she's in space
- The Kandorians have realistic "android dolls" as toys
- Kandor uses a "hot-beam" that travels at lightspeed to communicate with the rest of Earth

****

- Along with Supergirl, her parents Allura and Zor-El freeze the alien fire creatures and throw them into space


Weirdness:

- See the first feat
- Supergirl's foster parents, upon hearing that her real mother is dying from the heartbreak of missing her daughter, immediately come to the conclusion that they have to treat their foster daughter terribly to get her to hate them so she'll go back to her biological parents.
- Apparently, Allura's heartbreak counted as an "illness", which was cured upon being exposed to Earth's yellow sunlight, granting her super powers, which included the power of being immune to all diseases
- The Danvers, now living in Kandor so Supergirl's biological parents can live with her on Earth, adopt a Kandorian girl named "Dar-Lin" (get it?)

Superdickery:

- In their attempt to make Supergirl dislike them, the Danvers destroy a lot of her trophies and scientific equipment.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #315

Notes:

- The two delinquent kids from the Alpha Centauri system claim that they traveled "23 trillion, 342 billion, 816 million miles" to get to Earth. This is actually almost accurate, as the distance to Proxima Centuari, converted to miles, is ~24.965174 trillion. I'd almost put this under weirdness, as accurate distances and numbers regarding space phenomena aren't really something I've come to expect from comics of this era
- Apparently because the ship from Alpha Centauri uses a "space-warp drive", Superman can't see it when it's in transit, so he can't intercept it

Feat Catalogue:

- Using super strength and heat vision, Superman molds a chunk of stainless steel into a model of a rocketship
- Chases a model rocket that was blasted into space by alien technology and almost passed the moon, easily catching it and returning it to Earth
- No-sells a blast from a ray that can "dissolve the atomic structure" of steel in an instant
- Welds steel prison bars back together by hand
- Uses X-ray vision to determine that a ray gun does not come from Earth
- Searches the area around Metropolis at super speed with his X-ray vision to find the buried spaceship that the kids arrived in, then searches it at super speed to find photographs of the kids on their home planet
- Builds a copy of the boys' home city at super speed, based on the photographs
- Disassembles the city he built at super speed, so fast it looks like it's just vanishing as if the boys were waking up from a dream
- Flies to Alpha Centauri



Weirdness:

- There's a club called the "Rocket Boys of America" composed of kids who dress in silly - looking sci-fi outfits and form mini-clubs dedicated to studying each planet in the solar system. And apparently this club is big and popular enough that they got Superman to come perform for them.
- When the two alien kids use their technology to make a model rocket fly to the moon in seconds, Superman somehow still suspects it's a trick
- Despite saying that every child on their planet had been studying Earth for years, even so much as to master its languages, the kids didn't realize that the kind of technology they have isn't common on Earth
- Superman somehow registers the two alien kids for public school in under a day, just because they were curious about it

Superdickery:

- Cuts down enough trees and mines/gathers enough other material to create an entire fake alien city near Metropolis, then disassembles it, just to play a trick on the two kids

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, nothing much to say.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is a direct sequel to the Supergirl story from the last issue
- There's a line in here about Superman and Supergirl having saved an alien world from an exploding sun, however this is part of a ruse invented by Edna Danvers while under the effects of an emotion-altering poison. However, it's later revealed that some aliens did build a monument to the two on Earth for saving their planet, although it's not explained what they saved it from or how. So I'm not including this as a feat, as it's too ambiguous.

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl built a monitor screen that can observe events remotely, such as the lives of her foster parents who are now living in Kandor
- Moments after returning to Earth, she spots her Kryptonian parents and her foster mother with her telescopic vision after searching the planet
- Uses heat vision to melt a hole in a rock ledge from long range to dispose of some Kryptonite without exposing herself to its effects


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl)

- Zor-El invented a "teleport tube" that can materialize people from Kandor into the outside world at full size, but if they don't return within an hour, their atomic structure will dissolve and they'll die


Weirdness:

- A mutated creature in the Kandorian zoo called a 'Srang' has poison that causes anyone who touches its spines to hate anything they are currently thinking about. Also, the tank that contains the creature seems to be very poorly constructed, as it easily breaks

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level. I have a feeling it's going to stay that way for a while as many of the more impressive feats for both Superman and Supergirl might be in other titles.

Action Comics #316

Superman Story

Notes:

- Direct continuation to the Superman story from the previous issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to Alpha Centauri, arriving just after the two kids land their ship there
- Uses super strength and heat vision to repair the damage to the Alpha Centauri space cruiser
- A device on Alpha Centauri called the "Gravity Master" is used to prevent a giant asteroid from colliding with the planet. It's said that if it weren't for the device, the collision with the asteroid would probably knock the planet out of orbit and into its sun. When the device is damaged, Superman easily stops the asteroid and moves it into a stable orbit.
- Punches away a super strong robot even though it had Green Kryptonite as part of its outer casing, and the radiation was in the process of killing him
- In what is described as "a long journey across the gulf of space" (although, going by the context it probably couldn't have been more than a few hours), Superman flies from Alpha Centauri to the "Krob Galaxy"
- Using his telescopic vision, he apparently searches the entire galaxy and finds a specific planet that he was looking for.
- Tanks the explosion from an alien bomb rigged to destroy a tomb if anyone opens it
- Lifts an alien vault and carries it to another planet he passed by while traveling to the graveyard planet in the Krob Galaxy, and takes it to the floor of an alien ocean, then raises it to the surface, which disables the trap mechanism
- Carries the Alpha Centaurian Zarthur back from the graveyard planet to his homeworld (implied to be done faster than his previous trip since the guy was dying so he needed urgent medical care)
- Quickly flies from Alpha Centauri back to Earth





Weirdness:

- Apparently, on Alpha Centauri, parents punish their misbehaving children by putting them in a cage with a giant tentacled creature that... tickles them. Yeah.
- Superman has apparently never been to Alpha Centauri before, and knows nothing about the civilization and culture there. But considering that it's the closest star system to Earth, and he routinely visits other stars, planets, and even galaxies, you'd figure he would have at least checked out the place by now.
- Apparently girls are allowed to propose marriage only on one night of the year in Alpha Centauri
- A galaxy is alternately called the "Krob Galaxy" and the "Ravenor Galaxy". I suppose these could be two different names for the same place, though.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Some pretty good speed and sensory feats here, but still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Even though this was a potential future predicted by feeding a computer false data, there was the implication that an alien being's hypnotic control only worked on Supergirl because it had devoured Red Kryptonite meteors and gained some of their properties. It turns out that the specific false information fed to the computer was that the creature was still alive when in reality it was dead, so it's possible that this part of the prediction was accurate, and just didn't come to pass because the creature had died.

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- The Danvers use a "Tri-D Communicator" to project realistic holograms of themselves from Kandor to talk to Supergirl and her Kryptonian parents
- The Kandorians can also send items through a "materializer tube" to places they communicate with, and apparently these items are also enlarged to full size

****

- Zor-El apparently has another one of those Kryptonian supercomputers that can predict the future with the right information
- In a flashback, Zor-El saves Argo City from an alien creature known as a "Zygor" by using a "heat-proofed concave mirror" to reflect its burning jets back at it, driving it away, and then uses a Phantom Zone projector on it. Eventually it was freed from the Zone by the Kandorians, placed in a zoo, and eventually died.

Weirdness:

- Some of the odd predictions shown by the computer include
* Supergirl and her parents lifting a giant Egyptian pyramid with a Sphinx attached to the front of it
* The three of them rescuing "moon-prospectors, trapped by a cave-in while searching for rare minerals" - yes, on the moon
* Building a glass tunnel on the ocean floor to enable all of the people of Earth to view the "World's Fair of Atlantis"
- Funny line of dialogue: "Kara is so moody! She misses the gay times she had as Linda Danvers."

Superdickery:

- Zor-El and Allura trick Supergirl with a false future prediction in which she is forced to kill either Superman or Zor-El, which severely traumatizes her, just in order to go back to living in Kandor and to allow the Danvers to emerge and take care of her again
- The Zygor is shown to be a sapient (albeit evil) creature, but the Kandorians put it in a zoo like an animal.


Power Tracker:

- Nothing much happened in terms of feats this issue, so she's still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #317

Superman Story

Notes:

- Another cover featured on Superdickery. Not for Superman being a dick, but just for being a silly cover.
- There's a single panel here which basically sums up the comic book trope of villains who keep escaping/getting free from prison over and over again, so I decided to post it.
- This is the first time that Green Lantern is referenced in this title, I believe.
- Apparently Jimmy Olsen won a trophy for bowling, which he keeps in the Daily Planet offices


Feat Catalogue:

- Checks on a "flock of meteors" while patrolling space, to make sure none of them will hit the Earth
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision and super hearing to watch and listen in on a scientist's laboratory in Kandor, from the Daily Planet. While doing this, he sees a radiation spike hit the scientist and can determine that it's enough to be deadly
- Opens a safe at super speed before Lois can walk across the room to see him (implied that he may have tried every possible combination until he got the right one)
- Sitting next to each other in the front seat of a convertible, Lois begins to turn her head to look at Clark. Before she can complete the motion and see him, he flies away, changes to Superman, finds a nearby inn that he knew of, lights the lantern over its door with heat vision, lifts the inn, carries it next to the car and places it on the ground, changes back to Superman, and returns to his seat, all before she realizes anything happened.
- Uses his super senses to spy on Kandor again, to see that his scientist friend has died
- Uses super ventriloquism to make it seem like someone is drowning near a beach
- Uses "vacuum-breath" to specifically target and retrieve an uninflated balloon shaped like a person
- Uses a burst of heat vision to break the balloon without hurting the fish inside of it (see the Weirdness section for context)
- Uses super breath to slightly move a trophy so it reflects bright yellow sunlight into his face
- Spies on Kandor again, seeing the memorial made to the dead scientist
- Switches to Superman at super speed before Lois can notice


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Kandorian scientist Nor-Kan invents an "enlarger ray" designed to return Kandor and its people to normal size, but it is flawed as it enlarges some things too greatly.

