Avengers: Doomsday is not expected to premiere a new trailer during the Super Bowl, but that doesn’t mean no superheroes will show up this Sunday. Milly Alcock will be promoting Supergirl at the other big game this weekend, the Puppy Bowl.
Obviously, Supergirl has a pretty clear connection to the Puppy Bowl, as Superman established that Krypto is her dog. After arriving at the end of that movie to retrieve her unruly pup from her cousin, she immediately blasts off to space with him in tow, setting off the adventure that unfolds in Supergirl.
However, Krypton is hardly the only super-pet in the DC Universe. In fact, DC Comics is filled with critters with all sorts of powers, and it’s about time that they start showing up in the movies and TV shows.
When Otto Binder, Curt Swan, and Sy Barry introduced Krypton the Superdog in 1955’s Adventure Comics #210, he was just an extension of the Superboy stories they were telling. Superboy chronicled the adventures of teenaged Clark Kent, when he lived on the farm in Smallville, before he went off to Metropolis. Like any Midwestern boy of the Eisenhower era, Clark needed a dog, and thus Krypto was born.
Not only did Krypto fit perfectly with the low-stakes nature of these early Silver Age tales, in which Superboy dealt with pranks and shenanigans more than he did fighting supervillains, but he also became an immediate fan favorite. DC responded by bringing in more and more superpets. Batman got Ace the Bat-Hound months later in Batman #92. Beppo the Supermonkey showed up in a 1959 issue of Superboy. Supergirl got a pet in the form of Streaky the Supercat in 1960’s Adventure Comics #261, and then Comet the Super-Horse two years later in Adventure Comics #293.
