Supergirl in Adventure Comics #423. Making a spectacle of the Justice League.

If there's one thing you can rely on when you're a Supergirl it's that the next lot of troublesome aliens'll be along almost as soon as the last lot are out of the way. Last issue they were setting a giant robot loose in the city, now another bunch of aliens are out to cause chaos with spectacles.

As Linda Danvers is out and about, a mysterious shop assistant sticks a pair of sunglasses on her, sunglasses she can't get off no matter how much super-strength she applies. For some reason it doesn't occur to her to melt them with her heat vision. Nor does it occur to her to deck the assistant and find out what her game is.

Then it turns out the sunglasses are a mind-control device which the aliens use to make her put a pair of evil glasses on Superman. Now under the aliens' power, Superman sets out to stick mind-controlling glasses on the other members of the Justice League. Can Supergirl stop him in time?

Of course she can - but not before the leader of the aliens and his more responsible brother drown in their wrecked underwater base.

It's clear almost from the start that the leader of the aliens has gone completely mad and refuses to listen to his brother's repeated attempts to talk him out of a scheme that has no purpose other than to give him pleasure, but no explanation's given as to exactly why he's gone mad. Towards the end, the revelation's made that he's suffering from periodic bouts of blindness, which doesn't really explain anything in terms of his behaviour, although it may at least explain his strange obsession with glasses.

When it comes to the art, Mike Sekowsky'll never be my favourite artist but the truth is while I don't particularly enjoy his work here, it doesn't really put me off either.

Highlight of the issue has to be the sight of a bespectacled Superman trying to force a tiny pair of glasses on the Atom but, slightly underwhelming art and a lack of explanations aside, the main thing that strikes you with this outing is that, for once, it's a full-length Supergirl tale. Presumably this was in preparation for her finally getting her own mag just two issues later. It is one of the mysteries of life as to how Supergirl was able to sustain a viable series for three years in Adventure Comics but, once given her own mag, poor sales led to it being cancelled after just ten issues.