Weirdness:

- The premise of this one is that Red Kryptonite exposure causes Superman's face to temporarily change colors based on his mood, and he has to prevent people from using that to figure out his secret identity. I'd say this is strictly average on the weirdness scale.
- A newspaper printed a story saying that Lex Luthor escaped from jail, but apparently a policeman knew that it was a hoax based on false info, yet he didn't try to get the story recalled or anything.
- Lana Lang hosts a TV show where teenagers can perform for free. The current act is a group of 4 singing girls called "The Beatlettes" (who are dressed and look nothing like the Beatles, if you were wondering).
- Apparently Superman can't normally blush due to his invulnerability. This was mentioned before in issue #298.
- A placed called the "Green Lantern Inn" forms a plot point in this story, and it has a lamp outside that burns green, yet it has nothing to do with the Green Lantern you're probably familiar with (although Clark does mention it as being an odd coincidence that Hal Jordan would find amusing).
- There's a kid out in a boat near the beach blowing up giant balloons in the shapes of things like an elephant, a duck, a mermaid, and a swimmer. Superman wraps the latter balloon around a large fish to trick Lois into thinking it's a living person

Superdickery:

- After seeing a Kandorian scientist friend of his hit with a lethal dose of radiation, he's more concerned about his shocked white face revealing his secret identity to Lois than he is about the dying guy.
- While fantasizing about marrying Lois some day, he imagines them having a superpowered son - who is depicted in the fantasy as flying around inside their house and randomly wrecking things.
- Lifts an inn off its foundations and moves it to a different location, just to hide his secret identity from Lois
- Makes Lois think that someone is possibly drowning
- Steals a kid's balloon
- Wraps the balloon around a fish, nearly suffocating it, although he frees it before that happens
- Lois uses a fake piece of Kryptonite to try to scare Clark, suspecting he's Superman

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level. The color-changing face effect doesn't do anything to impact this, obviously.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to guide a crashing experimental plane to a safe landing, then uses it again to guide a parachuting survivor to a specific spot for a landing
- Uses telescopic vision and super hearing to see a disguised radio and overhear a conversation on it, then uses telescopic vision to search in the direction a radio transmitter is pointing to find a sea base over 3 miles off shore.
- Uses X-ray vision and super hearing to spy on the interior of the base
- With the help of a "rare space crystal", hypnotizes a guy into dancing with her all night, then hypnotizes him into giving her his engagement ring which was meant for Lena instead
- The hypnosis also causes him to lose his memories of the events
- By pulling on the giant anchor holding the "spy-dome" sea base to the ocean floor, Supergirl drags it close to the coastline where the US has jurisdiction
- Overnight in her laboratory, builds a robot in the form of Lena's fiance in order to come up with an excuse for why he seemed to betray her without revealing her secret identity



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Lex Luthor modifies a black - and - white TV in prison into a color TV, and also somehow gives it the ability to remotely monitor his sister Lena Thorul in real-time from anywhere (huh?)


Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Believing Lena Thorul's fiance to be an international spy, Linda decides to sabotage their relationship by hypnotizing him into paying more attention to her than Lena. It turns out he was actually a double agent working for the FBI.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #318

Superman Story

Notes:

- We see the planet "Lexor" - a world first introduced earlier in the Superman title (which we'll hopefully cover eventually). Basically the deal is that Luthor once saved this planet so they renamed it after him and worshipped him as their hero
- This is the first part of a two-part story
- This is the first time Brainiac has appeared in this title for a while, despite being mentioned very often

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman somehow obtains a rocket (either from the government or made with his own technology) to travel to a planet under a red sun
- Despite being depowered under a red sun, easily overpowers and defeats a hunter using Judo moves he learned from Batman


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- While still in prison, Lex Luthor builds a robot double of himself from spare parts and uses it as a distraction to cover his escape
- Sneaks onto a government rocket and modifies it to fly FTL to another star system
- Luthor builds alarms that react to the colors of Superman's costume in order to warn him of his approach

****

- Brainiac was somehow monitoring the proceedings on Lexor from deep space



Weirdness:

- Native life on Lexor includes a giant "madness flower", which releases scents that drive people temporarily insane, a one-eyed "truth beast", with "powerful brain-waves" that cause anyone who gets near it to only tell the truth, and a giant jellyfish that looks like a lake from a distance
- In addition to knowing Brainiac, Lex was friends/allies with a bunch of alien criminals from all over the universe

Superdickery:

- Upon tracking down Luthor on the planet he fled to, the first thing Superman does is punch him in the face, in revenge for Luthor doing the same to him last time they were there under the red sun

Power Tracker:

- Under the red sun of Lexor, he's probably Mid - High Street Level, otherwise High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- In this story, Supergirl graduates from high school and goes to college

Feat Catalogue:

- Thinks to herself that she could have easily won every academic award in her high school class but deliberately chose not to
- Uses controlled heat vision to dry a girl's clothes from a distance without harming her
- Flies to space, collects a bunch of asteroids and clumps them together into a planetoid, then throws it into the sun's orbit at precisely the right speed to pass in front of the moon and cause an eclipse at a specific time
- Uses super ventriloquism to contact Comet, wherever he was on Earth, and get him to come help her
- Moves a rear-view mirror back and forth at super speed to instantly hypnotize someone and make her black out, then changes to Supergirl, rearranges some haystacks, and returns to the car as it falls safely on top of them



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Beppo the Super Monkey is somehow able to recognize Supergirl in her Linda identity

****

- Comet the Super Horse is immune to a viral infection

Weirdness:

- A non-copyright-infringing "Dacy's Department Store" is seen in this issue
- A bitchy sorority leader keeps trying to haze Linda and figures that only someone with super intelligence could have come up with the idea of transferring books from an old to a new library by having students check them out of the first one and return them to the second, so based on this she is convinced that Linda is Supergirl, and to prove it she takes her in a car and deliberately drives off a cliff...

Superdickery:

- Causes a lunar eclipse just to avoid being seen in an embarrassing dress

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #319

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- The ending is pretty odd, as, although Superman escapes execution, Lex still effectively 'wins', getting to stay on Lexor and avoid justice. I would think this kind of thing would be against the rules of the Comics Code Authority when this was written.

Feat Catalogue:

- Still powerless under the red sun, he is able to somehow disguise his voice as that of someone else, well enough to fool a prison guard

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor either invented or discovered (it's not quite clear) a drug that can place someone in a coma for 5 days where they will appear to be dead to all types of medical examination, as well as an antidote for it

Weirdness:

- Apparently the Truth Beast (remember, from the previous issue?) is so sensitive that it can't be in the presence of the thoughts of more than 1 or 2 people simultaneously or it will go mad and die. Again, you have to wonder how these things evolved.
- Again we see more weirdly specific labels, such as Luthor labeling one of his drugs "Coma drug: One tablet, when swallowed, will induce deathlike coma for five days" in large, bold print

Superdickery:

- Claims he was punching Luthor in "self-defense", even though Luthor didn't hit him first
- Captures and subdues a lawyer who was assigned to defend him, so he could steal his clothes and disguise himself

Power Tracker:

- Mid - High Street Level under Lexor's red sun. High Herald Level otherwise.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Supergirl tries to change history by stopping Alexander Hamilton from being shot, but fails, due to the weird time rules in play

Feat Catalogue:

- Thinks to herself that she could calculate the answer to a chemistry problem in seconds, which would take normal students weeks to do ( the scientific staff at a professional chemistry laboratory said it would take them a full day to complete, although when rushed they did it in under an hour)
- Uses microscopic vision to determine that a chunk of gold ore originated from the Rocky Mountains
- Dives underground, spotting a coal seam with X-ray vision, grabs some of it, and compresses it into diamonds then brings them back to the surface
- Builds a giant glass bubble designed to withstand the pressures at the ocean floor, and comfortably accommodate multiple people. It's also equipped with cameras that can take pictures of sealife.
- Intercepts a bullet at invisible speed



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman invented a new, portable time travel device (I guess for if he's depowered and needs to travel through time like the situation in issue #300, maybe). It transports Supergirl and her classmates back to the year 1804 and then back to the present.

****

- Shrinking Violet from the LOSH can apparently "shrink to infinitesimal size at will"
- Uses her advanced future knowledge to rewire an audio recorder to turn it into a radio transmitter that connects to the school's public address system

Weirdness:

- The bitchy college rival Donna Storm again serves as the antagonist in this issue, even though she seemed to have been redeemed at the end of the previous one
- In Atlantis, we see an "elasto-fish" that can squeeze its body through a tiny opening, and a "glass fish" that is completely transparent except for its skeleton. While the latter one sort of exists, the former seems to be completely fictional, as far as I can tell

Superdickery:

- When Donna is cheating in her classes, Linda cheats right back

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #320

Notes:

- It was later clarified that the versions of Hercules, Samson, and Atlas seen in this issue were actually from Earth-Three (the Crime Syndicate universe). They were drawn from the wrong universe due to the interference of the inhibitor ray.
- Superman dons a costume that he took from an alien crook called Volto. I don't know if this was actually a villain that appeared in another title, or if they made him up for this story.
- The events of Superboy #117 are referenced here, another story that I'll hopefully get to at some point

Feat Catalogue:

- While underground in a fallout shelter, he detects that all of the electrical equipment in both Metropolis and Gotham City has stopped working, and traces the problem to an "inhibitor ray" used by a criminal who stole it from a secret research lab.
- While working at super speed while Lois and Jimmy are out of the room, he dismantles a radio and rebuilds it into a "time-drawing device" that pulls Hercules, Samson, and Atlas from the past (see the Notes section though) to the present and teaches them English. The device can also send them back, although they don't cooperate with this at first.
- Uses super ventriloquism to communicate with them from miles away in the fallout shelter
- Restrains and overpowers Hercules
- Flies from Metropolis to the Fortress of Solitude at super speed, puts on the Volto costume, and builds a giant steel horn, then returns to Metropolis within minutes
- Pretending to use the horn as a straw, he appears to be drinking the ocean enough to lower it to a safe level, while in fact he broke open the entrance to an undersea cavern for the water to drain into
- Not quite sure from the art, but he appears to take "thunderbolts of Jove" with no effect
- Reshapes the steel horn into a shield to reflect the bolts back at their source
- Uses super breath to remove Samson's hair and thus his powers
- Tanks punches from Hercules with no damage and overpowers him again
- Grinds some rocks into dust and mixes it with his ice breath to create the illusion that he is turning Atlas to stone when he freezes him





Weirdness:

- The inhibitor ray prevents Superman's machine from reaching through time to the future, but not to the past, for some reason (but it causes it to go to the past of an alternate universe instead)
- It's well-established at this point that the Justice League and various other superheroes exist on Earth in the same continuity, but when Superman can't solve a problem himself and can't rely on Supergirl, his robots, or the LOSH, it's weird that his next resort is to try to summon mythological figures from the past
- Hercules, Samson, and Atlas all have powers from different mythological figures that have nothing to do with them (for example, Samson can throw lightning bolts of Jove/Jupiter and has Midas' gold touch, Hercules has the powers of Neptune and Morpheus, Atlas has the powers of Proteus and Achilles, etc.) This is somehow explained as due to them being from the past of a different universe.

