Supergirl in Adventure comics #422. It's all gone King Kong.

As I know to my cost, when you're a super-heroine you have to be ready for any kind of threat and it can thus be a mere matter of time before you come up against a giant robot.

So it is that Adventure Comics #422 sees a duo of shape-changing aliens arrive on Earth to appropriate a giant robot a scientist has created to be the world's policeman in his hope of bringing peace to mankind.

Sadly, the aliens' plan is anything but peaceful as they send his robot on the rampage.

Having been inconveniently hit by a car it was throwing as she was trying to get to work, our intrepid heroine's soon on hand to deal with it. But she gets nowhere and has to endure the ignominy of being Fay Wray as it carries her to the top of a skyscraper where it happily swats planes as though they're bluebottles.

Fortunately, Supergirl has one thing on her side that Fay Wray didn't which is the ability to blast X-Rays into the brain of an opponent and, thus blasted, the robot plunges from its lofty perch to shatter on the street below, leaving us all to ponder that this time it wasn't the aeroplanes that killed the beast, it was most definitely the beauty.

The tale's bit a bit of light-hearted froth that allows writer Steve Skeates to have fun with a battle between two invulnerable characters and with the King Kong parallels before ending by threatening a sequel. Basically you get to see Supergirl battling a giant robot and get to see a bit of bare Supergirl midriff, what more could you want from a comic?

The back-up strip's a very odd thing featuring a masked cowboy called the Vigilante. I don't know anything about the Vigilante. I don't know if he'd ever appeared before or if he ever appeared again but he's clearly a good egg because he sets out to help an all-black Rodeo crew fight a gang of racists.

Did the Vigilante only deal with Wild West type problems? If so, you'd have thought the fact he was living in the present day would be somewhat limiting when it came to story ideas. You also have to question his choice of motorcycle which owes more to Lambretta than Harley-Davidson and is something you suspect a 17 year old girl would be slightly embarrassed to be seen riding, let alone a rough tough modern cowpoke of justice.