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Recently our pal Commander Benson posted a great review of “Superman and Batman’s Joke on Lois Lane,” a story that reveals Lois as a devious, conniving nut job.  In my case, this is preaching to the converted, but a glance at the rest of that same comic (Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #59, Aug. 1965) offers plenty of supporting evidence for the still-unconvinced.

In the lead story, “Lois Lane’s Super-Perfect Crime,” Lois receives from friendly aliens an elixir that grants her invulnerability, making it possible, she reasons, for Superman to finally take a wife without fear that his enemies will strike at him through her.   The only catch with the invulnerability formula, say the aliens, is that she’ll have to consume at least one glass of milk every day to ward off the potion’s dangerous side effects.

All that’s left now is to clue Superman in on this happy development, so Lois quickly arranges a meeting with the Man of Steel and explains the whole thing in a logical and rational manner.  Haha, just kidding!  Instead she summons him to a rocky ravine with an emergency signal watch and uses dynamite to dump an avalanche of boulders on herself while Superman looks on in horror.  As he digs her out in a state of shock and grief, he’s astonished to find her hale and hearty.

Naturally a little thing like invulnerability is handy indeed when you live a life as peril-filled as Lois Lane’s.  In fact, it’s fair to say the term “trouble magnet” was invented with this gal in mind.

To Lois’ consternation, her newfound ability does not move Superman to immediately pop the question. Quite the contrary; when asked on a television chat show when he’ll get around to marrying, Superman answers quite frankly, “Never!” and Lois, watching the program, flips her wig.

Naturally Lois assumes that “marriage” for Superman means marriage to her.  If you’re thinking this tirade is a bit over the top even for Lois, you’re right.  It seems she forgot to drink her daily glass of milk the night before, and that “side effect” the aliens alluded to is, well, insanity.  Oops.

As fate would have it, Superman picks this very day to reveal to Lois and Lana Lang the secret hiding place of a deadly Kryptonite ray gun (honestly, won’t he ever learn?) and Lois takes advantage of this opening with a plot to rid herself of both Supmern and Lana, killing the former while disguised as the latter.

Based on eyewitness accounts and Lois’ (true) testimony that only she and Lana knew about the Kryptonite gun, Lana is convicted of Superman’s murder and months later, she’s executed in the electric chair.  All is well for Lois, until one night she finally drinks a glass of milk and comes to her senses (really, months between glasses of milk?  For shame, Lois!).  Lois does the honorable thing and confesses to her crime, but the courts rule she was insane at the time and let her go.  That’s small comfort to Lois, who’s killed her friend and her true love and has to endure the angry stares of people who know what she did.

Luckily the whole thing is revealed as an hallucination; Lois experienced a dizzy spell after drinking the invulnerability formula and imagined the rest of the story.  She quickly demands an antidote to the formula to keep her vision from coming true, and the aliens wave their farewells.

So the old “it was all a dream” ploy leaves us (and Lois) unsure of just what she might really be capable of (though the image of her murdering Superman can’t help but linger), but the second tale in this issue is less ambiguous about her character.  In “Lois Lane’s Romance With Jor-El,” the girl reporter interviews a scientist who’s drawn up plans for a massive tower that, if built, could aim a ray at the Earth’s core which would prevent the sort of atomic reactions that might explode the planet.  When Lois asks if the invention might have saved Krypton, the scientist agrees it could have, and gives Lois the plans for the tower so she can share them with Superman. “Superman, nothing!” she thinks, ” I’m going to follow this up myself!”

Borrowing an experimental time machine from Professor Potter, she travels to Krypton, careful to pick a time period where Jor-El is still young enough to actually build the tower before it’s too late.  When she arrives, Jor-El has yet to marry his steady girlfriend, Lara.  Deciding the Jor-El of this time period would scoff at claims Krypton was doomed, Lois presents the tower as a defense against alien attacks aimed at the planet’s core.

Someone might want to tell Lois that if she has just succeeded in saving Krypton, she won’t find Superman waiting for her on Earth to hear the news.  Anyway it’s a moot point since she returns to her time machine to find it non-functional, and realizes she’s stuck on Krypton.  Immediately she decides to make the best of it by stealing that hunky Jor-El away from Lara (”If I can’t have the son, then why not the father?” she thinks, doing her best Joan Collins impersonation).

Lara offers to let Lois room with her, and is rewarded with betrayal, as most of Lois’  girlfriends eventually are.