Superdickery:

- Goads Hercules into using the powers of Neptune to raise the sea level and flood most of Metropolis, just to have an excuse for Clark Kent to leave the bomb shelter he was supposed to stay in for three days
- Pretends to be an imaginary supervillain called "Omni-Menace" who wants to rule the world, and terrorizes and enslaves the three characters from the past, forcing them to build him a palace (even Samson, who has lost his hair and thus has no more super strength)


Power Tracker:

- We finally get some good, solid showings against other super-powered beings, which we haven't seen that much of so far. But he's still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Sees a cave-in in a nearby mountain while in college, and rushes there at super speed, digging underground
- Builds a transparent "space-bubble" to carry someone safely through space, making it out of crystals from a mountain
- Carries the bubble with her 'ideal boyfriend' Randor in it across interstellar space to the planet Calyx, which also orbits a yellow sun
- A blast from an alien "destroyer-ray" bounces off her once she regains her powers
- Uses heat vision to carve a picture of Randor's face on an asteroid as she flies back to Earth

Weirdness:

- A pair of mad scientist villains from space spy on Supergirl, read her mind, and create an android in the form of her hypothetical ideal boyfriend, in order to trick her into visiting their planet so they can use a machine to steal her powers. Not the weirdest plot, although considering all they had to do was get her to sit on a chair, they probably could have come up with a less convoluted scheme to achieve it.
- For some reason, the villain thought that he wouldn't be vulnerable to Kryptonite because he wasn't born on Krypton, despite having all of Supergirl's powers transferred to him

Superdickery:

- Supergirl thinks that if both her and Superman's powers are stolen, "Earth will be helpless against crime and evil". Way to give credit to all of the other heroes around...
- Maroons the two villains on an uninhabited planet, effectively condemning them to a slow death. Harsh.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #321

Superman Story

Notes:

- Superman says that he stopped the villains from this issue before a year previously, but the DC wiki says that this is their only appearance, so their previous encounter must not have been shown in a comic

Feat Catalogue:

- Seconds after an alien ship uses a tractor beam to steal the Washington Monument, he sees it from Metropolis and arrives there.
- Blocks the tractor beam with his body and places the Monument back where it belongs
- Chases down the alien ship in space, saying that it has incredible speed, but his vision can still spot it and he will soon catch up to it
- He pursues the ship to another star system (the ship is also explicitly said to be moving faster than light)
- Suddenly exposed to a red sun, he falls out of the sky on an alien planet, and manages to use the last of his powers to land on some clumps of moss so as not to be injured.
- Despite having lost his "super-memory" under the red sun, he still knows many alien languages and can understand and speak the one on the planet he's stranded on
- He is subjected to a "remembervision" machine that can read his mind and project his thoughts as images on a screen. He implies that if he had his powers, he would be able to resist/prevent it from working.
- Still without powers, he manages to hold on to a super-powered alien's feet as she flies through the air and digs through a mountain filled with lead
- Manages to instruct his alien girlfriend to mine raw minerals from a mountain and build a complex humanoid robot out of them, with his appearance and enough strength to easily topple a building
- Fights off and easily defeats two aliens who also had their powers reduced to human level
- Now that both he and his alien friend have lost their powers, he still manages to build a complex apparatus to let them smelt metal using a natural "atomic fire", using "his brilliant mind and the science of perished Krypton". After days of work, they construct a giant robot. He then builds a plastic bubble for him and his girlfriend to breathe in, and the robot throws them into space, actually into another star system with a yellow sun
- Re-empowered, flies back to Earth
- Then flies at (explicitly stated) FTL speed to an uninhabited moon and moves it to the alien star system to eclipse their sun and drain their powers. Since he couldn't get close to their red sun without being drained again, it seems that he calculated the exact orbit and threw the moon at FTL speed into their star system
- Chases down and captures the villains in their spaceship from the beginning of the story
- Stated to be "the strongest man in the universe" when he has his powers.









Weirdness:

- The villains had a device that could temporarily change the rays of a red sun to yellow. Even if it couldn't work in reverse (in which case they could use in on Earth's sun and then attack with no fear of Superman), they could have turned it off while he was in space so he would suffocate, rather than luring him to a planet with a breathable atmosphere and standard gravity like they did.
- Superman somehow knows how to speak the language of an alien planet that he's never been to or heard of before.
- The aliens in this issue (who have Kryptonian - type powers under any color sun), also seem to have trouble using their heat vision to melt lead, although seven of them combined are able to do so.
- On the dark side of the planet, there is a giant "atomic fire" erupting from the planet's crust. Apparently it's fine to get close to it if you carry a lead shield in front of you, though.
- With no powers, he somehow manages to build a giant robot that can pick up and throw him at FTL speeds into another solar system. This is rivaling Lex's crazy tech feats.
- After taking his alien girlfriend back to Earth, she dumps him because she only liked him when he was without powers, and then she hooks up with a random guy from Earth, who somehow gets a hold of a spacesuit, and she flies him out into space.


Superdickery:

- Tries to punch a guy in the face for no reason
- Plunges a planet into permanent darkness, claiming he'll undo it when they "become civilized enough to forget about war and conquest". I think they might forget pretty soon, as they'll be more worried about starving to death with no plants able to grow on their planet anymore...

Power Tracker:

- Mid-High Street Level under the red sun, High Herald Level under yellow.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses heat vision to cut the strap on a suitcase held by escaping criminals so it falls out of their car
- Tracks another person with powers like hers across the city via telescopic vision and only loses sight of them when they fly behind some lead-lined smokestacks
- Digs a giant trench around a prison to prevent escaped criminals from getting any further

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- The Phantom Zone criminals are seemingly able to detect that Supergirl is watching them through the Zone-o-Phone. They also claim to know who the false Supergirl is (although they could have just been bluffing)

****

- Kandor has an "automatic census-taker" that "tunes in on the brain-wave pattern of every Kandorian" to track them all at all times. Why do I get the feeling that Kandor is really some kind of dystopian police state?

****

- Comet flies fast enough to light himself on fire by air friction, burning off a coat of tar on his body (he is, of course, unharmed by this)
- Apparently Comet knows how to get in contact with Circe, who has "a book of magic spells that would even work on super-beings"

****

- The false Supergirl, having gained temporary powers from a blood transfusion from the real Supergirl, uses her "super sensitive touch" to feel the injury she had under her bandages and realize that it's been fully healed.

Weirdness:

- Superman gave Supergirl a piece of Red Kryptonite in a lead-lined locket, which has the effect of making a Kryptonian powerless for an hour, but only on their upper body. She says it was supposed to be for an emergency, but she uses it in order to make her skin weak enough to give blood for a blood drive... not really an emergecy, and inherently a pretty bad idea since she's an alien and you don't know what kind of effects her blood would have on a human body. (Although we do find out - it gives them temporary superpowers). Apparently Supergirl was even aware that this could happen but she donated blood anyway.
- One of Linda's college friends gets into a car accident. She gets a blood transfusion from Linda which fully heals her and temporarily gives her powers, but apparently she hit her head so hard in the accident that she randomly became evil so she began masquerading as Supergirl and trying to ruin her reputation. Then when her powers wear off and she wakes up, she's back to normal and thinks the whole thing was a dream.
- When using a piece of Green Kryptonite to incapacitate the false Supergirl, Linda herself is unaffected for some reason. You could say it's because it was in a lead-shielded box and she only opened it in one direction, but I think the rays would still affect her.


Superdickery:

- We have the copycat Supergirl stopping the police to help bank robbers escape, breaking a bunch of criminals out of jail, bullying Comet, and robbing banks.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #322

Superman Story

Notes:

- While under the effect of a weapon that makes him act cowardly, Clark starts to sweat, and notes that normally he can't sweat
- The scene on the cover of this issue occurs only in Clark's imagination. In the actual story, he's cowardly only in his Clark Kent identity.
- We see a reference to Supergirl fighting a villain named "Evilo" (how creative...) with the LOSH in the future. Unlike many other villain encounters that are referenced in these comics, it seems that this one was actually shown in a previous comic, in this case an issue of Adventure Comics, another series which I hope to get to at some point

Feat Catalogue:

- Intercepts a grenade and tanks it so it doesn't hurt Lois
- It's implied that the "cowardice ray" wouldn't have worked on him had it not been made from Kryptonian technology and materials
- Even after the ray takes effect, it only works on him in his Clark Kent persona for some reason
- Travels back in time to the age of the dinosaurs, then travels back to the present day (1965)
- He manages to overcome the effect of the ray by unknowingly putting on a fake, non-indestructible Superman costume and performing a heroic feat as the costume burns off from air friction, revealing his Clark Kent clothes (which are "treated to make them friction-proof", however that works)
- Blitzes an alien ship, destroying its Kryptonite ray projectors and engines before its crew can react
- Uses a "space-warp curve pitch" to throw the ship to a far distant galaxy



Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Superman Revenge Squad are back and this time they have a "cowardice ray", which they hit Clark with from orbit, and it affects him despite his powers. This is apparently because it was built from Kryptonian technology stolen before the planet exploded. Even when he exposes himself to a piece of Red Kryptonite that has the effect of making him super brave, it doesn't help.

****

- Supergirl spotted the SRS ship on her way back from space, and used her senses to eavesdrop on them

Weirdness:

- I just thought of something: The SRS know Superman's secret identity, so why have they never tried exposing it to the people of Earth? That would be a good way to get revenge against him. Unless they already tried that in a different title.
- Superman thinks to himself that the cowardice effect can't be due to Red Kryptonite because he didn't feel the characteristic tingling sensation when exposed to the stuff. But on the very next page, he refers to it as "the Red K effect"
- While crippled by cowardice in his Clark Kent identity, he tries creating a new identity as "Brad Dexter", and this one is somehow free of the cowardice.
- In his new identity, he applies for a job as a reporter in Chicago, with a boss who looks just like Perry White, and a co-reporter named "Loretta Land".

