How Superboy Makes a Dress

I've been reading a bit of the Golden Age Superboy and came across these two rather amusing examples. In both cases, a gal's dress has been spoiled just prior to an important date. Here's Superboy taking care of Lana Lang, from Adventure #168:

And here he is doing a similar number for Smallville's "Cinderella":

The latter pic is from Adventure #160, which features a bit of terrific characterization for Clark, as he nobly volunteers to take a "homely" girl named Alice Norris to a big dance. Of course, as is cliche in such stories, once Alice removes her glasses and lets her hair down, she turns into a beauty.

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Super-Swipes #5

There are swipes and then there are SWIPES, and this is one of the latter. I talked awhile ago about the first appearance of Sun Boy from the Legion of Superheroes, and how large parts of that story were swiped from an earlier tale, but at least in that case the ending was significantly different.

Not so with this story, which introduces Legion member Star Boy:


The plot and most of the dialog are swiped from Adventure #195:

It would be tedious to point out all the similarities in the two stories, so I will settle for just highlighting the major plot points. In each case, Lana is annoyed that Superboy ignores her new dress. She gets an idea how to make him pay more attention to her from a movie:


Meanwhile, Superboy is surprised when he receives a summons to meet another super-powered youth outside of town. It's Marsboy/Star Boy. There's a brief discussion of how the youth gained his super-powers (in each case from a passing comet). In each story, there are two escaped criminals, one of which has been caught while capturing the other requires Superboy's help due to a super-power limitation:


In each case Lana Lang overhears the conversation and threatens the other super-powered lad with secret identity exposure unless he agrees to help her make Superboy jealous. Lana gets permission from her mom to visit the homeworld of the other boy with a demonstration of his ability to protect her:


In each story, the other super-lad takes Lana to his home planet, where he lavishes gifts upon her, including weaving a special cloth. In each case, Superboy, who is secretly aware of her plot, gripes about how odd it is that these heroes give her so much attention:


In each story, Superboy returns with a beauty in tow, explaining to Lana that she was indeed right: Girls from another planet are far more fascinating. Seeing her plans go awry, Lana pretends that the air on the other super-lad's world is affecting her, but:


This leads Lana to admit that she had blackmailed Marsboy/Star Boy into pretending to be wild about her. There is a slight difference in the two stories here, as in the Star Boy tale Superboy admits that he knew Lana's scheme all along and only pretended to be interested in the other gal. But in the end of both stories, Lana decides that while he may not be any closer to her, at least he's farther away from that interplanetary hussy.

A couple of notes: Marsboy had appeared a few times prior to Adventure #195, but as far as I know, this was his swan song. And Star Boy is shown as having dramatically different powers than the making objects heavy ability he would have during his Legion appearances. Indeed, his powers here virtually mimic Superboy's.

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Double Hockey Sticks

One of the odder aspects of the Silver Age Superman was the fascination Mort Weisinger and his writers developed with the initials LL. From the very first appearance of Superman, the love interest had always been Lois Lane. And in the Superboy adventures, his snoopy next-door neighbor was Lana Lang. But in the Silver Age, the LL's really started to take over. For example, we learned of Clark Kent's college sweetheart, Lori Lemaris:

Action #252 saw the debut of Supergirl. While Kara Zor-El doesn't have two Ls in her name, her secret identity was established as Linda Lee. In Action #272, we learned that there is a double of Supergirl on another planet, whose secret identity is Lea Lindy.

In Lois Lane #20 (October 1960), Clark decides to get rid of Lois the pest by flying back in time to the date he came to the Daily Planet office, and going instead to take a job as a deejay at a radio station. His secretary there is a gal named Liza Landis, who turns out to be an even worse snoop than Lois. Be sure to read that post to the end to see that Superman retained his irrational prejudice against the horizontally challenged. Hat tip: Michael Rebain.

In Superman #141 (November 1960), Superman accidentally flies back to Krypton before it exploded, meets his parents, and falls in love with a movie actress:

As far as I know this is the first time that the LL coincidence was noted in a story.

In Action #289, Supergirl tries to set up her cousin with a female superhero from another world:

But it turned out that the yellow rays of our sun were poisonous to her, and so she had to return to her home planet. Hat tip: Michael Rebain.

In Superman #157, he receives a machine from an alien world that can predict the future. One of the predictions is that he will be saved that day by an LL. Bizarro "gives" him a chunk of Kryptonite which starts to kill him. Which LL will save him, he wonders:

But as it turns out, a young baseball player by the name of Steve Snappin saves him. Was the machine wrong?

In Superman #165, he loses his memory and becomes Jim White, a cowboy on a ranch owned by the father of this gal:

Oddly, however, she's another SS, instead of an LL, although there are some Ls in her name: Sally Selwyn.

