Who doesn’t love the hit show “Supergirl”? Well, we talk up its various romantic triangles, but first a classic Silver Age Supergirl love affair… with a horse! It gets crazy, folks! And when you think it’s over, we’ve also got an animalistic Romance Comics Theatre for you: “Bosco Plays Matchmaker!” featuring our friends from the Fire and Water Podcast Network!
Listen to Episode 9 below (the usual filthy filthy language warnings apply), or subscribe to The Lonely Hearts Romance Comics Podcast on iTunes!
Relevant images and further credits at: Lonely Hearts Ep.9 Supplemental
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Great episode fellas!
You guys actually showed tremendous restraint during the Supergirl/Comet story segment. I fully expected a whole lot of NFSW discussion on burgeoning womanhood and bestiality…which I kind of got in the blooper segment anyway.
The question remains: were Silver Age comic creators a bunch of dirty old men, or were they completely oblivious to the now glaring subversive overtones of stories like this? I can’t decide.
The Supergirl TV series is appointment viewing at the Franklin household with the whole family watching together. The show has really come along after a great pilot, and some truly clunky follow-up episodes. Not sure I see many triangles outside of the obvious Kara/James/Win tangle. I think J’onn/Hank is more of a surrogate father figure to both Alex and Kara, especially given his tragic backstory. The Alex/Max Lord angle may turn up again. I couldn’t stand Cat Grant at first, but she’s grown on me.
I am tempted to withdraw my acting talents from Romance Comics Theater because Siskoid doesn’t like my beloved Superman: The Movie. You broke my heart, Siskoid. Sob.
Chris
I did say it was heretical “wrong-think”. I mean, I think it’s fine. I’m just not a fan.
Hey, I think Star Wars is balls too.
The NSFW is in the blooper though.
I used to think The Petting Zoo was the greatest name for a strip club ever, but Oil City is totally better!
I always thought it was interesting that the only DCU comics advertised in the romance line were Wonder Woman and Supergirl’s. Clearly they knew their audience, and who bought what.
I won’t bring up the idea of romance comics coming back again, because Siskoid made fun of me for doing so this episode. Words hurt.
Great acting in RCT, especially the guy at the end!
But what if they fail to come back because you suddenly stopped vocally supporting them, Rob?
I think Ryan may be up for a role in The Revenant 2.
Chris
I just saw The Revenant today. That was emotionally exhausting.
So are you saying you will turn down the role if so offered?
Great episode covering one of the more (potentially) lurid corners of Supergirl history.
I have to say you feel for Biron. He’s a centaur. He gets promised a potion that will turn him into a man but he drinks the wrong glass (something Shakespearean about that). Now a horse, he is granted immortality and powers. He unfortunately gets stuck in a literal comet and is marooned in deep space until a rocket nudges the comet releasing him. That rocket? Kara Zor-El’s as she was headed to Earth.
I guess they really are star-crossed lovers.
The girl/horse romance is obviously subversive but maybe they were simpler times??
A few more comments.
Comet was a playah. He actually wooed Lois Lane in his human form in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #92. And she fell for him hard. He divulges his secret to Lois but makes her vow that she won’t share it. He then returns to horse-form. I suppose she just got back in the saddle and chased Superman after that.
Comet was redefined in the Peter David Supergirl run as the Earth Angel of Love. His ‘horse form’ was more of a biped, equine like human. But his human form … well maybe I should say her human form was of Andy Jones, a lesbian who became male when she changed. This change happened at will and was not bound to comets or other celestial bodies.
There is a ton more to cover for Supergirl romances if you ever want to revisit. Dick Malverne. Jero. Brainiac 5. The creepy cameraman dude in San Francisco. Even Buzz the demon, also in David’s run.
Anyways, great discussion. Always love hearing fresh takes on the wonkier sides of Kara’s history!
Lovely show, and yes, i say they were more innocent times – young girls love their horsies and ponies, so why not horse a girl could literally love? It didn’t seem dirty to me as a kid, just magical. Not that I wanted her to get together with Biron/Comet/Bill – I was always a Dick Wilson/Malverne booster. I even bought Paul Kupperberg’s book of unseen Daring New Adventures of Supergirl/New Adventures of Superboy scripts to learn what happened after he showed up unannounced at her Chicago flat and she took the huff. Recommended!
