So maybe they should have kept his secret origin secret? Comet the Super-Horse

Some origins are just so right, they’re classic. Superman, last survivor of a doomed planet, fighting to defend his adopted homeworld. Batman, avenging the murder of his parents by waging a war on crime. And then there’s Supergirl’s super-horse, Comet, whose origin is … not classic.The Steed of Steel actually debuted in a Superboy story in Adventure Comics #293. Alien mind-controlling brain globes take over the Legion of Superheroes and use them to trap Superboy. Saturn Girl discovers the aliens can’t control animal minds so the Legion travels through time collecting Streaky, Beppo the Super-Monkey and Supergirl’s previously unseen Super-Horse. Joining Krypto to form the Legion of Super-Pets, they kick alien butt, saving Superboy and Earth. The LSP made several appearances in the next few years, though they never took off the way Krypto or the LSH did.

Jerry Siegel’s story tells us nothing about Super-Horse’s origin. He does shows us Supergirl keeping him in a corral on Asteroid Z (I don’t believe that ever happens) which suggests Super-Horse is just an animal, probably a Kryptonian survivor like Krypto and Beppo. When “The Super-Steed of Steel” appears in Action Comics #292, however, he’s being written by Leo Dorfman, who took things in an entirely different direction.

After Linda Danvers and her parents catch a Western film, she falls asleep wishing she had a horse like “the famous wonder horse” Firebrand from the movie. Inspired by the movie, Linda dreams of a super-powered horse that shows up and helps her; inspired by his comet-shaped birthmark, she calls him Comet. She finds it unsettling when she keeps dreaming of Comet, night after night, but they’re just dreams … right?

Then the Danvers family vacations at Pop Hadley’s Supergirl Dude Ranch, christened so after Supergirl saved the livestock from a flash flood. Linda thought the ranch was a success but the new owner, Greede, tells the Danvers on arrival that “the old coot” Hadley sold out because he couldn’t make a go of it. I fully expected to learn Greede got control by some sort of underhanded tactics (“Look Shaggy, the Phantom Wrangler is the man who tried to buy the haunted dude ranch!”) but if that’s what Dorfman had in mind, he never got around to the Big Reveal.

Instead the focus is on one of Greede’s stallions, unbroken and untamable — and an exact double for Comet, the dream horse. As soon as Linda approaches him, he becomes meek as a kitten. When she rides him, it turns out that just like her dream, he has super-powers. But … how?

We find out when the following issue tells us “The Secret Origin of Supergirl’s Super-Horse,” and man, is it a lulu. Riding Comet away from everyone, Linda tells him she’s figured out that he’s a telepath, and that he comes from Krypton like her; Comet informs him she’s 50 percent right. He’s Earthborn, from ancient Greece, where he was Biron the Centaur, secretly in love with Circe. When her evil rival Maldor tries to poison Circe’s spring, Biron shoots the poison flask out of his hand. He tells Circe the one reward he wants is to become human, so that they can be together. She agrees.

Maldor, however, is a total meanie, and sees to it that Circe’s potion turns Biron all-horse instead of all-man. A remorseful Circe makes up for the irreversible change by giving Biron what amounts to Shazam powers — the might of Jove, the speed of Mercury, the wisdom of Athena and the telepathic powers of Neptune (whose telepathic abilities never came up in any of the mythology I read but hey, am I going to argue with Circe?). And Biron will be immortal to boot.

This puts Maldor in a real snit, but his equally evil mentor has a solution. As a centaur, Biron is astrologically linked with the Sagittarius constellation, so it’s simple for Maldor to amplify the attraction. His curse magically yanks Biron across space and imprisons him on an asteroid somewhere in Sagittarius. There Biron sits for a couple of thousand years until a rocket passes by, shattering the magical aura confining him. The ex-centaur flies to Earth in pursuit of the girl he glimpsed inside the capsule.

Rather than introduce himself, Biron contents himself with watching her using his super-vision. Deciding to use his powers, like Supergirl, to help people, he lets Greede’s men capture him rather than reveal his super-identity. Being rounded up doesn’t stop him contacting Supergirl in her dreams to prepare her for their first meeting.

Linda plans to have the Danvers buy Comet from Greede. Alas, a movie producer is so impressed at seeing Comet ride in a horse show (with Linda for the jockey, of course), that he buys the horse first. To hide the Steed of Steel’s true identity, Comet and Linda let it happen. Then, while making a movie with Hollywood beauty Liz Taylor — er, Liz Gaynor, don’t know how I got that wrong — Comet eats some magical lotus blossoms that strip him of both his powers and his memory. He’s Gaynor’s horse now (don’t worry, he got better).

Like giving Superboy a pet dog, the logic of giving Supergirl a pet horse is undeniable. But this was an insanely convoluted way to do it — why not just make him a Kryptonian horse and be done with it? Had Dorfman already conceived of turning Comet temporarily human and launching a romance with Supergirl (Action #311)? Obviously that would have been a problem if he were a real horse. Or did Otto Binder start reminiscing around the office about his days writing Captain Marvel and Dorfman went “Hmmm, speed of Mercury, strength of Hercules, I like it!”

I was originally going to write about how someone really should have used a slimeball like Maldor again, then I discovered E. Nelson Bridwell did. In one issue of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane, Lois become Comet’s girlfriend instead during one of his human phases only to — well, here’s the synopsis.

It sounds almost as weird as Comet’s origin, and that’s saying something.

#SFWApro. Biron/Circe scene by Jim Mooney, everything else by Curt Swan.