Lois Lane's "Fictional" Adventures

From Lois Lane Annual #1, comes this list of "famous" old Lois Lane tales:

Why the scare quotes? Well, it turns out that a few of these stories never existed. Action Comics #20 is the January 1940 issue, and the (untitled) Superman story in that issue has Superman dealing with a headstrong actress; Lois doesn't even appear in there.  The May 1944 issue of Superman is #28, and it doesn't include any story with Lois on Krypton; at that point Superman didn't even know the name of his home planet.

Lois did not commit any crimes, perfect or flawed in the November 1945 issue of Superman, although she did meet a modern Annie Oakley in May 1951 (Superman #70).  She was featured in Mrs Superman (Superman #76) and wanted in Action #195, and had six lives in Action #198 and X-ray vision in Action #202.  The stories listed in the Showcase tryouts and Lois's own magazine are real, so overall, there were three stories (the first three) that never existed, out of the fifteen.

And, oddly enough, that turns out to be pretty good as the next Lois Lane Annual had seven phony baloney stories:

The others ["Lois Lane's College Sweetheart" (Action Comics, March 1939); "Lois Lane on Krypton" (Superman, May, 1944); "Lois Lane's Super-Dream" (Superman, August, 1945); "Lois Lane in Smallville" (Superboy, July, 1945); "The Girl of Gold" (Action Comics, June, 1952); "When Lois Met Green Arrow" (Adventure Comics, December, 1952); and "The Luck of Lois, Lana and Lori!" (Showcase No. 8)] were invented for this list for reasons that will almost certainly remain unknown.

Well, my guess is that Weisinger just didn't care if he got that list right; back then the assumption was that nobody would ever check this stuff.  There are some pretty obvious problems with the above list: Superboy didn't have his own magazine until 1949, and Showcase #8 was a Flash issue, not a Lois Lane tryout.

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Superman and Lois

Over at Superman Fan, blogger Nightwing posts a scathing review of a Silver Age Lois Lane story. He's particularly hard on the supposed romance between Lois and Superman:

Honestly, I don’t know why so many people talk up the Superman/Lois relationship as some kind of great romance, when most of the time he treats her as at best a pain in the neck and at worst some kind of crazed stalker.

And given the details of that story, it's hard to argue that is an unfair assessment of their relationship.

As it happens, right after reading that post, I was flipping through Superman #142, and found another zany Superman and Lois story, called Lois Lane's Secret Helper. One night, Krypto and Supergirl overhear Lois Lane pouring out her heart to sister Lucy:

So Krypto decides to play Cupid. He does some research around the world to find out what gets men in the mood to pop the question. In Venice, he observes a man proposing after the couple was serenaded by a gondolier. So he spreads some birdseed around where Lois and Superman are talking to attract a few songbirds and:

But it proves almost as easy to distract Superman, as the singing of the birds attracts some cats and:

Next Krypto observes some castaways who decide to marry after being rescued from their desert island. He manages to maroon Lois and Clark. At first Lois is scornful of her companion, but when he manages to get some coconuts she warms up quite a bit:

So Krypto causes an earthquake to throw them together, but Lois is disgusted when Clark remains prostrated on the ground:

Next, Krypto observes that seeing another couple in love can cause a man to lose his inhibitions. So when Lois finds a stray female dog, Krypto brings her a bunch of bones as a gift and:

But the arrival of all those dogs on the scene ruins the moment, and Krypto gives up on getting Superman to marry Lois. He's so peeved, in fact, that he decides to become Lois' pet. Which doesn't work out so well for her, as a cop issues her a citation because he doesn't have a license.

Comments: This story is played strictly for laughs, and it actually delivers, partly because of Superman's rather ridiculous behavior in a) falling for Krypto's romantic cues and b) promptly losing interest in proposing to Lois the minute something unexpected happens.

Exit question: I rather enjoy the snark in Nightwing's post about Superman and Lois. However, I usually grade these stories myself on the curve, recognizing that they were written for kids. Would you like to see a little more bite to my posts, or should I stick to poking fun when appropriate but gently?

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Was There A Plan "C" for Clark?

I linked a week ago to Again With the Comics' post on the Helmet of Hate story in Jimmy Olsen. As you will recall from reading that post, at the end of the story it was revealed that the entire plot was based on Plan "J", a pre-arranged scheme where Jimmy Olsen was to do certain things to help out Superman.

As it happens, I was re-reading Lois Lane #29 today, and the cover story in that issue reveals Plan "L":

It's a ridiculously convoluted plot, obviously partly so to provide us with that entertaining cover scenario. Here's Lois explaining what Plan "L" told her:

Okay, but what if he's in trouble from Green K near Niagara Falls, or in Egypt? Was there a plan for that? At any rate, Lois sets about kissing every superhero she can get her lips on, which on this day in Metropolis just happens to be Green Arrow, Aquaman and Batman. After they're covered with her lipstick, they wipe it off onto a hankie which Batman flies up to the Fortress. Superman then coats his own face with the lipstick, because it has a form of Red Kryptonite on it that provides temporary immunity to Green Kryptonite. Oh, and she had to do it in that zany fashion because the villains were spying on her:

Note to self: When planning to keep tabs on Lois Lane, make the crystal eye a little less obvious.

