Superwoman
"Let history bear witness that no American ever had to
bow to a tyrant!"
Superwoman has appeared in: [DC Comics Presents Annual #2] and [DC Comics Presents Annual #4]. She also had a small cameo in Alan Moore's imaginary story, "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?".
Elliot S! Maggin wrote the following letter which was published in DCCP Annual #2 as a postscript to his first comic-book Superwoman story:
Dear Julie,
You asked me to add to the cover letter that I gave you with this
Superman/Superwoman script
so that you could use it for the
text page in the DC PRESENTS annual in which the story is to
appear. If you don't mind, I'd just as soon leave this in the
form of a letter to you and kind of let our readers snoop on our
private correspondence. The one thing I want to say to the
readers and not to you, though, is that if you are reading this letter
before reading the story, then cease! desist!
GO
back
before it's too late! I'd hate to have the first
reading of my story ruined for anyone because he or she was too
curious about the new characters and read more about them than one
ought to know before seeing the story. So if you're a reader and
not Julie and you're still reading this letter even though you haven't
read the story yet, be advised that the butler did it... Rosebud was
the sled... in Casablanca Ingrid Bergman gets on the plane with
her husband... Willard Scott wears a toupee...
JUST
READ THE STORY FIRST,
PUL-LEEAAZZZE!
Well, if you haven't already
read
the story
and you're still with me you're probably one of those people who hates
surprises and there's no reasoning with you, so come along.
Julie, I hope you recognize one of the new characters in this
story. You've read the name "Kristin Wells" before. She
was the nineteen- or twenty-year-old graduate student at Columbia
University in the twenty-ninth century who was a major character in my
novel, Superman! Miracle Monday.
You said you liked the book, so I thought you might like seeing one of
its pivotal characters again.
In the book, Kristin is a history student who is so fascinated with
one of the unsolved mysteries of Superman's twentieth century
that she makes a journey into the past - on a foundation grant,
of course, not a student's budget - and finds out the secret of
the interplanetary holiday,
Miracle Monday.
Not only does
she discover the joyful holiday's secret origin, but she figures
prominently into that origin herself. I continued that theme in
Kristin's life with this story by making her come back - as an
eminent, seasoned professor now, not a callow student - in order
to learn the yet undiscovered secret identity of the mysterious
"Superwoman" who appeared in Metropolis in
1983. In this story she discovered, to her own mixed emotions,
that Superwoman was none other than a history professor from
the twenty-eighth century named Kristin Wells. You'll remember,
also, that at the novel's end, the memory of her presence in the
twentieth century was wiped from the minds of everyone on Earth except
for Superman. So Kristin and Superman are old
friends, even though in this story she's a "new girl" in
town.
Kristin is not actually as new as she seems. In a previous
incarnation, she was a character named Joanne Jaime. That was in
one of the last Superman stories I did for you years ago -
in a previous incarnation myself - called "The Miracle of
Thirsty Thursday." Joanne was a history student from the
future who is dismayed when she comes to the past - our time,
that is - to investigate a historic event and finds that all the
people she meets are other historians doing research along with
her. She finds no local color, only observers like herself to
pollute the broth. I refined Joanne into Kristin for the novel,
and I've tried to make her consistent and engaging for this
story. You said you wanted a different sort of new character for
your Superwoman, Julie, so here she is. I hope you like
her, because I think I'm in love with her.
As for King Kosmos, he's completely new with this story, and he's a baddie all right;
a dictator who was overthrown from the rule of a devastated Earth-like world who comes to our planet
looking for a place to rule. He has the ability, like that of Superwoman, to negate
dimensional protocols and travel among various times or parallel
universes at will. Superman can do that sort of thing
also, of course, but it's about the most difficult thing he knows how
to do. For Kosmos it's as easy as setting a course and
pressing a button. If you say so, he'll be back as well.
I wanted to
mention one more interesting thing about my novel,
Miracle Monday, if you don't mind. This is something I never
really made much of or told anyone about, but for me, at least, Miracle Monday is a real
holiday. In the book it's the third Monday of every May. On that day, according to
the book, resort owners on the glaciers of Uranus raise ski-lift tickets for the influx of
tourists. Teamsters driving slow-moving cargo transports to Earth from mining operations in
the asteroid belt get drunk and silly like sailors crossing the Equator for the first time. In
honor of Superman's chosen profession, even journalists can spend the holiday with their
families. There are laughter, reflection, public celebration with barbecues and holographic
light shows all over the solar system, merriments of all sorts. It's a big holiday.
As it happens, here in the real world, I received my first copy of
Superman: Miracle Monday in the mail from my editor at Warner
Books on May 18, the third Monday in the month of May, 1981. It
was a special day, totally coincidental, and I've never really told
anyone that before. Considering what Superman did in the
book on that day, it was a holiday worth celebrating for a long time,
so along with my birthday, Einstein's birthday and the first day of
summer, Miracle Monday is a day that I will probably continue
to set apart.
So read, enjoy if you're of a mind to enjoy, and have a good day, old
friend. Be in touch and...
Be happy,
Elliot