Superdickery:

- Lois is a total bitch to Clark for acting cowardly, yet I'd wager that most normal humans (which Lois thinks Clark is) would be at least a little intimidated by a gang of mobsters with machine guns and grenades.
- Breaks into a zoo at night and opens a lion's cage, just to test his bravery. He then flees and breaks the cage, allowing the lion to escape. (He captures it and returns it to the cage and then fixes it, but still)
- Picks up and throws a T-rex around by its tail just to show off
- In a flashback, Supergirl flies Evilo into space and threatens to leave him there to suffocate and die
- Supergirl deliberately tries to crash an airship with people aboard just to try to break Clark out of his cowardice. If it hadn't worked, people might have died.
- Supergirl then deliberately disturbs and terrifies a herd of elephants so they will stampede (wasn't it just last issue that she was giving a lesson about how abusing animals was wrong?)

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The Assassination of John F. Kennedy is referenced in this issue
- This is the first part of a multi-part story.

Feat Catalogue:

- The opening narration refers to Supergirl as "the mightiest girl in the universe", and says she is famous throughout multiple galaxies
- Easily spots a planet and its sun in a distant galaxy after simply being told what direction to look for it from Earth (in order to make sure it was the right planet, she may have even scanned the surfaces of countless planets until she found one populated only by women, as it was described to her)
- Okay, this is weird. While her physical powers are distorted and unreliable due to an alien device, Supergirl's mental powers are unaffected. But these powers somehow include some kind of mental energy that can be focused through a device called a "brain-wave converter" to wake people from suspended animation (it's implied a normal person's mental energy couldn't be used for this purpose)


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- We see a recreation of a scene from the past where Brainiac bound Supergirl with Kryptonite chains and tried to destroy her with "artificial Kryptonite flames". I don't know if this incident was actually shown in a previous comic or not.

Weirdness:

- There's a planet in a distant galaxy populated entirely by women, and called "Feminax". Yeah.
- Another planet built a gigantic plastic shield around itself to defend it from invaders... however that was supposed to work
- A villainess named Ravenne takes over a planet and then broadcasts a signal through space, deliberately asking for "female space criminals" to join her "sisterhood of evil", all focused on trying to kill Supergirl... despite it seeming that none of them had even run into her before
- Due to the effect of a "p-jewel" that distorts the rays of the yellow sun on Feminax, Supergirl can't control her powers, and one effect of this is when she tries to use her X-ray vision to search the planet, it somehow becomes a physical force, bounces off a wall, and strikes her, knocking her back
- We have another fictional character, Lady Macbeth, treated as a historical person. I guess she really existed in the DC Universe.
- Three women from Earth's past seem completely unfazed by being brought to the future of another planet by aliens and asked to help plot a scheme to take over the universe


Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #323

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Compressed his Superman costume to tiny size and hid it in his hand so the prison guards wouldn't find it when searching him
- Dug a hole out of the prison, while in solitary confinement, to go and do his patrols as Superman, using heat vision to fuse and repair the floor so no one could tell he left
- Says that he could go indefinitely without eating, but chooses not to
- Uses heat vision to fuse a lock shut, then repair it
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to see that the state's governor is a coma, spying on him from the prison
- Uses microscopic vision to identify Perry, Lois, and Jimmy's fingerprints to ascertain their identities
- Again shows the ability to stay underwater indefinitely
- Digs a tunnel from a river to the location of the stolen loot and catches the other criminals who were after it.

Weirdness:

- There's apparently a special "Superman Wing" of the Metropolis Penitentiary, where all the criminals he's caught are kept
- A thief is arrested after Clark Kent writes a story on his crimes, but the authorities don't know where he hid his loot. So they somehow decide that Clark Kent should be set up and framed as a criminal to try to go undercover in the prison to get him to reveal the location. Why use him, of all people? The guy would naturally be biased against him.
- After his fake hunger strike lasting 10 days, the other prisoners give him the nickname "Iron Man" Kent. Once again, stealing the names of other superheroes...

Superdickery:

- Pleads guilty to blackmail as part of a setup to get into prison
- Deliberately pushes around and writes a mean article about another prisoner in the prison newspaper, just to provoke him
- Tricks the prison warden, guards, and fellow prisoners into thinking he's starving himself when he's eating at a diner as Superman every day

Power Tracker:

- Again, High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue
- It's shown in a flashback in this issue that Superman once battled the Phantom Zone criminal Py-Ron (no relation to any similarly-named characters) when he took the guise of "Evil-Man". Again, how creative. But the DC wiki says this issue is his only appearance, so this event must not have been covered in any other comic.

Feat Catalogue:

- Her powers still distorted from the p-jewel, she tries to use ice breath but ends up freezing herself in a block of ice. The villains planned for this and say that only her own breath was cold enough to freeze and immobilize her
- The villains then use a "hypno-dominator" machine to transfer the evil knowledge and intentions of the 3 (pseudo)historical villainesses (Lady Macbeth, Lucrezia Borgia, and Mata Hari) into her brain. They specifically say that it will only work because her mental powers have been slowed down by the cold of her own super breath
- Her powers working again, but under hypnosis, she flies from Feminax (in a distant galaxy, remember) to Earth in an unspecified but seemingly short amount of time
- Using the mental talents given to her by the villainesses, as well as help from an herb that was grown under the influence of Kryptonite radiation, she brews a poison that is deadly even to super-beings.

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Comet was unaffected by the poison since he and his powers weren't Kryptonian in nature, so he faked his death, then flew throuogh the time barrier to the past to meet with Circe, who tells him how to counteract the poison
- Before Supergirl can use it on the Phantom Zone criminal, Comet uses his X-ray vision to alter the poison's atomic structure to make it non-deadly, as Circe told him to do

****

- The Kryptonian criminal Py-Ron flies the intergalactic distance from Earth to Feminax, melts their "early warning satellites" with his heat vision, then spins the planet faster on its axis, devastating the planet and killing all of its inhabitants


Weirdness:

- Ravenne's first plan is to prepare an invasion and attack on Earth. The three villainesses she pulled from history are completely on board with this, despite all of them being from Earth.
- The United Nations has plans for space defenses to protect Earth from hostile aliens. I guess this does make sense in the context of this setting, but it's still weird, especially since this takes place in the 60s.
- Celebrating the apparent deaths of Superman and Supergirl, the population of Feminax launch fireworks into the sky that explode into the shapes of Lex Luthor and Brainiac's faces
- Superman says that he and Supergirl will let Feminax remain in its orbit after its devastation. Presumably they were considering throwing it into its sun or something.

Superdickery:

- Under hypnotic control, Supergirl steal the UN's Earth defense plans, breaks into a chemical plant and steals some chemicals, and (seemingly) kills Comet, a Kryptonian criminal, and Superman with a deadly poison
- When we first see Py-Ron start to attack Feminax, the narrative frames it as trying to make us think that Superman is doing it. Not so hard to believe, actually, given what we've seen in this section before.
- Superman and Supergirl don't seem too upset about a planetary-scale genocide, and conclude that it would be a good idea to leave the wrecked planet as a potential warning to other criminals


Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. We're going to need to see something really crazy to go above that.

Action Comics #324

Overall Notes:

- Another cover featured on Superdickery, for obvious reasons (the cover relates to the Supergirl story)

Superman Story

Notes:

- Clark Kent is sent to cover a secret base preparing to launch astronauts to the moon. When this was published, that still wouldn't happen for 4 more years.
- A response in the letters column says, regarding alternate universes, "According to theory, there are countless such parallels of our Earth"
- Another response in the letters column mentions the James Bond movie Goldfinger, which came out the year before this issue was published

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to trigger an "electronic relay" in a vehicle to make it hit a guy and knock him into a puddle
- Jumps into a river right before a horse and wagon go over a waterfall, and uses rocks from the riverbed to build a ramp at super speed so the horse can escape
- Off-panel, one of Superman's robots foils a $1,000,000.00 bank robbery
- Uses microscopic vision on two blood samples to determine that they are the same blood type
- Reshapes his watch and the rubber heel of his shoe into sterile blood transfusion equipment and performs the procedure
- Flies to the moon and takes a picture of the lunar landing vehicle there


Weirdness:

- The military is preparing a "Spider-Vehicle" for the moon landing, which can "climb the most difficult crevices and craters"
- Clark Kent happens upon a hidden valley cut off from civilization, populated by Quakers living an Amish lifestyle, and speaking Shakespearean English. They have been isolated for centuries and only one of them even knows that there are people who live outside of their valley
- Superman carries a giant tree trunk while still in the guise of Clark Kent, and people don't find it impossible or remark on it other than it being an example of above-average strength
- Superman decides to try to alleviate a guy's fever by... picking up his bed and flying him through the sky. Apparently to cool him down. Why not just use low-level cold breath?
- Superman calls the belief in sorcerers an '18th - century superstition'. But he literally has met several of them...
- A first aid guide says that fevers are often cured with blood transfusions. I'm not a doctor, but that doesn't sound right to me. A bit of research can't show me anything backing this up either.

Superdickery:

- See the first feat. The guy did push Clark first, though.
- Clark seems content to completely abandon his old life and live in the Quaker valley, just because people there don't see his Clark Kent identity as a coward, and only leaves the valley because he's afraid people will accuse him of sorcery.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change him from High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Catches a collapsing bridge and welds it back together with heat vision
- Upon learning that fire can undo the spell on her, Supergirl tries flying into a volcano, being struck by lightning, and flying into the sun, but they all have no effect due to her invulnerability
- Flies across space to find some of the remnants of Krypton, and dives into part of the Fire Falls, which is able to burn her and remove the spell due to its Kryptonian nature. However, she isn't permanently harmed by this. She also refers to it as "the one fire in the universe that can affect me"
- Flies back to Earth


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman went on a mission to the future and back
- Blinded by magic, Superman is able to travel to his Fortress of Solitude by using his hearing to tune in on "certain interplanetary clocks" he has there

Weirdness:

- This is bizarre right from the first page. Supergirl runs into a Middle-Eastern Fakir who has real magic powers, and he turns out to be a demon in disguise. Apparently he was invulnerable to everything except the venom of a cobra, which just happened to be the snake he was trying to charm as part of his act, so it bites and kills him, and he gives Supergirl the magic "Satan Ring" ring that gave him his powers as he dies. She can use the ring up to 3 times before becoming a demon herself. She swears to never use it, but is suddenly put in 3 situations where she has to do so.
- Not only was there a literal waterfall of fire on Krypton, but it survived on an asteroid when the planet exploded, became a form of Kryptonite, and continued to flow somehow

Superdickery:

- Transformed into a demon with magic powers, she is compelled to help a bank robber escape
- Uses demonic magic to blind Superman

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald level. Even if she had tried flying through a supernova that wouldn't change.

