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This month we’ve seen Superman forget he’s Clark Kent, Clark Kent forget he’s Superman and an impostor convince Clark he was never Superman at all.  Now we investigate Superboy #107 (Sept. 1963), wherein Clark simply discards his super alter-ego so he can hog the glory for himself.

Writer Jerry Seigel and artist George Papp start us off at Smallville High School, where Clark and Lana Lang are attending their Geology class.  Clark’s x-ray vision reveals that “through a student’s error, a chemical mixture is about to explode!” (Make that two errors; the student is doing his Chemistry experiment in Geology class).

Clark’s first impulse is to slip away and change to Superboy, but then he experiences a sudden change of heart.  “I’m fed up always pretending to be weak and cowardly in my Clark Kent identity!” he thinks, “There are going to be some changes made, right now!”

Clark warns the other students that “one of my super-powers reveals an explosion coming,” and steps in front of the bubbling brew to absorb the blast.

Meanwhile, a band of crooks has arrived in Smallville with evil in their hearts and Green Kryptonite in the trunk of their car.  Krypto happens to fly over their car and crashes to Earth due to the Green-K’s effects, so they know it’s a “live” sample.

Arriving at his parents’ general store, Clark again uses his super-powers openly when Pa’s “slicing machine” breaks down.

PA KENT: “Uhm…I uh…I guess you’re wondering how Clark could move at super-speed.  Well, you see…”

CUSTOMER: “Actually, I’m more concerned that he didn’t put on gloves first!  I hope you don’t think I’m going to pay for that!”

You’ve got to love “super-feats” like this one.  I don’t care how fast his hand is moving, unless he can change its shape so it’s thin as a blade, it’s only going to pound that roast out of shape, not slice it into deli meat.

It doesn’t take long for Clark’s revelation to spread through town, and soon Chief Parker drives over to the store to get confirmation from the horse’s mouth.  Having turned into quite the showoff, Clark answers him in dramatic fashion, while the visiting gangsters look on.

I don’t know, would crooks really refer to themselves as “us racket guys” and their superiors as “crime big shots”?  Somehow I always figured nobody really sees themselves as crooks, even when they are.

Anyway, Clark flies off (in his street clothes) to a stone quarry, where he fashions a giant Clark Kent statue to place next to the Superboy statue in front of the Superboy Museum (thus demonstrating that his obsession with statue tributes to himself began at an early age).

The criminal element wastes no time in exploiting the new status quo, as one of the visiting crooks barges into the Kent store and opens fire on Ma and Pa.

Tragedy is averted, but Pa points out that he and Ma will always be at risk now from Superboy’s old foes.  “Stop whining,” says Clark, “I’ll take you where it’s safe!”  Sure enough, he flies the couple to a “deserted South Pacific island” that “isn’t even on any maps!  No crooks will find you here!  And there’s plenty of food on those banana and mango trees!”

That night, Clark is off to the big school dance, where he ditches Lana to dance with five other girls at the same time (through super-speed).  Lana sobs, “I guess Clark will never forgive me for not showing more interest in him before he revealed himself to be Superboy!”

This brings up an interesting point, by the way.  If Lana and later Lois are so convinced Clark is Superman, and if they want to marry Superman, wouldn’t it therefore be logical to treat Clark really nicely, in hopes he’ll propose to such a “swell girl”?  Surely it makes more sense than badgering, spying on and try to expose him, which only makes the girls come off the last any man in his right mind would want to wed.

Anyway, after entertaining his classmates by simultaneously playing every instrument in the dance hall band, Clark makes a patrol of Smallville and suddenly comes to his senses, realizing he’s been a jerk, marooning his parents on a desert isle and giving away his most precious secret.  Only now does his super-recall remind him that there was a glowing, red rock in that Geology class, a rock that must have been Red Kryptonite, the substance which always affects him in a different way.

See, this is why I love these old stories; you always learn something.  Turns out intense jealousy can prevent you from feeling a tingling sensation.  So if I ever find myself in the path of a jellyfish, I’ll just think of how much richer Bill Gates is than me and I should be okay.