At the beauty salon, Lois tries to turn Lara’s hair green but ends up accidentally dyeing her own.  When she recovers from that boo-boo, she tries to win over Jor-El at a dance all three attend.  That too goes badly, so Lois gets even bolder, altering Lara’s datebook so she’ll miss a romantic moonlight appointment with Jor-El, then disguising herself to take Lara’s place.

Okay, now tell me Lois isn’t a complete sicko.  Anyway Lara sure thinks so when she walks in on this scene and slaps Lois in the face.  The next day, Jor-El prepares to activate the newly-constructed planet-saving tower in a public ceremony when the tower and the town it’s next to mysteriously disappear.  Lois realizes the tower has been built on the outskirts of Kandor, and she’s just witnessed the city’s theft at the hands of Brainiac.

Suddenly getting off of Krypton has become a bit more of a priority, so Lois returns to the time machine to try it out again.  Luckily the atmospheric anomaly that rendered it inoperable has been counteracted by a second weather effect and now it works again.  Lois takes her leave, but before returning to the present, she sets her dials for only a few years hence, and stops at the El home to stalk a very young Kal-El.

Okay, I’m pretty sure that sort of thing would get you locked up in any state in the Union.  Once the shudder of disgust passes, check out that groovy Kryptonian architecture on Jor-El’s house.  Wooden siding , neatly trimmed hedges, a white picket fence and a healthy green lawn.  Turns out Kryptonopolis looks a lot like Beaver Cleaver’s “Mayfield.”

Commander Benson has already ably covered the third story in the book, “Superman and Batman’s Joke on Lois Lane,” but I figure it’s worth including these panels to give you the gist of Lois’ character in the tale:

Okay, so in one issue we see Lois murder Superman and frame her “friend” for the deed (albeit in a dream), try to steal Superman’s father away from his mother (at one point making out with him while disguised as someone else), snatch an unsuspecting couple’s toddler from his yard for an inappropriate display of affection and plot to marry Bruce Wayne only because she thinks he’s really Superman.  And remember, she’s supposed to be the hero of this book.

In fairness, of course, it must be noted that this sort of behavior was pretty standard for our favorite girl reporter and yet Superman always came back for more, making him what psychologists would call a “co-dependent,” every bit as messed up as Lois is.  Bruce Wayne, at least, seems to understand this, as indicated in this panel where Lois willfully misinterprets the teachings of Norman Vincent Peale:

Or as Cameo sang back in the 80s, “She’s strange.  But I like it.”

When it comes to marriage, Lois Lane and Lana Lang have been regularly frozen out by Superman for years, but in Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #60 (Oct. 1965), things are taken to the extreme.

Writer Otto Binder and artist Kurt Schaffenberger start us off at the annual Celebrity Party, hosted by the Daily Planet as a charity fundraiser.  The hostesses are star reporter Lois Lane and TV journalist Lana Lang. And lest you think “hostess” means they’ve been put in charge of the event, and preside over it in elegant evening gowns, let’s remember that it’s 1965.  No, by “hostess” we mean the girls are serving drinks and sandwiches while dressed in super-short “French maid” outfits with fishnet stockings and high heels.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

With their best qualities thus on display, Lois and Lana rack up a growing list of marriage proposals from movie stars and wealthy sportsmen (that is, if “Be mine, Bootilicious” counts as a basis for holy matrimony) but neither is willing to settle for anything less than Superman.  As it happens, he’s manning a “Super-Kisses for Charity” stand at the party, and the girls are only too eager to contibute.

Superman finds their attentions embarrassing, and not for the first time.  He decides to give them a piece of his mind and dresses them down in front of the other party-goers.

Wow, that seems a little harsh, don’t you think?  I mean, not that they’re not annoying, but their money’s as good as anyone else’s, right?  I admit they’re being kind of wasteful with it, when half their kisses miss your lips, but it’s all going to a good cause.  Plus those outfits really are hot, let’s face it.

Anyway, despite his anger, Superman keeps an earlier promise to take the girls to the Fortress of Solitude, there to collect information for stories about its many wonders.  But as they’re a captive audience on the long trek to the North Pole, he takes advantage of the opportunity to lecture them sternly.

