Come to think of it, DC could probably fill a 500-page trade with nothing but Pre-Crisis Superman/Lois Lane wedding comics

Meanwhile, at Comics Alliance...

I interviewed Tim Hanley, author of Wonder Woman Unbound, about his new book, Investigating Lois Lane: The Turbulent History of The Daily Planet's Ace Reporter. It's a fascinating book about one of the most fascinating characters in pop culture, and I enjoyed having the opportunity to ask Hanley more about it and its subject matter.

Regarding his cryptic clues about who or what he might right about next, I'm going to guess Catwoman, as she's the most prominent female character in the Batman story, and Hanley's already covered Wonder Woman and Superman (through Lois), so Batman seems like the natural progression (Well that, and he did say something about a villainous perspective).

The other clues were a little more intriguing. When he mentioned legacies, I thought most immediately of Robin, who would present another avenue through which to discuss Batman's history in pop culture, but, if he sticks with the female comics characters, maybe we'll get a book about Supergirl (who is naturally discussed a bit in the Lois Lane book), her inspiration Mary Marvel and Batgirl.

I have no idea, really, but whatever Hanley writes next, I'll be interested in reading it.

Lois Lane in The New 52-iverse

I've been thinking about Lois Lane more than usual lately, particularly in light of DC's announced but not yet detailed "Rebirth" initiative. It's not unreasonable to think that "Rebirth" will be more than just a marketing initiative, and will, in fact include some in-story way to bring an official close to the New 52 DC Universe, which launched in September of 2011.

The launch of the New 52 was a reboot of DC Universe continuity that lead to what was, in practice, a sort of half-assed line-wide equivalent of Marvel's millennial Ultimate line (That is, a reboot that re-designed the characters and started over with them...only, in DC's case, they didn't start from scratch, but introduced readers to the new universe en medias res, a few imaginary years into a largely "secret" continuity that would only gradually be revealed).

For the Superman books–mainly Action Comics, which re-re-re-re-retold Superman's origin, and Superman, set in the present–among the many big changes of the reboot was that of Superman's relationship with Lois Lane. Their marriage was dissolved, and, in fact, it never happened. These younger, less experienced versions of the characters weren't married, they weren't engaged, they weren't even dating, they didn't share in Superman's secret identity and there didn't even seem to be any chemistry, let alone romance, between the two.

As someone who is resistant to change in general, especially in comics where supposed fixes are often applied to things that aren't broken, I didn't really like the idea of Superman and Lois being de-married in a cosmic reboot. I liked them as full and equal partners, and thought their marriage actually contributed to making Superman distinct from so many of his super-peers (I also liked the fact that his parents were alive and he had a nice, healthy relationship with them; in The New 52, they were both dead).

There seemed to be two basic arguments for an unmarried Superman and Lois, however, one of which I find much more compelling than the other.

The first is the same that then-Editor-in-Chief Joe Quesada used in trying to justify the in-story reboot of Spider-Man Peter Parker and Mary Jane Watson's marriage in the pages of Amazing Spider-Man, that somehow having married characters limits the story options and ages them in the mind of the readers. I wasn't convinced, particularly since, at the time, Marvel had a younger, unmarried version of Spider-Man specifically designed to be distinct from the "real" Spider-Man in their long-running, actually rather great Ultimate Spider-Man.

But I could see where Quesada was coming from, sort of. Peter Parker was first introduced as a teenager, and original readers watched him attend high school and college and grow up over the issues and years. Even more so than most of the first generation of Marvel Comics characters, he was meant to be a character that was an awful lot like the young readers, who were only a radioactive spider-bite away from being a Spider-Man themselves.

Superman was never intended to be that sort of character. He was a more aspirational and inspirational character; the ways in which young readers could see themselves in him were a combination of wish fulfillment and metaphor. Superman was a grown-up whose stories were meant to be read by children; he was a dad-like figure from the start (The idea of superheroes a reader could relate to wouldn't really come along for a few decades after he smashed that green car and made that poor guy on the cover of Action Comics #1 grab the sides of his head in shock).

If marriage to Lois "aged" Superman, it did so only by a few years, maybe. And anyway, who cares? (Especially in the 21st century, when most Superman are adults themselves and, I'd guess, many of them are much, much older than Superman himself, whether he's meant to be 25, 30 or 39.)

The other, more compelling argument for un-marrying Superman and Lois is that it would restore the peculiar love triangle that was at the core of the very first Superman comics, the idea that Lois Lane loved Superman but despised Clark Kent, and that Clark/Superman loved Lois, but he wanted her to love him as Clark, not Superman.

