Lois Lane: The Villain Era

"HA, HA, HAAA-AA!"

In earlier posts, I covered Lois Lane’s introduction and the unpublished story that might have made her Superman’s partner. When editors nixed that idea, she settled into the love triangle that defined her for decades, chasing Superman, spurning Clark. Siegel and Shuster had a lot of fun with that setup, as in this sequence from World’s Fair Comics #1 (1939), which…just has to be seen to be believed:

The World’s Fair propaganda and Lois telling Clark “I hate you!” would be enough, but they pale next to the sight of a love-powered Lois keeping up with Superman physically. “You’d be surprised how hard it is to get rid of me!” No kidding.

You might ask why Superman’s fleeing at all. The feature offered a few rationalizations—“My enemies might strike at me through her,” et cetera. The real reason is, Superman was a fantasy created by straight, nerdy boys who’d had their own anxieties about getting with girls—and the sort of childhood freedom the fantasy represents seemed incompatible with adult stuff like settling down.

(Jerry Siegel married in 1939 and 1948; Joe Shuster was single except for one brief interval.)

The notion that men treasure their bachelor freedom and women have to “trick” them into marriage seemed popular with Mort Weisinger, who edited the Superman titles from 1946 to 1970, a period roughly coinciding with comic books’ “Silver Age.”

Under Weisinger, Lois got her own title and appeared often in Superman and Action Comics. But despite the exposure, the Silver Age was not kind to Lois.

Weisinger Superman stories were often about outlandish situations or deceptions only explained at the end. He seemed fond of making characters act like jerks or evil maniacs.

Here’s a typical dream sequence from Lois Lane #59, in which a superpowered, crazed Lois kills Superman while disguised as her love rival Lana Lang:

“HA, HA, HAAA-AA!”

Many Silver Age stories were dreams, hoaxes, or “imaginary stories,” what-if exercises disconnected from the ongoing narrative. Plus, some covers exaggerated the sociopathy displayed in the stories they advertised.

But even Silver Age Lois’ default behavior was…a lot. She spent most of her time trying to prove Clark was Superman and/or trick Superman into marriage. Her schemes to do so were vindictive, suicidal, or just plain insane (the cover below is accurate):

Silver Age Lois was marketed as “Superman’s girlfriend” despite not really being that. But by then, the question wasn’t why he avoided her, it was why he gave this obsessive lunatic any encouragement. I’d say Lois was the worst “girlfriend” Silver Age Superman comics could imagine, except her sister Lucy was even worse:

To be fair, when it came to ridiculous asshole behavior, Silver Age Superman dished out a lot more than he took. Under Weisinger, no gaslighting was too extreme to preserve a secret identity—Superman would sooner build a robot army or make Lois think she’d hallucinated than admit she’d exposed him as Clark. And that was only the tip of the iceberg of what’s now known as “Superdickery.”

There was one line the Silver Age Lois Lane never crossed. Sometimes a superhero’s friends turn into super-enemies—Jimmy Olsen became the confused, monstrous Turtle Boy, Spider-Man’s friends the Osborns became the first and second Green Goblin, and Green Lantern’s love interest Carol Ferris spent years as a split personality, fighting him as Star Sapphire, before healing and reforming. Yet DC never ran a story in which Lois Lane assumed an identity as a costumed supervillain.

Perhaps it would have felt redundant.

Next Sunday: The era where Lois stood alone. Tomorrow: The highest one-move Scrabble score!