The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 290: Adventure Comics #408, July 1971

Last night I spent a bit of time trying to catch up on the Supergirl television series, which I'm still on the fence about, or was, so I decided that today I should have a look at some of the Supergirl stories I have in the collection. It turns out I don't actually have very many. Most of what I do have is old issues of Adventure Comics, and this particular issue features perhaps the ugliest version of Supergirl's costume that I've yet to behold, at least from the waist down. From the bright yellow lines down the front of her tights to the little tiny Peter Pan shoes, I've not idea what the designers were thinking with this one, though it is far less-revealing than the typical super heroine costume, so perhaps that's what was behind this redesign. The upper part of the costume is fantastic, though.

This story is kind of a cool little gothic tale about bodies concealed behind walls in creepy old houses. It's really interesting to see a genre like the Gothic taken up in a comic from the 70s. Supergirl hardly fits the typical mold for a protagonist from such a tale, but the weirdness of the setting and the other characters with whom she interacts seem to have been pulled directly from a short story by Poe, and their interaction with other levels of reality (i.e., the afterlife) keep the Maid of Steel just off-balance enough that the story is effective.

I had a weird "oh, I live in the future" moment as I was reading this comic. Linda Danvers is part of a television crew in this iteration of the character, and at one point she films what looks like a little girl's face at the window of a creepy house. She promises to show, rather than tell, what she saw, but only after she has the chance to "develop about ten frames [she] shot" back at the studio. Of course, in my mind, her camera was digital, and they should have been able to look at the film right away. I wonder if there's a difference between film and digital when it comes to takes movies of ghosts.

Not sure what we'll get up to tomorrow. But it'll be neat.