Clark rescues Ma and Pa from the uncharted island faster than you can say “Dharma Project” and soon comes up with a plan to extricate himself from his self-made crisis. When the out-of-town crooks at last show up at the Kent home bearing their chunk of Green-K, they are surprised to see it has no effect on Clark.  And now we see the “brilliant solution” to Clark’s dilemma.

When Chief Parker arrives, Superboy explains “You see, I had learned these crooks planned to attack me with Kryptonite, but I didn’t know when they’d strike!  So with the cooperation of the Kent family, I wore this ‘Clark Kent’ disguise to lure them into striking me at the Kent home!”

But what, you ask, about that Green Kryptonite that had no effect?  For that, you can thank an ingenious invention by Clark:

And so the secret is safe once more.  Uh-huh.

Siegel comes close to getting this one right, but muffs it at the end.  If Superboy isn’t affected by the crooks’ Green Kryptonite — and he deliberately gives  the crooks and Chief Parker the impression that he isn’t — then why bother with the “Clark Kent masquerade”?  It really doesn’t matter where and when the crooks attack him with a powerless green rock.

What would have made a lot more sense would have been to say, “I engineered it so the crooks would use the Kryptonite on my friend Clark, who as an Earth boy is of course unaffected by its rays.”  Chief Parker could have been waiting in the bushes to nab the gangsters and Superboy needn’t have appeared at all (although maybe a robot could fly in and say, “Thanks for your help, pal!” to seal the deal).

The other issue here is Clark’s Kryptonite-neutralizing belt buckle.  If it works this well, then why not include a version in every Clark and Superboy belt he wears for the rest of his life?

Oh well, with all the amnesia that’s been going around, maybe it just slipped his mind.

In Action Comics #375 (Apr. 1969), Superman ends his four-month quest to rediscover his secret identity, lost to him after accidental exposure to a mysterious ray emitted by an alien machine.

Writer Otto Binder teams once more with artists Curt Swan and Jack Abel to brings us “The Big Forget,” which actually turns out to be the Big Remember.

Having already made three incorrect guesses at his secret identity — President of the United States, professional wrestler and super-thief — Superman decides to throw in the towel and simply invent a new identity.  (Interestingly, no consideration is given to simply living without one, possible because Superman has also managed to forget the location of his Fortress of Solitude, which makes it necessary to find a place to live, and a job to pay the rent.  Unless of course he simply carves out a new Fortress somewhere else, or makes diamonds out of coal as a source of wealth, or…)

Influenced by subconscious memory, Superman decides to apply for a job as a reporter.  Donning a blue suit and red tie and adding a pair of glasses (to “give me the look of a writer”), he sets out to visit the two major papers in town, the Daily Planet and the Metropolis Eagle.  With no particular attachment to either publication, he tosses a coin to see which one to apply to first, and the Eagle wins the toss.

In his disguise, Superman approaches the Eagle’s personnel manager, figuring he’ll need to make a strong pitch to convince the man he has a future in journalism.  As it turns out, the guy has no trouble at all seeing him as a reporter, or more precisely as the star reporter for the competition.

Tossed out of the Eagle’s offices, Superman decides to see what reception he gets at the Daily Planet.  If you’ve been following this series, you’ll recall Superman has met “Clark Kent” several times in his amnesiac state, but never noticed his powerful resemblance to the reporter (apparently those magical glasses fool even him!).  What Superman doesn’t know is that the “Clark” he’s met is actually a foreign spy, the same one responsible for his amnesia.  Now he’s beginning to suspect that maybe he’s the real Clark Kent after all,  so to test his theory he presents himself to Lois Lane and Perry White, who recognize him immediately.

“They couldn’t be fooled by a superficial resemblance!” he thinks.  After all, these are perceptive people.  Nobody could just put on a pair of non-prescription glasses and a blue suit and just fool these bright individuals into thinking he’s a whole different person, right?  Oh, wait.  Nevermind…

Clark — as he now knows himself to be — realizes that if he’s the genuine article, then there’s an imposter on the loose.  Going through his desk, he finds a set of keys labeled with his home address (so now he knows where it is!), and goes to investigate.  A quick scan of the apartment with his x-ray vision reveals a secret closet containing Superman robots and souvenirs, confirming he’s at last stumbled upon the right identity.  In the fridge, he finds more secrets; microfilm, codes and a radio transmitter, indicating the fake Clark is a spy.

