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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.
Together with Proty II, the shape-shifting glop of something who hung around with Chameleon Boy in the Legion of Super-Heroes, they formed the Legion of Super-Pets, a team that took care of problems when their owners were indisposed. And then there was the time that Comet turned into a human and Supergirl fell in love with him, but that’s been thankfully retconned away.
In addition to super-pets, DC has a host of other animal characters who aren’t companions to another hero. There’s the evil Gorilla Grodd and his noble opposite Solovar from Gorilla City. Detective Chimp, a chimpanzee in a deerstalker cap, may be even a greater sleuth than Batman. Giant apes Titano and the Ultra-Humanite battle the Justice League, while the squirrels Ch’p and B’dg and the former house cat Dex-Starr all exist in the Green Lantern mythos. And that’s not even getting into Captain Carrot and His Amazing Zoo Crew, superheroes from a universe filled with funny animals.
For a long time, super-pets and evil gorillas were embarrassments to superfans. Sure, they might show up in a kid-focused property like the various Krypto cartoon series that get produced. But you’d never see them in a major motion picture.
All of that changed with Superman, in which the arrival of Krypto was a key part of the first trailer. Krypto appears again in promotional material for Supergirl, but he’s not just there to carry over a popular character from one movie to another. Krypto’s return in Supergirl shows that James Gunn is ready to bring even the silliest parts of the DC Comics universe onto the big screen—and it’s not just the comic book fans who love it.
Supergirl arrives on June 26, 2026.
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