Plan "P", for Perry White appeared in Action #295, discussed in detail at the Silver Age Sage.

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Some Weird Silver Age Kisses

Okay so Lois is pretty sick in the head:

But check out what turns Superman on:

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

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Lois Lane #18

In the first story, Lois finds herself playing second banana to The Star Reporter of Metropolis. Mary Kenyon, a young college graduate, applies for a job at the Daily Planet. Perry's unimpressed with her clippings and tied up with plans for a major motion picture on the newspaper, so he turns the youngster down.

But Lois demonstrates her occasional admirable side:

Well, you can probably guess how that turns out; in short order Mary Kenyon, aided quite a bit by Superman, has a frequent byline on the front page of the Planet:

And when she coaxes a deaf man down from a ledge using sign language, it looks like Lois is headed for the features section. Then she gets a tip on the location of the most wanted man in the country. You've got to admire her courage, while questioning her common sense:

But Superman shows up in the nick of time to save her. And it turns out that Mary Kenyon's actually:

Yep, it was all a scheme so that Dolly could enact her role as Lois in the Daily Planet movie believably. Incidentally, the cast for the movie included Clark Gable as Perry, Rock Hudson as Clark, and Dwayne (Dobie Gillis) Hickman as Jimmy Olsen.

The second story is The Sleeping Doom. Superman makes his all-too-frequent mistake of giving a friend something from outer space:

Perry drops the jewel a little later and it breaks into three pieces. No problem, now Jimmy and Lois can each have their own fragment. That night, as they are sleeping, Perry and Jimmy are taken over by aliens within the jewel. Lois only escapes because she has to pull an all-nighter in order to finish an article for the paper. The next morning, Perry suggests that she reward herself with a nap, but she overhears him and Jimmy conferring:

So she decides to stay awake until Superman returns from a mission to outer space. Unfortunately, that won't be for ten more days, so she's forced to drink lots of coffee and other desperate measures:

Fortunately Superman returns just as she's about to fall asleep, and foils the alien plot.

The third story is the cover feature. An alien ship lands on Earth and Lois climbs aboard and meets Astounding Man. He's worshiped her from afar for years, in a rather creepy fashion:

We see some of the wonders of his home world:

As it happens, the New York Times reported just the other day on a prototype of just such a vehicle that Google is working on. Eventually Lois agrees to wed Astounding Man, even though he warns her that he has a secret. When she insists she loves him for the inner man, not his outward appearance, he does the big reveal:

Yep, Astounding Man was just an android being controlled by Oogamooga. Since she has given her word, she goes through with the wedding, but it turns out that the Lois who gets married is also an android. Cute ending:

Overall comments: This issue illustrates perfectly many of the continuing themes of the Silver Age Superman: the occasional selflessness of Lois, Superman's frequent mistakes involving objects from space, and the wonders of future technology. Very entertaining!

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Superman #112

The opening story is Superman's Neighbors. The plot concept is obviously cribbed from the famed Alfred Hitchcock movie, Rear Window. In that film, Jimmy Stewart plays a professional photographer with a broken leg, who passes his recuperation time by observing the other tenants of his apartment building, eventually realizing that one of his neighbors (Raymond Burr) has killed his wife.

In the Superman story, we learn that Clark Kent lives at 344 Clinton Street in Metropolis, and that one of his pastimes is to help out his neighbors with their problems. For example, he helps Joe Rollins, an artist, come up with an idea for a cover of a science-fiction magazine, and saves the dog of Ethel Cane from being run over by a truck. And when it comes to lame Tommy Snead, he helps the boy achieve his dream of being able to jump higher and run faster than the other kids, at least temporarily:

When a young woman spurns an offer of marriage from a man because she's in love with Superman, Clark arranges a date for her with the Man of Steel. She finds out quickly that she doesn't have his undivided attention:

But one of his neighbors turns out to be an amateur detective. Is he onto the fact that Clark is Superman? Nope, instead he suspects him of being a criminal, but Superman explains that Kent is helping him, which explains his mysterious comings and goings. And at the end of the story:

Comments: Superb characterization for Superman in an interesting, human-centered tale.

The second story features Luthor. Superman discovers that his uniform is causing weird changes around him, like turning metal into wood. It's because of a ray that Luthor's shining on him. But eventually he figures out what's going on and imprisons the crook. It's a short story (6 pages) even by Silver Age standards, and doesn't have much drama.