Adventure #333 (June 1965) includes a segment where Superboy meets the distant ancestors of the Atlanteans including a pretty brunette:


Jim pointed this one out to me in an email:


I didn't mention Lucy Lane or Lex Luthor. Jim also points out this gal:

In Action #321 (February 1965), Superman is trapped on a red sun world where he's the weakest man, and Lahla falls for him. But (amusingly) once they make it back to Earth she has no interest in him, as he's now the mightiest man around.

And this "gal":

Of course it's really Jimmy Olsen, from issue #67 (March 1963) of his self-titled mag.

Any more LLs that should be added to this list? I've always been a bit surprised that Light Lass didn't attract Superboy's attention.

Update: An early one, from Action #215 (April, 1956):

Lyra Lee (in 2956) turns out to be a secret identity pest for the Superman of that era, just like Lois a millennium earlier. And another mermaid from Action #244:

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Adventure #280

This story is symptomatic of one of the major problems with Superboy in the Silver Age. Characters that had been introduced in the Superman books often ended up appearing in Superboy, even though that appearance contradicted the Superman tales. Lex Luthor, who for years had bedeviled the Man of Tomorrow, turned out to have been the best friend (however briefly) of the Boy of Steel. Lois Lane and Mr Mxyptlk also appeared in the Superboy chronicles, so it was perhaps inevitable that Lori Lemaris would also pop up in Smallville eventually. Never mind that we had been assured in her first Superman story that she was a girlfriend of his during his college years at Metropolis U.

The story itself is a classically zany Silver Age tale. Superboy decides to help out a local "aquarium" (really an aquatic zoo) owner by bringing him terrific attractions like electric eels, sharks and a giant whale. Lori and her friends observe this from under the sea, and Lori lies a bit shamelessly:

It turns out that Lori is bored with Atlantis. BTW, those who think that there wasn't an explanation for the Lori Lemaris Atlanteans and the Aquaman contingent are wrong:

Lori decides to get Superboy to "rescue" her from a floating mine. When he does, she again indulges herself in a whopper:

But she trips herself up with a bit of "proof":

Of course, this was something of a cliche in the Silver Age; since BC means "Before Christ", nobody would have dated a coin 450 BC; that was the year applied after the birth of Jesus became considered a dividing point.

Lori explains that she wants to live outside the water, as a normal girl, and believes that Superboy will be able to accomplish this. He sets up the experiment, but Lana comes along:

The experiment will take 24 hours, during which time Superboy is away on a space mission. Lori is so confident the procedure will work, that she gets out of the water and drains it off. Bad move:

Say what? Smallville only a mile from the ocean? I guess we can rule out Kansas as the location of Superboy's hometown. Fortunately, Lana remembers that there's a pool inside the cave, and it turns out that the experiment was not to let her live on the land, but:

Still, how do we get to where Superboy and Lori have no memory of ever meeting before their college days? Lori's father goes to work:

Yep, he hypnotizes Superboy, Lori, and Lana into having no memory of the incident.

Comments: It's pretty obvious why this story has never been reprinted (as far as I know). The details are weird, the hypnotism bit makes little sense (except to get Weisinger out of the problem of explaining why the story contradicted Lori's first Superman appearance), and Lori's compulsive lying puts her in a bad light. On the other hand, there is a rare good bit of characterization for Lana Lang, as she saves Lori's life despite fearing that Superboy will prefer the mermaid.

The Congo Bill/Congorilla tale is a fairly pedestrian tale. Congo Bill is hit on the head, and when he changes into Congorilla, he does some oddball things, changing into characters from a nursery rhyme:

Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.

The story was dusted off and reused a few years later in a Superman story in Action Comics.

The Aquaman story features Aquaman and Aqualad helping out with the TV show, Sea Chase. This is a reference to a popular syndicated TV show of the times called Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges and two of his sons, Jeff and Beau Bridges.

Update: Commenter Osgood Peabody points out that the story has just recently been reprinted in this volume:

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Superboy #90

This was a common theme in the DC Silver Age; people were always looking into the future or the past via a television set. The appeal is pretty obvious; who wouldn't want to be able to turn on your TV and see his or her future life? In the story, Lana Lang is helping her father clean out an old laboratory, when she notices a "time-viewing machine" that Professor Wilton had been working on. According to her father, it never worked, but Lana does a little "tinkering" and before long she's watching:



So she decides to try to change the future. She's learned from watching the TV that Lois' parents are from nearby Pittsdale, where a cousin lives. Lois' school starts early, so Lana can spy on her at class. When she sees Lois leave a sample of her work for the student newspaper, Lana pounces:



But as it happens, Superboy sends a gust of wind through the town to prevent an avalanche, and this blows Lana's fake sample out the window. Lana decides what the heck, but Lois had seen her composition blowing away and replaced it with a carbon copy, so she gets on the student newspaper.