As he works on deciphering the secret codes, he’s suprised by the fake Clark, aka Agent Zero-Zero, who suddenly enters the apartment and pulls a gun.  When the spy calls for his cohorts, Clark quickly kayoes him and decides to take his place.

From the roof of the apartment building, Clark and his “fellow spies” are picked up by a blimp and meet the chief of the spy ring, an unnamed brunette female with a Princess Leia hairstyle and, since she’s a spy, a “Dragon Lady” dress and cigarette holder.  Locating “a trunkload of stolen secrets” with his x-ray vision, Superman summons the FBI with super-ventriloquism and tells them to send an armed ship out to see to capture the blimp.

The spy chief berates “Agent Zero-Zero” for not killing Kent, and to buy some time Clark strips off  his suit, revealing his Superman costume beneath.

So now Superman is pretending to be Zero-Zero pretending to be Superman.  Still with us?  He performs a series of “super-feats” to convince “Kent” (the still-disoriented Zero-Zero) he’s the real deal.  For his first astonishing display of super-powers, he uses “x-ray vision” to pick the four aces out of a turned-over deck of cards (Seriously.  The “Dragon Lady” thinks he’s using the sleight-of-hand tricks taught to all her spies, but he really is using x-ray vision).  Next, he blows out of a window as if to propel the blimp by “super-breath”.  Dragon Lady thinks he’s simply taken advantage of a natural gust, but in fact he really has used super lung power, and in doing so, forced the blimp back into U.S. waters, where a Coast Guard cutter waits.

A surreptitious blast of heat vision puts a hole in the blimp and sends it floating down to the federal authorities.  Dragon Lady orders the evidence thrown overboard, but Superman retrieves it.

With the spies in custody, Superman seeks assistance in recovering his Clark Kent memories.  Locating the Batcave, he appeals to Batman for help and notices among the Caped Crusader’s trophies a mixed-up calendar from the Bizarro World.  This sparks an idea, and using directions provided by Batman, he flies to the Fortress of Solitude.

Among his trophies is a metal called Amnesium, which wipes out the memories of non-super beings.  But also in his possession is Bizarro Amnesium, and on a hunch he exposes himself to it.  As hoped, when used on non-Bizarros it has the effect of restoring memories, not taking them, and Superman’s Clark Kent memories come flooding back.

And so after four long months things are at last back to normal.

I’m not sure what I can say at this point that you’re not already thinking yourself.  This four-parter was totally daft, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s also a painfully thin premise to be stretched out over a whopping four months.  One might reasonably ask why Superman doesn’t do in Chapter One what he finally gets around to doing here; seeking out Batman (or another Justice Leaguer) and simply asking, “What’s my secret identity, and where’s my Fortress?”

Under other circumstances, it would be natural to feel some resentment at having the whole thing wrapped up by a plot device as ridiculous as “Bizarro Amnesium” (and I thought I was a pack rat — this guy keeps everything!), but honestly after all we’ve been through, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Anything that gets us out of this mess is welcome.

Historically, we’re creeping ever closer to the arrival of editor Julius Schwartz and a major revamp of the super-mythos that will take us into the Bronze Age.  As such, this is one of the last gasps of the Silver Age style of storytelling, and so far as I know one of the last entries by veteran writer Otto Binder.   Too bad it’s ultimately quite…well, forgettable.

In the last two posts, we’ve seen Superman pose as the President of the United States and a professional wrestler in his efforts to reclaim his forgotten secret identity.  In Action Comics #374 (Mar. 1969), he explores the possibility that his alter ego is Public Enemy #1.

We open — as we so often do — in the offices of the Daily Planet, where Superman is reviewing a clip file of his past escapades for a clue to his missing identity.  Ironically, his helper is “Clark Kent,” actually a foreign spy who sent the real Clark to his apparent death and took his place at the Planet.  In reality, his assasination attempt took away Superman’s memory, which is how we got into this mess.