Once inside, Superman shows off his latest project: a “frozen sleep” device to be used by medical science for freezing incurable patients until cures for their conditions can be found (a decade or so later, this would catch on as “cryogenics”).  The outer limit on Superman’s time dial is 5,000 years, he explains, and once turned on it can’t be stopped without killing the subject.

Heading off on patrol, Superman leaves the girls alone for a while, and returns to find they’ve turned the technology on themselves.  Incredibly, he seems surprised by this development.

You can’t make it out here (and only barely in the original), but the plaque at the foot of the freeze chamber reads: “Goodbye, Superman!  We’re tired of waiting for you to propose.  When we wake up in the future, you’ll be dead, dead, DEAD!  — love and kisses, Lois and Lana).

Unable to turn off the device, Superman has no choice but to time-travel to the year 6965, there to await the unthawing of the girls, so he can return them to 1965.  Unfortunately, the device proves to have been defective, and the girls  do not survive the process.

Superman travels back to 1965, planning to emerge from the time stream one hour before the girls entered the chamber.  Unfortunately his calculations are off; due to a change in the Earth’s rotation after 5,000 years, the calendar will change by half a day.  Thus, he’s arrived several hours later than intended.  “I guess you can’t beat fate!” he decides.  Yes, no point in trying another trip a couple hours into the past.  Probably wouldn’t work anyway.  Wonder what’s on tonight?

As it turns out, what’s on is Lana Lang’s TV show, “I Remember Superboy,” which in turn makes Clark remember the pretty redhead is no more.  Life at the office is similarly depressing without Lois.

Yes, that girl who sealed herself in a cryogenic chamber to spite me in a passing fit of pique…how could I ever have called her “impulsive”?

Superman decides to try one more time, this time going back to the night of the party to be nicer to the girls.  Along the way, however, he’s knocked off a course by a comet that slips in and out of the time stream (as comets so often will) and he ends up in prehistoric times.  Throwing in the towel, he returns to the Fortress to mourn his lost girlfriends, remembering all the times they helped him out of jams and/or saved his life, and feeling like a total heel.

Missing them terribly, he turns his thoughts to the city of Kandor, where their doubles live.

Ah yes, the always inspiring motto of the Look-Alike Squad: “We’re Better Than Nothing!”  What do you expect, though, from people whose whole life’s work is determined by their incidental resemblance to someone else?

Superman spots too many “look-alikes” in Kandor and realizes two of the girls he sees are the genuine Lois and Lana.  Happily, he enlarges them to normal size and they explain what’s happened: when Superman left the Fortress earlier, they shrank themselves and joined their lookalikes from Kandor (whose names are never given, because — honestly — who cares?) and together they came up with a plan to make Superman miserable.  Yes, as Kandorians, the lookalikes are loyal to Superman, but as women they’re also all about humiliating men, you know, and that takes priority.

Using Kandorian “super-science,” they made unliving android duplicates of themselves and placed them in the freeze chamber.

His lesson learned, and even grateful to have been made aware that the freeze chamber is defective, Superman forgives the girls and everything is back to normal.

Yep, good to have them back.  Because that earlier crack about how they “fake dangers to get my attention”?  That was way out of line.

What a disturbed little triangle we’ve got here, with Lois and Lana turning down wedding proposals on the dim hope of getting one from Superman, Superman publicly humiliating the girls for helping him raise money (the sign says to kiss him for a dollar — they kiss him and charity gets the proceeds.  What’s the problem, again?), the girls faking their deaths to “teach him a lesson” and Superman, having been jerked around and scared half to death, forgiving their deceit and if anything seeming more attached to them than ever because of it.

As always, the art is a joy; nobody drew a prettier Lois or Lana than Kurt Schaffenberger, and those skimpy waitress outfits probably turned more than one young boy on to the charms of the female form…even if they were soon reminded that girls are ultimately much more trouble than they’re worth.

Here’s an interesting story from Action Comics #156 (May 1951), in which Lois Lane gets super powers.  Not sure if this is the first time she did so, but it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

Except for a set of white “dinner party”-type gloves, the costume Lois adopts as “Superwoman” is virtually identical to the one Kara Zor-El will wear when she arrives eight years later as Supergirl. The resemblance to cousin Kara is enhanced even further by Lois’ use of a blonde wig as a “disguise.” (Interestingly, she leaves the wig off on the cover, presumably to keep her recognizable to potential customers).

