SUPERGIRL: ROGUES GALLERY: LESLA-LAR!!

[alschroeder3]

With the new Supergirl TV show, I thought I'd look at some interesting points in Supergirl's history. A lot of heroes are defined by their Rogues' Gallery.

In Supergirl's case...well....

No, honest, she has a few good ones. But #1 has to be...

Lesla-Lar, the most effective, ruthless, most unstoppable villain the Weisinger-era Superman Family ever created.

Crazy as all get out, but efficient: let me show you what I mean...

Our first introduction to Lesla-Lar, just AFTER Superman said she had trained enough, that he was going to reveal her existence to the world...and then Supergirl finds her super-powers are just...gone. Neither she nor Superman can figure out what happened, but Superman regretfully tells her he can't announce her existence as Supergirl to the world--since she's no longer superhuman.

Cut to Kandor, the bottled Kryptonian shrunken city in Superman's Forstress.

She's jealous of the attention Supergirl WILL get if she's revealed to the world??

Inadvertently, this caused some long-needed changes. Supergirl stopped trying NOT to be adopted, in a mistaken idea that this would endanger her secret. (Well, considering at least one of the couples that DID adopt her, maybe there is some reason in that, but that's another story.) So the now powerless Linda Lee got adopted by Fred and Edna Danvers, who genuinely loved her, she changed her wig from the pigtails she had been wearing to a more modern hairdo, etc.

So...Lesla-Lar decided to rob her of this now ho-hum life?? And yes, somehow, Lesla-Lar is the spitting image of Kara/Supergirl. She's the "evil twin" of TV tropes.

Later Lesla-Lar revealed herself to Luthor (remember, this is BEFORE Supergirl's existence was revealed to the world.) who is appropriately shocked.

And yes, she DOES have quite a plan in mind. (Although, if she can rob Supergirl of her powers, couldn't she do that to Superman too? And if she did that, couldn't she just kill them both and then do whatever she wanted? Maybe she thought even a powerless Superman might be dangerous--and given how many times Superman got depowered in the Weisinger era and still prevailed, maybe she had a point.)

I can't get over how she LIKED being Luthor's "Secret emergency weapon", when Supergirl had been trying for months to go from Superman's "secret emergency weapon" and become publicly known. Even Luthor, though, wasn't as devious as Lesla-Lar.

Next issue:

Lesla-Lar finishes: "...People will think I'm on the law's side, and never suspect that you and I are secret partners in crime."

I love how she lectures Luthor on the best way to kill Superman.

Anyway, Superman meets with "Supergirl" and she fools him easily, even when she fakes an antidote for her powerless condition, and Superman says he'll announce her existence to the world...

And she would have succeeded, if it weren't for that meddling-- super-dog?

Krypto is supposed to have super-intelligence for a canine, but here he shows himself more perceptive than Superman, Luthor, the Danvers...

Supergirl, who has been brainwashed into thinking she's Lesla-Lar, is PLAYING Supergirl in a science-fiction movie being filmed in Kandor. Riiiiight.

Krypto is intelligent enough to operate a reducing/transfer ray, but can't take a pen in his paw, tail or mouth to write to Superman: "Hey, this Supergirl is an imposter". Although we do know that Krypto knows how to bark in Morse Code from other stories...

Later, the real Supergirl/Linda tries on her costume late at night, and is startled to find her super-powers came back!

And if you think she was startled, Lesla-Lar was just plain flabbergasted.

It turns out Mr. Mxyzptlk saw the young girl in the moonlight in the Supergirl outfit, and made this "ordinary" girl super-powered, just out of mischief. So Lesla-Lar's science couldn't overcome Mr. M's magic...

When Supergirl--the real one--was revealed to the world, did Luthor think it was the "evil" Supergirl? Was he waiting for her to betray Superman and free him?

Later, Lesla-Lar escapes and takes the place of Lena Thorul, Luthor's good and psychic sister. (Evidently Lesla-Lar can take the place of any blonde in the DC Universe. Maybe she's the Kandorian equivelent of Meryl Streep.)

Then she does what ANY villain at DC should have done who wanted to get rid of Superman, Supergirl, etc. She released some Phantom Zoners!

She even came prepared for Mon-El! Now THAT's planning ahead. Kru-El (A cousin of both Jor-El and Zor-El, a black sheep of the family) retrieved his cache of "forbidden weapons" where Superboy first encountered the Phantom Zone projector, and caused a time-barrier that kept Superman, who was time-travelling, from re-entering present times. Kru-El also has a disintegrator that MAY affect even Kryptonians. They draw straws to see who will volunteer to be a test subject--a suggestion by Zod, who is pretty chill about it..

