DC's Handling of Supergirl Post-Crisis Was Bizarre

In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed, discover whether even mentioning Supergirl in the letter columns was banned at DC post-Crisis

Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and forty-seventh installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first legend in this installment.

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COMIC LEGEND:

DC wouldn't even allow the MENTION of Supergirl Post-Crisis, even in the letter columns of the comics.

STATUS:

False, but a Little Bit of Truth

As I noted in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, one of the all-time great Christmas comic book stories of all-time is "Should Auld Acquitances Be Forgot" from Christmas with the Superheroes #2, by Alan Brennert and Dick Giordano.

The story stars Deadman, who, of course, can only be corporeal by possessing people. That's fine under normal circumstances, but on Christmas, he feels like a jerk in, effect, stealing people's holiday moments from them. At the same time, he obviously misses out on those experiences. Ultimately, he chooses to just go back to being a ghost, and he bemoans how awful it is being a ghost on the holidays. He is talked out of it by a mysterious young woman who knows exactly what he is going through as she, too, misses out on the experiences of the human world, and she has it worse, as she has mostly been forgotten....

Obviously, that young woman was Supergirl, who had died during Crisis on Infinite Earths and was then written out of continuity during the Man of Steel reboot (which made Superman the literal "Last Son of Krypton").

The problem is that the Superman titles were upset about a comic book story that was directly going to contradict their newly established continuity. I did a legend about how Jerry Ordway...if not threatening to quit, per se, was very upset about it. He explained to me in an old Comic Book Legends Revealed, "Even after John left the books, [Superman editor Mike] Carlin fought many battles on our behalf, to keep what we were doing consistent across the other books in the DCU. I have always felt strongly that a company should keep their characters consistent, as a service to readers. I think Julie Schwartz tried to keep his era's incarnation of the Man of Steel consistent in both tone and look, and we all tried to do the same. The creators working on a character need to have some power to exercise their control, so, for example, a huge Superman moment, continuity wise, appears in a Superman title, not Booster Gold, or Legion or Blue Devil."

The editor of the DC Christmas special, Mark Waid, knew that the story might prove to be controversial with the Superman office, so he explained the situation to Dick Giordano (then DC's Executive Editor) to keep the story from being squelched by the Superman office complaining. Giordano liked the story idea, so he decided to draw it himself, as he reasonably theorized that no one would ask to cancel the story if their boss drew it, ya know?

So with it now becoming clear that the story definitely WAS going to be happening, the Superman office did try one last thing.

At the same time that this story came out, Power Girl was in a coma in the pages of Justice League Europe...

So the Superman office asked if they couldn't just say that it was POWER GIRL meeting Deadman in the Christmas story, while she was sort of connected to the spirit world during her coma.

Dick Giordano, though, told them that it was just a simple Christmas story and that they shouldn't overcomplicate things. So the story remained as it was.

However, that controversy has led to a rumor that the modd at DC at the time was so sensitive that DC banned even the MENTION of Supergirl from the comics! For instance, in a 1989 issue of Secret Origins (also edited by Mark Waid), Supergirl's name is basically censored (also, in a profile write-up on writer Paul Kuppeberg in Power Girl #2 in 1988, his long run on Supergirl was not mentioned in his write-up)...

I asked Mark Waid about the very conspicuous edited usage of Supergirl's name in the Secret Origins letter columns, and he told me that it was just a bit of a joke based on the actual controversy. In other words, it was not a LITERAL banning, but it was close enough to it that Waid put in that joke to sort of address how he was feeling at the time. Whether it was an actual banning or not, it FELT that way to Waid and that is why he put in the edited mention of Supergirl's name into the letter column. So it was just his little commentary and not something that he was forced to do.

So no, not a LITERAL banning of even the mention of Supergirl's name. Things weren't THAT crazy (obviously, though, things were weird enough that Supergirl wasn't mentioned in Kupperberg's write-up, which, again, wasn't a literal BANNING, but it was a bit of an implied banning that would suggest that editors were just better off if they didn't even wade into the controversy...pun unintended, honest).

Thanks to Mark Waid for the information!