The finale is the cover story. Lois and Clark are amazed at a nightclub act featuring three strongmen who bill themselves as Hercules, Atlas and Samson. They demonstrate super-strength that Clark, using his X-Ray vision, can see is not phony. Lois spots their manager collecting the nights' gate receipts and follows him back to a laboratory, where she sees him give super-strength to a monkey using a ray machine. While the manager's away, she doses herself to great effect:

But Superman discovers that the effect is only temporary, and thus he has to save Atlas and company, as well as Lois, when their strength deserts them at a critical moment. It turns out the men had paid the manager $10,000 apiece for the treatments, in the belief they would be permanent. Superman catches the man before he can escape with their money.

Comments: One of the many stories in the Silver Age where Lois gains super-powers herself; I should try to catalog all of them.

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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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Lois Lane #13

This is a classic example of Weisinger's puzzle covers. The idea was to present a startling situation on the cover, with the hope that the kids would be compelled to pick up the comic and leaf through it to find out what shocking secret had compelled Lois to wear a lead mask. Weisinger knew through focus-group type studies that he had done that kids who actually picked up a comic and flipped through it were much more likely to purchase that actual issue, and thus his goal was to get them to grab the issue off the spinner rack.

The first story features a visit to Lois' hometown of Pittsdale. The local newspaper, where she got her start as a reporter, is celebrating its 100th anniversary. Perry kindly gives her the weekend off, but when she checks for a flight, she finds that the Metropolis Airport is all fogged in. Fortunately Superman takes pity on her and flies her back to Pittsdale. He agrees to stay the weekend:


Pop Lane realizes what a great son-in-law Superman would make when the Man of Steel helps out with some of the chores:

But when he pitches the idea, Superman demurs with the usual, "She'd make a wonderful wife, but my enemies would attack me through her," line. Unfortunately, a local snoop heard only the first part of the conversation and the rumor that Superman and Lois are getting married spreads like wildfire. And, as must happen in all comedies, it is decided that it would be too embarrassing to admit the truth, and thus they pretend to be ready to go through with it. Lois gets a visit from a former beau:

Yes, I am sure that Hector was once a hunk, before he started wearing the Joker's outfit. Pop Lane is generous to a fault:

But just as it looks like the wedding is inevitable:

Remember, Superman had to leave at six to photograph those stars, so the wedding has to be called off until the next time they're back in Pittsdale.

Comments: An extremely silly, slapstick story, that mines a lot of the same ground used for the rural comedies at CBS (Andy Griffith, Green Acres, Petticoat Junction) in the 1960s, although this November 1959 issue actually predates those shows.

Next up is Alias Lois Lane. Lois visits a western US town with the intent of getting a photograph of a TV star who's on his honeymoon. She dyes her hair blond to disguise herself, but a couple of crooks realize she's the spitting image of the famed girl reporter;

They blackmail her into helping them out (although she really goes along with their plot to get a scoop). Of course, they want her to imitate Lois Lane, but while her appearance is successful, she's nowhere near as smart or sophisticated as the genuine article:

But through effort, they teach her to recognize Lois' friends and to mimic her voice:

Hmmm, anybody hearing echoes of, "The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain,"?

But she enjoys ticking them off by getting things wrong, to the point where they're ready to give up hope. But then she manages to get saved by Superman:


Yep, it seems pretty obvious that an inspiration for this story was My Fair Lady, as one of the key songs in that Broadway play (and later movie) was "She Did It!" at any rate, the crooks now reveal their plot; they will have Lois photograph Superman with a special camera that contains Kryptonite, letting them steal a valuable mouse. Mouse? Superman explains:

As I have discussed before, animals being shot into space was a hot topic around then.

Comments: Cute take-off on the My Fair Lady theme. One interesting note: In both this story and the previous one, the pretext for the initial situation gets ignored the moment the real plot is introduced. Remember, Lois went back to Pittsdale for the 100th anniversary of her newspaper, but that never comes up once they get to the Lane family farm. Ditto with this tale, in which Lois never gets the photograph of the TV star and his blushing bride.

The finale is the cover tale, and it reveals the downside of puzzle covers; the story they represent is often wacky and filled with incredible coincidences. So it is with this tale, which starts out with Superman saving Lois and expressing exasperation with her curious nature:

The next day he spots her car crashed into a tree and rushes to the Daily Planet to see if she's okay:

He suspects that she was badly disfigured in the car crash, but that turns out to be wrong. Instead, Lois had attended a nightclub the evening before, where she watched a magic act:

And sure enough the first two people who see Lois the next day react oddly. When she looks into a lake:

She wraps herself in bandages, but realize this will not conceal her from Superman, so eventually she gets a welder to fashion the lead mask. Yet when Superman later removes the mask, it turns out her face is perfectly normal; all the magician had done was to plant a hypnotic suggestion in her mind that she would look like a cat the next day. But what about the people who reacted so strangely to her?


Comments: Clearly one of those stories where Weisinger came up with the cover idea and then assigned his writer the chore of creating a story where it happened. Incidentally, Lois got the head of a cat in another story appearing in Jimmy Olsen #66 a few years later.

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