In 1958, the same costume will show up on another prototype of the Maid of Might; the mysterious Super-Girl created when Jimmy Olsen wishes on a magic totem in a better-known story from Superman #123 (Aug. 1958) that’s also titled “The Girl of Steel.”

Providing even further foreshadowing, Perry White suggests the Superwoman in this tale may be “from Krypton, too!  Why — she might even be a relative!”

Artist Al Plastino does a great job on this one, sticking close to the official Wayne Boring model for Clark, Lois and Superman but adding a certain slickness and glamor that Boring’s work never managed. His Luthor is recognizably his own, however, and would stay pretty much the same through the 60s, though the look of the books would change in other ways. On the whole, I have to say I dig Plastino more as a “Boring Ghost” than a “Swan Ghost.”

Anyway, I found this to be another interesting “dry run” for the Supergirl we would eventually come to know and love. Obviously the concept of a super-powered female is one the Superman staff kicked around for some time before figuring out the ideal approach. Ultimately, by making Supergirl both a teenager and a relative, they found a way to exploit the sales potential of putting a female in the super-suit without making her a threat either to Superman as “top dog” in Metropolis or to Lois Lane as the official “girlfriend” of record.

My favorite moment is probably when Lois falls off a roof backwards for no particular reason. That’s our girl.

Imaginary Stories are a great way of exploring really cool ideas that, for one reason or other, you can’t pull off in official continuity.  For example, have you ever thought how cool it would be if Superman married Lois Lane only to see her murdered right in front of him in their family home?  Have you ever wished you could see a grieving Man of Steel pushed to the limits of his sanity, having a make-out session with a robot, trolling beauty contests for Lois lookalikes and tricking a woman into marrying him under the pretense of being someone else?  If so, then Superman #215 (Apr 1969) has the story you’ve been looking for.

Writer Otto Binder gives us this story “which never happened, but might happen in the future.” We open at Lois Lane’s funeral, where mourners including Jimmy Olsen, Perry White, Lana Lang and Lucy Lane gather to support widower Superman and his now-motherless (and super-powered) pre-school daughter Laney (spelled “Lanie” on the cover, but nowhere else).  As drawn by Curt Swan and Jack Abel, Superman explains that the “burial” is merely symbolic due to the nature of Lois’ demise.

Don’t you just love how the Dimension Master just walks right up to the open window and leans in with his weapon?  And the way Superman looks up, bored, from his paper to ask, “Still trying to take over the Earth, eh?”  (”Honey, you remember Dimension Master.  He’s the one who sent us the timebomb for Christmas.”)

Anyway, the casket’s empty since Lois disappeared into a fine mist (notice her last word was “Shhhh!”, making wives everywhere proud as she leaves this world telling her husband to be quiet).  Lucy Lane (who, as Perry is nice enough to tell Jimmy, is Lois’ sister…as if Jimmy hadn’t dated her for 20 years) offers to take little Laney home with her, but Superman says the logical place for a single super-parent and his super-daughter to reside is the Fortress of Solitude, so that’s where they go.

Laney is given the run of the Fortress, except for one door she’s forbidden to ever open. Just to make sure she doesn’t try it, Superman posts a robot sentry at the door 24/7.

Back in Metropolis, a gloomy Clark Kent mopes at the Daily Planet offices.  Perry and Jimmy are all sympathy, noting that “You were pretty sweet on [Lois] yourself!  Even though she was married to Superman, we know her death hit you pretty hard!”

To cheer Clark up, Perry gives him the assignment of assembling “a scrapbook of headlines about [Superman's] courtship of Lois! You pick the best ones!”  Clark puts his best face on, but inside “my heart is cracking in two!”  Of course Perry can’t know what he’s doing to Clark, but why he thinks this “gift” will do anything but depress Superman is beyond me.

One year later, on the anniversary of Lois’ death, Superman unveils a special surprise for Laney:

After Laney’s asleep, the Lois robot takes Superman by the hand and leads him “up to the roof” (the Fortress has a roof?) for “a stroll in the moonlight.”   Overwhelmed by her beauty and his longing, Superman makes out with the robot, apparently in the belief she’s the real Lois.

Back inside the Fortress, he thumbs through that scrapbook from Perry, and is shocked back to reality when he reaches the headline about Lois’ death.  (Thanks for sticking that one in there, Perry.  You’re all heart.) As if on cue, the battery in the Lois robot runs out of power and she slumps to the floor.

