Lois Lane: Beginnings
And her dark opposite.
Lois Lane debuted in Action Comics #1 alongside Superman, and she bristled with energy right from the start. This six-panel sequence is some of Siegel and Shuster’s best work together, containing a lot of information about the character that would serve as a template for the decades ahead.
Of course, Lois can’t entirely be a “princess who saved herself,” or Superman would have nothing to do. The thug in green, Butch Matson, rallies his men to chase Lois down and kidnap her.
When Superman first rescues her, she’s not delighted but frightened—and why shouldn’t she be? His powers are unnatural and his motives are unknown. For all she knows, he could start treating her the same way Butch would have, if she defies him the way she defied Butch. So when he “advises” her to keep this evening to herself, she…does the opposite.
Action Comics #1 has three other women who appear before Lois is named, and they almost feel like Siegel and Shuster working their way toward the character. One is a mute victim of domestic violence. Superman’s dialogue as he saves her feels tangled up in traditional notions of “womanhood” that Lois’ introduction would start to dispel. Still, this shows just how satisfying the superhero fantasy can be when it’s set against the kind of violence one might see in the news:
(Having the wife-beating husband faint in mid-fight might count as subverting gender roles. It’s also hilarious.)
The second woman, Evelyn Curry, is the victim of a frame job who’s barely seen. The name of her alleged victim is Jack Kennedy. Clearly that’s not the same Jack Kennedy who would become president and die two or three decades later, but still, watching the early Superman figure out “who killed Jack Kennedy” is a bizarre experience today.
The third one, nightclub singer Bea Carroll, is the actual murderer. She seems like a dark reflection of the early Lois, sharing many of her qualities, including her coldness and fire. This scene has its imperfections too, but Bea is certainly compelling to watch:
Bea has a lot of tools in her arsenal which she deploys with rapid efficiency: outrage, threats, sexuality, gun, appeals to chivalry and pity. But none of it works—like, at all—so even if she weren't going off to die, she probably wouldn't have gotten a return engagement.
Female villains were a rarity in Superman stories, then as now.
I’ll have more about Lois later—probably next weekend, time allowing. Today, I’m at work on The Journal of Wordplay, which is set to be released tomorrow—though, as is my wont, I’ll probably release it later on in the day. Until then!