Unable to turn up a helpful clue, Superman takes his leave.  Noting that he’s already goofed twice and adopted the wrong identities, he decides “from now on, I’ll just carry out my regular duties, such as crushing crime!”  (The other duties including, of course, saving reckless girlfriends and sidekicks from their own stupidity, cutting ribbons at building dedications and putting on truck-juggling exhibitions for charity).

A quick visit to the police station sets up Superman’s latest red herring.

Over at the state prison, a pair of convicts blow open a wall and initiate a mass break-out, which Superman quickly quashes.  One convict escapes, however, and as luck would have it Superman recognizes him as a member of the missing Super-Thief’s gang.  He follows him to abandoned train car, and with his x-ray vision spots an underground vault beneath it.

To his surprise, Superman finds a portrait of himself in the vault, along with a lead box, chained and labeled “Kryptonite: Never To Be Used.”  That clinches it; yes he’s promised not to jump to any more conclusions, but the painting and Kryptonite are conclusive proof that the missing Super-Thief must be Superman himself…right?  Anyway if he has any doubts, they fade when he finds a set of rubber masks in the image of the crook.

In the disguise, Superman goes to meet his “gang” and finds  they’re scheduled to pull a crime that very night.  “Ulp!” he thinks, “I’m…uh…stuck!  I have to rob the ice capades!”

That night, a performance of the Ice Capades uses a giant prop studded with real gems, when Super-Thief and his gang appear on skates to steal it in mid-show.  Police try to stop them, but a blast of super-cold breath trips them up.

As the gang collects the jewels, Superman thinks, “Why would I pull robberies like this?  What I do with that loot?  How can I be Super-Thief when it goes against my instincts to break the law?”

Sending  his hoods out of the room, Super-Thief changes to Superman and prepares to return the loot, when a Superman robot appears.  Thinking fast, he asks the robot to tell him his identity.

Learning that his usual “fence” for gems operates out of candy factory, Super-Thief makes a trip there and dumps his haul into a chocolate vat so they can be disguised as candies.  He’s interrupted when an FBI agent storms in to arrest him and the fence, known as “Gem” Horton.  Horton surprises the agent with a gas-bomb Easter Egg and takes him off to kill him, which Superman cannot allow.

Protecting the FBI man from the effects of the car crash, Superman returns to the candy factory to find it abandoned, Horton having run off with the chocolate-covered jewels.  Disgusted, he vows never to pull another job.

Back at the hideout, Super-Thief makes a series of mistakes that threaten to expose him, so he decides to go ahead with the next job after all, to divert suspicion. Breaking into a lab to steal a “radio-isotope,” he uses his super-powers to prevent the lab workers from being injured, and when a radioactive isotope falls from its container, he swallows it to save his gang from radiation poisoning.

Miserable in his secret identity, Superman seeks out a psychiatrist to help him.  The doctor conducts a word association test, and the results are disturbing.

Returning to his vault-hideout in his Super-Thief disguise, Superman gets a shock when the real Super-Thief shows up.  Just then, Super-Thief’s various fences show up en masse, having realized he’s led the FBI to all of them.  Superman unmasks and the crooks open fire, except for one who has a slightly…unorthodox plan of attack.

Happily, the Superman robot appears and disarms the would-be bomber.

When the police arrive, the second Super-Thief is revealed as an FBI agent.  The real Super-Thief had been killed a year earlier, but the FBI took his place (thus explaining the rubber masks Superman found).

Superman still wonders why he gave the psychiatrist the answers he did, and the robot suggests it’s because he’d convinced himself he was a crook, and answered accordingly.  Of course that still doesn’t explain why the robot said he was Super-Thief.

Dazed, the robot eventually located Superman and spotted him dressing up as Super-Thief, and thus concluded that was indeed his master’s secret identity.

At this point, Binder’s little magnum opus is, like the robot, beginning to self-destruct from its own illogic, so in the next issue we’ll finally get some resolution.

