Pre-Crisis Superman Overview

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #337

Superman Story

Notes:

- Another cover that was featured on Superdickery, I believe. The explanation for it doesn't make it any less weirder, really.
- The opening narration refers to Superman as "the world's mightiest hero". Somewhat subjective even at this point...
- Green Arrow is mentioned in this story

Feat Catalogue:

- Spins around a cane made of a nondescript "super-hard metal" and throws it like a boomerang to slice open an armored car
- Uses "super-aim" to fire a bunch of arrows up into the air so they come back down at precisely the right angle to pin two criminals to a pair of dead trees by their clothes without injuring them
- Apparently, X-rays can't penetrate Superman's skin
- Uses super ventriloquism to call for Lois and some other nurses so the message seems seems to come over the hospital intercom
- Superman has a doctorate from a medical school and can legally perform surgery (they reference Lois Lane #12 for this, which I'll hopefully cover eventually)
- Designed and built a flying helicopter vacuum covered in lead to steal Kryptonite

Weirdness:

- The "infamous Tiger Gang" are apparently robbers who wear full-body tiger print costumes. For supposedly being so infamous, this is their only appearance.
- Get ready for this one: Superman takes turns acting like a stereotypical millionaire, a beggar, a lawyer, an Indian Chief, a surgeon, and a thief. Because, as a kid in Smallville, he once got hypnotized by a Kryptonian comet to repeat a rhyme that subconsciously made him take up those identities... the hell?
- Some stereotypical American Indians show up, who apparently have no 20th century technology despite living in America in the 1960s.
- When Superman inexplicably steals an Indian headdress and bow and arrows to catch some criminals, no one finds this odd
- Apparently multiple museums in Metropolis had samples of actual Green Kryptonite
- The flying vacuum helicopter...

Spoiler: Please lay off the drugs, writers

Superdickery:

- Wrecks an armored car apprehending some thieves, which was really not necessary. He even thinks afterwards that his normal plan would have just been to wreck the car by hand, rather than by using a cane, and never once considers just stopping them before they reached the car or anything.
- Pressures the city to pass a bill tearing down a bunch of slums in one day with bulldozers, apparently without any regard for anyone who lived there. He even thinks how he could build better homes at super speed, but randomly decides not to, letting the city do it, which would take months.
- Steals a headdress, bow, and quiver of arrows from some American Indians (although he does give the latter two objects back... they let him keep the former)

Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable here, so still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- A response in the letters column says that Kryptonians retain their powers under blue and white stars

Feat Catalogue:

- Survives being inside a space-capsule crash landing on an alien planet while under a different colored sun, and having no powers. Somehow.
- Builds an electromagnet from components of her spaceship, and uses it to retrieve some iron - containing crystals
- Uses native alien materials to construct a "bulletproof vest"
- Despite being depowered, walks for many miles before tiring
- Performs an acrobatic trick to save an alien baby
- Prepares a trap, somehow predicting an alien will drop a rock on her at a specific place, and calculates it so that it will send a giant acorn to plug up the entrance to their underground kingdom
- With her powers back, masters an alien language in seconds by observing it from light-years away, then reads the lips of an alien in another star system to translate what he is saying

Spoiler: Second panel on the second page is... something

Spoiler: Not quite Macgyver level

Spoiler: Couldn't they just dig another exit?

Spoiler: These sensory capabilities just keep impressing me

Weirdness:

- Having been published before there were any female astronauts, this comic coins the odd word "astronette" to refer to them. (At least, I've never heard of that term used anywhere else)
- While testing a NASA spacecraft, Supergirl and the ship are swept into a natural "warp stream" that takes them at FTL speed to another star system.
- Supergirl ends up in a star system with a green sun. Those don't exist in real life.
- There is a rather infamous panel in this story that also appeared on Superdickery. Now we can finally see it in context.
- Apparently living underground allowed a race of aliens to evolve the ability to shoot fire from their eyes. And to Supergirl, this makes perfect sense.
- The alien planet has "soldier plants" - trees with faces that shoot spines at anyone that comes near them
- There are also "migrating ant-men", who "tow their womenfolk on logs"
- And "giant acorn trees", that drop acorns that look just like those on Earth - except they are the size of small buildings and contain deadly gas
- A bunch of relatively primitive aliens who use stone currency and live in huts have an advanced form of invisible, fireproof plastic

Superdickery:

- Talks down to a group of aliens by saying she was using 'Earth-science they wouldn't understand'.

Power Tracker:

- I think her feats on the alien planet are enough to put her solidly in High Street Level when depowered now. High Herald Level with powers, of course.

Action Comics #338

Superman Story

Notes:

- This is an odd one since it takes place in a future time (stated to be 2966, but later retconned to 2496, so as not to conflict with the LOSH stories), featuring a future descendant of Superman. Interestingly, another version of this same future Superman would later appear in the Post-Crisis Dominus Effect storyline, published in 1998.
- This is actually the first part of a two-part story
- A reader in the letters column asked why Superman didn't use his powers to help the US win the Vietnam War. The editors replied that he "figures the U.S. is good enough to win this conflict without his help". Kind of got some bad news there...

Feat Catalogue:

- Earth-One Superman (Kal-El/Clark Kent) does not actually appear in this story, so he has no feats here.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- One of Superman's future descendants destroys a comet with a punch. Somehow the detonation of this comet released "terrific electrical power" that ripped a hole in space.
- Another future Superman flies across interstellar space
- Said future Superman inhales a super-fast growing deadly fungus while sterilizing it with heat vision, before it can fill the atmosphere of a world and possibly escape into space
- He then uses telescopic vision to trace his enemy Muto to a different star system, and flies there after him

Spoiler: Because exploding comets can do that

Spoiler: If this mold could sterilize a planet and escape to space, this is pretty impressive

Weirdness:

- The "Federation of Planets" (no connection to Star Trek) apparently outlawed war, and thus all of the weapons in the universe were dumped (still intact) on one single planet... which is unguarded.
- The future descendants of Superman are immune to Kryptonite, but vulnerable to "a chemical fallout left by a past atomic war, which settled in the seas of every planet". Every planet?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Superman should scale to the feats of his descendants (in fact, he should actually be stronger than them, save the Kryptonite immunity, because their bloodline was diluted with human blood) but I'm not sure how to interpret the comet feat. The generous idea would be that the punch was so powerful that it ripped open that space warp as a side effect, but it could also have been due to some weird property of the comet (also see the similar phenomenon in the next issue). Anyway, the contemporary Superman is still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Supergirl states that there were over 1 billion Kryptonians that died when the planet exploded
- In this issue, a villain claims to be responsible for destroying Krypton, but it is revealed that he was lying

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl throws a bunch of boulders into the air so that they perfectly form her 'S' symbol in mid-air before falling back to the ground, where she catches them. She then throws them up again at hypersonic speeds so they explode from air friction and become fireworks
- No-sells a blast from an alien ray gun (although she pretends to be hurt by it)
- Follows an alien ship away from Earth to the far side of the moon
- Carries an alien spaceship across the universe (not sure how far this means, but still)
- Before a group of living meteors can reach the ship, she flies out into space, finds a creature that emits radiation that kills them, and brings it back, throwing it in their path to destroy them
- While in space, overhears the villain Raspor talking on the surface of a planet, and replies to him with super ventriloquism
- Somehow disabled a planet-destroying bomb buried deep under the surface of a planet, without physically touching it
- Flies back to Earth, carrying the alien spaceship with her

Spoiler: Interesting display

Spoiler: How much did she have to search to find that exact creature?

Weirdness:

- A pair of alien criminals are performing circus stunts on Earth for some reason
- In deep space, we see "vampire meteors", rock-like creatures that drain the life force from living organisms.

Superdickery:

- Supergirl strands an alien criminal on an abandoned planet, making him think it could explode at any moment, when it turns out he was actually innocent of the crime (destroying Krypton) that she thought he had committed. He did do other evil things, but still, that's a bit harsh.

Spoiler: I didn't technically kill you, I just condemned you to a slow and terrifying inevitable death... because I'm a hero!

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #339

Overall Notes:

- For I believe the first time in this title, the cover is actually divided into two halves, showing scenes from the Superman and Supergirl stories, respectively

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue, featuring the future descendant of Superman
- A reader sends a letter in the letters column, suggesting a story where Superman lands in Russia as a baby and is raised as a communist. Many years later, that concept would actually be done.
- Another response in the letters column says that the Kryptonite that killed the people of Argo City was actually "Anti-Kryponite", which effects depowered Kryptonians only.

Feat Catalogue:

- Again, the original Earth-One Superman doesn't appear in this story, so he has no feats here

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- While dying from polluted ocean water (that affects him like Kryptonite did his ancestor), the future Superman uses what limited heat vision he has left to reprogram some androids to save him
- Carries the androids to another planet and reprograms them again
- Flies back to Earth fairly quickly (the narration says "soon")
- Builds a giant grappling hook attached to a chain to retrieve Muto's base from under the ocean
- Before a weapon can cause the people of Metropolis to grow too large, he flies to a museum world, finds another device, and returns with it, then uses it to undo the enlarging effect
- No-sells the detonation of "helium bombs", stated to be "the most powerful in the universe"
- Ties up the engines of Muto's ship and throws it into orbit
- Smelts metal from rock with his bare hands to create a giant lightning rod, then uses vacuum breath to attract stormclouds to it, causing a lightning strike that... somehow opens a portal to another dimension and traps Muto there? The hell?

****

- The population of Atlantis combine their mental powers to send the future Superman a telepathic signal across vast distances in space

****

- Muto is able to react to a blitz by the future Superman that is directly stated to be "faster than lightning", using his transmutation powers before he can hit him

Spoiler: Speed and durability

Spoiler: That's just silly...

Weirdness:

- Muto uses an "expander-ray" on Metropolis, which causes everyone in the city to grow to giant size (their clothes can somehow stretch to accommodate them, but not the buildings and vehicles they're in)
- See how Muto was defeated. That gives more context to the comet feat, but it's just weird.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- I think we can say that the future Superman is High Herald Level like his ancestor, although he may be weaker due to his diluted Kryptonian bloodline.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This was actually Jim Shooter's first published story as a comic book writer. He was only 14 years old at the time. He would later go on to become the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel during the 80s.
- Superman is off in space on a mission with the rest of the Justice League during the events of this story
- Brainiac mentions that he has a "12th - level brain". This is the first time (in this title at least) that this has been mentioned, as his '12th - level intellect' would later become one of his defining attributes.

Feat Catalogue:

- Somehow, Supergirl's "feminine intuition" warns her in advance of Brainiac's attack on Earth
- Spins Brainiac's ship around at super speed, trying to disorient him
- Intercepts and tanks "energy bolts" from Brainiac's ship before they can hit Metropolis
- Intercepts and catches two of Brainiac's "hyper-missiles", and throws one back at Brainiac's ship
- Dodges Brainiac's "time-travel ray"
- Despite the enhanced Green K attack, she manages to escape from the cage
- Throws Brainiac's ship and its weapons into the sun

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Brainiac is able to perceive Supergirl charging his ship at super speed
- His ship's forcefield is able to stop her cold. She even comments that he must have increased its power from before.
- Apparently Brainiac can't get dizzy
- His ship's forcefield tanks the detonation of one of his own "hyper-missiles"
- The forcefield also reflects Supergirl's heat vision back at her
- Uses a "time-travel ray" to try to project Supergirl a billion years into the future, where the sun will be red so she'll have no powers, but she dodges it
- Manipulates the forcefield around his ship to destroy a thunderstorm around it
- Fires rays powerful enough to stun Supergirl, although they can't kill her
- Traps her in a Kryptonite cage, then uses "omicron rays" that enhance the power of the Kryptonite radiation to kill her faster, and to top it all off, he also releases Kryptonite gas in the cage.
- His ship's sensors detect Superman "millions of miles away" returning to Earth.
- He is able to channel the power of his forcefield into a destructive ray that he claims can annihilate anything, even Supergirl, and he appears to do so (but she escapes before it hits her)
- Uses a handheld "time-travel gun" on himself to escape

****

- Superman uses telescopic vision to observe Supergirl's fight with Brainiac from space

Spoiler: The full fight

Weirdness:

- See the first feat
- Brainiac uses "loudspeaker missiles" to issue a challenge to Superman. Literally, missiles fired from his ship that serve only to carry giant speakers on them.
- After her raw strength and heat vision fails to overcome Brainiac's forcefield, Supergirl tries to use lightning from a thunderstorm on it, saying how it has 'more raw power than an H-bomb'. It doesn't work, of course, but the fact that she thought it would when her own power, which is inconceivably greater than that, didn't, is weird by itself. I suppose if you really want to rationalize it you could say she was hoping the lightning would do something to 'short out' the shield that raw brute force wouldn't.

Superdickery:

- Superman was aware of the fight, and could certainly have crossed those mere "millions of miles" to aid Supergirl in time, but he decided to just let her handle Brainiac herself.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level, the weird thunderstorm thing notwithstanding.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #340

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of the iconic Superman villain Parasite. This was another of the young Jim Shooter's stories, and he is also responsible for creating the character (apparently inspired by learning about parasites in his 9th grade biology class)
- The cover blurb says that Parasite is "the most dangerous villain Superman has ever faced". The splash page later says he is the most powerful as well. I'm going to say no on both of those.
- According to a response in the letters column in this issue, Clark Kent's Social Security Number is 092-09-6616.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman brought radioactive elements from another galaxy to Earth to study them, and even though they are dangerous enough to kill a normal person in seconds, their radiation doesn't harm him at all
- Saves a falling plane off-panel
- Somehow gets an intuition that "something is about to happen" before he runs into the Parasite (Jim Shooter gave this same kind of power to Supergirl in the previous issue...)
- Moments after being partially drained, his "super-cells" fully replenish his energy
- Demolishes an old building and builds a new hospital at super speed in its place
- Hears a crime report on a police radio with his super hearing
- Despite being severely drained of power, he manages to stand up from pure willpower after Parasite beats him up
- Still drained, he uses his remaining power to hit Parasite with a surprise attack and save Lois, then escape
- Tanks multiple blows from Parasite using his own strength against him, despite being continuously drained
- Manages to counterattack, smashing Parasite into a wall
- Superman's invulnerability somehow prevented his mentality and thoughts from being stolen like his power, until he grew weak enough for Parasite's power to break through
- Manages to overload Parasite and cause him to explode/vaporize by draining too much power

Spoiler: The actual Superman vs. Parasite fight

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Parasite can absorb not only the energy but also the memories and intelligence of people he feeds on
- He also shows the ability to drain multiple people simultaneously at range, without needing to touch them. The drained powers stack too, so by draining 20 people he became as strong as 20 people combined. His weakness it that he burns up his energy super fast, so he constantly needs to feed to maintain himself. However, he claims that if he could absorb all of Superman's power, it would last him forever
- Manages to gain a lot of energy just from Superman flying outside past his window
- Drains Superman in his Clark Kent identity, from range again
- In their first actual fight, his power takes Superman by complete surprise and lets him gain a huge advantage
- Due to the durability he stole from Superman, he resists his heat vision, and is able to use heat vision of his own

Spoiler: Parasite's origin

Spoiler: Drains Superman a bit without even realizing it at first

Spoiler: Drains him again, but Superman quickly recovers

Weirdness:

- Parasite manages to accidentally discover Superman's secret identity, but instead of just draining him right there when he would have had him at his mercy, he decides to give him time to recover and lure him out later

Superdickery:

- Lois shows concern for Clark when he is having his power drained unknowingly, but he blows her off rudely and tells her to leave him alone

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, perhaps drained to as low as Low Meta Level by Parasite at one point.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Linda winning the Miss Universe pageant in issue #335 is mentioned in this issue.
- Star City, Green Arrow's hometown, is mentioned in this issue as well
- We see a US astronaut landing on the moon in this issue, even though it would be 3 more years before that would happen in real life
- Superman trained Supergirl to always disguise her handwriting so her writing as Linda and as Supergirl would look different

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to the moon and quickly locates a stranded astronaut
- Uses super-pressure to extend a flagpole and use it to save the astronaut without having to get close to the Kryptonite around him
- Returns to Earth in seconds
- Forges a bunch of writing in the archives of the orphanage to make it seem like another orphan was Supergirl
- Disguises herself as another former orphan to trick the criminals
- Collaborates with Superman to trick the criminals again, so they no longer suspect her

Spoiler: The physics of this seem questionable

Weirdness:

- There just happen to be Kryptonite meteors drifting a few meters above the surface of the moon, at the exact spot where an astronaut landed.

Superdickery:

- Uses vacuum breath to draw the smoke from a grill over to a dining table and make everyone there (who were her friends and former orphans at the orphanage) choke and cough a lot, just to create a distraction to get away
- Fakes evidence to make it seem like another girl is Supergirl, causing some criminals to (try to) lock her in a fallout shelter without air in an attempt to expose her secret identity.

Power Tracker:

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

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #341

Superman Story

Notes:

- The real-life Telstar satellites, some of the first communication satellites ever launched, are mentioned and shown in this issue
- An uninhabited island named "Balya" in the south Pacific is mentioned. This isn't a real place (although there is a town in Turkey by that name)

Feat Catalogue:

- In a rather low-end showing, Superman takes several seconds to fly from Metropolis to the south pacific, even though he was apparently in a hurry. Meh, outliers.
- Is unharmed by being in close proximity to "the most powerful H-bomb blast of all time", and also claims that "no nuclear explosion can affect me, though"
- Uses microscopic vision to identify fingerprints on a cannonball
- Superman has an alarm in the Fortress of Solitude that can alert him of dangerous earthquakes worldwide
- Using the hypnosis disk that Va-Kox built to enhance his own hypnotic powers, Superman hypnotizes the other Kryptonian into seeing an illusion that his plan succeeded
- Throws Va-Kox's belt and bomb into the sun to destroy it

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Kryptonian Va-Kox (disguised as Clark Kent) dives into the ocean too fast for Superman to overtake, and throws cannonballs at Superman with enough force to knock him off his feet
- Retrieves all of the stolen nukes faster than Superman (presumably because he knew where they were hidden)
- Va-Kox builds a "Superman utility belt" (said to be based on Batman's), with gadgets including a molten lead dispenser to neutralize Green Kryptonite, "dazzler pellets" (which create a bright light as a distraction so he can switch identities in public), a "magnetic beam" that can change the course of bullets, a hypnosis disc that enhances Superman's hypnotic abilities, and a miniature Phantom Zone projector
- While in the Phantom Zone, Va-Kox uses telepathy to send a villain on Earth instructions on how to build robots, and manipulates him into stealing and detonating a nuclear bomb
- Before the smoke from a nuclear blast clears, Va-Kox flies to a supervillain's island lair, applies a suit and makeup to don his Clark Kent disguise, then flies back to meet with Superman
- Now this is pretty interesting. Va-Kox claims that the belt he built had a bomb that could set off a "hyper-explosion" powerful enough to blast the entire Phantom Zone into a remote universe. The Phantom Zone is at least a universe-sized dimension itself (maybe multiversal, although I recall different Phantom Zones for different universes). Also, in a DC cosmology map I saw, the Phantom Zone was shown to be in the Sphere of the Gods, outside of the multiverse. Any way you slice it, though, this is insane, and the most impressive thing that we've yet seen from Kryptonian technology (assuming Va-Kox was telling the truth about the power of his bomb, of course. Although when Superman hypnotized him into seeing an illusion of it going off and working, he wasn't surprised, indicating that he at least believed that it could do what he claimed).

