Post by dans on Oct 17, 2020 12:16:59 GMT
This is yet another imaginary story, stemming from an adventure of Lana Lang from Adventure Comics.
The story so far: This story begins immediately after then end of The Girl of Steel, from Adventure Comics 189, from 1952. In this story, Lana gets a subset of Superboy powers (flight, super strength, invulnerability to metals) from an ancient alien belt her father, Professor Lewis Lane, discovered on an expedition to Easter Island. Lana creates a costume, with lead mask to conceal her identity from Superboy, adopts the identity of Sky Girl and begins a super heroic career. Superboy determines that her invulnerability seems to be limited to things made of metal, and decides that she is not powerful enough, or clever enough, to have powers, and brings her vulnerability to the attention of her father, who agrees and asks Superboy to get rid of the belt. In the final panel, as he throws the belt into space, Lana is overwhelmed by submissive, desperate adoration for the powerful young hero who is controlling her life.
*****
And, here we go! ==> Almost instantly following her episode of desperate longing, great sadness beyond anything she'd ever known before started to fill Lana as she realized just what had been taken away from her. Mighty powers, the chance to help people as a superheroine, the chance to be seen as an equal by her unrequited love. Without even saying goodnight to her idol, she turned and stomped away home. She went in through the back door and slipped into her bedroom, deliberately avoiding her parents. 'I need to get out of this STUPID costume, and then I want to be by myself for a while!'
As she removed the cape, she spotted the alien necklace lying on the top of her bureau. Once again, she was stunned by its beauty, and quickly put it on. 'I don't have the belt or powers any longer, but I have a necklace unique in the world!' That helped, a little, and for a minute she stood in front of her full-length mirror, admiring its beauty. 'It goes so well with the costume, too. I think I'll wear the costume for one last walk before I throw it away.' It was dark out, so nobody would see her. She avoided her parents and slipped out of the house, still wearing her Sky Girl costume and the beautiful alien necklace. The moon was full and bright and the air crisp and cool; she began to feel a little better.
She was on the sidewalk, not far from home, when a car with the headlights off roared out of a side street, tires screaming from abuse, and tried to turn onto the main street, but it was going too fast and slid out of control across the street directly at her. Suddenly, she was another 50 feet away down the sidewalk, and the car seemed to be moving in slow motion, and she watched in wonder and consternation as it slid over the sidewalk where she'd just been standing, tore up a narrow stretch of lawn, sideswiped a picket fence which stopped the slide, and then swerved back into the street, barely slowed in its headlong race. The fence was destroyed; the driver's side of the car was dented and covered with scrapes of white paint from the fence, but the car continued to race ahead. Lana stood still long enough to read and memorize the plate number revealed by the bright moonlight, then started running after the car. She wasn't Sky Girl any longer, and she had no hopes of catching it, but if this car crashed nearby she might be able to help.
Or WAS she still Sky Girl? Almost instantly, she caught up to the speeding car. Did she somehow still have her powers? She grabbed the bumper and pulled, but she couldn't slow the car - which suddenly didn't seem to be moving very fast, but it was now rolling inexorably at the wall of a brick building. She easily raced around to the front of the car and pushed on the hood, but she wasn't strong enough to slow it down, even though it seemed to be barely moving. And yet, somehow she knew it was still speeding, despite apparently moving in slow motion. So she raced to the driver's door, tore it open and pushed him into the passenger seat, climbed in, turned the wheel and applied the brakes. When the car came to a halt, she pulled out the key, got out of the car and ran away, dropping the key as she ran. A fractional second and two blocks away, she stopped to consider what had just happened, and was gratified to see a police car pulling up alongside the damaged car.
'I must have super speed!' she realized breathlessly. 'That's a power that even Sky Girl didn't have!' She thought about it for an instant, which was a lot longer for her than it is for us. 'It must be from the necklace. I've got to check it out!'
With that thought, she raced out of town and came to a halt outside of Midvale, a small town some 20 miles from Smallville, less that a second later. She took off the necklace and ran back toward Smallville. Four seconds and less than 30 yards later, she slowed again. 'Yes, it's the necklace, alright! And neither of those smart-alecks even suspected it might also give me powers! But I guarantee, they aren't taking this away too without a fight!' She put it back on and tried to fly - but no luck. 'I'll have to figure out what I can do tomorrow,' she thought as she ran for home, not hurrying, though it still took her less than 10 seconds. 'Since I can't fly, I won't call myself Sky Girl any more, but I can keep wearing the same costume!' Suddenly, she again loved the costume she'd hated passionately and vowed to destroy only a few minutes ago. The day's events had exhausted her; she dropped into bed and started planning the research she would do tomorrow, and was fast asleep within seconds.
A Little Reading...
Several of Lana's boy classmates had a 'secret club'. It wasn't really a secret among the kids of Smallville, though probably very few adults were aware of it. These boys had built a 'clubhouse', a shack made from clumsily nailed together construction scraps gathered from the dump, in the woods near the river, and they kept a supply of 'not suitable for kids' reading materials in several hidden boxes. Lana and some of her tomboy friends had once discovered this clubhouse while playing in the woods, investigated, and been shocked by the stuff their classmates had hidden there. But now Lana realized that she needed to review some of the magazines from one of those concealed boxes. She hoped the boys wouldn't have a 'meeting' scheduled for this morning! As soon as she got out of bed, she got into her costume and zoomed down to the woods.
The boys' clubhouse was empty this morning. She searched at super speed until she found the box she wanted, filled the bag she'd brought with her with a stack of flimsy magazines with luridly-colored covers, and then raced away into the hills surrounding Smallville. In a valley she hoped no one else ever visited, she entered a small shack, of much better construction than the clubhouse, a shack she'd built herself when she had been Sky Girl. She dumped out her stack of 'forbidden' magazines, then raced back to the Clubhouse and filled her bag again. After a few trips, she had a pile of over 100 magazines. 'I'll put them back when I'm done,' she promised her conscience, and then began a marathon reading session - every issue of Flash Comics ever published!
"By the time I'm finished reading. I'll know every trick 'in the books' about using super speed!" she announced smugly. "I'll show that snooty Superboy who's clever!"
She didn't rush; she often read an issue several times, and she made notes as she read. It took her over an hour until she was satisfied, and she had a half dozen pages of notes. She spent a couple of minutes restoring the comics to the box in the clubhouse. Then: "OK, now I'm ready for some practice!"