You have to suspend a great deal of disbelief to get through this entry.  Superman says he has an instinct against committing crimes, yet he does so repeatedly when he could just as easily have used his powers to sabotage the jobs without his gang catching on.  It’s anyone’s guess why a robot’s computer brain would be affected in the same way as a flesh-and-blood human brain, even allowing for the incredible coincidence of showing up at precisely the wrong moment to get hit by the amnesia ray.  Having the robot blow up just as it’s about to give up the secret just tips us totally into the realm of farce.

Even though Binder’s story is very much stuck in the Weisinger past, with its over-reliance on coincidence, “irony” and improbabilities, Swan’s art is obviously moving forward, with creative page layouts and panel designs that break from (what was up til then) tradition.  The stage is being set for the arrival of Murphy Anderson on inks and Julius Schwartz as editor, when the Man of Steel will finally be allowed to zoom forward into a new era of greatness.

But in the meantime, Curt’s stuck with inks by Abel — who’s never more than just that — and stories like this one.  And any way you slice it, that’s a crime.

When we last saw Superman, he was suffering amnesia, laboring under the mistaken belief that he was the President of the United States.  One month later in Action Comics #372 (Feb 1969), the Man of Steel is still wrestling with issues of identity, deciding that if he’s not the leader of the free world, then logically he must be a professional wrestler.

Writer Otto Binder pens this second chapter in Superman’s search for self, with Curt Swan and Jack Abel providing the art.

With the location of both his his Fortress of Solitude and his Metropolis apartment wiped from his memory, Superman is reduced to hanging out on a Metropolis park bench.  There, he tries to puzzle out  the mystery of his lost identity.

One thing he’s sure of is that he’s not the Daily Planet reporter Clark Kent, since he’s met the guy answering thta description.  What he doesn’t know is that the “mild mannered reporter” walking the streets of Metropolis now is actually a foreign spy otherwise known by the code name Double-Zero. It was this secret agent who “assassinated” the real Kent in the previous issue, triggering the fluke event that caused Superman’s amnesia in the first place.

When a stray gust of wind blows a fragment of a newspaper to his feet, Superman thinks he may have found the clue he needs to answer the mystery; a report on the disappearance of a masked wrestler who performs as “the Masked Superman.”

It’s a simple enough matter for Superman to fashion a black mask, which he dons before seeking out “Masked Superman’s” manager.  He reports for work, claiming to have been off on a boating trip during his “missing” week.  Together, they drive to the site of the Masked Superman’s next scheduled bout.  “Now,” says the manager, “remember to ham it all up, as usual!  Pretend you’re really super!”

Told to unload the trailer containing his stage props, Superman finds they’ve all been accidentally smashed, and hunts up substitutes at a junk yard.  In place of a fake safe and steel bar, he substitutes the real thing.

For his first “feat,” the Masked Superman lifts a “five-ton” safe and tosses it out of the building (and back to the scrapyard).  One audience member laughs, “Ha! Ha! What a clown!  I’ll bet that safe doesn’t weigh five ounces!”  but of course in this case it was the genuine article.  Then comes the stunt involving the steel bar.

With his pre-match routine completed, the Masked Superman gets down to the business of actually wrestling.  In his first bout, he’s pitted against a huge opponent dubbed “the Bulldozer,”  who looks to be more than a match for him.  Actually his only real challenge is finding a way to defeat the behemoth without revealing his true power levels.

The Bulldozer cedes the match, and Superman returns to his dressing room, where he encounters reporter Lois Lane, who’s come to interview him.  When she expresses frustration over the absence of Clark Kent — who was to bring a camera — Superman uses his x-ray vision to see what’s making Kent late.  It turns out he’s being pursued by two gunmen, so the Masked Superman makes his apologies and slips away from the interview.

Superman apprehends the gunmen and “Clark Kent” says they were after him because of “a crime expose” he’s been writing.  In reality, they were rival spies under orders to kill him, but he’s not about to admit that, and because he knows they won’t either, his secret is safe.  As Superman flies off, he notices that his costume has been ripped.  To preserve his identity, he’s been wearing a non-super version of the costume in his wrestling matches, and that’s what he’s got on now; the real super-suit is still hanging in his dressing room.

