Superman’s first great romance seemed a little fishy.
Actually, that bad pun doesn’t do justice to an engaging storyline. In The Girl in Superman’s Past (Superman 129, May 1959) and Superman’s Mermaid Sweetheart (Superman 135, Feb. 1960), artists Wayne Boring and writers Bill Finger and Jerry Siegel introduced readers to Lori Lemaris, a mermaid from sunken Atlantis.
The first story begins with Clark Kent and Lois Lane bundled up to attend a football game at his alma mater, Metropolis University. Clark reminisces how a chance campus encounter with a girl in a wheelchair led him to fall in love with the mysterious beauty, and moon over her.
One poignant, ironic element of the story has the most physically free man in the world drawn to what appears to be a disabled girl.
But when Clark asks her to marry him and is about to reveal himself, Lori cuts him off by telling him that she’s always known he’s Superman.
The shocked Man of Steel figures out she’s a telepathic mermaid, and they team up to rescue flood victims before they part.
Finger’s stories about Superman were often memorable, and these added a recurring character to Superman’s universe, despite the built-in contradiction with Superman’s friend Aquaman (Lori’s Atlantis and Aquaman’s Atlantis were clearly not the same place).
It did seem interesting, to me, that Clark Kent’s first real romance should coincidentally involve a being as fantastic and secretive as himself.
And Clark and Lori have more in common than we might initially think. For one thing, they’re both monsters.
“Like fantasy creatures such as mermaids, Clark/Superman combines categories in ways that technically make him a ‘monster’ without inspiring the kind of fear/disgust that would make him the centerpiece of horror (except, perhaps, to villains),” observed critic Greg M. Smith.
This kind of doomed romance has the advantage of seemingly bringing major changes to a continuing character who will, at the end, be left back at square one.
Bruce Kanin wrote:
ReplyDelete"For one thing, they’re both monsters." In a way, yes. Another wonderful write-up, Dan. I love the origin story and can re-read it over & over again. Wayne Boring was at his peak (a "peak" that lasted years).
Mark Engblom wrote:
ReplyDeleteEven as a kid reading this tale for the first time, I had a tough time believing that someone with Superman’s enhanced senses wouldn’t immediately realize she was half fish.
I replied:
That is a point so obvious that the writers thought it best to skip right over it and hope nobody would notice. Meanwhile, Lori put her enchanced senses to good use by calmly announcing that Clark was of course Superman, giving the readers a little frisson.
Interesting thought: might be it be that Clark couldn't really respect any woman who couldn't see through his disguise?
Jim Vlcko wrote:
ReplyDeleteI read one of the first Lori Lemaris story when I was a kid, a back-up to a cover that featured Titano. I found the Superman stories often a little hard comprehend, and didn't know why Lori was hiding her mermaid status from Clark. Or even how it was possible to sleep in a bathtub. Whether you had a fish tail or not.
ReplyDeleteDan Whitworth wrote:
I had it pretty bad for a girl named Lori in high school. And she WAS on the swim team. I wonder…
Richard Meyer wrote:
ReplyDeleteThere was an occasional but recurring theme in that era of Superman of loneliness and doomed romance that was poignant and mature in contrast with the silly stuff. There was an imaginary story where he marries Lois, Lana, and Lori in succession and they all die. No sex In those days, but they did have death.
The saddest romance that I remember was the Sally Selwyn story if I’m spelling it correctly… have you covered that one?
Michael Fraley wrote:
ReplyDeleteTypical of the modesty inherent in a story about a man in skin-tight clothes who has it all (or almost all) "out there," Clark never uses his x-ray vision, even accidentally, to discover just what Lori's "problem" is.
Vincent Mariani wrote:
ReplyDeleteAt his best, Boring could illustrate a classic story and make it even more powerful.
I replied:
Yes, he had a way with somber emotional scenes that he didn't often get to use.
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeleteFew DC stories of the period explored love and heartbreak as this one did. Oh, there was a lot of romance, but no relationships. Superman seemed to have his greatest love in doomed relationships but in this case, he didn't know it was doomed at first. Rarely do we see his feelings for Lois or even Lana shown as nakedly as in this story (the Lyla story is perhaps the other great example).
But how fickle Lori is in the second story!
Artwise, Wayne Boring shined in both stories. His intense style brings out the emotion as few artists would have done back then. Even in the panel above you can see the power in his art. The angle he selected helps establish the tension and lack of balance of the characters. Great stuff!
Paul Zuckerman wrote:
ReplyDeletePaul Zuckerman
When readers wrote in asking about that, Weisinger was able to explain that different areas of Atlantis responded to the island continent's sinking in different ways, establishing essentially (at least) two separate Atlantis'.
The interesting thing, though, is that Lori's introduction was the same month as Aquaman's new origin! Previously, there had been no mention of Aquaman being from Atlantis. Rather, as summarized at Mike's Amazing World of Comics, "Famed undersea explorer, Tom Curry, discovered an ancient city in the depths where no diver had ever penetrated. He believed it to be the lost kingdom of Atlantis. Making himself a water-tight home inside one of the palaces, Curry studied the records and teachings of the ancient people. He soon began to teach these lessons and skills to his young son, whose mother had died when he was a babe.
Curry’s son, who would later be known as Aquaman, was taught to live underwater and use the power of the sea to make him amazingly strong and swift. He also learned how to communicate with intelligent forms of sea life."
It was only in Adventure 260 (May 1959), that writer Robert Bernstein wrote a new origin for Aquaman, the one that we have known ever since---where his mother Atlanna is exiled from Atlantis and marries the lighthouse keeper, Tom Curry. They have a child, Arthur, and, on her death bed, Atlanna tells Tom about her past. The child develops his amazing abilities and becomes Aquaman. Only later on, is the Atlantis crown offered him. (Ironically, Sub-Mariner also had no particular reference to Atlantis).
Lori's first appearance was in Superman 129, also dated May 1959, hitting the stands about a week or two before Adventure 260. It is somewhat surprising that Mort did not catch that right away -- or maybe he didn't care.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Vaughan wrote:
One more reason why the Silver Age was the most off-the-wall era in the history of comics and the better for it.
Michael Gardner
ReplyDeleteOn one hand, he would be basically f***ing a fish, but on the other hand, Superman is an alien and that may not offend his own internal sense of morality.