Spoiler: If he had actually tanked that bomb...

Weirdness:

- Apparently "America's stockpile of nuclear bombs" are all kept in a single room in "a remote underground vault", just sitting there.
- When Superman is skeptical that the apparent "Clark Kent" he runs into has his same powers as him, the latter says "So you're from Missouri, eh?" If I had to guess, I'd say this was some kind of figure of speech that was known at the time, but I can't find any info on it. Reading it now, it just looks like a complete non-sequitur.
- After Va-Kox in his "Clark Kent" disguise attacks and antagonizes Superman, he then claims to be on his side and Superman seems to immediately believe it. He doesn't get skeptical until they visit the Fortress together later.
- We see another metal-eating alien creature in Superman's zoo, which he feeds some tin cans to
- Somehow a nuclear detonation temporarily opened a hole in the Phantom Zone, allowing Va-Kox to escape. Considering that nuclear blasts don't normally do this, I'm guessing it had to do with the fact that Va-Kox arranged it to be in one specific location at a specific time (to take advantage of some temporary weak point in the dimensional barrier or something).

Superdickery:

- The cover shows Superman and "Clark Kent" fighting each other
- Superman captured a "metal eater" from an alien planet and locked it in a small cage in his Fortress.

Power Tracker:

- We'll ignore the low-end outlier since it is contradicted by so many better speed feats. Casually tossing the belt into the sun from the surface of Earth with one hand was nice, but nothing we haven't seen before. As my image caption suggests, though, if Superman had actually tanked that "dimension bomb"... well, then it would be a high-end outlier and I probably wouldn't have changed his level here without more corroborating evidence. So yeah, still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The Supergirl story in this issue is a reprint of the one from Action Comics #270, which I covered already.

Action Comics #342

Superman Story

Notes:

- There's an advertisement in this issue for the Adam West Batman movie (I've never actually seen it, strangely enough...)
- The cover and splash page state the population of Earth as being 3 billion people. For 1966, this was roughly accurate (it was around 3.4 billion)
- First appearance of the obscure (but technically recurring) villain Grax
- We see the "highest building in Metropolis" pointed out in this issue, although it isn't named
- A response in the letters column talks about a Superman balloon that would appear in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade that year.

Feat Catalogue:

- In a film in Brainiac's ship, we see Superman punching out Brainiac (unsure if this is meant to be from a specific previous story or what)
- In flashbacks, we see Superman defeat Grax's army of robot invaders, and his "flying disc machines" which had stolen "Venusian Radonite"
- Catches a satellite falling on Metropolis, sent by Grax as a distraction
- Both Superman and Grax take it for granted that the latter's planetbusting "K-Meson Bomb" can't actually hurt Superman, even if it goes off right next to him.
- Grax felt the need to charge Brainiac's forcefield with red sun radiation to negate Superman's powers, in case he would have otherwise been strong enough to break it himself. Although this could be because the forcefield would be much weaker when spread out over such a large area (the entire Earth).
- Stands for an hour on the surface of the Mariana Trench, stated by the narration to be "20 miles under the surface of the Pacific Ocean" (in real life it's not that deep, but I guess we can assume that DC Earth is different, or Superman found an unexplored, deeper spot). Anyway this doesn't harm or discomfort him at all, but it also does nothing to damage or defuse the bomb.
- Digs to the Earth's core and stands in it unharmed, but that doesn't affect the bomb either
- Deliberately stands at ground zero of an H-bomb test, but both he (and the bomb) are unharmed
- Creates a "giant super-magnet" in seconds off-panel (presumably this involved finding and excavating the right materials, forging it, etc.)
- Uses the magnet to hold Grax's ship to the outside of the forcefield, saying that it won't be able to protect him from the explosion when the bomb goes off
- Tanks the explosion of the K-Meson bomb, while contained by one of Brainiac's forcefields around Grax's ship. Even despite this, the forcefield is breached by the explosion, and the other forcefield surrounding Earth is damaged and broken by it, but the Earth survives.
- He protects Brainiac's forcefield generator from the explosion by wrapping it in his invulnerable cape
- He also built a spaceship for Brainiac

Spoiler: The bomb can't hurt Superman

Spoiler: Unsuccessfully trying to disarm the bomb

Spoiler: Too late to stop it from going off...

Spoiler: Tanks the explosion of the bomb, which destroyed 2 Brainiac-style forcefields

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Brainiac built a new interstellar saucer ship
- Brainiac adds a "transistor hookup" to his computer brain, trying to enhance his intelligence, although he still can't come up with a plan to beat Superman
- Grax says that, even despite his supposedly superior brain, he could not create a forcefield as strong as Brainiac's
- Using spare parts from a monitor screen in the escape pod Grax put him in, Brainiac builds a device that lets him "thought-cast" across space to communicate with Superman on Earth

****

- The ray weapons on Grax's spaceship are able to cut through Brainiac's forcefield (although he did get in a surprise attack before Brainiac could raise his shields, so he may have damaged the generators somewhat)
- Grax uses a "space-transfer beam" to board Brainiac's disabled ship
- Grax claims to have a "20th-order brain", superior to Brainiac's "12th-order" one
- Knocks Brainiac out with a ray that 'short-circuits his computer brain', although he notes that Brainiac will quickly recover
- His ship has a ridiculously long, extendable "power charger" that can reach from many times a red giant star's diameter into its core
- Attaches a "K-Meson bomb" to Superman's belt, which is powerful enough to destroy the Earth, and will automatically go off if he tries to remove it.
- Using a modified version of Brainiac's forcefield (enhanced with red sun radiation to dampen Superman's powers), he covers the entire Earth with it to keep Superman within its atmosphere.
- Missiles (presumably nuclear) fired from Earth are also unable to break the forcefield around Earth
- Earth's best scientists say they can't begin to understand the science behind the bomb and its detonation mechanism
- Grax can somehow remotely monitor Superman's actions on Earth from space
- Diamond drills and laser beams are unable to damage Grax's bomb
- The bomb may even be more powerful than we thought, as, after escaping the forcefield, Superman says he can't fly far away enough from Earth in 5 seconds to reach a safe distance
- Grax also incorporated Brainiac's forcefield on his own ship
- Grax survived the explosion of the bomb on his ship by using a device which 'turned him into an immaterial phantom'. Despite this, the blast still hurled him far into space.

Spoiler: Grax attacks and defeats Brainiac

Spoiler: Grax enacts his plan

Spoiler: BrainGyver? Also, giant magnet out of nowhere

Weirdness:

- Advanced alien technology using transistors, lol.
- They actually try to use real science to explain the "K-meson bomb", and K-mesons (more commonly known as Kaons) are actually real quantum particles, although the explanation they give in the comic doesn't really make sense
- An astronomer using a large telescope manages to see Superman and Grax conversing in the upper atmosphere, and reads their lips to figure out what they were saying.
- After hearing about the bomb, some people randomly start throwing bricks at Superman

Superdickery:

- Brainiac saves Earth just because he doesn't want his rival Grax to get a victory over Superman. In thanks, Superman builds Brainiac a new spaceship, despite knowing that he will surely use it for evil.

Power Tracker:

- We don't know precisely how powerful the K-Meson bomb was, but the ability to not only break through one of Brainiac's forcefields, but continue to reach across space and shatter another one around Earth seems to imply that it's way, way beyond basic planetbusting. Recall that these forcefields were too strong for Superman himself to overcome earlier (although it has been implied he has gotten significantly stronger since then). Brainiac was also said to have upgraded the power of his shield in issue #339. Tanking the explosion completely unharmed, while it was concentrated by the forcefield around the ship, is super impressive anyway, although I don't think I can prove it's anywhere above High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This story features an "ultra-modern vehicle", a hovercraft that can race over the water at 300 mph. Even today we don't have hovercraft nearly that fast, but this is treated as a normal thing in the story.
- One of the pages in the story in the copy I had was upside-down, for some reason.

Feat Catalogue:

- Searches the sea for a bird she put her cape on and takes it back, otherwise nothing really notable

Weirdness:

- We see another random island full of Amazons (no relation to Wonder Woman). One of the girls from Stanhope College even comments "they must be an Amazon tribe" after seeing that they are all women, as if this was a common thing (apparently it is, since we've seen Superman run into several of these tribes before)
- These Amazons force every female castaway on their island to drink a "nectar of strength" and become Amazons themselves (no mention of what they do to the male castaways)
- Linda puts her cape on a bird to trick people into thinking that Supergirl was just flying by the island, so no one will suspect her secret identity there

Superdickery:

- Supergirl claims she couldn't help her friends escape without revealing her secret identity. That's nonsense, as while they were sleeping, she could just fly them to the mainland, resume her Linda identity, and then tell them that Supergirl rescued them all. Instead she sticks around on the island, letting her friends be enslaved.
- As part of her scheme to troll the Amazon queen, she causes coconuts to fall from trees on her head. People in real life have died from that.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here worth noting, so she's still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #343

Overall Notes:

- A response in the letters column in this issue states that Superman's immediate descendants would be just as powerful as him, as his Kryptonian genes were dominant, and further generations after that could still be powerful by occasionally reproducing with other superpowered individuals (explaining the future Supermen we saw in the story arc starting in issue #338). Although it doesn't say they would all be just as powerful as Kal-El.

Superman Story

Notes:

- The villain in this issue was fairly impressive, and I considered making a respect thread for him, but this is his only appearance so I probably won't

Feat Catalogue:

- The Superman Revenge Squad talks about how Superman defeated all of their plans and weapons in the past, despite all of their planning
- Superman takes debris created by Eterno's rampage and builds it into a series of walls at super speed to try to slow him down (although it doesn't work very well)
- Throws the Daily Planet building globe at Eterno and knocks him over
- Despite Eterno overpowering his heat vision with his own eye beams, Superman is able to tank the beam attack without damage, although he notes that it is strong

Spoiler: The full Superman vs. Eterno fight

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The SRS again demonstrates casual intergalactic travel in one of their ships. They also have a "time viewer" that can look into Earth's past.
- Their ship uses a "Cyclo-ray" that is capable of firing from orbit, blasting through the ocean crust, mantle, and core of the Earth in order to precisely target and destroy a pile of a specific element in the core.
- They have an "atomic transmuter" that they use to transform "nuclear capsules" into absorbium

****

- This issue's villain, Eterno the Immortal, is an ancient robot powered by "the energy of the stars" (not sure exactly what that means), but he has some pretty good feats and capabilities, including immortality, indestructibility, super strength, super intelligence (said to be "more intelligent than an army of Einsteins"), "Destructo-beams" capable of easily splitting mountains and digging 4000 miles to the Earth's core, and even overpowering Superman's heat vision, etc.
- When reaching the Earth's core, he was paralyzed by the strange properties of the element "absorbium" (basically his Kryptonite), but was otherwise unharmed, and stayed there, undamaged, for a billion years.
- The narration at one point says he uses "the power of 100 suns unleashed" to break out of the Earth's inner core.
- He digs his way up to the surface and emerges through a volcano
- Near-instantly translates the English language from hearing the citizens of Metropolis speaking it
- Punches Superman away and into the ground
- Superman says he hits Eterno with "all I got", but he barely reacts
- He shrugs off Superman's heat vision, and then matches it with his own destructo-beams, and even overpowers it
- Tags the SRS' ship with his beams while it was trying to escape to space
- No-sells the SRS' most powerful energy beams

Spoiler: The Superman Revenge Squad is back with a new plan

Spoiler: Eterno's origin

Spoiler: Eterno digs to the Earth's core, and the SRS releases him a billion years later

Spoiler: Eterno busts out of the Earth

Spoiler: Blasts the SRS ship

Spoiler: No-sells their standard weapons, but is disabled by the absorbium

Weirdness:

- Apparently, Earth was home to an advanced civilization 1 billion years in the past. Whether they were native, or aliens who colonized Earth, is not specified. It's also worth noting that these "Xan" looked exactly like humans, as well.
- Eterno is referred to as being half android and half robot... that makes no sense at all.
- A cloud of deadly space gas approached Earth in the past, which would apparently wipe out all life outside of the oceans, and the only way the Xan could think of to stop it was to use an element called "absorbium" that was only present at the Earth's core. Said element also coincidentally happened to be able to immobilize Eterno.
- After Eterno was disabled by the absorbium at the end of the issue, it was never shown what Superman did with him. Maybe we'll find out in another issue, but probably not.

Superdickery:

- Deliberately rips the globe off the top of the Daily Planet building during the fight with Eterno to use it as a weapon

Power Tracker:

- Aside from the lines about being 'powered by the energy of the stars' and using the force of '100 suns unleashed', we don't have that much to go on for how powerful Eterno was, apart from his performance against Superman. It seemed that they both weren't able to really hurt each other, but Eterno did seem to have the upper hand when the fight was interrupted, although if it had continued Superman probably could have won by throwing him into space or something, as he didn't seem to be able to fly. It was actually a fairly even fight. If we take the "100 suns" comment literally, that's still High Herald Level (although that, of course, doesn't indicate the limit of either Eterno or Superman's power).

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is a reprint from Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #40 (a series that I also hope to cover eventually). As I've explained before, when I get to that issue in that title, I'll just reference this post.
- According to the opening narration, this was Supergirl's first guest starring role in another title
- This took place back before Supergirl's existence was publicly known
- Apparently Superman can't hear Jimmy Olsen's signal watch while he's in the core of the Earth

Feat Catalogue:

- Hears Jimmy Olsen's signal watch, changes to Supergirl, and rushes from Midvale in time to save him from falling off a bridge somewhere outside of Metropolis
- Flies Jimmy Olsen to the Sahara desert, and then to the North Pole
- Uses telescopic vision and super hearing to see what is going on in the Metropolis rodeo from a long distance
- Uses ice breath to freeze a pair of scissors, then tosses them from outside of Metropolis precisely enough to cut a rope attached to a bull dragging a cowboy in a rodeo and free him
- She thinks to herself that she could also have used her heat vision to break the rope from that distance instead
- Uses X-ray vision to see Superman returning from the Earth's core
- Uses a precise application of super breath to hit the button on Jimmy's signal watch, setting it off
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision and super hearing to spy on Superman and Jimmy Olsen's conversation in Metropolis, from the orphanage in Midvale

Spoiler: Precision (but some dubious physics)

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman digs to the center of the Earth again, this time using a camera device protected by a special "super-hard fireproof plastic case" he made to take photographs of it for scientists.

Spoiler: Thanks for the photos, Superman, but why is there a giant robot down there?

Weirdness:

- Jimmy Olsen figures out that a sideshow act is fake because a frozen caveman had an iron-tipped spear. Considering all of the anachronisms surrounding cavemen we've seen in these comics (like living alongside dinosaurs), this seems like a case of arbitrary skepticism to me.
- Jimmy Olsen accidentally sets of a tear gas bomb and blinds himself
- The "Metropolis Rodeo Show" puts on a staged "Indian War Dance", complete with people in stereotypical Native American costumes

Spoiler: Epic fail, Jimmy

Superdickery:

- Chops down a tree to try to prove to Jimmy Olsen that she has superpowers

Power Tracker:

- This takes place several years before the 'current' setting of the stories, but I still considered Supergirl to be High Herald Level back then, so she maintains that level in this story too.

Action Comics #344

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman and Batman together invent a mind-switching device, and test it by attempting to swap minds with each other
- Superman says that his body never tires, but he does like to sleep to relax his mind
- The narration also says that fatigue can never bring sleep to Superman, but sheer boredom can

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Superman and Batman together invent a mind-switching device, and test it by attempting to swap minds with each other

Spoiler: What possessed them to think this was a good idea?

Weirdness:

- Superman and Batman decide to switch minds for an experiment.
- Batman has a pack of specially-made cards in his utility belt with images and details of various villains from his Rogues Gallery
- Superman has a bunch of really acid-trip style dreams due to the effects of Red Kryptonite and seeing pictures of Batman's rogues gallery. These dreams include such scenes as fighting a giant, talking flower that spits water at him, a talking bulldozer that turns into marshmallow when he punches it, a bunch of letter "Y"s with arms and legs attacking him on top of an Egyptian - style pyramid, a bunch of copies of himself frozen in ice, which then merge together and fight a bunch of mushrooms with arms that throw frogs at him, and a giant bird dive-bombing him with a giant egg that homes in on him like a missile.
- Funny out-of-context line: Superman thinks "Well, it's time for my date with Batman at the Fortress!"

Spoiler: What the actual fuck

Superdickery:

- Not used to Superman's powers, Batman makes a mess of the Fortress of Solitude trying to use them
- The giant robin in Superman's dream was said to symbolize Batman's sidekick Robin, so I guess we can count it as dickery on his part when it attacked him in the dream

Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable feat-wise here, so he's still High Herald Level. Since this story co-stars Batman, I'll label him as High Street Level, as well.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- On an alien planet similar to Earth, a presidential debate is televised for the first time in that planet's history. I thought this might be intended to be a parallel with contemporary events in real life, but the first televised US presidential debate was between Nixon and Kennedy in 1960, 6 years before this comic was published.
- This story is continued in the next issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies through space, photographing unusual cosmic phenomena for a planetarium exhibit that Superman is building. She travels through many different star systems.
- Intercepts bullets from multiple guns at once at super speed
- After being pelted with garbage, she flies through the atmosphere at super speed, causing the heat from friction to burn the trash off her costume
- Uses X-ray vision to read every book in a library in a few minutes (stated by the narration to be a million volumes)
- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to scan a planet and find out it is run by teenagers
- Uses X-ray vision to spot a vein of gold underground and tunnels under to dig it up, making sure to differentiate it from fool's gold
- Steals a slingshot from a boy's pocket at super speed in the middle of a large stadium crowd without anyone noticing
- Digs 200 miles under the planet's crust (IRL the crust on an Earthlike planet wouldn't be that thick, but whatever) and mines and refines a bunch of gold (actually fool's gold, since she wasn't paying attention this time) into a giant block of the stuff in seconds at super speed, then returns it to the surface in front of the treasury building "within moments"

Spoiler: More casual space travel

Spoiler: Senses and intelligence

Spoiler: Whoops

Weirdness:

- The gravity from a pair of twin suns somehow warped their orbiting planets into weird shapes
- Supergirl finds another planet that's a near-copy of Earth, complete with replicas of Metropolis and Midvale
- On this copy Earth, called Gaea, a plague wiped out the majority of adults, and teenagers, who were unaffected, took over, and then treated adults as kids.
- She finds a house identical to that of her foster parents' on Earth on the alien planet. She buys it as Linda Danvers, and then 'adopts' copies of her foster parents (because adults and teens' roles are reversed on this planet).
- Linda gets a job as a computer programmer. When asked if she has experience, she thinks to herself how she's operated computers ten times as large in Superman's Fortress. Funny from a modern perspective, because nowadays we keep trying to build more advanced computers to be smaller.
- An alternate version of Dick Malverne, who is working for adult terrorists, finds out Linda's identity, and helps stage a public incident to make her popular so people will want her to run for president. Despite not actually running, a write-in campaign gets her elected, only two days after the incident. His plan is to be appointed as her Vice President, then expose her as Supergirl (who is known as a villain on their world, due to misunderstandings and mistakes) and impeach her, then take over.

