Action Comics #471 (1977)
by Cary Bates & Curt Swan
cover by José Luis García-López
The most iconic Phantom Zone villain is by far General Zod, but there is another one with an unusual beginning.
I won’t concentrate too much on THIS issue, since we won’t learn about the villain until later.
We can forgive Superman for not picking up the Phantom Zone connection immediately, since the villain is anything but intangible.
This is happening in parallel to one of Clark Kent’s neighbors being contacted by the ghost of his dead wife.
Superman isn’t able to do anything to the ghost…
…and he’s shocked to find out this is *gasp* a woman!
Who has developed other powers on top of her Kryptonian ones.
All while pretending to be neighbor’s dead wife, so you know she’s a piece of work.
Action Comics #472 (1977)
by Cary Bates & Curt Swan
cover by Bob Oskner
She has all the powers of a Kryptonian AND can turn into a ghost AND is a martial artist AND she can dislocate her hips at will. Talk about a powerhouse!
This is Faora, and Superman is able to recover her Kryptonian criminal record.
Which includes murder and creating a concentration camp!!!
I love this sequence where we follow Superman flying. Curt Swan’s artwork is often the saving grace of Superman’s stories in the 70s… seriously, has the man EVER delivered a badly drawn comic? I can’t think of a single one!
Faora has been working Clark’s neighbor into stealing a weird space trinket from his apartment.
And that’s how Faora breaks out of the Phantom Zone. SOMEHOW.
This results into, what else, a Big Dumb Super Fight.
Faora is brutally efficient in her beatdown, and she’s particularly cruel in how she exploited a poor man’s grief.
Also notice the reference to “Paskorium”, undoubtedly named after writer Martin Pasko.
What’s scarier than a fully powered Kryptonian? A fully powered Kryptonian who is also a master of Bullcrap Martial Arts.
Unfortunately for her, Superman can easily whomp her.
She definitely made an impression on Superman. She’s far from the first Kryptonian he has faced, but instead of continuing the fight he decides for a strategic retreat.
Action Comics #473 (1977)
by Cary Bates & Curt Swan
cover by Bob Oskner
For someone whose origin requires a burning hatred for all men, Faora sure likes to team-up with men.
Here’s something I never expected the Lois Lane series would contribute: continuity!
It’s not Steve Lombard being punched in the face, but I’ll take it.
Superman has retreated to the Phantom Zone (!!!), even leaving a message for Supergirl.
Faora is on a rampage in Metropolis. You might wonder why Supergirl doesn’t show up to help, until you realize the fact that Faora wanting to kill all men means that she’s going to kill both Steve Lombard AND Jimmy Olsen.
Unfortunately she doesn’t because Jimmy and Steve have been transported into the Phantom Zone… along with all the citizens of Metropolis.
Which now belongs to the Phantom Zone criminals.
To make matters worse, she destroys the Phantom Zone Projector.
It’s also the return of the Superman robots: by this time he stopped using them because pollution rendered them useless.
How bad was pollution in Metropolis if could damage near-indestructible robots???
Okay Supergirl didn’t help in the fight because she also went into the Phantom Zone… but come on, not ONE other superhero showed up? What, Superman warned EVERYBODY about his secret plan?
All the Phantom Zone criminals seem to know each other, with the exception of Mou-Stache here.
And then OUT OF NOWHERE it turns out that Faora has psychic powers!!!
If you’re wondering if it’s connected to the Phantom Zone… NOPE, she always had it for some reason.
Unfortunately for her, Mou-Stache is immune to her powers.
As you probably guessed, Mou-Stache is actually Superman.
You might also have guessed there was a point to that disguise… and you’d be wrong, because it does ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to prevent an attack from the villains.
Why does Faora send them instead of fighting Superman directly? She didn’t have any trouble in a hand-to-hand fight last issue!
Ah, there’s the answer to my question: Superman sent EVERY SINGLE SUPERHERO in the Phantom Zone!!!
And here I thought modern Batman was the only one who could pull of stunts like that.
Green Lantern reveals that while Superman was disguised as Mou-Stache, he modified the projector by reversing its polarity so that it could solve the plot.
Not that Superman needs much help dealing with these idiots.
But they eventually overwhelm him, and Faora forces him to confess how he discovered her plan.
He basically read the script.
And just about when Faora is about to execute Superman with her death touch…
…the story just gives up.
THIS IS THE NEXT PANEL.
And so we end with Superman back from the Phantom Zone…
…and exiling the poor deluded widower into spending eternity with a woman who he thinks is his wife while she actually hates him to no end.
Happy ending, I guess?
Historical significance: 6/10
While Faora has never been as famous as General Zod despite owing most of her fame to the same source, she’s become a recurring part of Superman’s mythos.
Silver Age-ness: 8/10
That plan was something else.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
What a mess. The artwork is amazing, but the story has no clue what it wants to do.
Faora starts out great: manipulative, brutal and deadly. But then the comic can’t decide what it wants to do with her, moving away from focusing on her martial arts skills to coming up with inconsistent mental powers.
Also, that has to be one of the worst endings I’ve seen in this decade.
What else was in these issues?
Action Comics #471 has YET ANOTHER doppelganger of Clark Kent.
It’s already a miracle that he looks 100% human, but how does he keep finding humans who look 100% like him???
Action Comics #472 gives us to my worst nightmare: TWO Steve Lombard!!!
But it turns out it was just a prank Superman he pulled thanks to Batman.
Faora has about a dozen appearances before Crisis; most as flashbacks, but they do fight a couple of times. She’s mostly working with Jax-Ur and, crucial for later, General Zod.
There is some confusion regarding who is the main female Kryptonian villain.
If you’re thinking of Faora, chances are that you’re thinking about one of the villains of Superman II… however that’s Ursa, not Faora, and she’s a later creation.
Faora is from a 1977 comic, while Ursa first appears in the 1978 movie.
And Ursa IS in the comics as well: specifically she was introduced in post-Crisis continuity in 2007, with a later retconned version showing up in 2016. At least one of these two had a child with Zod.
But she’s a newcomer. Already in 1988, among the Phantom Zone villains of the Pocket Universe we had “Zaora” who is visibly based on the original Faora.
She was just as cruel, and Superman had to execute all of them for destroying the Pocket Universe’s Earth. She was even crueler than the original, but considering her final plead probably not as much as a man-hater.
Faora was re-introduced properly in the comics in 2001…
…and she seems to be the most frequent version to show up in adaptation, especially after the Man of Steel movie.
I hate that movie with the power of a billion exploding suns and even I liked this version of Faora.
Although I would say that modern day Faora… is basically just Ursa with a different name.
ESPECIALLY her post-Man of Steel appearances.
The confusion between the two might be the reason why Ursa died in 2024, while Faora still shows up in more modern comics.
In particular, in 2025 Faora showed up with her original look and attitude instead of her Man of Steel design, so it’s possible that she has finally outlasted Ursa.
