Credits | Characters | Plot Summary | Comments | Reprinted In Editor: Mort Weisinger Writer: Edmond Hamilton Penciller: Curt Swan Inkers: George Klein (Part I), John Forte (Part II) Roll Call: Bouncing Boy, Brainiac 5, Chameleon Boy, Colossal Boy, Cosmic Boy, Lightning Lad, Lightning Lass, Mon-El, Phantom Girl, Saturn Girl, Shrinking Violet, Sun Boy, Superboy, Supergirl, Triplicate Girl Legion of Super-Pets: Krypto, Streaky, Comet, Beppo Villain: Satan Girl (an evil red K clone of Supergirl) Other Characters: Two generator repairmen, two human delegates, two alien delegates, Polar Boy and Night Girl (of the Legion of Substitute Heroes), two robot-nurses of Quarantine World, doctor on Quarantine World, a half-dozen bouncing alien animals, two blue-skinned colossal children from another dimension (playing with their giant-sized puppets on the Puppet Planetoid) "The Condemned Legionnaires" (16 pages; Part I: 8 pages) When the girl Legionnaires suddenly fall ill to a mysterious ailment, Night Girl of the Legion of Substitute Heroes offers her help but succumbs to the "crimson virus" as well. As the boy members send the girls to Quarantine World, a masked woman calling herself Satan Girl flies down from the sky and proclaims that she will take the place of the girl members. After Sun Boy expresses his anger at the callous woman, Satan Girl reveals that she was the one who unleashed the crimson virus on the girls. Tearing the engines off the Legion's ship, Satan Girl flies to Quarantine World to finish the job. Supergirl arrives and is named honorary leader during this emergency and she races to Quarantine World but is too late to prevent Satan Girl from subjecting the girls to another deadly dose of crimson radiation. After a super-powered battle, Satan Girl breaks free and Supergirl stops off at the main hospital to pick up some samples of green kryptonite dust to use on the villain, who she assumes must be an escapee from the Phantom Zone. On an asteroid, Satan Girl awaits Supergirl's arrival but the kryptonite has no effect on her!
Part II: "The Secret of Satan Girl" (Part II: 8 pages) Supergirl returns to Quarantine World, where the rest of the Legionnaires have gathered, then guides them to an uncharted region of space where a planet and yellow sun only she knows about exists inside a big, dark cloud. There the Legionnaires meet intelligent alien animals that can bounce like Bouncing Boy. Thinking that Satan Girl may be an android, Supergirl goes about creating a special weapon to use on her when the villain arrives to weaken the girls further. The weapon proves useless against her but the bouncing creatures distract Satan Girl long enough for Supergirl to whisk the Legionnaires and Night Girl away to one of the strangest worlds in the universe: the Puppet Planetoid. Somehow, Satan Girl knows the existence of this world too and drops a load of green kryptonite on the Girl of Steel. As the villain gives yet another lethal dose to the girls, Lightning Lad manages to locate Supergirl and rescue her from her peril. Because Satan Girl's crimson radiations are of a kind that does not affect animals, Supergirl instructs Lightning Lad to take the ship's time bubble back to rally the Legion of Super-Pets. Arriving just in time, the Pets take down the villain. Defeated, Satan Girl unmasks and reveals that she is a red kryptonite created half of Supergirl. Knowing that she could not live beyond the usual 48-hour period, she was determined to siphon off the radiations into the other girl Legionnaires so she could live on. When the time limit is met, Satan Girl fuses back into Supergirl, who wonders how her twin could have been resistant to kryptonite. Later, a suit of lead armor found by Sun Boy sheds "some light" on her method. The Legion uses a different space-ship in this story: a gold, horizontally landing craft. The red kryptonite affects the girl Legionnaires, though they aren't from Krypton, because Satan Girl's bracelet-instruments draw not only the red kryptonite from her body and radiate it into other humans, turning them red, but it also draws the effect out and into the others. The effect of this red k is that she will die at the end of its 48 hour life span. By bonding itself onto the cells of the girls the red