Superdickery:

- Automatically assumes that a group of teenagers with guns on an alien planet were criminals and attacks them (they were actually police).
- Decides to live for 2 months on an alien planet, without returning the photos she took to Superman or even telling him where she is.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #345

Overall Notes:

- A response in the letters column has a reader suggesting that Superman could have wrapped the K-Meson bomb from issue #342 in his indestructible cape, which would have smothered the explosion and saved the Earth. The editors don't deny this would have worked, but I'm not so sure.

Superman Story

Notes:

- The premise of this one is similar to issue #127, where Superman's secret identity is again in danger of being exposed by a popular media show at the time. In this case, it's the TV show Candid Camera, which actually ran from 1948 all the way until 2014. The creator and original host of the show, Alan Funt, plays a major role in this story (but he's not credited on the DC wiki as the antagonist, like Ralph Edwards was in issue #127)

Feat Catalogue:

- Rips the Daily Planet building off of its foundation and flies it around in the sky
- Places the building back and fixes everything (including the wires and pipes) at super speed
- Uses super hearing to overhear Alan Funt discussing the prank about to be played on him, and, at super speed, drills through the bottom of a phone booth and out of the building, flies to Jimmy Olsen's apartment, "borrows" his miniature TV set and Batman costume, returns to the booth, fixes the floor to look as good as new, and replaces half of his Superman costume with the Batman one and puts his civilian clothes on over them, all in under half a second.

Spoiler: Another one of those super speed reaction/multitasking feats I like so much

Weirdness:

- Clark is assigned to cover an exhibit at a museum on the "Gay Nineties". This was an actual thing, but it's still a funny term.
- Clark dresses in a costume that's half Superman, half Batman, in order to fool Alan Funt. Weird way to do it.
- He is also seen carrying around a "miniature TV set" that can fit in the palm of his hand. I don't think that was a thing, especially not in 1967. Apparently it belonged to Jimmy, maybe we'll find out more about it if we ever get to covering his series.

Spoiler: Uh...

Superdickery:

- See that first feat? He did that as a stunt just to prank Perry White

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, not much else to say here.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- The planet Gaea is stated to be hundreds of light-years away from Earth in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Cuts the ropes of three nooses with heat vision
- Uses super breath to deflect bullets from a firing squad so they miss their intended targets
- Searches the entire country at super speed and captures the entire anarchist movement and its leaders, putting them in prison (timeframe unstated but implied to be no more than a few minutes)
- Notices a sun expanding rapidly and threatening to engulf a star system, so she throws half a dozen inhabited worlds into new, safe orbits
- Returns to Gaea and digs under the treasury building to create an earthquake
- Flies back to Earth

Spoiler: Some very casual planet moving

Weirdness:

- When Supergirl is recapping her origin to the Gaeans, she says "On Earth, I fight crime and humanity!". I'm guessing this was a mistake, because it seems that it's saying that she fights against humanity.
- The "Adult Revolt Movement", or "A.R.M.", on Gaea, has some distinctively Nazi aesthetics and policies, including the infamous salute and book burnings.

Superdickery:

- Resists arrest and wrecks a courthouse before flying into space (she says she'll come back and fix the damage later, but that hardly makes it okay)

Power Tracker:

- The planet-moving feat seemingly took her at least a few days, as A.R.M. had the time to set up their Nazi government in the meantime, but that can probably be attributed to the fact that she had to make sure the orbits were safe and the sun had stopped expanding. She's still High Herald Level, though.

Action Comics #346

Superman Story

Notes:

- Superman signs up for a $100,000,000,000.00 life insurance policy in this story. That would equal over $915,000,000,000.00 in today's currency. He cancels it by the end of the story, though.
- The Justice League is mentioned again in this issue.

Feat Catalogue:

- The opening narration states that "Superman is immune to any illness, invulnerable to any accident that might kill an ordinary mortal. Bullets bounce harmlessly off his impenetrable skin. Deadly germs shrivel and die in his super-hygienic body. An atom bomb would hardly muss his hair."
- Does 2000 one-handed push-ups at super speed
- A microscope shows no germs in his mouth, as apparently none of them can survive in his body
- Says that falling from outer space to Earth wouldn't muss his hair
- Plays "underwater basketball" with seals for 15 minutes
- Easily thwarts a bank robbery by a gang using "the most advanced military weapons", which are stated to not even tickle him
- Gathers gems and precious metals from space, with a total value of $100,000,000,000.00
- No-sells blasts from an alien ship's "most powerful force-bolts and energy rays". The aliens seemed to think these could stop him but were proven wrong.

Spoiler: Superman vs... four-armed, alien space pirate cats. Typical Silver Age.

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Supergirl uses the Phantom Zone Projector in the Fortress of Solitude to rescue Superman from the Phantom Zone

Weirdness:

- See the 5th feat
- The gang mentioned above actually had a stolen piece of Green Kryptonite, but decided not to use it for some reason
- A guy who used a piece of Green Kryptonite to threaten Superman is never punished for this, and in fact gets a happy ending

Superdickery:

- When spotting a man about to fall to his death, Superman thinks to himself that it's more of an annoyance, taking time out of his otherwise peaceful day to rescue him

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- A piece of trivia from the DC Wiki, the alternate cover of Supergirl #4 (from 2006) is a tribute to the cover of this issue, which is a scene from the Supergirl story

Feat Catalogue:

- As Linda Danvers, wins the University Bowl quiz game for her college, with the highest individual score
- Flies a criminal to an uninhabited island and builds a giant circular wall to contain him in a few minutes, then flies him back to the mainland

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman flies into space to rescue an astronaut whose lifeline broke

Weirdness:

- The word "scalpel" is mispelled as "scapel" at one point
- A criminal plastic surgeon says that her mother did the same work for Hitler, to disguise Nazi spies
- Some random (although rich) criminals have a TV monitor screen that somehow automatically monitors Superman and Supergirl's daily patrols
- The criminals manage to expose Supergirl's secret identity and use it to blackmail her, but there were multiple points where they were all in front of her, and she could have captured them all easily, but didn't.

Superdickery:

- A criminal who was after Clark Kent ended up killing the other criminal who was disguised as him, as well as his cohorts. Superman and Supergirl seemed to be just fine with this, as it provided a neat shortcut around their code not to murder people.

Spoiler: We're against killing people... but we don't care if others do it

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #347

Overall Notes:

- This is an 80-page giant issue focused on Supergirl, reprinting many stories featuring her. I'll only be covering the ones I haven't already covered, of course.
- The stories I already covered in this thread are:
* "The Boy Who Could See in the Dark" (reprinted from Action Comics #263, although the wiki mistakenly says it's from issue #264)
* "My Father, the Cop" (reprinted from Action Comics #264)
* "Supergirl's Super-Boyfriends" (reprinted from Action Comics #290)
* "The Secret Origin of Supergirl's Super-Horse" (reprinted from Action Comics #293)
- One bonus feature in this issue recaps several of Supergirl's adventures with the Legion of Super Heroes. They only mention one story that I haven't covered yet, but if it's in another title, I may get to it eventually.
- The three stories I'll be covering are all reprinted from Superman #140 (I'll reference this post once I get to that issue in that title, if I do). It's a single story divided into 3 parts.
- There's another bonus feature in this issue, briefly going over the origins of several supporting characters in the Supergirl stories (Dick Malverne, Jerro, Comet, Brainiac 5, and Lena Thorul)
- A third bonus feature recaps several incidents of Supergirl traveling through time and having adventures in the past and future.

Story 1: "The Son of Bizarro"

Notes:

- As previously mentioned, this is reprinted from Superman #140
- First appearance of Bizarro Jr.

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl doesn't even appear in this story, so no feats for her

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Bizarro builds his own Fortress of Solitude (or, rather, "Fourtriss Uv Bizarro") in the desert on Bizarro World. He forgets to make a door, so he just smashes through the walls to create one.
- Bizarro searches a million miles in space for his son in a few hours but fails to find him
- Bizarro Jr. survives crashing to Earth in a space probe, and it doesn't even wake him up

****

- Earth scientists had built an FTL space probe that traveled to another star system and back

Story 2: "The Orphan Bizarro"

Notes:

- Direct continuation of the previous story, again reprinted from Superman #140

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies straight through a mountain
- Uses heat vision to create a cloud of steam from a drinking fountain to obscure the view out of a window
- When using heat vision to heat a beaker of chemicals for her chemistry homework, she accidentally transforms them into an "unknown super-explosive". She, Krypto, and Bizzaro Jr. are all unhurt by it, but it appears to turn the latter into a true Bizarro

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Bizarro Jr. flies straight through a mountain. He can also fly so fast that Supergirl can't easily catch him.
- Superman has trouble catching him too, and the two of them need to work together to finally trap him
- Bizarro uses his super senses to spy on Superman's Fortress of Solitude all the way from his own Fortress on Bizarro World, seeing and hearing his son there

****

- Superman builds two robots disguised as a couple who adopt Bizarro Jr. from the orphanage. He also ostensibly forged papers and identities for them.

****

- Krypto is able to restrain Bizarro Jr. and prevent him from leaving the Fortress

Spoiler: Bizarro has Superman's crazy super senses

Story 3: "The Bizarro Supergirl"

Notes:

- Again, continues directly from the last one, and is reprinted from Superman #140.
- First appearance of Blue Kryptonite, which has similar effects to Green Kryptonite, but only on Bizarros

Spoiler: The debut of Blue Kryptonite

Feat Catalogue:

- Throws the duplicator ray from Earth to deep space, precisely aimed so Superman can catch it (he is on an asteroid in between Earth and Bizarro World at the time)
- Flies to Bizarro World and back to Earth with Superman

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Bizarro again spies on Earth from his own planet, and also flies there in the span of a single panel (actual timeframe is unknown, but it doesn't look like it was too long, as Bizarro Supergirl is still holding Bizzaro Jr. when he gets there)
- Flies back to Bizarro World
- The army of Bizarros slices an asteroid in half as they head to Earth, and Superman says they could easily do the same thing to the Earth itself

****

- Superman uses his telescopic vision to see the army of hundreds of Bizarros flying through space to attack Earth
- Wearing a special lead suit, he flies to space and collects Green Kryptonite meteors, throwing them onto an asteroid in the path of the Bizarro army
- After using the duplicator ray to create Blue Kryptonite, he carries some of it back with him to Earth
- Flies to Bizarro World and back to Earth with Supergirl

Spoiler: Bizarro spies on Earth again and flies there in a panel

Spoiler: The Bizarro army, on the other hand, seem to be taking their sweet time

Weirdness:

- The stories feature Bizarro World, so weirdness is a given. Too much to mention all of it, in fact. Although one notable thing is that when Bizarro Jr. crash-lands on Earth, he is picked up and taken to Midvale Orphanage, back when Supergirl was also staying there.
- Also, no one seems to find it odd, or even worth commenting on, that the mysterious orphan baby is wearing a Superman costume
- Supergirl's heat vision somehow transmutes ordinary chemicals into an "unknown super-explosive". Exposure to this seemingly causes Bizarro Jr. to look like a Bizarro, but it's later revealed that Bizarro babies are born looking human, and naturally transform to look like Bizarros later
- One of the trophies in the Fortress of Solitude is a mirror from the "world of giants"
- Bizarro Jr. randomly decides to play with the imperfect duplicator ray that Superman took from Luthor, and aims it at Supergirl, creating a Bizarro Supergirl

Superdickery:

- Supergirl uses a burst of super-breath to blow a cloud of dust into some people's eyes to conceal her secret identity
- Superman tasks Supergirl with not only keeping her own identity secret, but keeping the identity of Bizarro Jr. secret simultaneously at the orphanage.
- Bizarro Supergirl accidentally kills herself by landing on the asteroid with the Blue Kryptonite. Superman and Supergirl don't seem that broken up about it.

Spoiler: She's dead, because of the stuff I created? Whatever, back to work

Power Tracker:

- Supergirl, Superman, and all of the Bizarros (except for the Bizarro - Loises, who have no powers) are all High Herald Level.

Action Comics #348

Overall Notes:

- A letter and response in the letters column mentions that there was a Superman stage play that was being performed around this time, or slightly earlier

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- It's stated that it takes Superman at least a few seconds to build up to FTL speed (at least on Earth, I don't know about in space), so after spotting a falling rocket in Cape Kennedy, Florida, from Metropolis, he is able to just barely get there in time to save it, having only one second (although he has traveled farther distances both on Earth and in space in less time before... meh, inconsistencies).
- Uses his microscopic vision to identify that the rocket was sabotaged with acid
- While undergoing spy training as Clark Kent, he has to pretend to be timid and weak while still passing the training
- Uses X-Ray vision to identify that a practice gun a guy was using was a real gun instead that he had taken by mistake, and intercepts the bullet with his teeth, chewing and swallowing it. The practice guns were also said to fire "light beams", and it was shown and stated that he dodged the one shot at him, but as this was a training course meant to teach normal humans to aimdodge, we can't really say that this was lightspeed or faster.
- Is immune to a special kind of acid dart that can paralyze someone and erase their memory of the events
- At super speed, so fast that no one in the room can notice, he uses heat vision to evaporate the acid on some equipment to prevent it from corroding it
- Is unharmed by acid in his face

Spoiler: Saves the rocket, with a bit of dramatic tension

Spoiler: Dodging a light beam... maybe

Spoiler: Precision and speed with heat vision

Weirdness:

- A costumed spy calling himself the "Acid Master" is sabotaging the US Space Program (this was published during the height of the Space Race). This guy seems to have gimmick acid for everything, including acid darts that can paralyze people and wipe out their memories.
- The Acid Master broke into FBI Headquarters and stole their personnel files, so they randomly decide to make Clark Kent one of their agents assigned to capture him, because he won't recognize him.
- In addition to normal guns, the Acid Master's henchmen are armed with "acid grenades". He also has giant, tank-sized "acid cannons"

Superdickery:

- Lets the Acid Master destroy a bunch of chemical equipment, because he couldn't stop him without revealing his secret identity

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here to change him from High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- In a flashback, she saved an alien planet from starvation when a blight wiped out all of their crops by bringing them disease-resistant plants from other worlds
- Supergirl says that she deliberately tries to get average grades as Linda so she doesn't reveal her secret identity, but with her super intelligence she could easily get perfect grades
- Drills through a mountain "at lightning speed"
- Travels back in time and place to the first H-Bomb test (Ivy Mike) and tanks the bomb unharmed, then returns to the present

Spoiler: Wow, what a bitch

Weirdness:

- It's kind of odd that the aliens from the planet Denek were advanced enough to build a robot with all of Supergirl's powers, yet they couldn't solve their own famine problem
- The robot was built with the ability to disguise itself as either Supergirl, Linda Danvers, or... Bizarro Supergirl, for some reason

Superdickery:

- Supergirl is very ungrateful and even jealous of the robot that was built and sent specifically to help her, and deliberately tries to destroy her. In the end, she succeeds, as the robot is sent back to her home planet to be disposed of (and Linda even admits that she cheated too, as she wouldn't have been able to give blood either)

Spoiler: If this robot came back as a supervillain, she'd be perfectly justified

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. The robot ("Kara Strange") is perhaps slightly lower, as she was temporarily disoriented by the H-bomb blast

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #349

Superman Story

Notes:

- This issue involves "Intercrime, international crime syndicate and foe of Interpol". I'm not sure if they have appeared before or after this, but the name makes me think they could be a precursor to Intergang (in terms of out-of-universe inspiration only, I am sure that Intercrime has no connections to Darkseid or Apokolips).
- Intercrime has put a 2$ million bounty on Superman's head. This equates to over 18$ million in today's money.

Feat Catalogue:

- In less than a second, responds to a distress signal from a UN plane over the Arctic (his initial location was unknown). Intercrime's radar is able to pick him up, and its operator says that "only one thing could possibly move with such blinding speed"
- Intercepts missiles from an attack jet, saying that their blasts don't bother him "any more than a bursting soap bubble would"
- Catches the jet and easily flies it backwards against the force of its engines flying forwards at full power
- While at the Daily Planet building, uses his vision powers to see a UFO departing the Earth's atmosphere
- While weakened from Kryptonite (he says he's "too weak even to crawl"), uses vacuum breath to draw in lead wrappings from across the room and cover himself in them
- Uses super hearing to navigate while flying blind, covered in the lead wrappings
- Flies from an extinct volcano called "Crater Mountain" (location unknown, there are 2 of them IRL I could find but none match the description of the one in the comic) to the Fortress of Solitude to don his lead anti-Kryptonite suit, and then back, before some weird floating metal globes can move very far. It was later revealed that the globes were filled with lighter - than - air gas as a distraction, so this really couldn't have taken very long at all

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Krypto trains a bunch of dogs for canine services
- Krypto survives severe Kryptonite poisoning, and being locked in a Kryptonite cage, for what is implied to be at least a week

Weirdness:

- A bunch of nations all over the world agreed to give up their "doomsday weapons" for the UN to dispose of by burying them under the Arctic ice. It's implied these weapons are powerful enough to actually blow the Earth to pieces (DC Earth technology, not that far-fetched). We also get a visual sample of these weapons which seem to consist of missiles, cannons, and ray guns.
- Intercrime's plot to kill Superman involves creating another Kryptonite Man, by replacing the blood of a volunteer with "liquid Green Kryptonite". That's right, replacing his blood, not augmenting it. I hope for his sake that liquid Kryptonite can carry oxygen and white blood cells throughout his body.
- The device that Intercrime uses to monitor the Kryptonite transfusion is called a "diagnosticon"
- The newly - christened "Doctor Kryptonite" looks a lot like a skinnier version of the Hulk
- A "submarine satellite" (I guess a satellite launched from a submarine, or a satellite that can also go underwater? It's not clear) is stated to be "America's most advanced secret weapon"
- Doctor Kryptonite just happens to have a destructive laser gun that can melt the radio antenna on Superman's lead suit, and then blasts the suit open
- The story ends as some random plant aliens arrive and kidnap Dr. Kryptonite, mistaking him for their king... because he's green. Really.

Spoiler: So anyone could just dig these weapons up and use them now...