Lana sees another opportunity here:



So she puts a tiny speaker (the text says "microphone" but this is clearly wrong) in Lois's desk so she can give the answers to Lois, who believes the voice she's hearing must be telepathy. But Superboy has tested an experimental new explosive for the military which knocks out radio communications for a few minutes, and Lois fails the telepathy test despite Lana's attempts to help her.

Later, Lana tries to help Lois win a scholarship in sculpture. She hires a "starving artist" to help:



He creates a beautiful sculpture of a cat, but Krypto happens by, and indulging himself for a moment, he destroys any chance Lois had of avoiding journalism as a major. Lana is beaten for now, but she resolves to return to Pittsdale again; I don't know if this actually happened or not.

Comments: As I have mentioned many times, the inexorable nature of fate is a very common theme in the DC universe during the Silver Age. In a memorable pair of stories in 1959, both Batman and Superman were shown their fates had the most important and traumatic experiences of their lives not occurred. Of course, for Bruce that was his parents' murder, and for Kal-El it was the destruction of Krypton. In the former, Bruce becomes Batman anyway, while for Kal, he becomes the Superman of Krypton.

It was already well-established that one could not change the past in the DC universe; in a famed story in Superboy #85, Clark uses a time viewer (yep) to observe the assassination of President Lincoln. But when he goes back in time to prevent Booth from killing him, Lex Luthor is hiding out in that time period and he prevents Superboy from saving the president.

This makes a great deal of common sense. If Superboy saved Abe Lincoln, then he would grow up in a world where Abe Lincoln was not assassinated, and therefore he wouldn't go back in time to save Lincoln, who would be assassinated, so Superboy would go back to save him, so he wouldn't die, etc. You can see the problem.

The idea that the future is unchangeable is a different thing; you can argue that leads to fatalism. However, it was certainly necessary in this case, as we all knew from years of reading Superman that he did actually know a reporter named Lois Lane.

The second story features Supertot. Martha and Jonathan are taking a cruise with the toddler when he leaps overboard to chase some fishes. The couple are heartbroken, although not for the reason the cruise ship crew assumes. They know Clark will survive, but they may never find him again.

Sure enough, he makes it to Metropolis where he is put up for adoption. But the first couple he's adopted by discover his appetite is boundless:



The second couple are spooked when Supertot decides to imitate the moving men he'd seen during the day:



And an inventor and his wife are similarly startled:

And so it happens that Supertot is back at the orphanage when Ma and Pa Kent come searching for him.

Comments: Cute story; you could argue that this again was fate working its mysterious way to make sure Clark would be raised by the Kents.

The third story is something of a key in the Silver Age; it features the first time anybody other than the Kents had known that Superboy was secretly Clark Kent. Pete Ross had been introduced a few issues before as Clark's buddy, and in this issue we learn (as does Clark via super-hearing) that Pete's a loyal pal, when a pair of costumed guys invite Pete to a party, but specify that they don't want Clark tagging along:



So Clark decides to take some more secret identity risks in order to be around Pete Ross, and when they go camping one evening, the inevitable occurs:



But for once, the story doesn't end with the secret identity discoverer getting amnesia, or being convinced he was wrong. In fact, Pete subs for one of Superboy's robots when it malfunctions. Pete Ross would remain the only other person to know Superboy/Superman's secret identity in the Silver Age.

Comments: A fine little story, with great characterization for Pete. Unfortunately, there turned out to be little that the writers could do with him, and so he really only made a dozen or so appearances in the Silver Age.

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Single Issue Review: Superman #175

As you can see, this is one of the famed "Imaginary" stories from the Weisinger era. Lord only knows why Lex thinks that Lois will be fooled by him wearing Clark's clothes.

The story begins in the Superboy era, with Ma Kent coming down with a cold just as the family was planning a vacation to the Caribbean. This seems a disappointment to them, but we know that during that vacation, Ma and Pa Kent would contract the illness that killed them, so secretly this is very fortunate.

Lex at this point has lost his hair, so he still despises Superboy and has a plot to discover his secret identity. He causes strange attacks on various friends of the Lad of Steel and tracks Superboy's movements. Meanwhile Pete Ross (who doesn't know Superboy's secret identity in this story) tries to save Lana from the attack, but when it's over, she only has praise for Superboy:



So now we have a pretty good idea who the villain of the story will be. Luthor's pretty sure by now that Clark Kent's Superboy, the Lad of Steel decides he must run away from home to protect his parents. Superboy announces to Lana and Pete that he's going to dedicate his time to locating Clark, and he leaves Smallville.

