DC finally bites the bullet and makes a big, story-altering change to Supergirl by having Superman reveal her to the world in Action Comics #285 (Dec 1961). First, she reveals her identity to the Danvers, and then Superman reveals her hero persona to the world using a special television broadcast. She gets a big warm congrats from the City of Kandor, Atlantis, and from various planets. She even gets to meet President JFK.
Almost immediately, Superman needs to go to another galaxy on a space mission and leaves Supergirl in charge, where she faces her first public challenge. A rip in the sky reveals giant indestructible red scaly legs – it’s an invasion from another dimension. After failing to defeat the creature, Supergirl contacts the Legion of Super-Heroes and Brainiac 5 send her plans to create a shrinking ray. It looks suspiciously like a bazooka, but she looks good carrying it, at least.

It’s not often we get a big permanent change like this to a character. Supergirl was introduced more than two and a half years ago at this point and I have to believe she was incredibly popular given that she was the follow-up feature to Superman in Action Comics, and her back-story was heavily fleshed out in that time. It was a good decision to make her a “public” super-hero and to give the entire issue of Action Comics to her, and I’m excited to see where her stories take the character next..