Amazing work with the Romance Comics Theatre this time, I’d love a whole extended story by you nutters.
As somebody who grew up with cartoons where girls/women talked to horses in both a friendly and psuedo-romantic fashion, I can wholehearedly agree with you.
Finally, a GOOD episode. Wait, wrong podcast. They’ve all been good ones. I guess that means this one was just…super. (And yes, I am fully prepared to be shunned for that one.)
The award for best Romance Comics Theater performance has to go to Ryan Daly’s role as the bear. I think we should get that growl soundbite marketed as a ringtone.
LOVED this episode! I always enjoy this show, but this was the first time I felt I could really connect with the subject matter. That Supergirl story is legendary, so I enjoyed hearing you guys recap it and break it down. Really hilarious how it all falls apart upon deeper examination.
Also, I thought the segment talking about the Supergirl TV show was really well done and engaging! Perhaps you could do further comic book and TV/Movie tie-in episodes. The Marvel films are full of romantic hints, Smallville, and any other number of superhero related TV/movies.
It was hilarious hearing so many voices from the FIRE & WATER network in the Romance Theater segment! Sorry I dropped the ball on my part. 🙁
Keep up the great work!
PS: New-Clear… yes, the struggle is real.
All this talk about centaur romance has me thinking about the oeuvre of Kevin J. Taylor for some reason. Anyway, I was tempted to buy the recent Supergirl omnibus on the promise of gloriously weird comic book crap like this, but then I thought about the cost and passing novelty and all that bland Jim Mooney drawn Silver Age boilerplate… I’d rather read or watch someone attempt that type of material now rather than suffer through mildly amusing naive inanity in the original stories.
Supergirl and Bill/Comet’s entire relationship is based on a lie maintained by the Super-Horse. For the record.
It’s nice to hear a bunch of bros get together to have a discussion about the Supergirl show without eye-rolling dismissal and macho posturing. That said, I expect to tackle the show myself in some podcasting capacity eventually, so I don’t want to get too into it here. I like James Olsen, and he’s been the only viable love interest introduced for any other character in the show. Max was rendered radioactive by the Bizarro episode, so Alex cannot have anything to do with him unless they want to ruin that character, too. The H’ank-Alex relationship is 100% familial, so unless you guys are mixing incest into the beastiality, that’s just wrong-headed. The writing on the show is pretty ungood, so I watch it for my love of the characters and for the 2-10 minutes of engaging material smuggled into each atonal, directionless hour.
I don’t think I ever made the connection between the loss of General Eiling to the underused Shaggy Man and the revival of Sam Lane as Thunderbolt Ross. I have mixed feelings about that maneuver, but if they could make TV General Lane less of a bigoted idiot and use him as the understandable human resistance to metahumans that Max Lord should have been, I could be down with that. Man, I love that the show at least tries to take advantage of comic book lore, but some of their misappropriations are as awful as that of current DC Comics writers/editors. If they needed a Lex Luthor proxy, why not give Max Lord a similar arc as Smallville Lex where it takes several seasons for a full heel turn and the audience is rather sympathetic to it. Have Max legitimately if self-servingly try to help Supergirl and the DEO, only to be abused and lied to and become a justifiably paranoid adversary (who simultaneously tests Alex’s loyalties and necessitates the existence of Checkmate as a counterbalance.) But the writing on Supergirl is in some ways even dumber, shorter-sighted and otherwise adrift than The Walking Dead, so I’m asking a lot.
You know how DC loves to do stories about how White Power and Man-Man go off on a picnic together with even older, maler and more Caucasian Earth-Two/Greatest Generation versions of their mantles to bond over rehashes of their 40+ year old adventures? I like to imagine that’s also when groups of heroines and minority heroes go off to discuss all the spectacular cases they’ve had that went completely unreported. You know, like that time Eclipso took over the Legion of Super-Heroes, half of which had managed to trap the JLA, Titans and Outsiders in their own bases while the other half had just launch an invasion of Earth before being routed by Zatanna, Cyborg, Dr. Light II, Anima, Bloodwynd and Vibe? So yeah, why not have Supergirl and Madame Xanadu turn out to quietly be besties who team up to defeat Circe (who sounds more dangerous as a Supergirl foe than a Wonder Woman one?)