Adventure Comics #390. A Supergirl in love.

The good news is I've recently bought a pile of comics to review.

The bad news is most of them are Supergirl comics. So, if you're not fond of Kara Zor-El, the days to come might prove to be grim reading for you.

Fortunately I can't believe anyone could not be a fan of Supergirl. Over the decades, she's given us some of the most bizarre and twisted tales of perversion and weirdness ever inflicted on the human race, and Giant Adventure Comics #390's no exception as our Herculean heroine once more winds her way through the minefields of the land we call Romance. Frankly, I think anyone who's ever been young and in love will be able to empathise with the binds she finds herself in here.

In the issue's first tale, after watching a soppy romance film, Kara decides she must find Superman a wife. Clearly she's under the impression that her all-powerful cousin's incapable of finding one for himself.

After a dream that tells us she thinks his ideal woman is someone to do his cooking and cleaning, she decides Helen of Troy's the perfect fit.

Erm, that'd be the Helen of Troy who's a queen and therefore not too likely to be into cooking and cleaning?

This genius plan fails when, jealous of Supergirl's powers and beauty, Helen banishes Supergirl and Superman from her kingdom.

Showing the block-headed stubbornness that makes us all love her, Supergirl decides to fix Superman up with the grown-up version of the Legion of Super-Heroes' Saturn Girl. This all goes wrong when, after Superman gives Saturn Woman a snogging that threatens to suck her intestines out, it turns out she's already married to Lightning Man who isn't at all pleased to see Superman coming on to his wife. After no doubt pausing to give Saturn Woman her digestive tract back, Superman returns to the present day where he infamously declares that he knows the ideal wife for him.

It's Supergirl!

Sadly, he can't marry Supergirl because Kryptonian law forbids cousins from marrying. Seemingly, judging by the fact it never occurs to him to mention it, Kryptonian law doesn't stop grown men from marrying thirteen year old girls. Bafflingly undisturbed by this revelation, Supergirl scans the universe for a super-heroine who looks just like her but isn't Superman's cousin.

Happily she finds just the girl, in Luma Lynai, who presumably doesn't know about the existence of Supergirl, judging by her showing no signs of being completely repulsed and sickened by the whole back story of how Superman came to seek her out. Clearly she's the ideal woman for Superman because, not only does she ask no questions, but her initials are LL - just like Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Linda Lee, Lori Lemaris, etc, etc, etc.

Sadly, it turns out Luma Lynai can't live on Earth because the rays of Earth's sun have the same effect on her that kryptonite has on Superman.

Finally admitting defeat, Supergirl gives up on the idea and accepts that maybe Superman'll just have to slum it and settle for Lois Lane or Lana Lang, or presumably any other Earth woman whose name begins with LL. Lindsay Lohan, you have been warned.

Next up, Supergirl goes deeper into weird pervert love overdrive as Comet the Super-Horse sets out to win Supergirl's heart. Now, the more observant reader'll have noticed that Super-Horse is a horse. The even more observant reader'll have noticed that Supergirl is a girl. This should've set alarm bells ringing in DC Comics' editorial office.

Needless to say, it didn't.

Visiting a planet where magic reigns supreme, Super-Horse is transformed into a man whenever a comet's in the vicinity. In this guise, he becomes known to Supergirl as Bronco Bill and she's quite the smitten kitten until the comet leaves our solar system and he has to flee in order to turn back into a horse, leaving our heroine none the wiser as to what's been going on. Will our love-struck horse ever get his chance to climb on top of Supergirl like she so often climbs on top of him?

Of course he will. In the very next story he travels back in time and gets the sorceress Circe to turn him permanently into Bronco Bill.

Unfortunately he's mistaken for a dangerous criminal of the type whose first instinct upon seeing a horse is to set it on fire, and, when a posse comes after him, he has to flee and turn back into a horse for his own protection. He then rescues Supergirl from some kryptonite he's accidentally unearthed, leaving Supergirl to yet again wonder if she'll ever see Bronco Bill again.

Next, despite this being touted as a "Romance" issue, we have a tale from Supergirl's early days that has nothing at all to do with romance, when she tries to stop a kid called Dick from revealing to the world that Supergirl exists. She does this in a whole bunch of unlikely ways, involving cliffs, dummies and dumbbells, before convincing him that the flying female he saw was just a robot built by Superman.

Lastly, Supergirl meets her perfect man, a last survivor of Argo City who turns out to be an escaped criminal from the Phantom Zone. He's out for revenge on her, despite never having met her, and she almost falls for it, even getting as far as arranging the wedding.

Happily, her psychic friends, Super-Horse, Jerro the merboy and Saturn Girl, realise there's something up and, between them, they send the villain off to the future where he'll stay in a kryptonite cage until he can be returned to the Phantom Zone. Seemingly, Supergirl's adoptive parents have no problems at all with their schoolgirl daughter marrying a fully grown man. If they do, his knocking twenty years of their ages and giving them a load of jewellery seems to quell those objections.

So there you have it; Helen of Troy, lookalikes, robots, randy horses, merboys and alien super-villains. Just a typical teen love-life. No wonder we all love Supergirl so much. In so many ways, despite her powers, her day-to-day problems are just like those of the rest of us.