Hey! Professional Wresting is Rigged!

 

cover art by Curt Swan

We continue our journey through the pages of Superman Family #182 (March-April 1977) with a Lois Lane story. "Crime Takes a Fall" is written by Bill Kunkel and drawn by Jose Delbo.

Lois and Clark are checking out the local wrestling arena. It's supposed to be for a fluff piece on the popular sport, but Lois (being Lois) soon begins to dig up some dirt.

 

A rookie named Jaws Jackson is winning match after match. This is despite the fact that during workouts, he is easily tossed around by the veteran wrestlers. But when they get in the ring with him, their "muscles turn to jelly" and they are easily defeated.

It's doesn't take a brilliant deductive leap to figure out something is going on. Fortunately, Lois then demonstrates that investigating reporting is the easiest job in the world. You just have to accidentally overhear two thugs explaining the entire evil plan.

The premise of this tale is perfectly sound for a short 8-pager. And, as we'll see in a moment, I like the way it ends. But the above panels are a weak point. Even conceeding that the story has to move along quickly and the writer might be forced to use a contrivance to keep up this pace, having Lois almost immediately spot two men she recognizes as criminal and hear them share information that both of them already would have known is pretty lame.

But I do like what happens next. Realizing that Jaws Jackson doesn't know he's being used as a patsy by the mob, she tells him and asks him to follow her to the roof, where a crook with a dart gun is waiting to plug Jaws' next opponent at the right time. (By the way, it's mentioned that the darts are self-dissolving, so the plot makes perfect Comic Book Science sense.)

At first, it seems like Jaws has not followed her and Lois soon finds herself cornered by the bad guy. But Jaws does show up. And he's angry. Angry enough to tackle the bad guy and send them both plummeting off the roof. 

Fortunately, Superman is nearby to catch them. No one dies and villainy is foiled. 

I complained a few weeks ago about the Jimmy Olsen story ending with Superman saving the day while Jimmy is unconscious. I still think that's a valid criticism. But here, Lois figures everything out and sets up a solution for catching the bad guy. Superman does show up to catch the two men after they fall off the roof, but Lois remains proactive and responsible for solving the case. Despite that painful contrivance in the middle of the story, Lois' adventure works a lot better than did Jimmy's.

Next week, we'll visit with Captain America as he fights a monster that might not be a monster. In two weeks, we'll return to Superman Family and learn something about ancient Krypton. 

Lois and Lex Sitting in a Tree--K.I.S.S.I.N.G.

"Lois Lane, Gun Moll" deserves to be read simply because a story with a title like that should be considered required reading simply because it has that title.

Written by the always-imaginative Bill Finger and illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, the story first appeared in Lois Lane #28 (October 1961), though I own it as a reprint in Lois Lane #68 (Sept-Oct 1966). It begins with an eccentric inventor trying to convince Perry White he has invented a ray that can turn a person from good to evil. Perry dismisses him as a crank--which is always a potential mistake in a Comic Book Universe. 

The inventor, in a fit of pique, turns the ray on Lois, who immediately mashes Perry's cigar into his face, forms a criminal gang while taking on the identity of The Leopard Lady, kidnaps her own sister, uses a chunk of kryptonite to ward off Superman and takes up smoking.











It's a wonderfully silly premise. Schaffenberger's art is really what makes it work. The instant Lois turns evil, she gets this sort of contemptuous sneer on her face that completely sells us on on the concept.






Anyway, she's not satisfied with robbery and kidnapping. She soon decides to take a step up in criminal society by marrying arch-criminal Lex Luthor. The ceremony is performed by a kidnapped preacher behind a kryptonite-based force field, so one might question its legality. But then, Lex and Lois aren't really that concerned with legalities.

It's really a wise move on Lois' part when you think about it. She does move up in her chosen profession and she doesn't have to change any monogrammed clothing she might have.






Well, it all turns out to be a trick--Luthor had kidnapped the real Lois and replaced her with an evil robot. Lex himself in disguise played the eccentric professor. So Perry was right--the "turn someone evil" ray was a fake. It's the robot so well-made that it at least initially fools a man with super-senses and x-ray vision that's real.