Meanwhile, Lois has been nosing around that same dressing room, suspecting the wrestler may be the real Man of Steel.  In a lead box, she finds a chunk of green kryptonite, which she assumes Superman is using to conduct experiments to find an antidote.  She decides to leave it out of the box, figuring that if it weakens the Masked Superman, she’ll have proof he’s the real deal.  However, Superman sees what she’s up to and uses his super-breath to blow the Green-K into one of his costume boots.  When he arrives in the dressing room, he seems completely unaffected by its rays.

Soon after, however, the radiations begin to affect him, so he quickly flings the rock out of the boot “a few miles down into the ground”, figuring “I can repair the floor later!”  Sure.  Later.

Obviously this entire sequence makes no kind of sense.  The vast majority of Superman’s encounters have occurred when he was in costume, and the super-suit never gave him any protection on those occasions.  Well, maybe we don’t know for sure whether his feet hurt, so I guess the boots might protect him a bit, but logically Kryptonian fabric shouldn’t provide any greater protection from Kryptonite than polyester would from Plutonium.

Heading to his next match, the Masked Superman is accosted by underworld figures who tell him to throw his next fight.  He does some throwing, alright; tossing his opponent — the Terrible Tiger — out of the ring and into the laps of the mobsters.  Next up, he faces the Merciless Mauler, and takes out his aggressions on the poor guy (”Just thinking about those gangland gangsters makes my blood sizzle!”) When the Mauler whispers, “I thought you were supposed to lose!”, Superman goes over the edge.

While this scene does make for an arresting cover image, it’s also completely out of character.  None of the wrestlers nor their gangland bosses is a true threat to Superman, and compared to some of the cruelties and injustices of life, rigging a wrestling match hardly seems a heinous enough offense to warrant such a fit of rage. Maybe the ray that took his memory did more damage to Superman’s brain than he knows.

Returning to his dressing room, the Masked Superman is attacked by the gangsters, angry at what he’s cost them in lost bets.  Wasting no time, they let the lead fly, but thinking fast, Superman uses his super-cold breath to stop their bullets.

With their target unharmed and no bullets to be found on the floor, the gunmen assume their ammo has somehow been replaced with blanks, and beat a hasty retreat.

Later, Superman finds the diary of the real Masked Superman and learns that he was a great admirer of Superman…which means, of course, that they can’t be the same person.  Knowing the wrestler liked boating, he conducts a search at sea and finds the poor fellow shipwrecked on an island.  He’s easy to spot because he’s the only shipwrecked sailor wearing a Superman costume; apparently he likes to wear the outfit when he goes boating.  Hey, it takes all kinds.

Unfortunately, due to the shipwreck, the wrestler has also lost his memory, so Superman gently reminds him.

His memory returned, the Masked Superman tries to restore Superman’s memory by hitting him over the head with a club (I don’t blame you, brother!) but of course it doesn’t work.  Superman returns the wrestler to his manager and gets back to the business of trying to find out who he really is.

Well, this one was…interesting.  Even in his addled current state, it’s hard to imagine Superman thinking the masked wrestler routine would make for a proper secret identity.  Also it’s interesting to note that it’s not only super-criminals and gangsters who collect Kryptonite, but also his “admirers.”  The Masked Superman — a fan of the Man of Steel — keeps a chunk in his dressing room as an expression of his devotion.  Apparently the substance is only slightly more rare than common quartz.

The “super cold breath” tactic for dealing with bullets is effective, and logically should have been Superman’s standard method of dealing with the situation.  Certainly it’s less hazardous to bystanders.  You have to wonder, though, how “super cold breath” works.  We can cool off a spoonful of hot soup, for example, by blowing across its surface, but it’s not that our breath is actually cold.  Superman must have to “think cold” or something to activate the power, otherwise he’s just blow the bullets away instead of freezing them, right?

Anyway, the search continues in our next installment, when Superman decides that having started as a politician and progressed to professional wrestling, the next logical job to try out is that of a criminal.  Stay tuned.