The OTHER Super-Ann

Centaur Publications' spinoff character of Mighty Man named Super-Ann wasn't the only character from that publisher to share that sobriquet as a totally different one premiered a year later in what was essentially a showcase for the Chicago Mail Order Company. CMO Comics from 1942 was essentially a catalog for a mail order company, and the anthology would highlight their various products in a way that was as subtle as a falling cannonball. This second Super-Ann instead of being superpowered Ann Star was instead Ann Allan, a non-superpowered heroine who was basically a young socialite with some fighting skills that would frequently come across one caper after another in Arizona. Unlike Super-Ann the First, Super-Ann the Second had a small team that worked with her instead of a shapeshifting crimefighter who was such a silent partner that not even his partner knew he existed. Ann Alan had two girls as her running crew, "Freckles" Doyle and Susan Green. Freckles would always be talking in slang, while Susan was the bookish girl in glasses who was sort of a proto-Velma. CMO Comics only lasted for two issues, so Super-Ann 2.0 didn't get much traction. Her first adventure is on the set of a movie where the main actress is kidnapped by the flunkies of a rival actress, so Ann and her posse use their clock-throwing abilities to vex the baddies' plot for which Susan says that because of their victory they should rebrand Ann as "Super-Ann". Throughout this first issue there were ads in the corner of every other page that present an article of clothing that the Chicago Mail Order Co. was selling, so imagine if Wonder Woman during her powerless stories from the Silver Age had her wearing designer outfits and you'll get some kind of idea of what CMO Comics was pushing going for. The second and final adventure of Super-Ann is still around the movie set where Ann adopts an obligatory mascot dog called Foxey while she's under threat of a totally different rival actress who wants to bump Ann off because she's afraid Ann will take her place in the movie. Freckle and Susan are left out of the second story until the very end of it when Ann phones them up about a new job, probably working on the movie, although this issue was absent of the normal CMO adverts. Even though there was nothing specifically "super" about this particular Ann, it might have operated as a decent feature for young girl readers if the comic wasn't so busy trying to shove tacky clothes ads in your face.