The story doesn't explain why the robot fools Superman for a short time. The implication is that it must have been human-looking down to a molecular level and even exuded normal body odor. But Lex is one of the foremost scientists and inventors in the DC universe and he had a lot of experience building robots, so we'll give this to him.

Anyway, Superman tumbled to the scheme when he saw Lex light a cigarette for Lois and saw she didn't react in pain when Lex accidentally burned her cheek with his lighter. He finds and rescues the real Lois and melts down the robot with his heat vision. That's another wonderful moment, as we get an hilarious two-shot of Lex's thugs (who apparently weren't in on the plan) reacting in horror when Superman apparently executes Lois in a brutal fashion.

So why did Lex do all this? For no other reason than he wants to see Superman suffer. When Lex Luthor gets mad at someone, he stays mad at someone.

That's it for now. Next week, we'll get a remind of just how much the Lone Ranger depends on his horse to get things done.

Cover Cavalcade

During the Silver Age, Superman's friends used to go insane with disturbing frequency. Fortunately, they usually got better.

Superman's Girl Friend

I'm afraid poor Lois didn't have half the fun Jimmy Olsen did during the Silver Age of Comics. She had her own comic as well. After a try-out in Showcase #9 (August 1957), the first issue of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane was cover dated March-April 1958. But too many of the stories involved her trying to convince Superman to marry her or cat-fighting with Lana Lang over who the Man of Steel liked better. (Lana, by the way, had moved to Metropolis to work in television broadcasting.) Or she'd be trying to prove that Clark Kent was really Superman. There was a cute series involving Lois' dreams of what life would be like if she married Superman and had kids.

Some of these stories were individually clever, but it didn't do much for showing
Lois off as a capable and professional woman. Actually, I respect and admire real-life women who choose to give up careers to be full-time moms (as Lois did in the imaginary Mrs. Superman stories), but Lois in "real life" was shamelessly throwing herself at a guy who just wasn't into her.

To be fair, mixed in with all that were occasional stories in which she's shown doing investigative reporting and helping to catch bad guys. But Lois' main saving grace throughout the Weisinger-era was her not-infrequent demonstration of ethics and downright nobility.

In fact, there's a great example of this in Showcase #9, her try-out issue. An Otto Binder-penned story titled "The New Lois Lane" involves Superman trying to let Lois discover his secret identity!

Well, not really. A crook named "Con" Conners stumbles over a clue that Clark Kent is Superman. So he's following Clark around with a movie camera, hoping to get proof.



Superman's plan is to adapt a fake secret identity, then let Lois discover it and thus take the heat off Clark. So he "accidentally" leaves various clues, only to have Lois eradicate those clues to help the Man of Steel preserve his secrets. Superman ends up thanking her for her loyalty while pretty much gritting his teeth in aggravation.

Superman finally manages to make the plan work--"Con" discovers his fake identity and he simply announces he'll give that one up and become someone else, thus foiling "Con's" plans to... um... well, actually the story never does explain exactly what "Con" was planning on doing with his information. Blackmail doesn't seem practical. And you can't endanger his co-workers any more than they are already endangered by being publicly known as Superman's best friends.

Oh, well, "Con" would have thought of something, I'm sure. The main point is that Lois gets to be noble AND Otto Binder was able to mine some nifty humor out of the whole thing. Of course, this is spoiled a little by Lois' motivation to be noble--it was her new strategy to get Superman to fall in love with her.

But there are other stories in which she's noble just because it's the right thing to do, so we'll cut her a break. In the end, though, Jimmy got to be pretty darn cool, while Lois often came across looking foolish. And when you look more foolish than a guy who's been turned into a Giant Turtle Man, you really should rethink your life.

That's it for our systematic look at the Weisinger-era Superman stories. Of course, we'll return to it from time to time when I review individual random stories from the Silver Age, but I think we've covered all the specific topics I wanted to touch upon. I'll end by saying that Superman during this time built up a mythology that would be my choice for the richest (in terms of story telling potential) than any other comic book mythology every managed. That's arguable, of course. But it's my opinion and... well... it's my blog. So there!

Cover Cavalcade

Actually, I think Superman just might have a point.

Thanks to Gary Shapiro, host of From the Bookshelf, for sending me this laugh-out-loud cover.