In the 1960s, Lois Lane acquired super powers with such frequency that she sported her own recognizable green-and-yellow super costume for appearances in Action Comics and Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane.
Lois acquired her costume — even as her romantic rival Lana Lang got a yellow-and-purple one — in Lana Lang, Superwoman! (Lois Lane 17, May 1960).
In The Battle Between Super-Lois and Super-Lana! (Lois Lane 21, Nov. 1960), writer Jerry Siegel and artist Kurt Schaffenberger reflected the ambiguous attitudes of the era, trivializing women’s power as often as they celebrated it.
Instead of corralling killers or blowing out forest fires, Super-Lois and Super-Lana whipped up super-pancakes and super-pizzas in their efforts to impress Superman. So fevered were their desires to marry him that they even engaged in a super-catfight.
Siegel and Schaffenberger brought Lois’ costume back in The Reversed Super-Powers! (Action Comics 274, March 1961) when Superman’s anti-kryptonite experiment accidentally transferred his powers to Lois.
Something was there, in the American air, beyond all the condescending silliness. The cultural gravitational pull of this theme of an empowered Lois Lane has been strong enough to affect even the Superman stories outside the comic books.
In the final episode of the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Superman, All That Glitters, Noel Neill’s Lois gained super powers.
And in the 1990s TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, Terry Hatcher’s Lois accidentally siphoned Superman’s powers to become Ultrawoman.
Ironically, Margot Kidder, the actress who played Lois in the four Christopher Reeve Superman movies, predicted this turn of events. She was unaware that the characters had become engaged and then married in the comic books, but she wasn’t unappreciative of the changes.
“She’ll have to get some super powers next,” Kidder said. “As women’s liberation goes on, that’s how it should be. Know more and do more. I’m all for it.” She added with a laugh, “But skip the marriage. And make sure he does the cooking.”
Bob Doncaster wrote: Super pancakes and pizzas that would have fed a small country. With great power...
ReplyDeleteBob Johnson wrote: So they were on the Justice Food Network of America?
ReplyDeleteSalvatore Marlow wrote: I loved the sappy Super Lois stories as a kid, “Do you want superpowers like Lana?” “Yes please.” Never realizing Lana had insect powers for most of her life. When written right, Lois never needed powers.
ReplyDeleteMark Engblom wrote: It was almost as if the male creators of that era were subconsciously wrestling with the concept of a woman "doing what I do," albeit temporarily and at arm's length. That generation, as always, was swimming in the midst of some big currents (and undercurrents) of change. In some of the most (seemingly) minor venues (like childrens' comic books), society was rehearsing its reordering.
ReplyDeleteChris Juricich wrote: The special issues were when Lois wasn't transformed into a super-brainiac future Lois, a witch, a werewoman, super-powered, etc. whatever, they were fun tales i look back with joy and nostalgia.
ReplyDeleteBruce Kanin wrote:
ReplyDeleteAlan Moore brought Super-Lana back for the final time in "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?"
Bob Doncaster wrote:
ReplyDeleteLike a little black dress, every stylish young woman has a super suit in their wardrobe, just in case.
Jim Vlcko wrote:
ReplyDeleteEverybody got super-powers eventually, Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Batman, Robin, Batwoman. It was a common story motif. Superman lost his powers just about as often.
I replied:
Jim Vlcko However, the stories of women gaining super powers had a particularly odd resonance. After all, Super-Perry didn't waste his time making super-pancakes.
Jim Vlcko wrote:
ReplyDeleteBut I agree the gender power reversal was interesting. I read early Lois Lane comics as a boy, only because the local newspaper adapted some of the stories in its Saturday comics section. Then I bought a few more but found them too girly for me. There was one where Lois became a jungle queen, reminiscent of 50s jungle stories where scantily clad women, always with full makeup and hair coiffured, ,saved the natives from reds and unscrupulous hunters.
Richard Meyer wrote:
ReplyDeleteThere was an imaginary story where Earth explodes and Lois is on Krypton with super powers and Kal-El pursuing her. It ends with her losing her powers and Kal getting them which is apparently supposed to be funny and appropriate.
A better and genuinely funny story was Lois dreaming that she and Clark both get super powers but she finds that it’s utterly hopeless trying to teach cowardly Clark to join her in super heroics.
ReplyDeleteBob Hughes wrote:
Are these stories imprinted on my psyche because of an intrinsic quality of their own or simply because I was 8 years old when I read them? Once again, this was continuity and "soap opera" before Stan Lee supposedly invented them. Alan Moore reached back into this era for his closing story "Whatever Happened to the Man of Steel?"
Charles W. Fouquette wrote:
ReplyDeleteI read somewhere that the publishers were dismayed that girls did not read comics as much as boys do and by a wide margin. So, they gave the ladies super powers. The thing is, they never kept the powers. A sign of the times is very evident in the way male writers treated women in those days. I'm glad to see times have changed and for the better.
George Blake wrote:
ReplyDeleteRegrettably people, men and women, that gain or are on a position of power often act “silly," petty, and selfish.
Ask any guy, “If you could have any one super-power like Superman, which would you want?”
The answer has been the same ever since I was a child — a long, long time ago — “X-Ray Vision!”
Can you guess why?
Superman was an ideal, he could handle the responsibility. Most people, for example that win millions in the lottery or through inheritance, go nuts and spend themselves into bankruptcy.
We may choose to be silly or not. You know the old saw, “Power corrupts…”
I replied:
Yes. So true. Socrates made that point with the Ring of Gyges.
ReplyDeleteSamuel J Tomaino wrote:
Lois Lane 21 was my first DC comic and first superhero comic. Previously, I had bought Casper the Friendly Ghost. I was attracted by the cover. Even though I was only 10, I'm sure it appealed to my young libido. When Superman was thinking that "Both Lois and Lana have acquired permanent superpowers." I believed it even though I did not know who Lana Lang was! That 10-page story and the other which was a two-parter were silly but attracted me to a lifelong love of the superhero genre. Fortunately, my second Superman comic was Superman 141, "Superman's Return to Krypton", one of his best Silver Age stories.
Robert S.Childers wrote:
ReplyDeleteThere's a very early story where Lois dreams she gets super powers (it may have been the first Lois-with-powers story) which follows the same celebrate-and-trivialize format. She does fight crooks, but then she's relegated to being a wallflower at a dance in her honor because none of the guys want to dance with her for fear of getting crushed or stepped on. Then she kind of tries to sexually assault Superman just before she wakes up.
Charles Terrell wrote:
ReplyDeleteIt was just about a given if someone around Superman got super-powers like Lois and Lana they'd either spend their time saving people just to show up Superman instead of for altruistic reasons or waste them engaging in meaningless displays like these. They always had to act in a fashion that depowering them later for being unworthy was justified, with women it was easy to go the stereotype route of things like the super-catfighting.