A few days later, Superman is tapped to judge the Miss Metropolis beauty contest, ostensibly designed to pick the city’s loveliest female, though everyone seems to be focused on another objective.  “Who knows?” says Perry, “Maybe he’ll find another girl he likes…and re-marry!”  and one contestant muses, “If Superman’s looking for another wife, I hope he picks ME!”

To everyone’s surprise, one contestant looks exactly like Lois Lane, and when Superman checks her with his x-ray vision, he spots a fracture in her arm that matches perfectly an old injury suffered by Lois,  “This IS my wife!” he exclaims joyfully.

Unfortunately, it’s actually Chameleon Queen, the evil wife of the Dimension Master who’s capable of assuming any form.  She and her husband have arranged this little masquerade to inflict mental torture on Superman, but as they laugh about their cruel prank, they’re hit by a ray fired from a spaceship and knocked dead.  The occupants of the ship remove their masks to reveal their surprising identities.

That’s right, Superman, we want you dead, but we can’t stand to see you suffer.  So we committed murder right in front of you as a favor.  You know; for old time’s sake.  “Gee, thanks, fellas.  See ya ’round!”

Back at the Fortress, Laney’s curiosity has gotten the better of her; distracting the sentry robot with a laboratory fire, she smashes through the door of the mystery room and is accdentally exposed to a stockpile of Red Kryptonite.   As Superman arrives and watches in horror, Laney fades to nothingness in much the same way Lois did, leaving the Man of Steel to conclude that “the combined radiations of all those Red K specimens destroyed her!”

However, upon consulting his super-computer, Superman finds Laney was not killed, but rather transported to a parallel Earth.  Turning the Red-K on himself, he follows Laney across the dimensional barrier and, on locating  her, tucks her safely away in the parallel Earth’s Fortress of Solitude, which he finds to be slightly different from his own.

For her newest assignment, parallel-Lois takes a “gill serum” which allows her to breathe underwater, but runs into trouble when she’s attacked by a giant octopus.  Superman saves her and takes her to a hospital, where he’s overcome with emotion and rashly pops the question, leading to some awkward moments when he meets the Superman of this parallel Earth:

Superman’s solution to this dilemma is to marry the parallel-Earth Lois as promised, pretending to be the Superman she knows and loves.  After the ceremony, he takes her to the parallel-Earth Fortress, where she meets Laney…

That’s right, no need to burden your wife with the truth.  What better way to start off a life of wedded bliss than with a few lies and secrets, right?  Meanwhile the parallel Superman returns to our Earth to take over for our Superman.  “I’m glad I thought of changing worlds with my double,” he thinks.  “He has a wife…his daughter has a mother…and I needn’t get married.  Unless…hmm…I wonder if there’s a Lana Lang on this Earth?”

And on the parallel Earth…

Yes, I’ll never forget my first wife, who I shall honor by marrying this lookalike who makes it seem like Wife #1 never died at all.  And to honor Wife #2, I will never mention I was married before…to a woman who looked, sounded and acted exactly like her.  Because then she’d think I was a weirdo, and there’s no need to burden her with the truth such thoughts.

Wow, I like Otto Binder and all, but this story is MESSED. UP.   Am I alone in being concerned that the most powerful man alive builds a robot, then a couple of hours later forgets it’s a robot and makes out with it?  That he watches Brainiac and Luthor kill two people and because he really, really doesn’t like the victims, turns a blind eye while they haul off the bodies (and even says, “Thanks”)?  That he would lie to a woman about his very identity just to get her to marry him?  That the foundation of his abiding, all-consuming “love” for Lois seems based entirely on what she looks and sounds like?  And that he’s willing to live the rest of his life in a marriage where he’s lying not only to his wife but to his daughter as well? Frankly, the only Superman who comes off well here is the parallel version, who’s “too busy” for women.

This is the kind of story that makes you want to take a shower.  Things get creepy fast and stay that way to the very last panel, where Superman gloats, “That’s what she thinks!”  It’s a sordid, ugly mess.  Well, maybe not ugly, as even with the bland inks of Jack Abel, Curt Swan still turns in a great art job, one that makes Lois in some panels so beautiful you can almost understand Superman’s psychosis.  Almost.

At least at the end, we see Superman’s learned one lesson.  He’s set up the new family home inside the Fortress of Solitude, which is a little harder for most enemies to reach.  And there’s no windows.