Spoiler: The most surprising thing here is that the procedure only failed the first time because of sabotage

Spoiler: Well, that's one way to end a story

Superdickery:

- Superman shows off at a wrestling exhibition by manhandling wrestlers with one hand literally tied behind his back
- Lets a guy get kidnapped by aliens, who will probably end up accidentally killing him since they think he's a plant lifeform

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level, not much to say.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Somehow manages to fly from one building to another carrying a stack of books several times taller than she is without dropping any of them. She also says she emptied the old library in one trip, but her previous line implied multiple trips. Weird.
- Rings the bell on top of one of those carnival test-your-strength machines (IDK what they're officially called) by just tapping on the bottom with one finger.
- Uses heat vision to cook cakes inside an oven when the oven breaks, notably sending it through the glass without heating the glass itself
- Created a trophy out of gold she dug up from miles underground
- Identifies the smell of chlorine gas leaking underwater from above in the air
- Uses ice breath to freeze a large river so quickly that the gas barely has time to leave the canister
- Carries a large chunk of ice with the gas canister inside to the Arctic
- Uses heat vision to engrave a portrait of the athlete who won it on the gold trophy

Weirdness:

- Two random criminals use a handheld "money vacuum" to steal money from across the street in their car
- A (clearly white) American history professor dresses in a stereotypical Native American headdress when teaching about smoke signals. This obviously wouldn't fly today.
- Built a giant pair of "super-tongs" for fishing people out of the water... instead of just doing it by hand for some reason.
- She takes the frozen chlorine tank to the Arctic, where she says "it'll never thaw out". Oh boy, if only they knew back then...
- Throughout the story, Supergirl randomly does destructive, evil things without understanding why, and then remarkable coincidences keep exonerating her. Turns out two random aliens were messing with her head and manipulating events as part of a game against each other. Okay...

Spoiler: Of course! It was so obvious in hindsight!

Superdickery:

- Despite tracking a criminal getaway car with her vision powers and knowing exactly where it is, Linda decides to attend her college class rather than catch it

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. A rather low showing for resisting telepathic control, but we've seen similar things affect Superman before in this title, and we don't really know the power or nature of the aliens' technology.

Action Comics #350

Notes:

- Oddly, the scanned copy that I have has 2 scans of the cover here, one intact and the other with part of the cover page torn away to reveal a glimpse of the splash page behind it
- A location in France called the "Brisseaux Caverns" features in this story. There is no such place IRL, but it may have been inspired by the Lascaux Caverns, a cave system in France featuring many examples of prehistoric artwork.
- Perry White is back to being the editor of the Daily Planet in this issue. I guess he lost his government job in another title.

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies across the Atlantic to France, precisely digging into the cave where Perry is trapped, pretty much as soon as he hears about it (the narration describes him "flashing across the sea")
- Uses equipment in his Fortress to determine that a skeleton he found is a million years old (although that should technically be a fossil then)
- Travels back in time to the year 700,000 B.C.
- Without powers under a red sun, uses his Clark Kent glasses and some paper bills to start a fire
- Superman has apparently mastered prehistoric languages on previous trips through time, and even without his powers he is able to remember and remain fluent in them
- Still with no powers, uses his boxing and wrestling skills to fight off a super strong caveman. He dodges the guy's blows and throws him around, but he can't really hurt him. Still, he puts up a decent fight.
- Builds a blowgun out of a piece of bamboo, and creates a dart for it.
- Tricks some cavemen by using red and blue berry juice to stain a rock to look like his costume from a distance
- Survives a fall into a valley that seems hundreds of feet deep, just by eyeballing it. The narration even says it's miraculous that he survived.
- Makes a lasso out of a vine and uses it to catch a pterodactyl, after dodging its claws and beak attacks
- Survives being carried by the pterodactyl (holding on to the rope with his bare hands) miles away, and is dropped in the ocean, but swims back to shore, and returns to his previous location by the following day
- Teaches a bunch of cavemen to use bamboo to build an aqueduct
- With help from other caveman, beats the caveman he first fought and his cronies in a rematch
- One of Superman's robots follows him back through time, showing that they can also travel through time
- Superman's Fortress has a "time-scanner" that the robot used to find Superman in the past

Spoiler: First round vs. the caveman

Spoiler: Fairly impressive feats for having no powers

Spoiler: Second round, also time-travelling robot

Spoiler: Info about the time-scanner, and they return to the present

Weirdness:

- Another one of those stories that takes a lot of artistic license with prehistory. We have humans and dinosaurs coexisting again (in the year 700,000 B.C.), and the Earth's sun apparently being red back then (it wasn't). At one point Superman does say that dinosaurs survived in the local area "by some freak of evolution" "long after they died off elsewhere" so at least there's some attempt at an explanation.
- The depowered Superman shoots a dart from a blowgun into a sack of water made with animal hide, releasing an herb inside that makes the water taste bad, but somehow without puncturing the sack and causing it to spill.
- Superman's analysis says the alien skeleton is over 1 million years old, yet he only goes back in time to 700,000 BC, and the skeleton is later revealed to be that of one of the cavemen he met there, who died after he left. This inconsistency is never addressed in the story.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

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

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The Beatles and the Monkees are name-dropped in this story
- Linda is a class reporter for her college newspaper, the Stanhope Sentinel
- This story features "Krpyonite-Plus", a "super-powerful isotope of Kryptonite" that is more effective and deadly to Kryptonians at a faster rate than the standard green type

Feat Catalogue:

- Intercepts a car and prevents it from hitting a bus, picking it up and carrying it away in microseconds
- Uses super breath to blow steel I-beams from a truck onto the road, creating tracks for a runaway school bus to guide it safely back onto the road
- Performs a complicated song and dance using a flute, saxophone, and giant keyboard simultaneously
- While weakened from the Kryptonite-Plus, she is able to use super ventriloquism to send a message to the Justice League in their headquarters in a different part of the country

Spoiler: Decent feat of speed and precision

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Hal Jordan uses his ring to teleport himself, Batman, and Green Arrow to the scene of the crime
- Hal knocks out his imposter with one punch, saying that he doesn't need his ring for this
- Batman does the same to his imposter
- Green Arrow takes out his imposter with a boxing glove arrow

Spoiler: Super ventriloquism while weakened by Kryptonite, also GL teleportation

Weirdness:

- A gang of criminals disguises themselves as a gimmick band based around superheroes, with costumes of Green Arrow, Batman, Green Lantern, and Supergirl.
- The fake Green Lantern ring used by the imposter is actually an "electronic detector beam" (metal detector?) that he uses to find a hidden vault in a wall
- The Green Arrow imposter uses an arrow coated with "hyper-acid" that takes several hours to eat through a metal safe door
- The Batman imposter has a "vibro-key" that seems to shoot an invisible beam to open locks, like the Sonic Screwdriver from Doctor Who
- A random rich guy who owns a copper mine had plans for advanced "vital defense weapons" in his vault, for some reason.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change her from High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #351

Superman Story

Notes:

- First appearance of Zha-Vam, a somewhat obscure but still popular Pre-Crisis villain. I previously made a respect thread for him.

Feat Catalogue:

- When he and Jimmy Olsen pick up pieces of a blackboard that Zha-Vam destroyed with his lightning powers, it is still electrified and shocks Jimmy. Clark pretends to be shocked too, but is actually unhurt.
- Uses ice breath to harden the gold that Zha-Vam melted with his fire powers
- No-sells a magic arrow from Zha-Vam, composed of Zeus' lightning heated to a million degrees by Vulcan's fire, and compares it to a mosquito
- After being compressed into a ball of dirt, compacted into "a new, ultra-hard element" by Zha-Vam's strength, he is thrown into space and towards the far end of the universe, but manages to break free as he passes the moon, although he says he had to exert himself a lot to do so

Spoiler: This scan is in the Zha-Vam respect thread too, but I figured I would also post it here

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- For Zha-Vam's feats, see his respect thread, linked above in the Notes section

Weirdness:

- A group called the "United Crime Syndicates" features here, which is an alliance of several criminal organizations including Intercrime (see issue #349), the "Purple Gang", the "Golden Bandits", the "Trigger Mob", and "Murder Inc." They apparently have elections to choose their "Crime Chief".

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. Zha-Vam is at least Transcendant Level, maybe higher.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is a reprint of a story from Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #57. My usual notes about covering other titles later apply here as well.
- This was originally printed as a single story, but is separated into two parts for this reprint. The second part is reprinted in the following issue.
- This is another of those Imaginary Stories, although it was later retconned as taking place in an alternate universe

Feat Catalogue:

- As this is an alternate universe story, there are no notable feats

Weirdness:

- The premise of this story is that Jimmy Olsen accidentally exposes Linda Lee Danvers to a piece of Red Kryptonite, which erases her powers and memory, and then ends up falling in love with and marrying her practically overnight.
- Instead of 24 hours like normal, the Red Kryptonite's effect on Supergirl seems to last for around a week or so, at a minimum

Superdickery:

- After realizing that Linda has lost her memories and is marrying Jimmy Olsen without recalling her true identity, Superman just lets it happen

Power Tracker:

- Assuming she is similar in power to the Earth-One version, Supergirl would still be High Herald Level with her powers, back during the time this story was published, probably only Low Street Level without them, though.

Action Comics #352

Notes:

- Continuation of the Zha-Vam story. It concludes in the following issue.
- Even though the cover features a scene from the story, Zha-Vam is neither shown nor mentioned, strangely.
- A volcanic crater in Greece named "Mount Smolder" appears in this story. As far as I can tell, this isn't a real place.

Feat Catalogue:

- Lifts and balances a full-size replica of the Empire State Building on his pinky finger
- Smashes right through a full-size replica of the Great Pyramid
- Builds a full-size replica of the Eiffel Tower out of steel beams in 10 seconds
- Remains conscious when magically turned to stone by Zha-Vam's Gorgon powers
- This is a rather weird one, while turned to magnetic stone, he attracts lightning bolts to his body, and 'charges his thought-waves with eletrical energy', allowing him to remotely operate a typewriter at the Daily Planet. He then attracts more lightning bolts, and they turn him back to normal. It was implied that Zha-Vam deliberately let this happen though, to toy with him.
- Seems to blitz Zha-Vam and cut off his belt before he can react, although it's possible that Zha-Vam also allowed this to happen too, as his belt has an automatic defense against anyone who tries to mess with it
- Shouts loud enough for the entire world to hear him
- Created a ring with a needle coated with a chemical that will put anyone it injects into suspended animation

Spoiler: Showing off

Spoiler: Let's just pretend this makes sense and move on...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Again, for Zha-Vam's feats, see his respect thread

Weirdness:

- Full-size replicas of the Empire State Building, the Great Pyramid of Giza, and a giant pile of steel girders can all fit inside Metropolis Stadium, and are put there just for Superman to show off during an exhibition. Where they came from is never mentioned.
- Superman decides to put on a charity exhibition when he knows Zha-Vam is on the loose
- Zha-Vam forces Superman to declare the former to be "the greatest of all super-heroes", which makes no sense, as Zha-Vam hasn't done anything even remotely heroic

Superdickery:

- Upon hearing the news that Superman has been turned to stone, Lois' first thought is not to worry for him, but to think how this could help her prove that he and Clark are the same person.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, same as usual.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue, reprinted from Jimmy Olsen #57. Again, this is an Imaginary Story that was later retconned to take place in an alternate universe.
- We see another recap of Supergirl's origin in this story

Feat Catalogue:

- Again, as this is an alternate universe story, there are no notable feats

Weirdness:

- Jimmy Olsen deliberately rides a carnival ride that was shut down for being unsafe. Said ride involved seats shaped like Superman in flight.
- A "Purple-stone national park" features in this issue. Obviously a spoof on Yellowstone, although I don't know if it exists in the Earth-One universe or just in this particular alternate universe.
- There is a random "bottomless pit" at the national park, which leads to a hidden underground civilization. There's a guy there with a magic jewel that can turn people into formless blobs.

Spoiler: Another average day in Silver Age DC

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Again, assuming the Supergirl in this alternate universe scales to the Earth-One version, she would be High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #353

Superman Story

Notes:

- This is the conclusion of the Zha-Vam story arc, and his last actual appearance (although he appears as a ghost/illusion in a later issue of the Superman title)
- The cover of this issue is a complete lie, as it shows Zha-Vam and Atlas battling each other for the right to kill Superman, where in the actual story, Atlas helps Superman against Zha-Vam
- The copy of this issue that I have has an alternate cover where Zha-Vam is replaced with Captain Marvel (Shazam) and Atlas' dialogue is edited accordingly. I'm guessing this was a fan-made edit, as Zha-Vam is an obvious expy of Captain Marvel in terms of his name and powerset.
- It's noted that since Zha-Vam's Achilles power of invulnerability is the same one the original Achilles gained from being dipped in the river Styx, if he touches that river again, that power can be negated
- Latium is referred to as an "ancient city" in this issue, when IRL it's the general region in Italy that Rome is located in

Feat Catalogue:

- On a mission somewhere in space, Superman builds a giant bridge between two artificial moons for some aliens, welding the metal girders together with his heat vision, then flies back to Earth. (These would probably have to be a much stronger material than any metal on Earth to do what they do).
- Bypasses Zha-Vam's magical Orion shield by traveling back in time to Ancient Greece
- Claims to have memorized all languages, including Greek, and speaks Ancient Greek fluently
- Dodges a crystal ball thrown at him by Zeus at super speed
- Using some 4d thinking, Superman travels back to the future, but 5 minutes before Zha-Vam set up his Orion shield, allowing him to reach Earth
- Using his own magic belt, Superman demonstrates the following powers:
* P for Pan, summoning magical Pan Pipes that force Zha-Vam to dance when he hears their music
* B for Balder, granting him said Asgardian god's invulnerability (even to Zha-Vam's magical weapons that could otherwise negate Superman's own invulnerability and kill him)
* M for Midas, allowing him to turn the dragons Zha-Vam summons into gold by touching them
* S for Sol, the god of the sun, whose rays dissipate the magical rainbows of Iris conjured by Zha-Vam
* F for the Norse Frost Giants, freezing Zha-Vam's sun chariot of Phaeton, which could burn the Earth to a crisp
* A for Atlas, which summons the titan himself to help Superman out
- Flies Zha-Vam back through the past to deliver him to the gods of Olympus

Spoiler: I wonder what those girders are made of...

Spoiler: A shortcut through the fourth dimension

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- For Zha-Vam's feats, see his respect thread

****

- The ancient Greek gods are able to see visions of the future
- Apollo claims his arrows can reach the moon, and Mercury says he can outspeed them. These likely apply to Zha-Vam's powers as well.
- The gods create Zha-Vam from clay using Prometheus' powers, imbue him with his 6 base powers, and give him a belt containing not only their powers, but the powers of 'gods from other lands' (not explaining where they got the ability to use these powers from different pantheons, though. Also, both belts in this story have powers from various other mythological beings as well)
- Pluto uses black lightning bolts to open a passage to the Greek underworld, which allows Zha-Vam to travel through time to the future, then reseals the passage with those same bolts.
- Prometheus turns Zha-Vam back to clay

Weirdness:

- Superman saves an alien planet that succumbed to a "permanent ice age" by building a giant bridge between two artificial moons they now live on, instead of just moving the planet closer to its sun or something.
- Traveling back in time to ancient Greece, Superman fools the Olympian gods by wearing his cape in a different way and pretending to be a minstrel, playing a lute and singing. Zeus and the other gods just go along with this and allow him to stick around on top of Mount Olympus.
- Even though his song is supposedly translated from Greek, it rhymes in English and the rhyming is noted by the Greek gods
- Achilles is hanging around with the Greek Gods and they're acting like he's one of them, even though he wasn't
- Prometheus is also shown as being part of the pantheon and working with Zeus, even though he's supposed to be chained to a rock with an eagle eating his guts, as ordered by none other than Zeus himself.
- Another group of gods, which included gods from multiple pantheons, led by Neptune, the Roman version of Poseidon, apparently had a quarrel with the Olympians and gave Superman a magic belt like Zha-Vam's to help him fight him. Neptune also refers to Zeus as his brother, which indicates that Zeus/Jupiter and Neptune/Poseidon are different names for the same beings. But one of the gods following Neptune also appears to have a winged helmet like Mercury, who was helping Zha-Vam. One could assume it would be Hermes, the Roman version of Mercury, but that again makes the Greek and Roman gods separate beings... Superman also uses the powers of the Roman sun god Sol, while Zha-Vam had the powers of the Greek sun god Apollo.
- Superman feels the need to use other powers from his belt to protect him from Zha-Vam's attacks after invoking the invulnerability of Balder, but shouldn't that one power have also made him immune to Zha-Vam's other powers too, as long as they didn't involve mistletoe?
- When Superman presses the A button on his belt, for Atlas, it actually summons the guy to directly help him, instead of just granting him his powers or equipment like all of the other buttons (on both belts) did.
- Zha-Vam says that his strength of Hercules is weaker than the strength of Atlas, because "Hercules never lifted a world". Except in Greek Mythology, Hercules did temporarily take the place of Atlas and hold up the world (or rather, the Heavens).
- Superman bluffs the Olympian gods at the end by delivering the defeated Zha-Vam to them, making them think that he's more powerful than all of them combined. But this doesn't really hold water, as Zha-Vam was clearly superior in combat and abilities, and Superman could only beat him with the help of a bunch of rival gods. Also, if the Olympians' motive was jealousy that they weren't being praised in the future like Superman was, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to just use their powers to help people like he did, then they could get the same kind of praise as him? Although the Olympian gods were kind of dicks, so I guess it makes sense if they didn't want to do that.
- It was never shown or explained what happened to Superman's magic belt after he beat Zha-Vam. I guess you could assume he kept it, but it certainly would have been useful in many future encounters, and I'm pretty sure we never see it used again. It's also possible that he gave it back to the gods who created it for him.

Superdickery:

- Superman takes all the credit for beating Zha-Vam himself, ignoring the contributions of the other gods that helped him. Although this could have been for the purpose of bluffing the Olympians so they wouldn't try something similar again.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level for his base powerset. With the magic belt, he could be anywhere from Transcendent Level to Skyfather Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is the first part of a two-part story, continued in the next issue.

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl uses telescopic X-ray vision to read a student's grades in the college files
- Uses heat vision to damage the interior of a door lock only, breaking it open
- Reads a science book at super speed and memorizes it
- Uses her super vision to track the student in an aircraft to a mountain, where he meets with an alien spaceship
- Uses her necklace to help her "super-hypnotize" the same student, breaking the hypnosis he was already under by some aliens and forcing him to give her the books he was holding and go back to his dorm, then forget about the entire thing
- Uses her own super-hypnosis (without a prop this time) against the aliens in a mental struggle. It seems they can't affect her even when combining their powers, but she doesn't seem to do much to them either.
- The alien brains conclude that Supergirl's memory is a better storage device than what they were already using to store all of the knowledge they had accumulated from planets all over the universe. They have to use Kryptonite on her to get her to cooperate with them, and they get her to successfully store all of their information. When testing her on the information, it includes things such as the temperature and location of a quasar over 6 billion light-years from Earth, so obviously these guys are well-traveled and have accumulated a lot of info

Spoiler: Countering alien hypnosis

Spoiler: The alien brains can't hypnotize her

Spoiler: Stores a ton of information from all over the universe in her mind

Weirdness:

- There's a mountain called "Mount Hightop", which doesn't look all that tall in the comic, yet the comic claims no one has ever climbed it
- A bunch of disembodied alien brains that call themselves the "Living Library" use "penetro-reading beams" to absorb the information in books in seconds, and go from planet to planet, trying to absorb all of the knowledge in the universe. Wasn't there something like this on Futurama?
- Supergirl gives the temperature of a quasar as being around 89 million degrees, which is way too low. Although it doesn't specify what scale is being used.
- When asked for a "relativity equation", Supergirl replies E = mc^2. That's mass/energy equivalence, not relativity, although it is related. A more accurate answer would have been the Einstein Field Equations.