Action Comics #325

Overall Notes:

- There's a PSA featuring Superboy in this issue

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- No-sells an alien ray gun which the alien claimed would "blast him to atoms" (possibly a hyperbolic statement/figure of speech though)
- Flies away from the aliens so fast it appears as if he disappeared
- Enlarged to giant size, but without his powers, he tricks some aliens into returning what they stole and leaving Earth

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Jor-El invented a "growth ray" that can enlarge organic beings. It made plants grow 100 times their original size and also enlarged his son to a giant (after he accidentally shot him with it).
- We see a common Kryptonian device called an "Opty-Talky" which seems to be a radio that can receive and transmit sound and images from a long distance without needing another transmitter/receiver.
- Kryptonians also had structures in the sky made of clouds, described as "permanent cloud castles, rigidized by radiation"
- They also had "weather control towers" that did exactly what you would expect from that name. One was able to immediately cause a blizzard in an area (although they are noted not to cover some parts of the planet)


Weirdness:

- The Cover. Superman as a kaiju-sized toddler on Krypton.
- When baby Kal-El is mistakenly enlarged, Jor-El figures that he won't recognize him as his father when he's so small in comparison, so he claims to be a "magic elf", and this works.
- A "floating city" that looked to be no larger than a city block square was said to house a million people.
- There was a lake on Krypton with water that shrunk anything that entered it, due to "some strange chemical".
- In the end of the story, Superman categorizes the change that occurred to him as a baby as being Red K induced, even though it wasn't.

Superdickery:

- Jor-El deliberately covers his son in hard-packed snow which freezes him, in order to lure him to a river of fire to dump the snow on it, putting him in danger of being burned.

Power Tracker:

- Giant-but-powerless Superman would probably be Low - Mid Meta Level. With the Red K worn off, he's back to High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The opening narration refers to Supergirl as "the world's most popular girl". Seems like an editorial to me...
- Two "Hollywood stars" named "Rock Rivers" and "Tab Hudson" are mentioned in this story. As far as I can tell, these characters are fictional, although they seem to be references to the real-life actors Rock Hudson and Tab Hunter, who were popular at the time this comic was published.
- A dance called the "Frug" is mentioned. Turns out this was actually a real thing in the 60s.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super breath to alter chemicals in her chemistry class to create a cloud of tear gas and drive everyone out of the room
- Unaffected by tear gas
- Uses heat vision to warm up a guy's chair to get him to rapidly stand up
- Uses super speed to play an entire band's worth of instruments at once, so fast it looks like there are multiples of her playing each one



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Atlantean scientists are able to use a "cosmetic ray" to give a woman's hair "a shimmering golden wave that will last a lifetime"
- They are also able to use "visuo-crystals" to repair her vision.
- And a "psycho-charge" to alter her personality


Weirdness:

- The college students seemd to consider $5.00 a significant amount of money. Even using the inflation calculator, $5.00 in 1965 would only be worth about $31.00 today.
- Lori Lemaris carries an underwater "rescue bubble" to save a drowning woman
- A college professor was undercover as a hobo in order to write a paper, and acted like this was a normal thing to do, and he also had an interview with a "famous king of the hoboes(sic)"

Superdickery:

- See that first feat? She did that just to cover up the fact that her teacher was crying because of a mean prank. A bit of an overreaction, I'd say.
- Deliberately causes a landslide to block a road out of town, just so she can stop one specific bus, in order to try to keep a teacher in town and attempt to give her a makeover
- Supergirl and the Atlanteans essentially kidnap a woman, perform cosmetic surgery her, and mess with her brain to alter her personality, all without her consent



Power Tracker:

- Still no change from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #326

Superman Story

Notes:

- This issue again mentions that it was the combination of Earth's yellow sun and lower gravity that gave Superman his powers, as the latter factor hadn't been mentioned for a while
- This story is interesting, because Superman is up against a threat he can't defeat, and only ends up saving the world by complete accident in the end

Feat Catalogue:

- Breaks free from the grip of a giant snake-like sea monster with comparable (later stated to be greater) powers to his own, while underwater
- Pushes the parts of a damaged plane together and welds them back together with heat vision, seemingly before any significant amount of air can be released via explosive decompression.
- Flies into the core of the sun and back out, although it doesn't do anything to stop the super-powered bugs attacking him
- Deliberately flies through a swarm of "high-speed meteors" (and is, of course, unhurt)
- The Fortress of Solitude has a "world monitor screen", which can be used to display images from all over the Earth
- While depowered under a red sun, he's somehow able to stand up and walk around (albeit with discomfort) on a planet with greater gravity than Krypton.



Weirdness:

- Some aliens had their civilization wiped out by a plague, so in return they decided to visit a gigantic planet of monstrous creatures and send them to 100 other planets to wipe out all life on them just out of spite, then blow up the giant planet, along with themselves, for no reason.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald level. The alien creatures he fought here seemed to be on a higher tier.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl thinks to herself that she often flies faster than the speed of light. Of course we know this, but some people insist that it be spelled out.
- Lands on a rowboat at super speed and throws a bag of stolen money back to the boat it came from
- Claps her hands at super speed to create the equivalent of a thunder sound indoors, which snaps a guy out of a hypnotic trance
- Locates a vein of gold underground and digs to reach it, retrieving the gold
- Rescues everyone from a burning building and puts out the fire with super breath


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Jerro implies that there's a dangerous operation that Atlantean doctors could perform to give him a fully human body with legs

****

- Superman has an "Origin Detector Machine" in the Fortress of Solitude, which is another one of those magic-like computers that can find out someone's origin with information fed into it (in this case, including information about thousands of inhabited worlds, and planets in different dimensions)

Weirdness:

- A thief juggles some precious gems in order to make light reflect off them in a precise way to hypnotize someone. Supergirl somehow believes this is a normal skill that a random thief could learn and doesn't suspect him of having a connection to Krypton, despite the fact that this clearly fits the mold of many of the Kryptonian hypnosis techniques we've seen before.
- The "Origin Detector Machine" overloads and explodes when attempting to calculate too much information
- The reveal here is a huge pile of WTF. Get this: As a kid in Argo City, Kara had a "living android doll" she played with, which was built by some scientist who was good at that stuff. Later on, her father Zor-El asked the same scientist to build an android to test his Survival Zone projector ray on, and he did. From the Survival Zone, the android watched Kara arrive on Earth, assume her secret identity, and become Supergirl. Years later, some random cosmic accident/fluctuation freed him from the Zone and he appeared on Earth, and because he had been programmed with some of the mental traits of his creator, he also started becoming obsessed with dolls and building them, to the point where he was stealing money to pay for that hobby (also because his brain was scrambled by the Survival Zone ray). Also, he was drawn to Supergirl because all of the androids built by the guy had some kind of mental connection to each other, so he had the memories of the doll she had as a kid. And she became obsessed with him and helped bail him out of jail because his face subconsciously reminded her of the doll from her childhood.



Superdickery:

- Linda completely stands up her date Dick Malverne to dance with another guy she doesn't even known without even saying a word. Then, after finding out the guy is a thief, she pays his bail money to get him out of jail, right after Superman caught him and turned him in. She wasn't under any kind of hypnosis or mental compulsion, either, it was just her subconscious memories influencing her.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Action Comics #327

Superman Story

Notes:

- One of those "Imaginary Stories", meaning it's likely not canon to anything relevant. The opening narration says this "could happen in the future, but may not".
- A text insert in this issue states that the UN made Superman an honorary citizen of every nation in the organization
- A response in the letters column confirms that Superman doesn't need to eat food to gain energy

Feat Catalogue:

- As this is a non-canon Imaginary Story, there are no notable feats.

Weirdness:

- The cover is pretty wacky
- In this hypothetical future, we see that there is no more crime. They did this once before in one of these potential futures, but it's still way too optimistic if you ask me.

Superdickery:

- On the cover, we have grandpa Superman helping his grandson demolish a brick wall, just for fun

Power Tracker:

- The aged Superman, weakened by Kryptonite over the years, would probably be Low Meta Level. Of course this has no bearing on the canon Superman, who would still be High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Part one of a multi-part story

Feat Catalogue:

- In a flashback, Supergirl catches a falling space capsule, rescues the astronaut inside, and cools the burning ship with her super breath so it can reach the ground safely
- In another flashback, she diverts a "giant metallic space-squid" that was releasing enough ink to blot out the solar system and carries it back out into deep space. Not really sure how to rate this feat...
- Digs up ancient fossilized bones and sorts them at super speed


Weirdness:

- Interdimensional aliens from "Dimension Z", who have technology that can traverse alternate dimensions, use computers with punch-cards. LOL.
- A "Giant metallic space-squid" that releases enough ink to blot the light out from entire star systems. Really.
- Part of the recordings the interdimensional aliens show to try to prove Supergirl was a criminal in their dimension show her supposed alternate identity of "Serpena" using a "brain evolution machine" to cause her pineal gland to develop into a third eye on the back of her head, which can turn anything it sees into glass

Superdickery:

- "Superman" accuses Supergirl of actually being a villain from another dimension and helps capture her.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level. Not sure what to think about the squid feat, the creature itself didn't seem so big, but it could possibly move FTL (or at least its ink could) and it somehow was able to expel enough ink to block out the sun over the distance of the entire solar system, so that could mean it was ridiculously dense and massive to store all of that ink in its body... or it could just be some weird physics-defying magic/handwavium. It's a hard feat to really evaluate.