...And guess who draws the short straw!

In something very odd in a Weisinger-era Super-family comic, she actually dies, and stays dead for over a decade...

But this is comics. Nobody dies forever in comics.

She returned in a Supergirl story decades later, an energy-being who nestled herself in Kara's mind..and is all of the sudden convinced that her resemblence to Supergirl/Kara is a family one.

Yeah, they can't be sisters, but I wonder if Lesla-Lar might be related to Alura? The fact that her name is different from most females on Krypton (who use their father's name as a last name, for instance Kara Zor-El) might indicate she's illegitimate or an orphan, and maybe she's a daughter of a sibling of Alura's.

Still, she easily succeeded in her plans against Superman and Supergirl, and only was stopped by a super-dog's sense of smell and Mr. M's Magic, and finally by sheer mischance of drawing a short straw. Not too shabby. She played with the big boys (the Phantom Zoners) on an equal footing-- and played Luthor for a fool.

She was easily the most efffective foe Superman or Supergirl ever faced, and was never defeated by anything EITHER super-cousin did.

She didn't look impressive. She didn't have an impressive super-villain name. But she beat anyone human--or Kryptonian humanoid-- who got in her way.

THAT'S efficient.

Comments

[captainbellman]

"Gasp! A strange, ordinary-looking young woman in a Superman-ish costume tunneled through the walls of my cell with her bare hands? Could she be some kind of a Super...GIRL?! Better ask her to bend some metal, just to be sure. After all, it might have been a fluke. Or she could have an invisible drilling mechanism of some kind. Note to self: invent one, then patent it."

[alschroeder3]

I think his initial reaction was more, "GYAAHHH!! Not ANOTHER one!"

[captainbellman]

Still, nice that he (and...like...the entire prison staff?) gets so used to Supergirl tunneling in and out of his cell every damn day. She has a teleport ray! Why is she just using her bare hands?

[sailorlibra]

I can't tell you how delighted I am to discover that Jor-El has an evil cousin named Kru-El. It's just so perfectly cheesy and ridiculous. I love it.

[alschroeder3]

He actually looks more like the General Zod of SUPERMAN II than the comic Zod did, but I'm kind of glad they went with the General.

"KNEEL before Kru-El...what? What's so funny? Why are you all laughing? Are you saying I have a cheesy name? Then die as you deserve to!"

[q99]

Very interesting! I'd never heard of her before.

And such a poor death for such a strong villain. Bad writers!

[alschroeder3]

Actually, after about two years of her being the main Supergirl villain, I think the writers (Siegel, I believe, with maybe the occasional Binder story) thought they had more or less exhausted her story possibilities, and decided to show how badass the Phantom Zoners were. Sort of like the time Magneto and Toad were taken by the Stranger in X-Men, effectively ending them as possible menaces for several years. The Zoners also held Lena Thorul hostage, which got Luthor to join with Supergirl in defeating them...no small task. One of Kru-El's weapons was a helmet that could form anything he was thinking of---one wonders if he had glimpsed Oan technology, because it sounds very power-ring-ish or Miracle-Machine-ish.

[q99]

A point, but... the gun used then instantly fried!

It'd have been better if they had just phantom-zone'd her or something.

[jkcarrier]

Supergirl's rogues gallery are definitely an odd bunch. It seemed like all her female foes wanted to steal her powers and/or trade places with her, while her male foes all wanted to marry her. I suppose that reflects what her male writers thought female readers would be interested in -- fighting with other girls over status or having "bad boy" romances.

[bradygirl_12]

Kru-El? Is he gonna hook up with Cruella Deville? ;)

[penguinzero]

If they got married, by Silver Age Kryptonian naming conventions, wouldn't that make her Cruella Kru-El?

[freezer]

I like how, even in a purely mental monologue, she goes through all the classic "FOOLS! I'LL SHOW THEM ALL!" gestures.

[lordultimus]

I rather enjoyed how even while brainwashed to think that she was a hateful scientist, Kara was still a bundle of innocence.

[alschroeder3]

True; the sweetness and essential innocence of the character still shines through, even when she's pitying...herself, not knowing it's herself.

[halloweenjack]

I thought that someone named "Lesla-Lar" was going to end up being an example of another trope entirely.