During the period when Mort Weisinger edited the "Superman Family" titles, no writer had any exclusive hold on the characters they created for DC Comics. Still, Leo Dorfman wrote all or most of the stories in which "Super-Horse" is involved with the main action, rather than being a supporting figure. From the beginning, Dorfman seems to have had a rough arc regarding where he wanted the Super-Horse stories to go, even if there was not really a proper conclusion to Comet's story. Dorfman probably never planned an end as such-- I feel sure Comet was mainly a story-device to keep food on the table, and when tastes moved away from the Weisinger-type story in the 1970s, the ultra-equine effectively went into comic-book limbo.
The opening image of the first Super-Horse story shows Supergirl happily astride her Super-Horse as they flee kryptonite rays from alien ships. In the story proper, this occurs only in one of the heroine's dreams, though the real event takes place one issue later.
First, however, Linda "Supergirl" Danvers suddenly gets horse-crazy while watching a western movie. Notice that though she's in high school at this time, she's supposedly more interested in the horse than in the cowboy.
Anna Freud, writing in 1926, carried on Big Sigmund's tradition by claiming that young girls liked horses due to "penis envy." There's no telling what Freudianisms were known to Leo Dorfman, but at the least I suspect he knew that juvenile books about horses-- BLACK BEAUTY, NATIONAL VELVET-- had proved enormously popular with young girls. He seems to have concluded that there was something erotic at the base of it, to judge from Linda's bedtime thoughts about getting "goose flesh" at the idea of sharing adventures with her own horse.
In the space of the story, Supergirl has three dreams about a super-horse helping her in some way. She names him Comet because he has a comet-like birthmark, though as a story-motif the birthmark won't become important until a few issues later. Then Supergirl encounters an identical horse at a real-life dude ranch, and the first story ends on an enigmatic note.
In the next story, Supergirl finds out that Comet is not just a horse, but a telepath, who proceeds to relate his origin via a mental voice. His lineage goes back to ancient Greece, when he was a centaur named Biron. (This seems to be a reference to one of the most famous centaurs in Greek mythology, Chiron.)
It's later revealed that Maldor, the sorcerer who tried to poison Circe, caused Biron to drink the wrong potion. Circe tries to make up for the blunder by using a magic potion that turns Biron the ordinary horse into a super-being. But Maldor has another scheme, using his magic to cause the super-horse to become imprisoned on an asteroid in (appropriately) the constellation Sagittarius. Biron languishes on the desolate asteroid for centuries, until 1959, when a rocket from Argo City happens by with its precious cargo.
Thus Biron becomes fascinated with the teenager aboard the rocket, and follows it to Earth. It's not clear why Biron waits a few years to contact the heroine, but he tells Supergirl that he read the minds of the alien scouts that were preparing for invasion. It's not clear why that would prompt Biron to invade Supergirl's dreams and construct an exact replica of what was going to happen when she attacked the aliens and the newly christened Comet came to her rescue. In this same issue, the aliens invade for real and things play out in reality just as they did in the dream, suggesting that Dorfman's Super-Horse had a little clairvoyance going for him, when it was convenient for the writer.
The rest of the Dorfman stories featuring the relationship of the heroine and her horse focus on the "romance with a secret identity" that had been DC's bread-and-butter since the debut of Superman. A couple of times Comet is temporarily transformed into a human being, in keeping with the original boon he wanted from Circe, and in one story, the transformation happens in werewolf-fashion, whenever a comet passes in the heavens. Because of this development, I hazard that Dorfman had always planned to have his super-equine transform in this fashion, but had to work his way up to that point. Otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any particular reason for the writer to presage the transformation with the comet-birthmark.
Whenever Comet does get the chance to become human, however temporarily, he immediately finds some reason to get into a lip-lock with Supergirl and/or Linda. I don't find this as transgressive as many comics-fans do, because he really isn't a horse, but a liminal being between human and horse.
However, I'll admit it's more than a little peculiar when Supergirl becomes jealous of Comet's attentions to another female. Granted, by this time she knows that he's not a real horse, but a transformed centaur. Yet in all the stories post-dating the big revelation, she doesn't really think of Comet as "a guy." So maybe what she's really jealous about is that another woman is getting the jollies that Supergirl usually gets.
As to the origin of those jollies, deponent saith not, except to observe that at no point in his career do you see cousin Superman fantasizing about riding a horse, regardless of gender.
ADDENDUM: I noted above that at fifteen, Linda/Supergirl seems a little old to form a crush on a horse rather than on a boy. However, I should also note that no one would have thought that the girl-readers of the feature would be that old, and THEY might indeed be of an age to have horse-crushes-- not that it's automatic with every young XX, but middle-school seems to be a little more likely for the crush to form.
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