Action Comics #328

Superman Story

Notes:

- The villains in this issue plan to coat Superman's hands with two chemicals that will cause a nuclear-like explosion when he claps them together. This isn't intended to actually hurt him (because it can't), but rather to destroy Metropolis and make him seem responsible for it. What's interesting is that these chemicals are called "Megatron" Alpha and Omega. This was 19 years before the Transformers villain debuted.
- Apparently Superman always salutes the Kryptonian flag whenever he sees it

Feat Catalogue:

- Buries a time capsule deep beneath the Earth. It's shown he had done the same for several previous years in a row.
- Has a "Seismic map" in his Fortress of Solitude that can detect large explosions and earthquakes around the planet.
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision and super hearing to spy on crooks plotting against him from across the world
- Outsmarts and tricks the criminals to catch them

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Threatens to set off a nuclear-scale explosion to murder some criminals if they don't confess. It was a bluff, but still.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue
- We actually get some continuity here, as the interdimensional villains used the same combination of red and green Kryptonite that Brainiac used on Superman in issue #275 to temporarily give Supergirl a third eye on the back of her head, to corroborate their accusations

Feat Catalogue:

- Without her powers, manages to overcome a gauntlet of interdimensional monsters that had defeated many other heroines from other universes previously
- Her powers restored, she intercepts and tanks blasts from "force-guns"


Weirdness:

- That whole frame-up last issue? That was to get Supergirl to come to their dimension so she could compete in a gladiator game, because their king was cursed by a wizard and a prophecy said that a kiss from a heroine from another dimension would restore him. Except it didn't actually say that, they misinterpreted it, and what it actually did was give Supergirl her powers back, so they could function in that dimension.
- Despite everything the inhabitants of Dimension Z did to her (framing her for a crime, making her think Superman was against her, kidnapping her, and putting her in an arena of death against deadly monsters, and the fact that they had kidnapped and killed many other competitors in these games before), Supergirl seems to completely forgive them by the end of the story.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

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

Action Comics #329

Superman Story

Notes:

- The cover is misleading (as they often are). It has Superman claiming that his enemy has "robbed him of his super-powers" when in the actual story he just realizes that his enemy can match them
- This story introduces "Kryptium", a type of invulnerable metal from Krypton. Even under Krypton's red sun, it was apparently the strongest metal on the planet, and only a "de-coherer ray" could damage it
- Apparently Superman gave Metropolis University notes on the Kryptonese language so it could be publicly translated
- A response in the letters column says that Superman could see with his eyes closed but only if he "turned on his X-ray vision at full power"

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses microscopic vision to identify the Kryptium metal composition of the sword
- Uses his power of "total recall" to remember seeing that same metal as a child on Krypton
- He also somehow had the knowledge of Kryptonian science to create his own de-coherer ray
- Hears the sound from a TV in a mountain hideout from far away and uses it to locate the hideout


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Kryptonian scientists invented a "de-coherer ray" that could cut Kryptium, the most invulnerable metal on their planet.
- They also created a "super-nuclear" generator that exploded and blew a laboratory straight off of the planet and into space

Weirdness:

- Superman calls Krypton "a planet of peace", and implies that they wouldn't make such things as swords, yet we've seen all kind of Kryptonian weapons before.
- Being able to build a robot out of a metal more durable than Superman somehow also gave the robot strength equal to or greater than his

Superdickery:

- After losing repeatedly to a mysterious super-powered knight, Superman becomes so annoyed that he snaps at Jimmy Olsen and others around him

Power Tracker:

- Another instance of the 'anything from Krypton is invulnerable' theme, although apparently this was the most invulnerable thing from there, which was nigh-indestructible even under Krypton's native conditions, so having trouble with it is no indictment. Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The villain "Drang the Destroyer" featured in this story has nothing to do with the "Drangs" seen in issue #303. Apparently the writers just had trouble coming up with original names.
- The opening narration calls Drang the Destroyer "the mightiest villain" Supergirl "has ever encountered".
- Supergirl is taken in a spaceship to a part of the universe that she describes as being unfamiliar to her, and she seems surprised by this, perhaps indicating that she's visited a significant amount of the universe. It's later revealed that she's in a different universe.
- One of the villains says that Supergirl is "Earth's mightiest heroine". They really don't give Wonder Woman any credit, do they?

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses super-pressure to squeeze an asteroid, combining the hydrogen and oxygen atoms into water (pretty sure chemistry doesn't work like that, but okay...)
- Supergirl's costume is still indestructible after she loses her powers in the strange universe (which she herself notes is odd), and when a "mechano-slave" robot tries to destroy it with its "buzz-saw teeth" that can "slice through anything here", the teeth break off. This could also go under weirdness.


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Drang the Destroyer is stated to have the powers of invulnerability (apparently to the same extent as Supergirl), "cyclone breath", "energy vision" and invisibility. He can also use "tele-projection" to project an image of himself anywhere in his home universe.
- It seems he also has ESP, as he was overhearing the conversation on the Circle of Evil's space base from his homeworld
- It's unclear whether he used his "energy vision" through a mental projection of himself, or if he actually teleported there, but he destroys a computer on the Circle of Evil's base


Weirdness:

- The villainous organization known as the "Circle of Evil" has a policy where, if any of their members fail at a task, they are forced to commit suicide with the use of an alien "execution bird" that delivers opposing charges through its legs, disintegrating them to atoms. These birds apparently charge their power from "feeding batteries". Yeah.
- The extradimensional villain's ship is apparently so easy to navigate because it has labeled buttons on it with pre-determined destinations on them
- Supergirl apparently has no powers in this strange universe she has traveled to. Yet she was able to fly around in space just a few pages previously, after entering it. Maybe it took a while for her powers to wear off?
- Supergirl forgets that the ship she was given is programmed to travel to only one destination - right after being told that fact. Isn't she supposed to have super memory?
- Drang is also known by the name "Dr. Supernatural", but this is only revealed in the very last panel of this story for some reason.

Superdickery:

- After watching a villain commit suicide right in front of her, Supergirl just stands there smugly.

Power Tracker:

- With her powers, High Herald Level. When deprived of them in the foreign universe, I guess Mid - High Street Level.

Action Comics #330

Overall Notes

- The cover here is related to the Supergirl story. It also proclaims Drang the Destroyer, aka Dr. Supernatural, as being "more sinister than Luthor" and "craftier than Brainiac"

Superman Story

Notes:

- A response in the letters column said that Clark Kent got straight As in High School English class

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses a mold to create silver dollars from a huge amount of silver bars with his bare hands at super speed
- Lifts the roof off a building and flies in a circle, creating a whirlwind to draw all of the stamps at a stamp collectors' convention into the air (and somehow only the stamps and nothing else)
- Easily overpowers Krypto, who was trying to stop him from stealing a satellite


Weirdness:

- This story features a "Hall of Heroes", with statues honoring "the great heroes of all nations". One of which is Christopher Columbus. Somehow I don't think that this would fly today.
- Another Red Kryptonite story, this time the effect is that it gives him the compulsion to steal things that begin with the letter "S" and give them to poor people. The excuse given is that he was looking at a statue of Robin Hood at the time he was affected, and the letter "S" was on the wall just above the statue, but that's still weird
- A bunch of criminals figure out that Superman is only stealing things that begin with "S" before he figures it out himself
- Digs up a fossilized "sea serpent", and states that fossilization means it still looks like it's alive. That's... not how that works at all.
- There is a box in the Fortress of Solitude labeled "Secret of Superman's Identity - DO NOT OPEN!" This is actually a trap for his enemies, containing knockout gas.


Superdickery:

- Brings a sunken ship onto land and crushes a bunch of buildings with it, reasoning that since they were scheduled to be torn down anyway it doesn't matter. You do know that they have proper safety procedures for demolishing buildings, right?
- Steals a bunch of stuff while under the influence of Red K
- Hits Krypto, also while under the influence of Red K

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, as you can probably guess.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- Supergirl is recognized by various heroes from different planets in her own universe, due to her intergalactic fame
- This story features a character called "Multiple-Man", who has the power to create duplicates of himself. This came out almost 10 years before the debut of the Marvel character.
- We see a scene from the Superman story in this issue, as it takes place simultaneously with the Supergirl story. I think this is the first time that the two stories in the same issue have explicitly crossed over like that.


Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl's cape reflects a beam from a "frost-gun" and freezes the guy who fired it
- Her cape also protects her from the disintegration of a machine caused by one of the execution birds
- Claims to be able to rewire the circuits of the alien ship with her heat vision, to reprogram it to travel back to the main universe and Earth (although she never gets the chance to actually try this)



Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Drang can also become intangible.
- He reveals as well that he was the one responsible for removing Supergirl's powers, somehow (magic?)
- He also seems to use a form of telekinesis to push and pull the powerless Supergirl around to different destinations on his planet
- He projects an illusion of Supergirl's college classroom (possibly also indicating that he read her mind to create the illusion)
- He changes her from her Linda identity to her Supergirl identity by waving his hand
- Creates an illusion of one of the execution birds killing Superman, and claims that it could happen for real
- His monitors can observe events on Earth (in another universe, remember) in real time
- He can drain energy from Earth using a "space-warp portal" machine
- He restores Supergirl's powers, but on the condition that they only work while she is on his planet
- Creates another illusion to trick Supergirl into thinking he had regained his power
- Uses his energy vision to destroy the alien cosmic ship before Supergirl can reach it, even though the narration claims she was speeding towards it (good speed/reaction feat)
- Apparently there's some kind of forcefield around Drang's planet that prevents Supergirl from leaving, rather than just her powers becoming non-functional if she tries to leave







Weirdness:

- Another alien hero that Supergirl meets is called "Surya", from the "Evolution World". She can "evolve" (shapeshift) herself into "any prehistoric beast". I trust that I don't need to point out that evolution doesn't work that way.
- Drang/Dr. Supernatural is revealed to be an elemental force of evil, but he quickly loses power unless he can absorb "evil energy", which is some kind of magical force generated by evil acts done by superbeings.

Superdickery:

- Superman is shown stealing silver, from the Superman story in this issue

Power Tracker:

- Same as last issue, Mid-High Street Level when depowered, High Herald Level with powers.

Action Comics #331

Superman Story

Notes:

- After a mistake causes the Daily Planet to accidentally print a joke story as a real one, Clark Kent suggests they can still get away by claiming it was a prank, mentioning famous historical hoaxes like the Cardiff Giant and something called the "Great Balloon Hoax", which he claimed was about a supposed trip to the moon via a hot-air balloon. However, it seems this is actually a chimera of two different real-world hoaxes: One regarding a trip in a hot-air balloon, and the other regarding life on the moon. Edgar Allen Poe claimed that the latter hoax had ripped off a story he wrote about a balloon flight to the moon, so that could be where the confusion comes from. I don't know if the writers did this on purpose, or just didn't do their research correctly.
- Perry White apparently keeps a Superman outfit in the Daily Planet "for publicity shots"
- There's a small ad at the end of this story saying simply that "The Spectre is Coming". I think that is the first mention of him we've seen here so far, although I'm pretty sure this was an advertisement for his own upcoming series, not an indication that he was about to appear in Action Comics, so don't get your hopes up.

Feat Catalogue:

- Realizes a criminal is disguising himself as Perry White due to the way he speaks, and uses X-ray vision to confirm it

Weirdness:

- A random criminal (referred to as a "crime lord", so he's probably pretty rich, but still) has a "super-sensitive directional mike" that can "pick up a whisper a mile away", and the thing is small and portable too. This was 1965, we don't even have technology like that today.
- At one point, when Lois thinks Clark is dead, she starts praising him, calling him, among other things, "an ideal escort"... make of that what you will.

