World’s Finest: The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot

At the time, the deadline for submitting fan art to DC FanDome was 2-1/2 days away. It was just about enough time for me to start and complete a third and final piece.

https://www.dccomics.com/dcfandome

The Plot Thickens

Superman is my favorite DC Character. This may not be a surprises if you’ve read the two previous posts about my DC FanDome submissions featuring Lois Lane and the Teen Titans. Following my strategic decision to avoid creating new Superman art, this third piece was going to be Superman adjacent. It was going to star Supergirl and (because why not) also Batgirl.

Dis-cover-y

I don’t have a favorite classic Supergirl comic story. As for classic Supergirl & Batgirl team-up comic stories, there are that many to begin with. Regardless, I proceeded with searching for a pre-Crisis era comic book cover featuring the two super side-kicks and came across issue #169 of “World’s Finest” from September 1967. The feature story is titled, “The Supergirl-Batgirl Plot.” According to the online wiki synopsis, Supergirl and Batgirl apparently team up to undermine their male mentors, then a twist is revealed and everything goes back to status quo, just like most of the comics of the Silver age and American super-hero comics.

The original cover is pencilled by Curt Swan and inked by George Klein. Here, Superman and Batman visually remain the stars of their own team-up book, but Supergirl and Batgirl combined are a close secondary read. The sky/background is a flat honey-amber and like A LOT of covers in the day, flat yellow was both more energetic than white and allows for characters with predominantly red and blue colored costumes to standout.

Sketch ’n’ Stretch

Unrestricted by the events of the original 1967 story, I attempted to re-imagine a cover/poster with the same or similar elements to elicit that “What in the world is happening here?” response in the audience/reader that was goal of those Silver age comic covers. 

A few quick thumbnail sketches explored different camera angles for composition, Batplane designs, logos and costume treatments.

I struggled with the initial full-scale layout. There were problems with scale, perspective and generally lacking an interesting dynamic to the whole thing.

Fresh Inking

Given the squarish space for art that results from placing logos and type at the lower quarter of the poster, I pushed Supergirl as big a full-figure  that would fit. Now, at least, she appeared to be hovering and not standing on the plane wing the same as Batgirl. Made-up alien invaders were made bit larger and gives something action-heroic to do for Batgirl. Batgirl’s flowing cape obscures how the other end of the cable is anchored to an eyelet of the plane, which would help justify how she can pull up those two beings.

For additional contrast, the Superman-Batman-Batmobile vignette were shrunk significantly while retaining enough for telltale details.

The ball of stuff in Supergirl’s hand doesn’t end up reading as well as it should. They began as big cannon barrels, that turned into space lasers, that got busted up with tangles of wires and tied in a large knot. It is literally space junk- weapons that no longer pose a threat. Story-telling wise it is simultaneously a success and a failure.

Super Friends

I don’t know why both Supergirl and Batgirl were kept as individual sidekick heroes and didn’t team-up more often and neither were part of the Teen Titans. I think that if a book like “World’s Finest” could successfully FORCE Superman and Batman on shared adventures, then the same could be done with Supergirl and Batgirl for their targeted audience. Their personality dynamic would be and should be different from their mentors, which could have been interesting. That is, as long as it didn’t become super-hero Betty and Veronica.

In this piece, I imagine that Supergirl/Kara is a couple of years younger than Batgirl/Barbara. I also imagine that she speaks with an Australian-like accent.

I Lost My Bat Shoe

I think dulled colors does a lot for this vignette of the former heroes struggling with the hum-drum task of changing a flat tire. It’s so average looking, that it takes a while to realize that Superman is struggling to carry a mere car tire.

The smoke was a late addition, which ended up also being a great place to hide a bat icon.

Incomprehensible

For giggles and elucidation, the art is presented without the word bubbles and other graphics.