When Marv Wolfman Introduced Supergirl's Death Wish

CBR

By Brian Cronin

Published Aug 13, 2018

CSBG's spotlights of comic book moments that are hilarious in hindsight sees the writer who later killed off Supergirl introducing a death wish in her

This is Past Was Close Behind, a feature that spotlights moments, exchanges, etc. from older comics that take on a brand new light when read in concert with later comic books or events. Basically, stuff that looks hilarious in hindsight. Today, we look at how a writer introduced the fact that Supergirl has a death wish...thirteen years before he killed her off in a comic book.

After years of being a featured back-up in the pages of Action Comics, Mort Weisinger started to mix things up with Supergirl by making her the LEAD feature in Adventure Comics, displacing the Legion of Super-Heroes, who were temporarily relegated to being a back-up in Action Comics (don't worry, the Legion made their way back eventually to starring in their own comic book title. After all, how could DC go without a Legion of Super-Heroes comic book series for that long? Oh...right. Sorry about that). Supergirl took over in Adventure Comics #381 and held the spot past Mort Weisinger's retirement. She gave it up after Adventure Comics #424, at which point she had graduated to her own solo series (the early 1970s was the start of something that would become a common occurrence in the years to come, which was Marvel and DC trying to push each other off of the shelves by releasing as much product as possible. So suddenly, lots of characters were getting series. If you ever wanted to pitch DC Comics a new series, around 1973 would be the time. They would all get canceled pretty quickly when there was a paper shortage a year later, but hey, at least you got your series out there!)>

Soon before Supergirl got her own book, we had 1972's Adventure Comics #421, written by Marv Wolfman and Steve Gerber, with art by Mike Sekowsky and Bob Oksner. Adventure Comics was basically Mike Sekowsky's swan song at DC Comics. He did odd jobs here and there over the next few years, but this was pretty much it for him as a main artist (he actually remained on the series after Supergirl got her own book, as the series became a sort of retro adventure series and he did a Vigilante feature in the revamped version of the book).

Anyhow, the issue opens with a mysterious woman showing up out of a similarly mysterious portal. She reveals that her name is Nightflame and she is here for Supergirl!

Nightflame wrecks enough of the city that Supergirl investigates and she is quickly captured and taken to Nightflame's evil dimension.

As it turned out, Nightflame actually comes from within Supergirl herself. She lives in a dimension that is the "evil" side of Supergirl and Supergirl obviously doesn't have much of an evil side, so their home is being destroyed and so they have decided to capture her and take over her powers....

Luckily, while Supergirl appears to the outside world as if she is in a coma, her love interest, Geoff, sends his thoughts to her and sends such loving thoughts that it begins to destroy this dark dimension. As it is being destroyed, Nightflame reveals the REAL truth! She is actually Supergirl's DEATH WISH! However, Supergirl now has overcome her death wish as now she wants to LIVE!!!

Well, sadly, I have some news for you, Supergirl...

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13 years later, Marv Wolfman was in charge of the universe-spanning crossover event, Crisis on Infinite Earths. In an attempt to show how important this event was, DC decided to kill off a few characters and after a lot of deliberation (and a box office failure of a movie), Supergirl was decided to be one of the major heroes who would die and so, in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (by Wolfman, George Perez and Jerry Ordway), the heroes are trying to stop the Anti-Matter from using a weapon that will destroy the remaining worlds. Superman took the villain on head-to-head and Anti-Monitor was getting the better of him. This led to Supergirl making a sacrifice to stop the Anti-Monitor's weapon and protect her beloved cousin...