Brainiac's Blitz is a Supergirl story written and penciled by Jim Shooter, and published in Action Comics #339 (July, 1966). It is Jim Shooter's first published story (although that title is disputed by Adventure Comics #346, published in the same month).
Superman must leave Earth on a mission with the Justice League of America, so he asks his cousin to hold the fort as he is away. Supergirl promises to do so, albeit she has the feeling that there is danger brewing.
Meanwhile, Brainiac is still licking his wounds after his last defeat. Unable to get over his humiliation, he has devised new weapons and traps to destroy Superman. Judging he is ready to exact his revenge, the Coluan heads towards Earth.
Kara is attending her classes in Stanhope College, unable to shake a sense of foreboding off, when she hears Brainiac has arrived in Metropolis, and he threatens to blast the city out of existence if Superman does not show up.
Tropes:
- Alliterative Title: Brainiac's Blitz.
- Antagonist Title: Brainiac sets a trap for Superman, but Supergirl gets in his way.
- Circling Birdies: When she is striken and stunned by a barrage of beams shot by Brainiac's ship, Kara sees white stars circling around her head while dazed.
- Coincidental Broadcast: As walking down her college's hallway, Linda Danvers passes by another student who coincidentally is listening to a radio broadcast about a flying saucer circling over Metropolis.
- Death Trap: Brainiac traps Supergirl into a Kryptonite cage. He then bathes the cage with omicron rays to increase the K-radiation and push a button to fill the cage with Kryptonite gas. To finish her off, he transfers his force-field energy into a disintegrator ray and blasts the cage into atoms.
- Disintegrator Ray: Brainiac transforms his unbreakable force-field into a beam which may blast anything into atoms.
- Emergency Temporal Shift: When Supergirl is about to catch him, Brainiac uses a portable machine to send himself to another time period.
- Evil Gloating: Before shooting his newest weapon, Brainiac boasts that it is a time-travel raygun which will blast Supergirl into the far future where she will have no powers because the Earth's sun will have turned red. Alerted by his gloating, Kara dodges the blast instead of letting it hit her, as she might have done if Brainiac had kept his mouth shut.
- Fight Off the Kryptonite: As lying on a Kryptonite cage, and breathing radioactive Kryptonite gas, Supergirl forces herself to ignore the extreme pain coursing through her body and squeezes her lean body through the bars, right before her cage is blown up.
- Gas Chamber: Brainiac's trap involves locking Superman into a Kryptonite cage and filling it with Kryptonite gas.
- Hoist By His O Wn Petard: Brainiac wastes his weapons, which he intended to destroy Superman with, and his ship's power attempting to kill Supergirl. When he weaponizes his force field as a last resort and fails, Brainiac is left with nothing to fight Superman or Supergirl, and no defense to keep them away from him, so he must run away.
- Hurl It into the Sun: After forcing Brainiac to flee, Supergirl tosses his ship into the sun in order to disintegrate all his lethal weapons.Narrator: "Moments later, the Girl of Steel hurls the Saucer and its weapons straight into the Sun!"
Supergirl: (thinking) Old Sol's tremendous heat will vaporize those death-devices! No one will ever use them on Superman! - Never Found the Body: After watching Supergirl writhing on her Kryptonite trap, Brainiac averts his eyes to turn his force-field into a beam which blasts into atoms Supergirl's prison. He assumes Supergirl has also been annihilated, but by looking away he missed her slipping out of her cage.
- No-Sell: As usual, absolutely nothing can go through Brainiac's force field. Supergirl throws back Brainiac's missiles at his ship, and they explode harmlessly. Kara fires her heat blasts, and they bounce off the shield. When Brainiac uses the force-field as a battering ram, its target is blasted into atoms.
- The Only One: Since the whole League is off world, Supergirl is the only super-hero left on the planet who is powerful and resourceful enough to try to fight Brainiac.
- Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: After trapping Supergirl and blasting her cage into oblivion, Brainiac believes her dead and decides to retreat to his asteroid base. Suddenly, Supergirl bursts through his ship's hull, telling him to not write her obituary yet. She was able to slip out of the cage just in time.
- Revenge: Brainiac cannot get over the fact of having been defeated and put into a space prison by Superman, so he heads towards Earth to challenge and kill the Man of Steel.
- Revenge by Proxy: Subverted. In the beginning, Brainiac intends to take revenge against Superman, and regards Supergirl as nothing but a nuisance. Since he cannot shake her off, though, Brainiac decides that killing Superman's cousin is another way to exact revenge.
- Rule of Perception: When Supergirl dives deep into Metropolis’ harbor, Kara is perfectly visible -and blue-colored- despite being surrounded by lightless, murky black waters.
- Secret Identity Change Trick: Linda hears a report about a weird flying saucer circling over Metropolis while attending classes, so she pretends to be feeling ill in order to leave and change identities.
- Spanner in the Works: Brainiac sets a death trap to kill Superman, not counting with Supergirl interfering, forcing him to use his trap, and then goading him into destroying it.
- Tailor-Made Prison: Subverted. Brainiac builds a Kryptonite cage especially designed for Superman. However, he decides to use it to get rid of Supergirl, and Kara manages to escape because she is smaller and slimmer than Superman, hence she can slip between the bars.
- There Was a Door: When Brainiac's ship has used up too much energy to keep its force-field up, Supergirl smashes herself through the hull to attack the villain.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: When Brainiac's ship's cameras spot Superman approaching Earth, Brainiac decides to blast Supergirl into oblivion and then retreat to his asteroid base. When his attempt fails and Supergirl is about to capture him, he uses a time machine to escape into the timestream.
- Visible Invisibility: When Brainiac's time travel-ray hits a red car, the vehicle becomes white and shown as a dotted outline to show it is vanishing.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: When Superman meets his cousin, she feels like a failure because her overconfidence let Brainiac escape. Kal cheers her up by pointing out she fought Brainiac alone and won impressively.Superman: "I witnessed your victory over Brainiac with my telescopic vision!"
Supergirl: (downcast) "Victory my foot! I let him get away right under my nose!"
Superman: "Stop with the self-reproach bit! You dealt him one of the most humiliating defeats of his crooked career!" - You Shall Not Pass!: When Brainiac threatens to obliterate Metropolis if Superman does not show himself, Supergirl shows up and declares he will not destroy the city while she is around.Brainiac: "My hyper-missiles will score on your tallest buildings!"
Supergirl: "Not while I'm guarding the goal!"