Superdickery:

- Lois has a fake issue of the Daily Planet printed as part of a prank, claiming Clark Kent is Superman, and she works with a military sergeant to make Clark think the guy's gun jammed and fired bullets at him, when they were really blanks. Keep in mind she didn't actually even believe he was Superman when she came up with this.
- In revenge for the above prank, Clark (while 'pretending' to masquerade as Superman) tricks Lois into thinking that he fell to his death
- Perry White also gets into the dickery, staging a fake attack on 'Superman' (claiming to be aiming for Lois though) using real bullets as a publicity stunt (he had Clark put on a bulletproof vest ahead of time but didn't tell him about the attack), and Clark even notes that one of the bullets missed the vest and hit him in the shoulder, which could have been lethal if he wasn't really Superman. Perry also didn't bother to inform the police of this.
- Clark pulls another death fakeout on Lois
- Once Lois realizes he's not really dead, she throws a vase full of flowers and water in his face.


Power Tracker:

- Absolutely nothing notable here, so still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation/conclusion of the Drang/Dr. Supernatural plot arc
- Some of the alien heroes are also aware of the LOSH and have been in contact with them
- Although the end of the story shows that Drang (or at least some vestige of him) survived, he has never returned in any other story.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses her "super-memory" to recall the design of a time machine and is able to construct it from spare parts with the help of the alien heroes, although for some reason it can only bring people from the past to the present
- Uses microscopic vision to identify the flaw with the "time magnet" she built and remodels it
- Manages to finally defeat Drang by baiting him into absorbing too much "evil energy" and exploding. This was a gamble with no guarantee it would work, but she got lucky.


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- We again see Drang destroying the ship with his energy vision before Supergirl can reach it, and she suspects that he can read her mind (likely, how else could he form such realistic illusions for her?)
- We get a confirmation that Drang is keeping Supergirl trapped on his planet with a magical forcefield
- Drang's natural state is apparently intangible, so he doesn't need to activate that power. He's also capable of using a "vigorator" (a device which is intangible like him, probably rendered thus by his magic) to absorb any attack made with an intention of anger or evil intent to grow stronger.
- Projects another illusion to Supergirl, this time making her think that she's back on Earth and Metropolis is burning. Either he read her mind again to get the info or he is spying on Earth from a different universe. He also specifically says that he 'planted the illusion in her brain', indicating a pretty high level of telepathy to get past her mental defenses (either that, or it's because his telepathy is magical in nature)
- He sees through Supergirl and the alien heroes' attempt to trick him
- Transmutes her fake 'magic wand' into a candy cane
- Apparently lacking enough power to conduct his plan to recreate some of the greatest crimes in the history of the universe, he uses his magic to enlarge Supergirl's time machine and make it bring various villains to his location in space and time
- He seems to gain energy even from another villain just thinking of evil plans in his presence
- His planet is orbited by planetoid - sized "sentry satellites" operated by android crews
- Despite exploding, he seemingly survives as a small amount of "evil super-energy", and is hinted to possibly be able to return at some point

****

- Supergirl says that Superman once built a time machine "which could pluck any person out of the past or future" (perhaps referring to the events of issue #320? That would explain why it only worked on people from the past, as that one had the same restriction. Also, it's able to summon people from the past of a different universe, which was the same thing that happened in issue #320. The level of continuity is honestly beginning to scare me here.)








Weirdness:

- Circe claims that she will be cursed with 7 years of bad luck if she interferes with another magician. I don't think this rule has ever been referenced before or since. Perhaps she was just scared of Dr. Supernatural.
- The alien heroine Surya is mutated into a giant insect, but is able to simply use her shapeshifting power to return to her normal form


Superdickery:

- Perhaps a very minor one, but the plan to defeat Drang required retrieving three villains from the past and killing them, which would have altered the timeline.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to put her above High Herald Level. But Drang is such a genuinely threatening villain, I might dedicate an entire thread to the guy.

Action Comics #332

Overall Notes:

- There's an advertisement for a Teen Titans title in this issue, apparently the first book they got
- A letter in the letters column laments how Stan Lee was always subtly dissing DC in his columns. Kind of funny, because in my Fantastic Four and Avengers threads I read those very columns that were being complained about.


Superman Story

Notes:

- Apparently, sometime since we last saw them, Superman had imprisoned Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Lightning Lord, Saturn Queen, Cosmic King, and many others on a prison planet that was surrounded by a ring of charged particles that negated their powers. I don't know if this was shown in another title or not.
- While dematerialized in the process of teleportation, Superman's consciousness still exists. It's unclear if this is due to his powers or some property of the teleportation device.
- This is the beginning of a multi-part story


Feat Catalogue:

- After receiving a message that Luthor escaped, Superman searches through space for him with his telescopic vision. He doesn't immediately find him, but it is implied that he scans a large volume of space.
- Near - instantly figures out how to modify a teleporter device to work on living matter, and performs the modifications with his heat vision
- Intercepts some misfired nuclear ICBMs, making 6 of them crash into each other and kicking 3 more into the sun



Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor uses parts from a wrecked spacecraft to build a device that attracts "cosmic energy" from space and concentrates it on a statue, transmuting it to rocket fuel, which he uses to power a spacesuit he built that can take him to the planet Lexor (remember that?) at FTL speeds.
- He later coats another spaceship in lead to disguise it as an asteroid and hide it from Superman's X-ray vision
- Lex fires a missile from one of his hidden bases that tracks and destroys a ship (seeming a large distance across the Earth and within seconds, as it was in time to save Superman from Kryptonite poisoning)
- Built a long-ranged "stun gun"
- He also has a device that can view scenes on the planet Lexor from Earth in real-time

****

- Some random "Army scientists" invented an intantaneous teleporter ray that works across interstellar distances
- The same device is later made into a pistol-sized weapon



Weirdness:

- It's kind of funny to see Brainiac working in a chain gang
- The US army built an interstellar teleporter in 1966. Not even with the help of a named super-scientist or anything.
- Lex Luthor built a hidden compartment inside a statue of himself on Lexor, containing records of all of his evil deeds, which could be accessed by just accidentally touching part of the base of the statue. The hell?
- Some Atlanteans thought they could adapt to breathe air again by slowly exposing themselves to greater and greater amounts of oxygen... Lamarckian evolution apparently. Also, the oxygen concentration inside their dome being turned up too high somehow caused the water in it to evaporate.
- Lex Luthor strangely brands his weapons with the initials "L.L." and an image of his face

Superdickery:

- That prison planet? The guards are equipped with weapons they can and will use to permanently transmute attempted escapees into solid crystal. Kind of a harsh justice system that Superman sent them to...

Power Tracker:

- It's interesting to note that the weaponized version of the teleportation ray was stated to be able to kill him, as it's very rare for a mundane (read: non-Kryptonian or magical) device to be considered that type of threat. He had previously resisted atom-destroying weapons, so that implies there is something special about this one, perhaps the scientists who invented it stumbled onto the same or similar principles as that one Kryptonian raygun or their "de-coherer ray". Anyway, he's still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Although this is classified as an "imaginary story" (or an "imaginary novel", as the cover proclaims), it was later retconned to have actually taken place in an alternate universe. I suppose you could technically scale the powers of the Kryptonians in that universe to those in the Earth-One universe, but I still probably won't bother posting scans of feats unless there's something really insane (also because I've almost exceeded the image limit for this post)
- This is actually the first part of a multi-part story
- Again, both the Earth's lesser gravity and yellow sun are stated to be jointly responsible for Kryptonians having superpowers there
- It's stated here that Gold Kryptonite is the rarest type of the mineral. Not sure if that's true in the Earth-One universe as well.
- At one point in this story, heat vision is used to make a wall near a piece of lead hot enough to cause the lead itself to melt from its proximity, as the narration notes that HV is ineffective against lead itself

Feat Catalogue:

- As this takes place in an alternate reality, there are no notable feats

Weirdness:

- The alternate Superboy tries to throw his costume into space and plan for it to fall back down to Earth when he needs it again, but miscalculates since he didn't take the Earth's rotation into account. Except it would have been in the same inertial reference frame as the Earth, so it wouldn't have moved independently from the Earth's rotation at all.
- The alternate Superwoman has a device in her Fortress that imprisoned invisible creatures from yet another alternate dimension, whose planet occupied the same area in space as Krypton but didn't explode. So then how did they get into the Fortress in the first place?


Superdickery:

- The alternate universe "Superwoman" does the same thing to the alternate "Superboy" that Superman did to Supergirl on Earth-One - force them to live in an orphanage until they were considered ready to use their powers correctly
- The alternate Superboy also deliberately messes with the equipment in Superwoman's Fortress of Solitude despite being explicitly told not to

Power Tracker:

- I suppose I could just say it's irrelevant, but I guess these alternate versions of Kal and Kara would still both scale to High Herald Level.

Action Comics #333

Superman Story

Notes:

- The Kryptium sword from issue #329 is back again. Some scientists are trying to study it but can't because it's so indestructible.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to "a remote planet" to relax for a few days
- One of Lex Luthor's robots breaks its hand when trying to punch him
- Carries a train into space and to Venus, and then back


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex's remote monitors are able to not only watch Ardora on the planet Lexor, but also zero in on Superman's location and monitor him, even when he's on a remote mountaintop away from civilization
- Uses a small "interceptor projectile" that is fired from his base into a scientific lab with an "exact radar fix", which arrives "instants later", releasing sleeping gas to knock a guy out
- Lex uses an "iconoscope" to project an illusion of a monster around Superman
- Invents a "dyno-frost machine" to transform lakes and reservoirs into ice and manipulate them, also altering the weather for hundreds of square miles, starting a miniature ice age



Weirdness:

- A university grants Superman an honorary degree of "Doctor of Super-Science"
- Again, the conditions on Venus are portrayed as Earth-like. Somewhat excusable for the time this was written, as we hadn't yet sent many probes there.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, although his sanity is awfully low in this issue as Lex is using psychological warfare to drive him off the deep end.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the Imaginary Story from the previous issue (which was later retconned to take place in an alternate universe)
- We also get a recap of many of the events of the previous story
- Apparently there is a "sector zero" in the Phantom Zone where criminals can be put in solitary confinement, away from other prisoners. I don't know if this is part of the Earth-One Phantom Zone too, or just applies to this alternate universe version

Feat Catalogue:

- As this takes place in an alternate universe, there are no notable feats

Weirdness:

- The alternate Superwoman and Superboy are both affected by Red Kryptonite that transform them into the forms of Superman and Supergirl... then it wears off and doesn't have any effect whatsoever on the story.
- We learn about two Kryptonian criminals named "Van-Dal" and "Tir-An", who were made up by Superwoman as part of a story. Subtle.