Superdickery:

- See that first feat? She did that just because she was suspicious about the books he was checking out of the library. Major invasion of privacy.
- She continues to stalk and spy on this student just because she's suspicious of him
- Vandalizes a lock and breaks into the school library as part of her investigation

Power Tracker:

- A lot of good mental feats here, but in terms of physical feats she's still High Herald Level. As for the mental feats, It's hard to know exactly how much information she was storing, but it seems to be a lot. This also shows good telepathic resistance on her part, which seems to contradict what happened in issue #349, but that could be because she didn't know what was happening then and didn't prepare for it, while in this case she did. So it might be a matter of her mental defenses being stronger when they are used actively and she is prepared.

Action Comics #354

Superman Story

Notes:

- Mighty Mouse is referenced in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to scan every house in a portion of a suburb and finds one that is lead-lined, then uses super hearing to hear Lex Luthor's voice coming from inside it
- While covered with Green Kryptonite and dying from it, he is subjected to Captain Incredible's "Atomic breath" that reduces the Kryptonite to "harmless atoms", and he is himself unharmed by this. It's unknown if the breath was somehow targeted only at the Kryptonite and not his body, though, but it doesn't look that way from the art.
- Tanks punches and physical attacks from Captain Incredible, who is significantly stronger than he is (he was able to one-shot an alien with Kryptonian - like powers that no-sold a punch from Superman earlier, and was twice his size).
- Escapes from CI by traveling to the future, causing him to lose track of him (and CI was also shown to be faster than him)
- Identifies that CI's costume is made of a material that wouldn't be invented until the year 2600, which he is familiar with from his trips to the future
- Flies back to the present
- Takes on CI again and lures him to the future, the trip forward through time conveniently fixing his malfunctions. He presumably then flies back to the present again, although this isn't directly shown.

Spoiler: Escapes Captain Incredible

Spoiler: I bet you could have beaten him if you had used that magic belt from the last issue...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex invents a ray gun that turns Superman into a "living Kryptonite magnet", causing Green Kryptonite to fly towards him and stick to his body

Weirdness:

- A random alien comes to Earth in order to steal diamonds from a jewelry store. Not only is it never explained what he wanted with them, but he's also stated to be from a planet similar to Krypton and has powers like Superman's, so he could have just compressed coal into diamonds like Superman has done so many times, or gathered them from any of a bunch of different sources in space. The most reasonable theory that I can come up with was that he didn't care about the diamonds at all, and was just 'committing a crime' to lure out Superman, as he seemed confident that he could beat him.
- The premise of this one is that a scientist from the year 2600 admires Superman, so he builds a robot that's more powerful than him in every way and sends him back in time to help him, yet the trip through time distorts the robot's programming and makes him turn evil and try to kill Superman.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. This issue does a good job of showing how he can at least sort of hold his own against a much more powerful opponent that is actively trying to kill him.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the last issue
- Interesting line of dialogue in the beginning: "How good to be home at last after our long star-trek". This was almost certainly a deliberate reference, as Star Trek: The Original Series premiered the year before this comic was published
- One of the facts Supergirl has memorized is the vibration rate of the cesium atom, which is 9,192,631,770 Hz. I was surprised to find that this was actually correct. Good job, writers.

Feat Catalogue:

- The alien brains claim that they have turned Supergirl into "a living super-library that has the answer to any question in the universe"
- Uses her microscopic vision to analyze a plague mist that the aliens couldn't cure and then uses the information that was downloaded into her brain in order to instantly determine how to neutralize it
- Carves a series of statues out of "crystal mountains" with her bare hands
- Shouts a word at a high volume, creating a "weird super-echo" that is absorbed and re-emitted from the crystal mountains and will apparently linger "for ages to come"
- Intercepts and no-sells alien lightning bolts that travel at the speed of light and hit with the force of 5 megatons each
- Uses her heat vision to reignite a dead sun (implied to be in the same star system as the planet she's on). She does it fairly easily, although the dialogue implies that she restarts a reaction in the sun rather than providing all of the power itself, so it's hard to quantify, but still impressive
- While still using her HV on the sun, she uses super breath to blow away a flock of metal birds so they don't fly into the beams
- Supergirl's powers also seem to make her (and the alien queen who gained her powers) immune to the plague mist that wiped out the entire alien race and forced them to live as disembodied brains.
- Flies from Zorkia back to Earth (the opening narration described it as being "in a remote galaxy")

Spoiler: Instantly deduces the cure for an alien disease

Spoiler: One of the better HV feats we've seen so far

Weirdness:

- Supergirl thinks to herself that the Moai statues on Easter Island may have been carved by beings from another planet. I mean, this is the DC universe, so it's definitely possible. Or... probable, even.
- The alien brains measure Supergirl's powers as she is performing various feats, but quantify them in fictional units like "megacalibrans" and "velocitars", so these measurements are useless to us.
- The planet Zorkia has volcanoes that erupt lightning instead of magma, because their planet's core is made of "electro-energy". What?
- Alien birds that are made of metal, again
- When the aliens use a device to copy Supergirl's powers into their queen, she doesn't gain a vulnerability to Kryptonite, even though we've seen similar incidents where such reproduced Kryptonian powers do come with that weakness

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- The sun feat is nice, but she's still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #355

Superman Story

Notes:

- This story is continued in the next issue

Feat Catalogue:

- In the time it would be expected for Clark Kent to travel from the Daily Planet building to the Metropolis airport, Superman makes a patrol of the entire world, even to the point of inspecting individual buildings
- At super speed, grabs a liniment bottle and uses X-ray vision to 'molecularize the chloroform' in it to turn it into knockout gas.
- Uses first-aid ointments as makeup to effectively disguise himself as another person
- Uses his senses to confirm that the Annihilator's "weird, hair-trigger atomic structure" is "as deadly as a million hydrogen bombs", and if he attacks him, he could cause an explosion that would destroy the Earth.

Spoiler: Patrolling the entire world in a matter of minutes

Spoiler: Another obscure vision power

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- We see Kryptonians had another planet-destroying weapon, this time in the form of a mix of 3 different chemicals

Weirdness:

- A prisoner in a Soviet work camp digs up a crashed Kryptonian rocket, and immediately identifies one of the artifacts found within it as a "mind tape" holding telepathic records. The guy was a scientist, but still that doesn't seem like something most people on Earth would be able to recognize.
- Kryptonian scientists accidentally discovered a mix of three chemicals that could potentially destroy their planet, so they destroyed their entire stock of the chemicals except for a sample that they sent into space in a rocket, because. When Krypton exploded, the rocket was knocked out of orbit and coincidentally crash-landed on Earth.
- The human scientist, being allowed to work on biological weapons for the Soviets, somehow figures out how to modify the chemicals so that they give him superpowers when he ingests them
- The scientist, Karl Keller, before assuming the moniker of the Annihilator, first calls himself the "One Punch Kid" and puts on a boxing exhibition, offering $1,000.00 (over $9000.00 in today's money) to anyone who can remain standing after one of his punches. No one manages to collect. Ironically, despite his name, he seems older than Saitama and has a full head of hair.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This is a reprint of the Supergirl story in Action Comics #286, which I have already covered.

Action Comics #356

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the Annihilator story from the previous issue. The story concludes in the following issue.
- James Bond and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. are referenced in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies in front of the Annihilator to intercept the military firing a bunch of guns and bazookas at him, as one hit could cause him to detonate and destroy the Earth (and Superman too, as the chemical explosives are from Krypton so they could hurt him)
- Fixes the Daily Planet office at super speed, repairing the broken desks, furniture, and filing cabinets and putting all of the papers back where they belong, after the Annihilator accidentally wrecks it by creating a small explosion.
- Blitzes and destroys 3 of his Superman robots in microseconds before they can attack the Annihilator

Spoiler: Couldn't he have just ordered them not to attack?

Weirdness:

- The Annihilator committed many crimes in the previous issue and in this one, but apparently this one particular train robbery was the first time anyone tried to shoot him or do anything to stop him, requiring Superman to save him and explain that he would explode if he was hit
- There's an emergency alert in the White House that sends a supersonic signal that can summon Superman or his robots
- Superman visits a "pet shop" contained caged animals including what appear to be a leopard, a tiger, and a chimpanzee. Again, this was stated to be a pet shop, not a zoo.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This entire story is a dream of Supergirl's.
- Supergirl claims in the dream that she has dealt with "mole-monsters" before. I don't know if that's a reference to an actual published story or not, and if it's not, I don't know how reliable of a statement it is, since it was from a dream
- Cassius Clay is mentioned in this issue. This was published after he had changed his name to Muhammad Ali, though.

Feat Catalogue:

- As everything that happens here is a dream, there are no relevant feats. It should be noted, though, that Comet and Supergirl fly through a supernova explosion in the dream, which would be a good feat if it actually happened. (Comet is completely unharmed but Supergirl is hurt since her powers are weakening in the dream).

Spoiler: Too bad this feat didn't actually happen

Weirdness:

- Dick Malverne and his geology class are exploring a cave and run into a giant "prehistoric mole-creature". Yeah, this is all a dream, but it's not really treated as an unusual thing.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Nothing happened outside of the dream, so the actual Supergirl is still High Herald Level. That supernova feat would have been on the same level if it was real, I just posted it in case someone tries to be dishonest and post it out of context as a legit feat (although I don't see what the point would be, as there are many other comparable or greater such feats for Comet and Supergirl and ones they can be powerscaled to).

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #357

Superman Story

Notes:

- Conclusion of the Annihilator story arc
- It's made explicitly clear here again that the reason the Annihilator powers are dangerous to Superman is because they originate from Kryptonian chemicals, which can affect him as if he were a normal human. Later, when he acquires the same chemicals from different planets, he says that they won't have the same effect since they weren't from Krypton
- We see the US President cameo again (Lyndon B. Johnson at the time, although he goes unnamed here)
- There is a stash of Kryptonite stored in the Pentagon vaults. This actually makes sense, as opposed to a lot of other instances of Kryptonite randomly turning up in unlikely places.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses heat vision to melt a pair of handcuffs without harming the guy in them
- Throws the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore, the Lincoln Memorial, and presumably other "national monuments, memorials, and historical treasures" into orbit to save them from destruction (and also presumably sets them down safely to their original locations when he's done)
- Quickly searches the Rocky Mountains and finds a specific crashed plane (no timeframe given though)
- In under an hour, searches space for samples of 3 specific chemicals and returns them to Earth

Weirdness:

- I maybe should have mentioned this before, but the 60s teen slang used in this story arc is pretty hilarious. Teenagers back then actually used to talk like that, if you can believe it. All I can think of when I read it is that episode of the original Powerpuff Girls where the Professor starts talking like that and Mojo Jojo goes "That is so lame! You will pay for your use of inappropriate dialogue!"
- There is a room in the Pentagon with a control console for various WMDs including ICBMs, "bio-warfare missiles", nerve gas rockets, and "undersea hydrogen bombs" (in the form of mines). Apparently all of these can be immediately activated with just the push of a button.
- Annihilator Jr. and his gang decide to take an Air Force bomber for a joyride and randomly drop atomic bombs on the US mainland.
- The 3 chemicals, when gathered from other planets and lacking their Kryptonian properties, somehow cause the person ingesting them to revert in age and lose their memory... because reasons.

Superdickery:

- Accepts help from the original Annihilator and gets the president to give him a pardon and let him live freely... but this is the guy who was literally planning on shattering the Earth.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing notable to change him from High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses microscopic vision to examine a guy's fingerprints and then mentally compares them with the national database of fingerprints on file from the police and FBI, which she had memorized perfectly.
- While patrolling space, she spots a sea of oil on an alien planet that had caught on fire from a meteor impact. She creates a giant drill and digs underground, draining the entire sea to stop the fire.
- We see in a flashback that Supergirl covered herself in gasoline, lit herself on fire, and used the flames to skywrite a warning about an incoming tidal wave (this is definitely a "don't try this at home, kids" moment)
- At super speed, cuts and alters an outfit from a suit to a dress, while someone is wearing it, in "a moment"

Spoiler: Impressive feat of memory

Spoiler: Geologists everywhere are crying

Weirdness:

- The plot for this story: An alien falls in love with Supergirl after she saves his planet, and dumps his fiancee. So the fiancee disguises herself as a man, comes to Earth, and tries to trick Supergirl into thinking they have been married for a year and she lost the memory of it due to Kryptonite exposure. She figures out the ruse but plays along in order to get them back together.
- Even though Supergirl says that she figured out the trick the moment the alien slipped a fake wedding ring and car keys into her purse, we see her thought processes after that when she's comparing the fingerprints, and they show she's not onto the trick.
- Apparently she deduced that the 'man' who kissed her was actually a girl because he put his arms around her neck rather than her waist or shoulders... huh?
- Also, we have a girl-on-girl kiss in a comic from 1967. Unusual circumstances, but still.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- No change from High Herald Level.

Action Comics #358

Superman Story

Notes:

- I believe this is another cover that was featured on Superdickery
- This is the first part of another multi-part story

Feat Catalogue:

- There are no notable feats in this story

Weirdness:

- Some random criminals develop an operation that can bring a dead man back to life for 10 hours
- The entire plot of this story involves criminals trying to frame Superman for murder. A plan that would never have worked in the Golden Age, since he killed people all the time back then.

Superdickery:

- Superman puts on a boxing exhibition against a random guy (originally planned to be Jimmy Olsen) where he basically would do nothing but humiliate his opponent, easily dodging all of their punches and then letting them hit him to no effect.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- The narration states that Superboy was "the strongest lad in the universe". Not sure about the accuracy of this statement...
- Apparently Jor-El and Zor-El had another brother named Nim-El

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl performs no notable feats in this story

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- In a flashback, we see Superboy flying back to Earth from a space mission, and he finds an asteroid that looks like an enormous jewel, and cuts some pieces off of it with his bare hands to take back to Earth, then uses super pressure and heat vision to shape the jagged shards into a perfectly cut jewel
- After being repowered by a yellow sun, the amnesia that Superboy was suffering after a blow to the head disappears, although for some reason he forgets everything that happened while he was depowered in that period
- He then easily escapes and knocks an alien back with a punch. Said alien was previously shown to be powerful enough to completely immobilize the FTL traveling Argo City
- He hits the alien with a dozen punches at once
- When the alien scans him and recreates Green Kryptonite radiation, he is able to resist it for a bit in time to escape, leading the alien in a chase across its star system
- Flies into the system's sun, the alien is unable to follow, then exits through the opposite side of the sun and flies back to Earth
- In the present time, Superman is instantly able to recognize the gem that he carved from an asteroid and remember doing so
- The alien was also able to mindwipe the entire population of Argo City (consisting of depowered Kryptonians), however he didn't seem to be able to do the same to the empowered Superboy

****

- A space probe built by Zor-El was able to KO Superboy... because, of course, it was made of Kryptonian materials. Said probe was also capable of seeming FTL speed, as it left Argo City to collect minerals from space.
- Zor-El's lab had a device that used "vitalizing vapors" that could heal someone's injuries
- He also had an "auto-teacher", a helmet that would beam information directly to someone's brain, in this case knowledge of how to speak the Kryptonese language
- Another one of his inventions was a "grav-beam", which was a handheld device that could change the weight of objects
- He also built "propulsion-pacs", basically jetpacks that allowed the depowered Kryptonians of Argo City to fly
- He built rocket engines on to Argo City, and a hyperdrive, allowing it to travel across interstellar space
- He also created a temporary light source to mimic Krypton's red sun while Argo City was in interstellar space
- The Kryptonians also had flying, remote controlled toy soldiers that could shoot harmless energy rays

Spoiler: Superboy vs. the alien, featuring a trip straight through a yellow sun

Weirdness:

- If Zor-El could build a probe like that for something as nonessential as mineral collection for scientific analysis, why didn't he build more ships to escape on when the Kryptonite poisoned Argo City?
- An alien addresses the Kryptonian inhabitants of Argo City as "humans" for no apparent reason
- A kid in Argo City had two pet "prism-birds", which create rainbows behind them as they fly

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Supergirl as a young child in Argo City with no powers would be Below Street Level. On Earth in the present, she's High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #359

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- Batman cameos in this issue, in his civilian identity of Bruce Wayne. He's rejected to serve on the jury trying Superman, because 'everyone knows Bruce Wayne is Batman's friend, and Batman is Superman's friend'. He later disguises himself as Superman to help clear his name.
- We see the return of the element 'Supermanium'. It's apparently invulnerable to diamond drills and the strongest acid, and the scientific community chose to give it that name after Superman discovered it
- We also see that several foreign countries put Superman's image on coins and stamps as thanks for his helping them
- A response in the letters column in this issue states that Superman's heat vision is infrared in nature. I'm not sure if that's been kept consistent since this, though.

