Supergirl, Red Kryptonite, Transfusions and Tropical Diseases
Mr. Malverne, the father of Supergirl’s boyfriend Dick Malverne, has come down with a deadly tropical disease1. As his condition worsens, the doctors decide they have no choice but to try the experimental “miracle” serum Spracolicin2.
Meanwhile, Supergirl is having problems of her own because she has been exposed to six red kryptonite meteors. As every fan of Silver Age wackiness remembers, exposure to red kryptonite causes bizarre, but temporary, changes in Kryptonians. Each meteor has affected Supergirl in a different way, but luckily, like bad ninjas, she only has to deal with one at a time. The first meteor caused her to become morbidly obese3. The next turned into a wolfman (or wolfwoman, rather). When she turned back to normal, she used her x-ray vision to check on Dick and learned about how sick his father was.
The third red kryptonite meteor causes her to shrink down to microscopic size. Seeing the opportunity to help Mr. Malverne, trial-sized Supergirl flies across town to the hospital and enters his bloodstream by flying down a conveniently open transfusion bottle4,5.
Once in his body, she locates the bacteria6 causing the tropical disease and pummels them into submission, then allows the body’s natural defenses to take over.
The doctors, of course, credit Mr. Malverne’s miraculous recovery to the Sparacolicin serum. But unfortunately: “What a shame our supply was the only amount of it in existence and the formula has just been destroyed in a fire!7”
Notes:
1. What is it with the Superman writers and tropical diseases? Remember that in Silver Age continuity, Ma and Pa Kent died of a tropical disease. (Personally, I’m guessing this allowed the writers leeway with the symptoms by claiming it’s a “tropical disease” and nobody can argue otherwise.)
2. Or Sapracolicin. It’s mentioned twice in the story, and spelled differently each time.
3. At which point she disguised herself as a giant parade balloon. Seriously.
4. An infection requiring a transfusion? How unusual. Oh, it’s a tropical disease.
5. An open transfusion bottle? This couldn’t have been a good idea, even before our current era of acronym-laden health and safety regulations.
6. Forget those microscope photographs you saw in biology class — they’re wrong. What you see here is exactly what bacteria really look like.
7. Great planning there, guys. (No great loss though as the serum didn’t actually do anything.)
Story from Action Comics #283, “The Six Red K Perils of Supergirl,” by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney. I wasn’t sure where to file this one, was it a Forgotten Medicine of the Silver Age, Transfusion Confusion, or just general Supergirl Silver Age Wackiness?
August 17th, 2011 at 8:41 am
I thought Red K’s effects lasted for 24 hours? So did this saga occur over six days? If so, that’s impressive. These days it would take a 24-issue maxiseries to cover six days in the life of a superhero.
August 17th, 2011 at 9:10 am
Official Comment
You’re right, the effects from Red K are supposed to last for 24 hours. The authors seemed to have ignored that part (despite it being a major point of the Superman story in the same issue). No time course was given in the story, but it certainly wasn’t 24 hours per meteor.
August 17th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
If you read the two-issue series (and you can, thanks to certain naughty websites) the whole idea is that SG believed herself immune to all forms of K-ite because she had been made super-super by Mr. Mxyzptlk. And that was after losing her powers thanks to a rogue Kryptonian. At the end everything is reset to starting conditions by sending Mr. M back home. Anyway, the usual rules about the duration of red-K effects were thrown out the window on a weak excuse.
I guess I actually bought these issued back in the day. I definitely remember the “death vision” hallucination from pt. 2.. I was, er, not yet 10 at the time.
Note that in the balloon episode, the brown wig stretched along with the rest of Linda Lee. It never occurred to her to ditch it and go blonde so nobody would recognize her. The 2-headed bit in pt.2 should have gotten more space. I mean a teenager arguing with herself for real? Priceless!
August 18th, 2011 at 4:20 am
How cute the way the blood vessels look like cavern rivers. I wonder what happens if the patient stands up.
August 18th, 2011 at 5:25 pm
By any chance did this comic come out around the same time as the movie Fantastic Voyage?
August 18th, 2011 at 5:31 pm
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August 24th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
If I were his doctor I’d be more concerned with all the air in his blood vessels than with the infection. Then again, his circulatory system is apparently the Paris Catacombs, so what do I know?
September 13th, 2011 at 9:35 pm
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