kryptonite would have killed them girl if Satan Girl had had time to rid herself of all of it. Satan Girl did not show any signs of being sick during the 48 hours because she is invulnerable, but the girl Legionnaires were slowly drawing closer to death during that time and so were helpless to protect themselves from her. Satan Girl doesn't inflict the crimson virus on any of the boy Legionnaires even though it would have helped her rid herself of the virus more quickly. The reason for this, according to Satan Girl, was: "I'll use it only on the girl Legionnaires to confuse Supergirl". Originally, she wanted to join the boy Legionnaires as part of the Legion. After they rejected her, she thought it was a worse revenge for them to have to face the deaths of all the girls on the team than to kill them with the red kryptonite effect. It is tragic to think that no sooner than Lightning Lad has come back to life that he is faced with the imminent deaths of all the girl Legionnaires, including Saturn Girl. Night Girl is not invulnerable, so her compassionate decision to go care for the sick girls is a brave but puzzling one. Polar Boy or one of the other male Subs would have made a more effective nurse. Perhaps Lydda thought her super-strength, combined with her Kathoon physiology, would make her immune to the effects. Maybe she did it as a drastic attempt to get Cosmic Boy to finally notice her. If so, it worked, for on page 3, panel 3 of Part II, you can see Rokk standing protectively by Lydda in her wheelchair. Cosmic Boy says: "Supergirl would be free to come from the 20th century, for she promised to visit us about this time." Because Supergirl had seen Lightning Man in the far future, she knew Lightning Lad would someday be brought back to life. Because it was difficult for her to bear this secret while she watched her teammates mourn, Supergirl didn't take part in any Legion missions for a while. After the Legionnaires thought Lightning Lad had returned in Adventure Comics No. 308, they notified everyone and Supergirl returned only to find an impostor (in the form of Ayla Ranzz, Garth's twin sister) and so she left again. After Lightning Lad truly did return last issue, the Legionnaires contacted all members and Supergirl promised that she would soon visit them again. Supergirl was able to start to melt Satan Girl's lead mask with her x-ray vision because super-powered Kryptonians have been known to melt lead on occasion, if the layer is thin enough. Apparently, Satan Girl's mask was thin enough to be vulnerable to heat-vision. According to a doctor on Quarantine World, the radiation from green kryptonite dust "helps cure certain space-ills in ordinary people" (page 7, panel 2 of Part I). The curative powers of kryptonite were no doubt brought to light after it was added to serum XY-4 to create a longer-lasting anti-lead-poisoning serum for Mon-El.
When Lightning Lad goes to pick up Streaky from the 1960s, Krypto is there too, indicating that from this point onward in the chronicles, the Super-dog that takes part in Legion adventures in the future is from Superman's time, though he first joined the Legion in Superboy's era. The red kryptonite-based crimson virus radiation doesn't affect the Kryptonian Krypto and Beppo because Satan Girl mentions that it is a type of red kryptonite that only affects humans. The flashback events depicted in Adventure Comics No. 316 - on page 9, panel 3 of Part I - take place between the second last and last panel of this story, after Satan Girl disappears but before Sun Boy finds the lead armor. Adventure Comics No. 409 (Oct. 1971) Legion of Super-Heroes Archives Vol. 2 |
Satan Girl wears
lead armor painted to look like her costume (face and
all) when she handles the kryptonite on the asteroid and
the Puppet Planetoid. She must change out of this armor
between panels 1 and 2 of page 6 in Part II, since on the
following page she removes only the thin lead mask she
wore earlier and not one with a painted-on face. Later,
Sun Boy finds the armor hidden behind some rocks. The
eyelets of this armor must be open, since on page 7,
panel 4 of Part I she uses her telescopic vision to track
Supergirl's approach and the beams of telescopic vision -
like of x-ray vision - cannot penetrate lead.