Feat Catalogue:

- In a flashback, we see Superman rescue a Ferris wheel from falling over during a windstorm
- In more flashbacks, we see that Superman smashed some satellites after they were launched into space, and used super breath to create a tornado to wreck an army proving grounds and destroy a lot of tanks and other vehicles (both times he was under the influence of Red Kryptonite)
- Another flashback shows him deflecting the course of a nuclear weapon from hitting a Pacific island
- Creates a giant glass bubble to surround the courtroom and flies it into space at FTL speed to view his crime in the past
- Uses his super vision to spot the poison capsule in the man's teeth in the space image, then uses microscopic vision to zoom in on it and memorize the fingerprint on it
- Flies the courtroom back to Earth
- Stops his own heart to fake death as Clark Kent
- Is unharmed by swallowing a poison capsule that could instantly kill a human

Spoiler: This is almost as silly as the time he did a similar stunt to record Helen of Troy's voice in the past

Weirdness:

- Somehow the normal people in the courtroom are able to see Superman's boxing exhibition from light-weeks away without any kind of magnification devices
- For some reason, the criminal scientist behind the plot to frame Superman carries around a bottle of the same poison capsules that he used for the frame-up everywhere he goes

Superdickery:

- Even though he's being framed for murder, people seem quite eager to believe it, and it's not hard to blame them...
- The prosecuting attorney, meant to be an antagonistic and dishonest character, kind of has a point with pointing out how conceited Superman can be
- We have him causing destruction while influenced by Red Kryptonite - still counts
- When he deflected the nuclear missile, it went off and the radiation killed the crew of a ship. They were revealed to be alien criminals in disguise, but they still died horribly
- The way he proved his innocence involved lying to the court and deceiving the judge, faking his death as Clark Kent and faking the existence of a "revival gas" as well. So he literally lied under oath. Batman is also complicit in this.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change him from High Herald Level here

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Apparently it's a well-known rumor that Supergirl attends Stanhope College in her secret identity, even if no one knows who she is
- Supergirl's height and weight are stated in this issue to be 5' 5" and 110 lbs, respectively
- Supergirl refuses to use her X-ray vision to see through a group of people because she thinks it "could be harmful to them". This is the first time I recall this concern ever being brought up, as Superman and Supergirl have used X-ray vision this way many times before without causing any damage.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses X-ray vision to instantly determine what part of her Linda robot is broken
- Writes the entire US Constitution on a blackboard with chalk, in shorthand, in under ten seconds. She could have done it in normal English, but she deliberately chose this way to disguise her handwriting
- Squeezes a lump of coal into a diamond
- Uses heat vision to transform the surface of a light fixture into a mirror
- Squeezes another lump of coal into diamond, but shapes it into an invisibly thin needle, and then uses coal dust on it to surreptitiously alter the fingerprints people had taken of her from across the room to conceal her identity
- Throws the first diamond down to the center of the Earth, and drops the diamond needle down after it
- Instructs her robot to use gems from a necklace to hypnotize a student into pretending to be Linda and then make her forget about the whole incident

Spoiler: More weird quirks of Kryptonian vision powers

Spoiler: If she threw that with enough force to reach Earth's core, the entire state should be gone, at least...

Spoiler: Mind controlling innocent bystanders for fun and profit!

Weirdness:

Superdickery:

- Hypnotizes a random student to follow her commands as part of her plot and then erases her memory of it
- Deliberately ruins the secret sorority's cookout in revenge for their hazing attempts

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, still.

Action Comics #360

Notes:

- This is a special giant-size issue collecting 7 Supergirl stories showing the events leading up to the eventual revelation of her existence to the public. I have previously covered all of them already in this thread, so there is not much else to say here.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #361

Superman Story

Notes:

- Second appearance of the Parasite. Even though he supposedly died in his first appearance in issue #340, he proved so popular with readers that they demanded that he be brought back, so here he is again. The story was, again, written by Jim Shooter.
- The Parasite says he is capable of absorbing power from "any living thing". I don't know if this was ever contradicted, although it would make sense that some lifeforms in the DCU would be immune to his power for one reason or another.
- Parasite claims that once he has absorbed all of Superman's power, he'll be immortal, possibly hinting that Superman is immortal? Not all that clear.
- There is a letter in the letters column claiming that the teenage thugs from the Annihilator story arc were goofy and out of date even for the time it was published, which is funny.

Feat Catalogue:

- His super hearing detects a ship under attack off the coast, and he confirms it with his telescopic vision
- Easily defeats the Octopus Gang and their giant mechanical octopus (see Weirdness section below).
- The octopus releases a cloud of poison gas to threaten the shore to distract him, but Superman breaks into the vehicle, subdues its occupants, steals a gas tank from them, and in seconds, inhales all of the gas and puts it back in the tank. He's also, of course, immune to the effects of the gas.
- Creates a giant cork from scrap lumber in a few minutes and uses it to plug a leaking dam
- Despite having his power drained by the Parasite, he defeats a criminal in power armor and knocks him out
- Being too weak to use his super breath to put out a forest fire, he somehow manages to do so by building a gigantic wooden fan and swinging it at super speed
- Despite being majorly weakened, tanks a blast of his own heat vision from Parasite
- Works together with some aliens to come up with a plan to trick the Parasite

Spoiler: Superman vs. the giant mechanical octopus (yeah...)

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Parasite survived his disintegration in issue #340, but has existed since then as a disembodied cloud of energy. He was still alive, but couldn't do anything in this form, until an alien scientist reconstituted him.
- He kills the alien scientist very rapidly by draining all of his energy. He also absorbs the alien's knowledge, allowing him to pilot the scientist's spaceship.
- He also seems better able to control his powers, as he is able to deliberately steal just a tiny bit of energy and psyche from Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, and the other Daily Planet employees, so little that they don't notice.
- He's also able to steal energy from Superman very slowly as well, so he doesn't notice at first either.
- Despite doing so slowly, Parasite weakens Superman enough that he has trouble fixing a dam, and gets beaten up by a criminal wearing strength-enhancing power armor.
- Using telescopic vision and ice breath stolen from Superman, Parasite spies a plane in the distance and freezes it
- Also, he has the ability to absorb the excess energy that Superman exerts every time he uses his powers, and from a fair distance too.
- Starts a forest fire using Superman's heat vision
- Pretty soundly defeats Superman in battle, and is only stopped by the arrival of some friendly aliens

Spoiler: How the Parasite returns

Spoiler: Parasite shows good control of his powers

Spoiler: Continuing to mess with Superman

Spoiler: Pretty easily defeats him

Spoiler: Aliens Ex Machina saves the day

Weirdness:

- The "Octopus Gang", a group of criminals who pilot a giant mechanical octopus in order to plunder ships, make their only appearance here. I trust that I don't need to explain why this is weird.
- Part of the Parasite's plan involved using his powers to steal some of Jimmy Olsen's "journalistic talent", and he later does the same to Lois Lane and other Daily Planet reporters.
- The Parasite, in disguise as a random guy, just walks into the Daily Planet offices and asks Lois if he can use a typewriter to write a story for the paper, to which she immediately agrees. I don't think professional journalism works like that.
- A random criminal had a suit of power armor giving him the strength to tear open a bank, and he decided to use it for just that... robbing a bank in broad daylight.

Spoiler: This is a perfectly sensible criminal scheme

Superdickery:

- Spins the giant mechanical octopus (with humans inside it) around at super speed. Realistically, this would kill them from the g-forces.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level normally, probably around Low - Mid Meta Level when his powers were at their lowest from the Parasite's draining.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- We have another appearance of the "Supermanium" element. Notable here is that Supergirl says she could barely scratch it with her fingernail, although she didn't seem to be trying that hard.
- The Superman Museum in Metropolis is shown to have exhibits teaching about Kryptonian history and language

Feat Catalogue:

- Memorizes a pizza delivery route, then throws every pizza like frisbees precisely to their destinations
- While underwater, swings one foot to create a whirlpool and bring a log stuck to the bottom of the pond up to the surface, without anyone realizing she was using her powers

Spoiler: This puts Spider-Man's pizza delivery skills to shame

Weirdness:

- The premise of this one is that Stanhope College is testing a computer (one of those really big, old ones with tape reels) that is meant to analyze data about people entered into it and match them with their perfect dates. Somehow, I don't think this was actually a thing in the 60s, but I could be wrong...
- Linda and her date watch what is described as a "Supergirl cartoon" at the movie theater, but the way it's described is as an actual recording of things she did in real life. So how can that be a "cartoon"? It would be a live-action documentary.
- For supposedly being such a rare element, some random metallurgist in town had a supply of Supermanium, and was able to spare enough to make a fake coin just for a prank

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, nothing much to say here.

Action Comics #362

Superman Story

Notes:

- This is the first part of a multi-part story

Feat Catalogue:

- Inside an "armored car" (really a wooden car painted to look like an armored car), Clark sees bullets from multiple machine guns, pistols, and shotguns go through the sides of the car and deflects them all with his hands before they can hit the driver.
- Narration confirms that he has "super-balance", letting him easily walk a tightrope, even while under hypnosis
- Instinctively holds back to avoid killing a gorilla even while under hypnosis
- Manages to resist the hypnosis and avoid killing the gorilla when ordered to
- Still confused from the hypnosis that hasn't quite taken hold, Clark Kent, not realizing he is Superman, reads a book on hypnosis at super speed and then super-hypnotizes himself to want to kill Superman

Spoiler: Random ventriloquist transforms a Superman robot into a machine that can hypnotize Superman

Spoiler: And since the hypnosis wasn't good enough, he then hypnotizes himself

Weirdness:

- Another weird cover. I think this one might have been on Superdickery as well.
- The story itself is bizarre too. There's a performing ventriloquist, whose brother died in prison after being caught by Superman, and the guy carries around a wax dummy of him and talks to it as if his brother is still alive. He and his gang plan a heist by substituting a fake armored car for a real one so he can rob it when it's carrying cash, and end up inadvertently capturing Clark Kent. Then, using a giant robot Superman head that they built from pieces of a defective Superman robot, which they have somehow rewired into a hypnosis machine that can hypnotize even Superman, they use it on Clark Kent, not knowing he's Superman... instructing him to kill Superman. To test this, they have him fight a gorilla dressed in a Superman costume. Really. Then, when the hypnosis doesn't quite work, the confused Clark Kent hypnotizes himself into wanting to kill Superman.

Spoiler: Only in the Silver Age...

Superdickery:

- He was delirious, but hypnotizing himself to want to kill Superman, and beating up a gorilla, both probably count.

Power Tracker:

- Somewhat of a low showing against mind control/hypnosis, but still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- This story, published in 1968, says that American astronauts first landed on the moon in 1970. In reality, it was a year earlier, but we can chalk it up to one of those alternate future timelines. Also, it's unclear how much of this future timeline was real and how much was created by Mxy or his descendant.

Feat Catalogue:

- While painting at Stanhope college, she uses telescopic vision to see into the atmosphere of Venus to paint it
- Flies through the head of a malfunctioning giant robot and removes its "master control box", disabling it.
- Figures out future Mxy's identity and tricks him into saying his name backwards
- Flies back through time to the 20th century under her own power

Spoiler: Paints a scene from Venus she sees with her super senses

Spoiler: Tricks future Mxy and returns to the past

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- A future descendant of Mr. Mxyzptlk (whose feats should scale to him) creates the time ship for the exchange student program, then brainwashes everyone in the 40th century to believe Supergirl is a criminal, and magically brands her with a sign that says "OUTLAW" (which she thought was done by future technology). He also changes a statue of her as a hero to one depicting her as a villain.

Spoiler: More 5d shenanigans

Weirdness:

- Linda is chosen to be an exchange student, but it turns out that the exchange is with a girl from the same college in the 40th century AD, who appears in a time machine. The dean of the present college is surprised by this, but quickly recovers and accepts it without too much trouble.
- In the future moon landing that supposedly took place in 1970, the astronauts had an "experimental space mail capsule" that would launch physical letters (with special stamps and postmarks) from the moon to the Earth. For some reason, NASA didn't adopt that idea in real life.
- The entire plot of this issue focuses on a future descendant of Mr. Mxyzptlk (who might also be Mxy himself...) altering history to frame Supergirl for a theft, and also disguising himself as Robin for some reason
- An exhibit in the future containing the "rarest treasures in the universe" includes a "singing flower"

Superdickery:

- Her assignment was to paint the most imaginative scene she could. She cheated by painting an actual scene from Venus (i.e. not one that she imagined).
- As part of her plan to trick future Mxy, she robs a museum exhibit and wrecks the place. She presumably returns the stuff and fixes it later, but still.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #363

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- According to the DC Wiki, a Kryptonian "Virus X" originally appeared in Superboy #106 as a hoax, but apparently it was based on a real disease from Krypton.
- We see a flashback to Krypton centuries before Superman was born. The narration states that the Kryptonians didn't have space travel at that point, but still had those super telescopes to monitor other planets. They also knew about Earth at this point.
- In this issue, we see "Luna City", a "moon-base mockup NASA built to train astronauts for the coming moon landings". I checked just in case this was a real thing, and it wasn't.

Feat Catalogue:

- Still under the hypnosis from the last issue (including his self-hypnosis), his subconscious mind still rebels against the desire to kill
- Somehow the shock from being infected with the virus restores Superman's memories and removes the effects of the hypnosis
- Despite killing Earth creatures in seconds, Virus X apparently takes at least hours to kill Kryptonians (death was said to come to unpowered Kryptonians on Krypton in "a few hours", and Superman, after having been infected for what seemed to be several hours already, enough time for night to fall, said he had about 12 hours left).

Spoiler: Starting to resist and then finally shaking the hypnosis, but it's too late

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Lex Luthor thinks to himself that he could convert a sand pile into an atomic pile. Possibly intended to be hyperbole, but considering the other tech feats we've seen from him, hardly far-fetched.
- Luthor uses Kryptonite radiation to somehow mutate normal microbes into Kryptonian "Virus X", which is deadly to Kryptonians, even with powers.
- Working in his prison lab, Luthor creates a powerful electric battery, hooked up to an "electronic thought-projector", allowing him to hijack TV signals nationwide and transmit his own message over them

Spoiler: We'll ignore, for the moment, the fact that viruses aren't microbes...

Spoiler: Next time just throw him in a pit somewhere. Without any sand, preferably.

Weirdness:

- The state governor was allowing Lex Luthor to work in a biochemical lab in prison, to try to cure a disease affecting cattle. If you've been reading this thread so far, you know what a terrible idea that is.
- Lex Luthor arranged a deal with the ventriloquist criminal from the previous issue to give him some of his home-grown Virus X to kill Superman with. What happened to Luthor wanting to be sure he was the only one who would defeat him? Or does he think it still counts because he created the virus?
- The 'to be continued' text box reads: "Cheer up, readers! You know a comic hero never dies!" Even if they meant 'dies permanently', that's still not always true in comics... not even in just DC and Marvel.

Superdickery:

- Breaks into his own apartment while under hypnosis and intends to infect Superman (who he doesn't know is himself) with the deadly Virus X.

Power Tracker:

- We can probably assume the infection has weakened him somewhat, although that wasn't explicitly spelled out in this issue. Still I'd guess he's Mid Herald Level, due to the early stages of the virus.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Apparently the entire JLA is away in space during the events of this story
- At first I thought this story might be a reprint, since it seemed familiar, but it's not. Then I realized it has a very similar plot to issue #112, with giant tongs/tweezers being used to steal world landmarks

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses her telescopic vision to spot the Taj Mahal being stolen, and flies there at super speed from Stanhope College before it can be lifted into the air
- Catches the Taj Mahal after it is dropped and puts it down safely.
- Uses telescopic vision to see that the Statue of Liberty is the next target, and gets there before the tweezers appear
- Follows it back to the interdimensional aliens who stole it
- Finds an abandoned train and flies it up to the dimensional portal, as she is being forced to play the aliens' game with them
- Uses an "ultra-hard steel beam" to pry Superman's Fortress of Solitude off of the mountain it was built into, then carries it to the aliens
- Studies the aliens' language at super speed (apparently with only the writing on their multi-sided die as a sample) and learns how to translate it.
- Uses super breath to manipulate the dice to land where she wants it to.
- Takes Fort Knox up to the aliens
- Replaces all of the missing landmarks

Spoiler: Supergirl vs. giant alien tweezers

Spoiler: Superman is going to be pissed

Spoiler: Fort Knox once again makes an appearance

Spoiler: Returns all the landmarks

Weirdness:

- The first four landmarks stolen are Alcatraz prison, the Sphinx of Giza, the Eiffel Tower, and... Stanhope College's observatory. That last one is kind of the odd one out.
- Two giant alien children from another dimension are stealing the landmarks in order to play a game similar to Monopoly. Supergirl tries to spank one of them, but finds that they are invulnerable like her.

Superdickery:

- Tears the Fortress of Solitude off of the ground to give it to aliens for their game. She returned it later, but you'd think she could have found some other abandoned "fortress" to take instead.
- Steals Fort Knox and all of its gold. I guess when Zha-Vam does it that's bad, but when Supergirl does it, it's okay. (Yeah, she did it to trick the aliens and then returned it, but come on)
- Having figured out that gold affects the aliens the way Kryptonite affects her, she takes great pleasure in torturing them with it, even pointing out how it can kill them as she smiles

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #364

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue
- Supergirl says that no one can age or die when in the Phantom Zone

Feat Catalogue:

- Despite dying from the virus, he switches from Clark Kent's clothes to Superman's costume at super speed, before Lois can notice
- Still weakening, he uses his X-ray vision precisely enough to trigger an alarm in Kandor and lure Supergirl inside
- Builds a spaceship intended to take him to the hottest sun in the universe

Spoiler: We'll see how this ends up...

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Despite being locked up in his prison cell once again, Luthor manages to hijack nationwide TV signals a second time (actually his minions were doing it with a recording he made earlier)
- Luthor has a remote-controlled rocketship that can become invisible to even Superman's senses
- Uses some colored lights to hypnotize some people into thinking they saw Superman being cured
- He also used a "vibro-ray" to help with his illusion

****

- The Phantom Zone criminals use their mental powers to create a barrier to stop Superman from entering the zone

Spoiler: Why do people keep trusting Luthor?

Weirdness:

- Another weird group of criminals, the "Gimmmick Gang", try to rob an armored train car with a giant sawblade attached to a small motor vehicle.

Superdickery:

- Destroys a bunch of the superweapons in his Fortress, thinking that they're too dangerous for even Supergirl to use. But he had no problem leaving them around when he was still there...
- Tricks Supergirl and traps her in Kandor for a short amount of time while he leaves Earth

Power Tracker:

- As the virus progresses, Superman notes that he feels weak and is constantly getting weaker, although he still seems to have all of his powers. I'll tentatively put him at Low Herald Level in this issue.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- In this story, a mosque is referred to as a "Moslem Temple"
- A response in the letters column to a question asking what state Metropolis was located in said that, in some older stories, it was in New York, but they were deliberately keeping it vague at this point

Feat Catalogue:

- Gathers broken glass from a dump and uses heat vision to fuse it into a rectangular box, then dives with it underwater to catch a bunch of rare fish in a makeshift aquarium.
- Is able to detect X-ray radiation coming from a body, and uses X-ray vision to locate its source
- Uses super hearing to determine that someone has a strong and healthy heart from the sound of their heartbeat
- Dips her arm into a vat of liquid helium with a temperature near absolute zero, to freeze a tattoo onto her skin (as normal ink won't stick to her skin). She is, of course, completely unharmed by this.
- Stops her own breathing and heartbeat to fake death
- Recognizes and is able to understand an alien language

Spoiler: Detecting X-rays

Spoiler: Dunking her arm in liquid helium

Weirdness:

- An alien in disguise had an "illusion ray" equipped on his plane that made it appear to transform into a flock of geese. Supergirl just gave up and stopped pursuing them at that point.
- Another weird plot: Some guy disguises himself as different people and marries several girls, killing them at the weddings. Supergirl disguises herself as the next victim, only to find out the guy is an alien lawman hunting three female criminals to execute them, so she has to help him catch the last one

Superdickery:

- See that first feat? A lot of those looked like deep sea fish that couldn't survive for long in a tank that size
- She was perfectly willing to hand over the final criminal to be executed (although she died by accident before that). I guess the 'code against killing' doesn't apply when someone else is going to do it.