Superdickery:

- The alternate Superboy is a mischievous, disobedient troublemaker who keeps ignoring what his cousin says, sabotages all of the other orphans' chances of getting adopted, builds a device to try to release Kryptonian criminals from the Phantom Zone, and tries to overthrow his cousin and take over the world

Power Tracker:

- The alternate Superwoman and Superboy would both be High Herald Level. After losing his powers due to Gold Kryptonite, the alternate Superboy would probably be Low Street Level at most, as he wasn't even a match for Jimmy Olsen.

Action Comics #334

Notes:

- This is a special, 80 - page, all-Supergirl issue, consisting of reprints of previous Supergirl stories. I've covered most of them already, so I'll just be covering the stuff that I haven't already.
- The reprint of the first Supergirl/LOSH story (from Action Comics #267) is modified to retcon away the part about the Legionnaires being the descendants of the ones who met Superboy, as they decided that was pointless and it made more sense for them to be the same
- A summary in this issue clarifies that Mxy's spell to empower Linda didn't wear off when he returned to the 5th dimension because it just undid the power-draining caused by Lesla-Lar
- The one story in this issue that I haven't already covered is from Superboy #80. I haven't gotten to that title yet, but when (and if) I do, I guess I can just point to this post instead of covering the same story again.
- Some of the feats from the Superboy story reprinted in this issue are occasionally shown in Pre-Crisis Kryptonian respect threads, so we see some rather famous scans in their original context (one of the reasons that I started this thread in the first place)


Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl travels back in time to visit her cousin when he was a teenager
- Superboy flies trillions of miles in seconds, to the planet Hebos, orbiting Alpha Centauri. Supergirl beats him there, though.
- Having arrived first, Supergirl dunked herself in molten lava and allowed it to cool around her, creating the illusion that she was a statue. She also implies that she could have deliberately stopped her heart from beating, but decided not to.
- The two of them play catch in space with a small moon
- They then dodge around asteroids and play hide-and-seek, with Supergirl hiding in the core of a sun
- They swim on a water planet so fast that their wakes rise up like mountains behind them.
- They also easily escape from an alien underwater fishing vessel, then fly back to Earth
- Both of them thwart an alien invasion by grabbing two alien ships and forcing them to destroy each other, easily tanking the explosions
- Supergirl returns to the future
- Superboy flies to the distant "Xurolo" galaxy, then back to Earth





Weirdness:

- The opening narration to the Superboy story states that "Superboy is the only human on Earth with super-powers"... wrong in at least two different ways
- In the distant galaxy "Xurolo", apparently the "laws of science" are different, and because of that, the scent of an alien plant can cause even superpowered Kryptonians to lose their memories, which wouldn't normally be possible

Superdickery:

- The two of them relocate asteroids and moons just for fun

Power Tracker:

- Both Superboy and Supergirl would be High Herald Level in this story, and many of their feats here reflect that.

Action Comics #335

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from issue #333
- The Daily Planet has a different head editor in this issue, because Perry White was elected as a US Senator in an issue of Lois Lane's title (another book I'll hopefully get to someday)
- The President of the United States makes an appearance in this issue, although he is only shown in silhouette and not named. At the time this comic was published, it would have been Lyndon B. Johnson.

Feat Catalogue:

- Races a "bolt of artificial lightning" while blindfolded and smashes through an armored wall, beating the lightning and moving at close to lightspeed
- Identified alien explosive chemicals that had been shrunken by Brainiac's technology, then outsmarts Luthor and Brainiac
- Throws Lex Luthor's satellite from Earth to the planet Lexor, arriving faster than Brainiac's FTL ship can make the journey, and aims it precisely to release some amnesia gas next to Ardora
- Invented said amnesia gas, which "wipes out unpleasant memories"




Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Luthor used a "hypno machine" to projected an image of a glacier "on the wavelength of Superman's brain" to create an illusion.

****

- Brainiac had an invisible spaceship
- He also invented an "Artificial Kryptonite Vibro-Beam", which he intended to use to kill Superman (although when he is shrunken down to tiny size, the gun is seemingly no longer powerful enough to do so)
- Brainiac reiterates that Superman can't overcome his force shield, although we don't see that actually tested here



Weirdness:

- Superman thinks to himself that a bunch of "radioactive fission blocks" that were being carried in a truck could potentially destroy the Earth if they went off. I guess that's more of Pre-Crisis DC's overly powerful nuclear technology that we've seen before.
- Luthor says that he created an illusion of a glacier and a new ice age to trick Superman, although in the previous story we saw that the glaciers he created were real. This could either be a retcon, or perhaps they're talking about two different incidents.
- Now-Senator Perry White was made head of the "S.I.C.", or Secret Intelligence Committee of the US Senate. As far as I can tell, this organization is fictitious.
- "General Blade" (Lex Luthor in disguise) tells Superman that "our scanner has had you under surveillance for weeks". While Luthor is shown to have such remote viewing technology, it seems odd that the US military would have it and Superman wouldn't question them using it on him. Although he was suffering a mental breakdown at the time.
- For some reason, Brainiac had to fire a ray gun at his spaceship to make it visible again

Superdickery:

- Superman deliberately erases Ardora's memories of learning that Lex Luthor is a criminal

Power Tracker:

- The throwing feat is nice, but it's nothing we haven't seen before. Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- NASA's Mariner space probes are name-dropped in this issue. Maybe we'll start getting realistic depictions of Venus soon...
- Supposedly famous actors named "Frankie Abalone" and "Tommy Sanders" are mentioned. These are probably based on the real-life performers Frankie Avalon and Tommy Sands.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to fog the negative of the film in a camera before it can develop
- Uses low-level heat vision to ruin a painting
- This is a weird one. She uses X-ray vision to "change the molecular structure" of some puppets to give them a magnetic charge and make them attract metal
- She discovered how to access and play back the data recordings of an alien probe
- Somehow uses a mirror to reflect what she sees with her telescopic vision, allowing people to see close up views of distant planets
- Squeezes lumps of coal into diamonds while juggling them
- Flies back to Earth from an alien planet under her own power
- Some weird alien mold that was meant to duplicate the radiation of a spiral nebula to make her ugly took longer than usual to work on her because of her invulnerability, but it did work


Weirdness:

- Aliens send probes to Earth and other planets, with the objective of abducting the winners of beauty contests to participate in a "Miss Cosmos" pageant, but it's all a trap by an alien who wanted to turn girls ugly because he was made ugly himself by radiation. Also, tons of other planets apparently have "Miss Universe" pageants that work exactly the same as they do on Earth, and they all have the same beauty standards.

Superdickery:

- Linda uses her powers to cheat in the Miss Universe pageant, sabotaging the other contestants (it was so that none of them would be taken to space for an interplanetary contest, but still)

Power Tracker:

- We have no idea what properties the alien radiation mold stuff has, so it's hard to say what it means that it affected her. But she's still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #336

Overall Notes:

- This cover was featured on Superdickery. Their explanation for it wasn't quite correct...
- This issue featured the premiere of "Direct Currents", a feature showing brief summaries of then-upcoming DC comics

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Using his power of total recall, Superman remembers the exact day that a Phantom Zone criminal is scheduled to be released
- Builds a "ray-concentrator", which basically seems to be just a lead-shielded Green Kryptonite weapon he can use on other Kryptonians, while the lead will protect him as long as it's pointed away from him
- Uses hypnosis to make a criminal surrender (the circumstances behind this are a bit weird, as he was in Kandor at the time, but Ak-Var had been affected by Red Kryptonite which caused him to give one temporary Kryptonian power at a time to people he touched, so Superman had been given the hypnosis power back but no others. Still, under normal circumstances, there's no reason he couldn't have done the same hypnosis trick)


Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Ak-Var, a Kryptonian criminal who spent 30 years in the Phantom Zone, had his natural telepathic abilities enhanced by the experience, so even on Kandor without powers, he was able to detect that his thoughts were being traced
- Kandorian cops also have "Spectro-glasses" that can analyze substances

Weirdness:

- Superman keeps records in his Fortress of Solitude in the form of old index card files. You'd figure he'd have Kryptonian computers or something.
- The Kandorian police have "telepathic hounds" that can track someone based on recordings of their brainwaves


Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Under Kandor's red sun environment, he would be Low-Mid Street Level, maybe High Street Level if you factor in the hypnosis (but Below Human Level if you take into account his size). Otherwise High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- The villain Jak-Thal's name is misspelled as "Jak-Al" at one point
- Lois Lane apparently works part-time at a hospital as a volunteer nurse

Feat Catalogue:

- I've seen this feat in some respect threads. Supergirl flies into space, where Bizarro World is about to collide with an earthlike planet. She considers just destroying the latter if it's uninhabited, but when she finds that it has a civilization, she lifts a giant mountain from the planet and places it on Bizarro World, causing it to change orbit and avoid the collision. She later replaces the mountain back on its original planet.
- Flies back to Earth


Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Earth scientists apparently have FTL telescopes, as they are able to detect an impending collision of Bizarro World, which is in another star system

Weirdness:

- Superman has two random masks of his and Supergirl's faces hanging on the wall in the Fortress of Solitude
- Superman uses an untested piece of Red Kryptonite to see if it can fix Supergirl's face, but despite his computer analysis showing that it may help, it instead just split her into two copies for 24 hours. This subplot is over in a few panels and has no bearing on the rest of the story.
- A mountain that big in proportion to a planet would weigh far more than the "thousands of tons" the comic said, and that's not even the beginning of what's wrong with the physics in that scene
- To explain the context of the cover, the Bizarros used their imperfect duplicator ray to create a flawed Bizarro copy of Supergirl (who had become ugly), and the flawed copy turned out pretty. That was the one collaborating with Comet on the cover to keep Superman out of the Fortress (because she thought she was doing him a favor... because Bizarro)
- While in a space prison, Jak-Thal was apparently allowed to use a "prison space monitor" to spy on Supergirl on Earth

Superdickery:

- Comet can tell that the Bizarro Supergirl clone isn't the real one, and yet he still cooperates with her to bully Superman

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.