Comic Legends: The Streaky/Krypto Cover That Outraged a Generation!
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the seven hundred and thirty-fourth installment where we examine comic book legends and whether they are true or false.
Here is part one of this week's legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
Fans were so upset over a misleading Streaky/Krypto cover of Action Comics that DC wrote a new story based on the original cover.
STATUS:
I'm Going With True
Superman fans of the Silver and Bronze Age were well aware that the covers of Superman comic books were often designed to specifically make you expect one thing and then have the interior story explain away the events of the cover. For instance, Superman pretends to punch the Flash in this comic...
Click the button below to start this article in quick view. Start nowHowever, fans still expect the story within the comic book to at least have SOME connection to the cover. For instance, that particular story still has a scene SIMILAR to the cover in the comic.
Like this classic cover...
The scene happens like that within the comic book, but it is a bad guy who made himself LOOK like Superman!
That leads us to Action Comics #266 and its awesome Curt Swan/Stan Kaye cover...
The cover flat out tells us to look inside to see who is a mightier team, right?
And yet the story within the comic (by Jerry Siegel and Jim Mooney) is just a Streaky tale...
Superman and Krypto ARE in the story, but only to inspire one of Linda Lee's fellow orphans to try to dress Streaky the cat up like Krypto...
Streaky then gets temporary powers that come and go as Streaky is exposed to the radiation...
This gets Paul into trouble when he tells people that Streaky is super and no one believes him...
Ultimately, Supergirl enlists Krypto's help in making Paul out to not be a liar...
Well, let me tell you, fans were NOT happy about the fact that the story inside didn't even remotely resemble the cover. After the reactions came pouring in, DC decided to come up with a new story to match the original cover!
Action Comics #277 has a new Swan/Kaye cover...
Only now the scene on the cover actually happens!
At the start of the story (by Siegel and Mooney once again), they even note that they're doing the story in response to the fan reaction...
It opens with Krypto helping Linda out of a jam, which makes the non-powered Streaky jealous...
So when he gets powers, he takes it out on Krypto...
This leads to them deciding to let the two animals settle it in a competition (gotta love Superman's ultra-naturalistic dialogue. "I'll cheer for Krypto.")...
The tug of war ends in a tie when the chain breaks. Superman has had enough of the nonsense so he has Supergirl take the animals to anoter planet to settle it there where no humans can be hurt. It then turns into a hilarious bit of nonsense until, at the end, Beppo the Super-Monkey also shows up!
Hilarious.
Check out my latest Movie Legends Revealed - Did fan outcry lead to Spock's death being moved to the end of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?
Check back soon for the final part of this (well, last) week's Comic Book Legends Revealed!
Source: www.cbr.com