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #365

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the storyline from the previous issue
- We see cameos from the JLA here, including Batman, Robin, Green Lantern, Flash, Green Arrow, Wonder Woman, and Hawkman and Martian Manhunter (I don't believe the latter two have appeared or even been mentioned in the title before this)
- It's stated in a note in this issue that White and Gold Kryptonite originated the same way as Red Kryptonite, from Green Kryptonite passing through "weird cosmic clouds"
- In the brief recap we get of Superman's origin here, it appears the part about him living in an orphanage before the Kents adopted him has been retconned away
- We also see that he first encountered Green Kryptonite in Smallville as Superboy
- It's also stated that his foster parents died of a mysterious fever that he couldn't cure with his powers (not sure if that is ever elaborated on elsewhere)
- It's stated in this story that Kandor has a population in the millions
- The star that Superman chooses to be cremated in, Flammbron, is apparently the hottest in the universe, and the narration says that its "incandescent neutronic flames match the searing heat of a thousand normal suns". I'm not sure if that means it's 1000 times hotter (on the surface, core, or both) than Earth's sun, or has 1000 times the luminosity, or what.

Feat Catalogue:

- Superman once saved the planet Knorr from the "Serpent People of the Viper Planet". This is only mentioned in dialogue, though.
- Despite dying from the virus, as his FTL spaceship passes by a planet he is able to use his telescopic X-ray vision to see the inhabitants grieving over him
- He then does the same thing as he passes the planet Lexor, observing them rejecting Luthor and his scientific advancements
- Reviews his past life with his perfect memory
- In a flashback, saves Lois from an erupting volcano

Spoiler: Super senses while dying

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- The Bizarros of Htrae are able to track and keep up with Superman's rocket as it passes by their planet at FTL speed

****

- Lex Luthor is shown using a machine gun with "artificial Kryptonite bullets" in a flashback

****

- In a flashback, Jimmy Olsen used judo to defeat and subdue a pair of criminals

***

Supergirl carries a giant glass dome containing Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lori Lemaris, and flies it through space to catch up with Superman's rocket before it reaches Flammbron

Spoiler: Supergirl brings her cousin's prior girlfriends to say goodbye to him

Weirdness:

- The rocket that is used to send Superman to Flammbron is FTL, but it's unclear if it was built with Earth technology only or if Superman contributed some Kryptonian technology. Also, a scientist is able to see it with a telescope as it passes beyond Pluto, so another one of those FTL telescopes I guess
- The whole "Virus-X" thing gets even more contradictory here. Its name says it's a virus, but the dialogue in this issue and the previous one refers to it as a bacteria.
- The rocket passes right next to 3 inhabited planets, and they're all planets that Superman has visited before. What are the odds of that?
- The people of Lexor are so upset that Lex apparently killed Superman that they reject and destroy all of the scientific knowledge and advancements he gave them. Kind of throwing the baby out with the bathwater, don't you think?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- As he's still continuously getting weaker from the virus (or whatever it is) in this story, I'll say he was at High Meta Level by the end of the issue.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Weirdly, there seems to be no title page or splash page for this story. I assumed that some pages were missing, but every other archived copy of the issue I've found has the same sequence of pages.
- Everyone at Stanhope college is impressed by a "mini-computer" the size of a bar of soap, which was loaned to them by NASA, and costs $100,000.00. Kind of funny considering how much technology has advanced since the 60s.

Feat Catalogue:

- Remains motionless in mid-air as a model for students to paint and sculpt in art class
- Searches every student's locker at super speed with her X-ray vision to locate the stolen computer
- Uses microscopic vision to match a fingerprint to a person
- Uses heat vision to obscure the fingerprint on a sculpture
- Used heat vision to somehow open a locked locker without leaving a trace
- While under the influence of Red Kryptonite, she actually used her heat vision to carve a precise copy of a guy's fingerprint into a sculpture, so well that her normal self wasn't able to tell it was a fake
- Catches up with a rocket heading for space and gets inside it, using her flight power to steer it on another path, then returns it to its launch site.
- Mixes up some rocket fuel at super speed and refills the rocket, taking only split seconds for the whole process
- Flies into space, grabs a meteor, and flies it back into the atmosphere so fast it burns up

Spoiler: A pretty impressive feat of doing a complex task at super speed

Weirdness:

- Stanhope College's "astronautics department" has an actual, functioning space rocket they are going to launch
- The Superman Museum featured a robot dog (looking somewhat like K-9 from Doctor Who) that was sent from space to the museum by some random aliens... and part of it was made of Red Kryptonite, but it wasn't an evil plot, it was completely by accident

Superdickery:

- Under the influence of Red Kryptonite, she tries to frame a fellow student for a bunch of crimes
- Even after the Red K has worn off, she steals a statue from the Superman museum to give to him as an apology, figuring that Superman will just let her get away with it (and she's probably right)

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, still.

Action Comics #366

Superman Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the ongoing story arc
- Flammbron is again stated to be the hottest sun in the universe
- We see a flashback to the events of Superboy #115, which I hope to cover eventually
- Kandor apparently has an "auto-census" that Superman can use to determine that everyone that's meant to be there is still in the city. More evidence for my theory that it's a dystopian police state.

Feat Catalogue:

- Turns out that I was right, as the telescope the scientists on Earth are using is a special "hyper-telescope" built by Superman that allows them to view things from light-years away in real time
- It's confirmed that the heat of Flammbron was only dangerous to Superman due to his weakening from the Virus-X, and that normally it wouldn't have been able to harm him
- His ship destroyed, he flies back to Earth under his own power. It's stated that the trip there took several days, and the trip back was implied to be much quicker
- Uses telescopic vision to see Batman and someone (Hal Jordan) impersonating Superman rescuing people from a collapsing crane from across town
- Superman once gave Batman an anti-gravity belt that lets him fly

Spoiler: And you thought I was reaching with my FTL telescope theory...

Spoiler: You fail biology forever

Spoiler: Random aliens tend to save Superman a lot, don't they?

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

****

- Hal Jordan, who was substituting for Superman, flew away so fast that Superman couldn't follow him

****

- Martian Manhunter uses his "Martian Vision" to determine that Superman is the genuine article (I'm not sure how this works...)
- He also picked up and carried a Mayan temple away from a stream of lava so it wasn't damaged

****

- The Flash shatters an iceberg by vibrating his body at super speed

Spoiler: Faster than a speeding Superman, it's... Green Lantern!

Weirdness:

- The White Kryptonite thrown by the Bizarros as Superman's rocket passed by their planet ended up killing the Virus-X, because it was actually "a form of plant life, like bacteria". If you didn't know, viruses, plants, and bacteria are three completely different things.
- Superboy once saved an alien 'fire-breather', and their race were distant cousins of the fire beings who live inside Flammbron, so they decided to repay him by saving his life. Convenient...

Superdickery:

- Superman seems a little jealous and upset that other people are impersonating him, even though they are doing his job quite well

Power Tracker:

- Being cured and fully recovered from the virus, he's back to High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Superman's near-death from Virus-X is mentioned in this story

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl's Linda robot has an emergency signal device that can call the real Supergirl, similar to Jimmy Olsen's signal watch
- Freezes the water in a bay around a sinking ship so the passengers can walk safely to shore
- Easily defeats two future terrorists, one who tries to lasso her with an "electro noose" and the other who shoots her with "energi-darts" that could supposedly reduce her to a "blob of lifeless protoplasm". She easily tanks the darts and breaks free from the noose, then effortlessly throws off one of the terrorists who was wearing gloves that increased her strength 100fold
- Being unable to use her telescopic vision because of a bomb that will supposedly go off if she uses any of her superpowers on it, she instead builds a giant pair of binoculars to examine Stanhope College from hundreds of miles away and spots the bomb

Spoiler: Supergirl vs. future terrorists

Spoiler: Okay then...

Weirdness:

- After some future terrorists create a forcefield around Stanhope College, a student there is able to examine it with the naked eye and somehow determine that its molecular structure is composed of some unknown compound. Because he's... good at chemistry, I guess, and that somehow gives him super senses. The hell?

Superdickery:

- Needing to respond to an emergency signal, Supergirl decided to save a sinking ship more quickly by freezing the water around it, ignoring the damage that would do to any sea life in the area...

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, not much else to say here.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #367

Superman Story

Notes:

- Apparently, for the past 3 years, the Metropolis Police Department has been giving out a "Superman Award" each year to the person who has helped Superman the most, who they vote on
- Superman says here that if the ice covering Antarctica melted, the sea level would rise 600 feet, flooding half of the world. However, in real life, if all of the polar ice and glaciers in the Arctic, the Antarctic, and Greenland melted, the sea level would rise only some 230 feet.

Feat Catalogue:

- Uses telescopic X-ray vision to see that painters are still working on his apartment from across town
- In an instant before a swarm of meteors hits Antarctica (with enough force to melt all of the ice on the continent), he slices a glacier off of the land, shapes it into a giant bucket, and uses it to scoop up millions of tons of seawater to throw at the meteors to stop them, repeating this process around 100 times before they hit the ground
- He claims to have memorized every map on record, so he can recognize any place on Earth when he patrols it, and is surprised to find an island that's not on any map
- Stops the Superman Revenge Squad and throws their ship back into space
- Stretches his cape over an erupting volcano to contain it
- Within 10 minutes, he scans the police department's missing persons reports, finds someone in the files who looks sort of like Clark Kent, searches all of Metropolis to find the guy, disguises him with a suit, glasses, a wig, and makeup, and hypnotizes him to pretend to be Clark Kent, in order to protect his secret identity.
- The guy also had amnesia and Superman cures it with his super-hypnotism

Spoiler: Impressive speed feat, but the physics are highly questionable

Spoiler: Even if the cape is indestructible, this still wouldn't work

Spoiler: Kind of a weird solution but okay

Weirdness:

- Some random scientists build a "disaster predictor" that can predict exactly what disasters will happen in Metropolis and when, down to the minute. It doesn't work, but only because they made a mistake when building it
- Some random toddler somehow gets into the scientists' laboratory and starts messing with the machines
- An encounter with Red Kryptonite turns Superman into some kind of horned monster, then gives him bat-like wings, then makes him a centaur
- After a forest ranger sacrifices his life to save Superman from some Green Kryptonite, he donates his heart to a guy who needed a heart transplant. And the Superman award for that year goes to... the guy's disembodied heart, for some reason.
- Superman couldn't use one of the robots stored in his apartment because the painters would see it, but wouldn't it have been simpler to use one from the Fortress of Solitude instead to pose as Clark, rather than the convoluted plan he came up with?

Superdickery:

- Kidnaps a guy off the street and hypnotizes him to play the role of Clark Kent

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here to change him from High Herald Level

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the story from the previous issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Built a "super-catapult" (that looks more like a cannon to me) in the Fortress of Solitude, in order to launch herself all the way to Stanhope College (planning to do so after she seemingly removed her powers with Gold Kryptonite... and she somehow planned to survive this by wearing a special protective suit she designed)
- She used her "super-aim" to precisely aim the catapult so it would cause her to land exactly where she wanted to
- It's stated that the forcefield/barrier around Stanhope is impenetrable to anyone without superpowers, but Supergirl could crack it with one finger if she tried (but she doesn't since it would set off the bomb)

Spoiler: That isn't a catapult... but that's probably the least odd thing about this

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Superman uses telescopic vision to see the forcefield around Stanhope College from the Fortress of Solitude

Weirdness:

- As shown on this issue's cover, Superman plans to smash through the dome around the college, unaware of the bomb. Supergirl is able to tell him about it right before he hits, but apparently he's going so fast that he can't stop in time. Even if, as shown in the next issue, she hasn't really lost her powers, this still makes no sense as the normal guy she was working with also managed to run in front of the dome before Superman hit it. Also, he's performed complex maneuvers requiring stopping and changing direction at higher speeds than this many times before.

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level, despite the plot-induced, inconsistent low-end of not being able to stop fast enough when he didn't seem to be going all that fast in the first place.

Action Comics #368

Superman Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

- Flies to the replica of Krypton he and Supergirl made in space
- One of the android-crewed factories on the Krypton copy created thousands of miles of "wide, black, metallic ribbon", which he uses to connect several asteroids that are orbiting the planet
- Returns to Earth, after having patrolled space for a month
- Scans the Earth from the top of Mount Everest
- In a flashback, cuts an island off from the seafloor and moves it out of the path of a typhoon, anchoring it elsewhere
- After a cat and dog knock over all of the boards at a chess tournament, Clark puts them all back at the correct positions on each board using his super speed and memory
- No-sells a bunch of alien weapons that he previously confiscated from another planet, including a "trillion-volt boomerang", saying that the weapons would top "an earthquake, a tornado, and a 100 - megaton bomb combined"
- Flies to a planet under a red sun, taking a space suit and parachute with him so he can land safely once he loses his powers

Spoiler: Decorating the replica Krypton

Spoiler: Testing himself against alien weapons for fun

Feat Catalogue (non-Superman):

- Mr. Mxyzptlk creates ice cream for children

****

- Jax-Ur smashes a meteor

Weirdness:

- There's a criminal group called the "Tuxedo Gang", whose gimmick is that... they wear tuxedos. That's it.
- We see a flashback from a previous year, where a float is made "in honor of Superman's 10,000th super feat" - How do they keep track of that? And I'd figure there would be more than that, as well.
- A comet large enough to eclipse the sun not only exists and does so, but also somehow opens a temporary rift to the Phantom Zone
- When some aliens tell him that he has to exile himself to a planet with a red sun because he is no longer needed on Earth, he just accepts it without questioning them.

Superdickery:

- Upon finding out that all crime and disasters have somehow halted on Earth, Superman is upset that he has no job anymore, and actually seems to be happy at the prospect of crimes or destructive earthquakes occurring. He even accuses Mxy of causing this state of affairs just to mess with him.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again

Supergirl Story

Notes:

- Continuation of the storyline from the previous issue

Feat Catalogue:

- Supergirl had the knowledge to built special contact lenses coated with a Kryptonian chemical that "nullifies hypnotic devices". She probably could have resisted the hypnosis without them if she still believed she had her powers, though.
- No-sells a blast from one of the future criminals' weapons

Feat Catalogue (non-Supergirl):

- Unable to stop in time, Superman instead accelerates, passing lightspeed in under a microsecond and traveling back through time, then returning to the present
- It's implied but not directly shown that Superman smashed the forcefield after the bomb was disarmed

Spoiler: Why not just prevent the bomb from being set up while he's in the past?

Weirdness:

- Some time cops from the future set up a forcefield to protect Supergirl from the effects of the Gold Kryptonite so she never actually lost her powers, but they also used a "brainwash beam" to make her believe she had lost them, so she subconsciously suppressed them, which was apparently good enough to avoid setting off the bomb

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #369

Overall Notes:

• There's a special feature in this issue where Bill Finger, one of the creators of Batman, reveals where he got the name "Bruce Wayne" from - a combination of Mad Anthony Wayne and Robert Bruce. Robin's name, Dick Grayson, came from a writer named Charles Grayson, and the name of a character from some old adventure books. Alan Scott was originally going to be named "Alan Ladd" (a play on Aladdin), but the editors didn't like that, so he got the name Scott from seeing a volume of the works of Sir Walter Scott.
• Another feature covers the phenomena of early Comicons, which were just becoming popular at the time
• A response in the letters column says that Superman was wrong about believing that he had only around 12 hours to live in issue #363, as he survived for longer while under the effects of Virus-X

Superman Story

Notes:

• Continuation of the story from the previous issue
• We see a place called "Fire Crater", which is (or was, rather) a dangerous active volcano. As you can probably guess by the unimaginative name, this isn't a real place.
• Apparently, under a red sun, even Superman's costume loses its invulnerability. I think this might be a contradiction to something we've seen before, though...
• This story incorrectly states that Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania is the highest mountain in the world due to its location near the equator making its summit farther from the Earth's core than the summit of Mount Everest. While the latter part of this statement is true, Mount Chimborazo in Ecuador is closer to the equator and so its summit is even higher, using this criteria.

Feat Catalogue:

• While depowered under a red sun, fights off an alien tiger-like creature by throwing a piece of Green Kryptonite at it (which is harmless to him in this condition)
• Still weakened but with his powers slowly returning, he defeats a bunch of armored alien 'knights' with his bare hands
• His powers returned, he no-sells having a "fire cauldron" (which seems to contain some sort of molten rock or metal) dumped on him
• Flies out of the alien solar system before the yellow sun rotates to show its red face (see Weirdness section) and flies back to Earth
• Destroys one of the alien Sentinels, despite it being loaded with "ultra-energy that has the power of a million lightning bolts". The narration says Superman could withstand a billion lightning bolts "if need be", and the "ultra-energy" only causes him to feel a slight tingle
• Flies from the Fortress of Solitude to Mount Kilimanjaro and kills another Sentinel
• Flies at super speed from Kilimanjaro to the South Pole to kill another one
• Flies to the deepest part of the oceans and uses a nuclear warhead to destroy another one of the Sentinels
• Digs to the Earth's core and breaks into a chamber that the Sentinels set up that was unharmed in the pressure and heat of the core
• The fifth Sentinel is stronger than the others, managing to repel Superman with a forcefield and blast him around with an energy beam, but he destroys it by collapsing the chamber it built in the core of the Earth
• Not sure if this counts as a feat, but the hypnotic rays the Sentinels used to pacify every person on Earth and stop all crime and violence didn't seem to affect Superman at all, as he still destroyed them

Spoiler: Destroying the Sentinels

Weirdness:

• The splash page features a bunch of people holding the comic itself and commenting on the cover... very meta
• Superman finds a fruit tree within an orchard bordered by a stone wall, and so he concludes that the fruit must be edible. But this is an alien planet, so what's edible to aliens won't necessarily be edible to him.
• The planet he went to had a sun that was, bizarrely, half-red and half-yellow, separated into perfect hemispheres. What. It would have made a lot more sense, if you ask me, for the planet to have had 2 suns, one red and one yellow, and once the red one set and the yellow one rose he would regain his powers.
• Superman only wondered why the alien Sentinel insisted he go to a world with a red sun when he was already on his way back to Earth
• On Earth, which is still completely peaceful, a bunch of police are shooting their guns at a wall, in order to dispose of the bullets and collect the lead for more peaceful uses. Couldn't they have just taken the bullets out of the guns instead?
• The Sentinels say that they have stationed themselves at the 5 "control points" of Earth. One of these is the Fortress of Solitude, for some reason. Another is (supposedly) the highest mountain on Earth, which kind of makes sense, since it would give them the longest line of sight, but the others are the coldest point, the deepest point in the oceans, and the hottest spot in the Earth's core. What the logic behind these choices is, or how Superman figured them out, is unexplained.
• There is a sunken nuclear submarine at "the deepest spot in the oceans". A submarine of that shape and design would have imploded from the pressure far before it could reach the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

Spoiler: STARS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Superdickery:

• Without giving the Sentinels a chance to fully explain themselves, Superman kills one when he thinks it's trying to destroy the city of Kandor. Upon realizing that they are mechanical in nature, he immediately assumes they are remote controlled devices by some villain and wastes no time in destroying all of them. But it turns out that not only were they sentient beings, but they weren't evil at all, and actually telling the truth about their goal to make the Earth a paradise, and now it's back to the way it used to be. Whoops.
• Kills one of the Sentinels at the bottom of the ocean by using a nuclear warhead from a crashed submarine, detonating it. This would kill tons of sea life and irradiate the water around it, when he killed the others using methods that caused far less collateral damage.