Lex is still suspicious, so he decides to ingratiate himself with the Kents. He takes Clark's job in the general store. Using his scientific genius, he automates things:



After dinner, the Kents decide they like Lex so much, they're going to adopt him. Lex accepts as it will make it easier to discover if Clark really is Superboy, although he does feel a little twinge of guilt. Later, when he sneaks down the stairs to search for Superboy's secret tunnel exit from the house, the Kents tell him to feel free to raid the refrigerator for a snack, and suddenly:



Superboy uses his distance vision to see that Ma Kent is still heartbroken that he left. He returns for a quick visit, but:



Since there is now no risk to his secret identity, Clark and Superboy return home. Incidentally, that scene on the cover? It turns out to be imaginary too, as it's a daydream that Lex has about how he's going to help his brother out in the future. But Pete Ross is not happy to see them, and vows revenge on Superboy for keeping Lana from returning his love.

An aside: The letters column includes this missive and response:



The anecdote about Grost is true; he pops up frequently in discussions of extremely brilliant youngsters, and Time Magazine profiled him in 1964, with the comic books prominently featured:

Michael Grost was pretty downcast. His parents had promised him ten Superman comic books if he got an A in school. Instead, he got only a B+ and five comics. But Mike's parents were delighted, for the course was Contemporary History of Europe and Asia, and the school Michigan State University. Mike is ten. As a special-status student at M.S.U. last year, the Lansing prodigy scored an A-average while amassing 38 credits in math, humanities, history and science.

Grost retained his love of comics; his web page on the classic comics of the 1950s and 1960s is here. See the end of this post for Grost's take on this story.

In the second part of the story, Lex gets an appointment as a research scientist in Metropolis, while Clark has been accepted as a reporter with the Daily Planet. Rather than break up the family, Ma and Pa Kent retire and move to Metropolis as well. The Kents play matchmaker, but Ma wants Clark to marry Lana, while Pa sees that his son prefers Lois Lane. Meanwhile Pete Ross has moved to Metropolis as well, and is still bitter that Lana prefers Superboy to him.

A crime wave starts in the city, which uses fantastic Kryptonian machines that could only have come from Superman's Fortress of Solitude. While battling the machines, Superman is affected by Green Kryptonite, and falls on Lois, nearly killing her in the process. This convinces him who he really loves:



Lana (the girl shown entering the room) realizes that she's lost, and resolves to keep Clark's secret. She marries Pete Ross on the rebound. But when she discovers the plans to the Kryptonian machines that carried out the attacks in Metropolis, she realizes her husband's a crook:



Pete plans a trap for Superman. He kidnaps Lois and uses her signal watch to summon Superman to his lair:



Lana, whom Pete has locked in their penthouse, manages to escape and get to the Kents. Lex has been working on a machine that will give him super-powers, but it's faulty. In the battle that ensues, Lex saves Superman and Pete is killed. But the victory does come with a price:



Comments: I've always enjoyed the imaginary stories, and this is no exception. The redemption of Lex seems a little incredible, and it's likely that Pete would have dropped his vendetta against Superman when he got what he wanted, Lana's hand in marriage. But aside from the weak motivations, the story works quite well, and Curt Swan's art, as always, is visually appealing.

Michael Grost's take:

Clark Kent's Brother; The Defeat of Superman; The Luthor-Superman (1965). Writer: Edmond Hamilton. Young Lex Luthor is adopted by the Kents, and becomes Superman's brother, in this book length tale. Hamilton manages to reweave the entire story of Superman's life, in this imaginary tale depicting an alternate unfolding of Superman's story. This tale is like "Superman's Other Life", in that it creates a whole alternative history for Superman, showing what his life might have been like if it had taken a very different course. It differs from many Imaginary tales in the Superman family, in that it does not present a possible future for the characters, but rather an alternative past and present. "Superman's Other Life" showed an alternative life for Superman on Krypton; here we see a reworking of Superman's life on Earth, concentrating on the non-superpowered humans he encountered in Smallville and Metropolis. This emphasis makes this one of the least sf oriented tales in Superman, just as "Superman's Other Life" was one of the most. However, both tales share a high level of imagination, looking at alternative lives for their hero. Some of the developments here involve Hamilton's personal theme of characters taking on roles and locations associated with others: for example, Lex Luthor becomes a member of the Kent family. This story is one of Hamilton's most imaginative and intricate embodiments of his role-assumption structure.

Update: See also this post at Random Longbox on another imaginary story featuring yet another hospital bedside proposal.

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