Spoiler: Nice going, dick

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level. Some might try to use the "billion lightning bolts" statement to imply a low-end, but not only does he have far greater durability feats than that, but the narration never stated that was the maximum he could take either, so it doesn't seem to be an issue from my perspective.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

• This is the first part of another multi-part story
• This story references "Diamond Jim Brady", a wealthy businessman from the Gilded Age.

Feat Catalogue:

• The splash page shows a drive-in movie theater showing a recording of Supergirl destroying a giant robot insect
• Uses parts from old airplanes to build a giant fan and blow away a bunch of fog so planes can safely land
• Uses telescopic vision to spy on her friend's scumbag ex-boyfriend cheating on her with another girl
• Carves a realistic wooden statue at super speed using her fingernails
• She has access to "hypno-lure eyeshadow from the planet Femina", "super-kiss lipstick from Venus", and "bio-magnetic perfume from the flower world, Romanzor".
• Later in the actual story, we see the same drive-in movie theater scene, except Supergirl is fighting more boxy - looking robots trying to rob a bank
• Flies into space to retrieve some "rare space-elements"
• Uses telescopic vision to spy on a school football game from the top of a mountain peak

Weirdness:

• Supergirl says that using the giant fan to blow away the fog allowed her to 'cover more territory' than she could with her super breath, when we've seen that power used before to create gusts of wind wider than planets
• Apparently some villain built super strong robots for the purpose of robbing a bank, instead of just, you know, selling his robot designs and making money that way

Superdickery:

• See feat #5. Those sound suspiciously like date rape drugs (although they didn't seem to have that much of an effect when she used them).
• She gets so lovesick that she gets distracted daydreaming and avoids saving a truck filled with liquid oxygen which crashes and explodes

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level.

Action Comics #370

Superman Story

Notes:

- Superman has the damaged remains of the rocket he came to Earth in as a baby preserved in his Fortress.

Feat Catalogue:

• Travels thousands of miles from his Metropolis apartment to the Fortress of Solitude in "scant moments"
• He has a "matter analyzer" device in the Fortress which can be used to determine the age of an object
• As a young child, with no powers, outmaneuvers and defeats a giant dragon creature
• Manages to alter his course in mid-air when propelled by rocket boots he has no direct control over, in order to save a falling kid
• On the planet he lands on in another universe where he has no powers, his body emits a strange radiation that speeds up the "mental evolution" of the entire planet, causing their civilization to progress from the stone age to the space age in just 25 years. Not sure how relevant or applicable this is as a feat in any way, though.
• He's unaffected by a concentrated form of a "living element" that turns everyone else on the planet evil. The son he had on that planet inherits this immunity.
• Still with no powers, he evades the remnants of his former civilization trying to hunt him down and kill him for 40 years

Spoiler: I guess this shows his bravery and skills, even as an unpowered child in a life he doesn't remember

Spoiler: However this power works, it apparently only applied in that other universe

Weirdness:

• The premise of this story is that, when Krypton exploded, it temporarily triggered a warp in space that sent Superman's rocket to another universe, where he crashed, grew up (without powers), lived for a century, then was reverted back to a baby and sent back to the main universe where only 2 hours of relative time had passed, and he only has vague memories and dreams of his other life.
• The planet he lands on in the other universe is home to a creature called a "devil-dragon", which fires blasts from its eyes that "can turn a person evil for life".
• Having been turned evil by the dragon's eye beams, Superman's (or "Sonn", as he's called in this world) adopted sister tries to kill him by giving him jet-propelled boots that launch him into the air, but he manages to coincidentally save a kid falling from a building while in flight, reminiscent of his later heroics on Earth
• Later, she develops a concentrated "living element" based on the devil-dragon's eye beams, which is released and turns the entire planet evil, causing them to wipe themselves out in a nuclear war.
• Superman's son on that planet invented a "rejuvenation booth" (even after the planet was devastated by nuclear war) that reverted the now 100 - year - old Superman to a baby and simultaneously devolved their entire civilization back to the stone age, however that's supposed to work... He also restored the Kryptonian rocket and sent it back into space, through the space warp, and back to the Earth-One universe.

Spoiler: Okay, but what was the point of all of this?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- Depowered Superman on the alternate universe planet would maybe be Low - Mid Street Level (not taking into account his passive ability to advance their civilization at an accelerated rate). On Earth, he's still High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

• Continuation of the story from the previous issue
• There's a waterfall called the "Bridal Veil" in the Amazon that is shown in this issue. IRL, there are many waterfalls with that name, the closest one to the Amazon being in Peru (the Catarata Velo de la Novia). Googling images of it, it actually looks surprisingly similar to the one depicted in the comic.

Feat Catalogue:

• Saves a falling car in "a lightning-fast dive" (not sure if that's meant to be literal or not)
• Digs miles down into the Earth to find a coal seam, retrieves the coal, and squeezes it into diamonds
• Then finds a gold vein underground and mines some of it
• She built a computer called a "prognostron" that can predict the future (we've seen her and Superman use machines like this before)

Spoiler: How much do you want to bet we never see this particular device again?

Weirdness:

- Even after seeing what a two - timing scumbag the guy was, and after he dumped her in her Linda identity, she still dates him in her Supergirl identity and agrees to marry him, and honestly thinks it's a good idea until the computer predicts a bad future if she continues

Superdickery:

• In the computer's prediction, Supergirl's future daughter (who has superpowers too) causes trouble by rearranging houses like sets of building blocks, and later wrecks all the furniture in a room
• The prediction also shows Supergirl getting so angry at her husband she seems like she's about to kill him
• Spins her fiance around at super speed, nearly crushes him with a hug, and almost suffocates him with a kiss, in order to get him to break off the marriage

Power Tracker:

- Again, she's still High Herald Level.

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #371

Overall Notes:

- A response in the letters column says that Green Lantern couldn't have used his ring to cure the Kryptonian Virus-X, because it was Kryptonian in nature, and thus invulnerable like Superman. This would seem to imply that Superman and other Kryptonians are invulnerable to the powers of a GL ring, although a lot of these answers in the letters columns are not held to and often contradicted later.

Spoiler: Proof Superman > Green Lantern? Probably not

Superman Story

Notes:

• This is the first part of a multi-part story. At the end of the issue, Superman still can't remember his civilian identity and is still trying to discover it.
• The US President plays an important role in this story. The comic is dated January 1969 - right after an election year, but as I'm not sure when it was actually released to the public, I'm unsure if the president was meant to be Lyndon B. Johnson or Richard Nixon. I'd probably guess Johnson. Although the editor's notes say that they are not going to portray the president's physical appearance as being the same as any RL politician this time.
• The RL space capsule Friendship-7, in which astronaut John Glenn made the first manned American spaceflight, and its location at the Smithsonian Institution (specifically, the National Air and Space Museum) is a plot point in this issue
• The then-upcoming Apollo 11 Moon Landing mission is mentioned in this issue

Feat Catalogue:

• He has his memory of his civilian identity accidentally erased by an "amnesia ray" from an alien supercomputer from another dimension, but the narration mentions that this happened due to a "billion - to - one chance", perhaps implying that most of the time this kind of thing wouldn't have been effective.
• Uses super hearing to hear rumors being spread about the President all over Washington D.C.
• Uses X-ray vision to determine why a copying machine is broken
• Copies the President's signature hundreds of times at super speed, as accurately as a machine
• Uses heat vision to weld the wire to fix the machine
• Uses his fingernail to cut a hole in a space capsule, and then reseals it with heat vision, leaving no evidence that it was ever damaged
• Repairs a hole he made in the Washington Monument with "super-pressure"
• Uses X-ray vision to determine that a hand grenade is actually just a harmless smoke bomb
• Uses super breath in reverse to prevent a spy from escaping the room
• Overhears a morse code message being broadcast over the radio from a ship out at sea, while in the White House
• Carries an aircraft carrier from the open sea back to port to save time

Spoiler: I guess it's not normally that easy to mess with his memory?

Spoiler: Hearing radio waves, in case you forgot he can do that

Weirdness:

• Some aliens from another dimension give Superman a supercomputer that can solve super complex problems and generate various "ray forces" with different effects, one of which gives Superman amnesia and erases his memory of his Clark Kent identity (this ray is triggered by accident). Seeing that the US President has been missing for 3 days, he comes to the conclusion that his alter-ego was the President, so he takes up the role and uses makeup to disguise himself, figuring that he must have done the same thing when he had his memory.
• The President was apparently on a "secret mission at sea" that they couldn't tell anyone about, even Superman. Yet a random guard standing outside of the White House somehow knew about it.
• A little girl getting herself accidentally trapped in a space capsule on display on a museum was apparently a serious enough disaster that they had to call Superman, instead of just the fire department or something.

Superdickery:

• Having forgotten his secret identity, Superman just assumes that he must be the President of the United States, and so he impersonates him. Quite the ego, there.
• He also sabotages the elevator in the Washington Monument and then breaks a hole in the top as part of a plan to hide his secret identity, even though he repairs them later.

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, again.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

• We see a flashback to Supergirl's childhood in Argo City, where she had a friend of the same age named Morina, who died when she was accidentally exposed to the Kryptonite (or rather, Anti-Kryptonite, the kind that affects depowered Kryptonians) under the lead shielding of the city.
• There's a scene in this issue featuring giant inflatable parade balloons shaped like Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, and the Flash, for the "Metropolis Annual Heroes' Day Parade"
• Apparently, Hal Jordan always wears his power ring on his right hand, not his left
• The future biography of Supergirl also says how she will die, although it's not stated in the issue. Being "from the future" myself (heh), I know that she will eventually be killed by the Anti-Monitor in COIE (of course, like most superheroes, she didn't stay dead permanently). But that brings up an interesting question - did the biography actually say the same thing, that she died fighting the Anti-Monitor? Out - of - universe, obviously not, since the character hadn't even been thought of when this was written, but in - universe? Maybe, although still probably not, because this entire timeline seems to have been negated at the end of this story, and the events of COIE destroyed and remade (almost) every future timeline as well.

Feat Catalogue:

• On the splash page, we see Supergirl stopping some criminals' car by crashing into the roof, creating enough of an impact to blow out all of the tires
• In a flashback we see how Supergirl fought beings from the 7th dimension and defeated them (another nail in the coffin for VSB - style "dimensional tiering"). She flew the Stanhope Library through the time barrier into the future and then back, as well.
• In another flashback, we see her capturing a bunch of mutated sea creatures and the deadly gas they created and flying them to another planet so they wouldn't endanger the Earth
• Reads through her future biography in seconds at super speed
• Uses metal roofing from damaged skyscrapers to build a giant metal kite to attract a bunch of artificially - created lightning bolts and save a city, catching the falling debris with one hand while she flies the kite with the other
• From "Midland City" (wherever that is), uses telescopic vision to spy on Miss Powell in the Stanhope Library
• This is a confusing one. She deliberately handles a situation in a different way than her future biography states, which causes all of the information written in all of the books, and everyone's memory of it (including her own), to completely vanish, hinting that she somehow eradicated that entire future timeline. I was so confused about the implications of this that I actually made a thread asking for other people's takes on it.
• It's probably just for narrative effect, but Supergirl seemed to lose her memories of the future timeline at a slower rate than everyone else. Not sure what that would imply, either.

Spoiler: Beings from the 7th dimension, but clearly weaker than the likes of Mxy

Spoiler: Taking mutant sea creatures to another planet

Spoiler: Changing the future?

Weirdness:

- Some random scientist working on a weather control machine accidentally creates a thundercloud that starts destroying a city with giant lightning bolts. He seemingly never faces any kind of consequences for his recklessness.

Superdickery:

• Destroys Ms. Powell's desk in anger at her publishing the book
• If she actually did wipe out an entire future timeline, then that would be genocide on an unimaginable scale, and probably the single greatest act of superdickery we have seen so far. Superman will have to up his game in order to compete with his cousin in this department.

Power Tracker:

- As the actual implications of the timeline - changing feat are hard to determine and up for interpretation, I don't think there is enough evidence to say it implies anything above her standard High Herald Level.

Action Comics #372

Notes:

• Continuation of the story from the previous issue
• I believe this is another cover that was featured on Superdickery, for obvious reasons

Feat Catalogue:

• Welds a crack in a safe at a junkyard shut with heat vision
• Throws a 5 - ton safe across town to the junkyard he got it from
• Bends a steel bar into the shape of the word "Superman"
• Uses reverse super breath and super ventriloquism to trick a kid in the audience into thinking his balloon popped, while he instead draws it to him at super speed, so fast that no one can see it happen
• Uses telescopic vision to see that "Clark Kent" (really, the spy impersonating him) is in trouble, and flies to save him, before the gunmen that are after him catch up to his car
• We find out that his costume can also work like lead and block out Green Kryptonite rays, but only for a few minutes
• Despite being weakened by Green Kryptonite, hurls a chunk of it miles into the Earth's crust
• Uses ice breath to intercept some bullets before they hit him, freezing them so cold that they turn to dust when they do hit him

Spoiler: I guess that's sort of useful?

Spoiler: Interesting trick

Weirdness:

• Still missing his memory of his civilian identity, Superman this time thinks it might be a wrestler calling himself "The Masked Superman", who wears a Superman costume with a black mask and uses fake props to pretend to do super-feats before each match. But if that was his secret identity, then he wouldn't have needed those props in the first place.
• The real "Masked Superman" was a guy who was a fan of Superman, so he decided to theme his wrestling gimmick around him. He had also gotten hold of a piece of Green K and planned to give it to the real Superman as a gift... do I really need to explain why that's a bad idea?

Superdickery:

• For elaboration, the cover has him dressed as a wrestler, threatening to crush his opponent's skull like an eggshell in the ring
• Lois once again plans to expose someone she suspects of being Superman to Green Kryptonite to reveal his secret identity
• In the actual comic, he does threaten to crush the guy's skull like an eggshell, although he only thinks it before getting a hold of himself, although it's only because he remembers that he has a code against killing. So if he didn't, he would have literally killed the guy, whose only crime was having some gangsters try to make his opponent throw the match
• Tries to shock another guy out of his amnesia by flying him high up into the sky and dropping him. It does work, though.

Power Tracker:

- Nothing to change him from High Herald Level.

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Helps the navy test their new weapon, a giant mechanical spider that spins steel webs to trap submarines (WTF)
• Catches someone who fell out of a plane, carries the plane out of a storm, then closes the door and returns to the plane, so fast no one can see her leave or change costumes (although they were distracted and dazed from the turbulence and the near-crash)
• Uses X-ray vision to determine that a rope had been sabotaged with acid, and reweaves it back together at super speed so fast that no one can see
• Thinks to herself that she could dive to the center of the Earth
• Unharmed by a giant boa constrictor snake trying to strangle her

Spoiler: Finally, an actual use for that 'super-weaving' power

Weirdness:

• See the first feat
• A movie producer, shooting a film in an island near Hawaii, had actual piranhas imported for a scene in the movie that was later written out of the script, so he just left them in a pond on the island. Invasive species concerns, anyone?

Superdickery:

Power Tracker:

- High Herald Level, still

 

[Endless Mike]

Action Comics #373

Notes:

- This is a special giant-sized issue reprinting several Supergirl - focused stories. As everything in this issue consists of reprints of previous issues of Action Comics that I've already covered, there are no scans this time.

Action Comics #374

Overall Notes:

• A response in the letters column states that Superman works out in the Fortress of Solitude with "special devices designed to tax even his muscles"
• It's also stated that the reason so many pieces of Kryptonite reached Earth is because there is a "space-warp" connecting the former location of Krypton and that of Earth that they traveled through

Superman Story

Notes:

• Continuation of the storyline from issue #372, where Superman has still lost the memory of his Clark Kent identity
• It's implied in this issue that Superman is right-handed, although I also recall him being ambidextrous. It could be the latter and he just decided to use his right hand at the time.

Feat Catalogue:

• According to various news headlines, Superman discovered a lost continent and rebuilt a reservoir
• In search of a criminal's hideout, he searches "every likely place" for hours (not clear on what kind of range we're talking about here, though)
• Rebuilds a prison wall that was destroyed with plastic explosives to prevent a jailbreak at super speed, so fast that it appears to the escaping criminals that the wall just reappeared in front of them
• Uses ice breath to supercool ice at a skating rink to hundreds of degrees below zero, causing guards with ice skates to slip on it
• Chases a car falling off a cliff, digs underground before it hits the ground, and then uses his super breath to cushion it as it falls, in order to save the car and its occupant while still making it look like it crashed.
• Flies through intense radiation in a nuclear reactor, strong enough to burn off the disguise he's wearing, but is completely unharmed
• Uses super ventriloquism to fake an emergency alert over the reactor plant's intercom system
• Swallows a sample of deadly radioactive material, as it won't harm him and the radiation can't escape his body to harm others around him

Spoiler: There better not be anyone around the next time he uses the bathroom...

Weirdness:

• There's a random criminal who calls himself "Super-Thief" (Superman thinks it might be a mockery of him), but he was killed and replaced by an FBI agent trying to catch his accomplices, and strange coincidences led Superman to believing that the criminal was his secret identity
• See the fourth feat
• Superman had the foresight to carry a second copy of the disguise he was wearing, compressed to small size in the pouch of his cape, under the first disguise. Kind of odd.
• The same "amnesia ray" from the extradimensional alien computer that messed with Superman's memory also screwed up the memory of one of his robots, which just coincidentally happened to be in the way of it when it was fired
• Upon realizing that its memory had been compromised, the robot explodes... for no apparent reason

Superdickery:

• Coming to another fake assumption about his civilian identity, Superman thinks he's a crime boss, so he plays out the part and robs people
• Accidentally kicks a metal drum so hard it wrecks a building (that was condemned already, but still)

Power Tracker:

- Still High Herald Level

Supergirl Story

Notes:

Feat Catalogue:

• Uses microscopic vision to examine the interior parts of a rose and do a sketch of it for a botany assignment for college
• In a flashback, freezes a dinosaur and flies it an interstellar distance to another planet before freeing it from the ice with heat vision
• Invented a "barrier ray" she used to stop a war between two planets using "doomsday bombs" (the weapons had Green Kryptonite in them so she couldn't stop them personally, implying she could have done so if that wasn't a factor)

Spoiler: Way to ruin a perfectly good kaiju movie plot...

Spoiler: Another device we'll probably never see or hear of again

Weirdness:

- "Radiation from an aurora" once revived a dinosaur on Earth, which was also somehow bulletproof.

Superdickery:

- Tricks an alien into breaking his own race's laws by killing microbes, which then causes him to commit suicide

Power Tracker:

- Nothing here to change her from High Herald Level.