That, and how the secret identity played into their complicated relationship, may not actually be fundamental to Superman comics (certainly plenty of stories of the modern age worked just fine after Lois discovered Clark's secret, and after they were married; and the argument could be made that doing away with the love triangle and the secret identity issue made the feature a lot less weird and its gender politics a lot less off-putting to a modern, audience composed of grown-ups), but they were certainly early elements, fuel for decades worth of stories in many different media, and, when The First Couple of Comics finally did tie the knot in 1996, there were certainly objections to the event, on the grounds that it was just too drastic a change (De-marrying Superman and Lois was a feature of the DC ixnay-ed "Superman 2000" proposal by Grant Morrison, Mark Waid, Mark Millar and Tom Peyer).

So I find it interesting that, now that we're looking at what could very well be the end of the New 52 continuity–the choice of the word "Rebirth" calls to mind Geoff Johns' Green Lantern: Rebirth and The Flash: Rebirth, both of which restored old status quos for those franchises through in-story events and minor retcons–that DC didn't really do anything with an unmarried Lois and Clark in the four years and change of the New 52.

Rather than restoring the Clark/Lois/Superman love triangle, the two were essentially platonic friends and occasional co-workers (Clark spent part of his career working at Daily Planet rival The Daily Star, and part of his career as a blogger). In the New 52, Lois Lane seems to have been Superman's Pal Lois Lane, his other best friend in the field, a sort of second, female Jimmy Olsen.

Wonder Woman fulfilled the role of love interest that Lois once played, as she and Superman were an item for just about three and a half years, first locking lips in August of 2012. If the New 52-iverse is coming to a close of sorts, than that would mean DC spent almost five years with an unmarried Superman, and the decision to decouple him from Lois had nothing to do with restoring what some might see as a core element of the character and concept, but instead so that he could date Wonder Woman.

Meanwhile...

A few days ago, Comics Alliance launched a new feature called "The Question," which essentially consists of posing a question to various contributors to answer. For the first installment, the question in question was Which comics should DC Comics launch after Convergence?, and five Comics Allies (myself included) offered three suggestions apiece.

What was quite interesting was that four of those five all suggested some variation on a Lois Lane book (my own was The Planet or The Daily Planet, a Gotham Central set in the newsroom of Metropolis' paper of record), and the fifth may have as well, as he noted his choice for an Amanda Waller-starring comic was made in part because we were so Lois Lane-heavy. I think the results speak for themselves: The people (well, we people anyway) really want to read Lois Lane comics.

Hopefully there's enough pro-Lois sentiment in the piece and the comments section that the good folks at DC Comics will start stroking their chins and considering Lois Lane comics. And hopefully what they come up with will be absolutely nothing like the last Lois Lane book they published, which was not a good comic book at all:

I read it and remember not liking it, but on the specifics? I think Lucy Lane and Superman appear in it? And there were too many artists? And it involved illegal experiments of some kind, involving aliens and/or gene-splicing to make people look alien-like? I don't know. The cover clearly shows an alien from Alien and Lois Lane though, implying it was a stealth remake of Alien with Lois Lane in the Sigourney Weaver role and the Daily Planet building in the role of the space ship, but that was not at all what it was about. (Speaking of Lois Lane comics, Kate Beaton Lois Lane comics are the best Lois Lane comics).

I wrote some other stuff for some other places this week, too. For example, I reviewed Andi Watson's charming original graphic novel Princess Decomposia and Count Spatula for Good Comics For Kids (although in retrospect I fear I didn't use the word "delightful" nearly enough times), and I reviewed Rick Geary's excellent Louise Brooks: Detective for Robot 6.

Among his many other achievements, Superman also apparently discovered the word "blog."

The above panel, drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger, first appeared in 1959's Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #9, and was reprinted in Showcase Presents: Superman Family Vol. 3.

Good one, Superman.

Of course, your sarcastic remark might carry more weight if you were doing something more productive than just standing around juggling bricks...



(Panel from 1958's Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #5, collected in Showcapse Presents: Superman Family Vol. 2, which is where this was scanned from; drawn by Kurt Schaffenberg)

Some additional thoughts on Craig Yoe's Secret Identity, a great idea for a cop show and searching for Jimmy Olsen fetishists

I have a short review of Secret Identity: The Fetish Art of Superman’s Co-Creator Joe Shuster (Abrams ComicArts) in this week’s Las Vegas Weekly which you would perhaps like to go read. Go on, I’ll wait right here for you.

Hey, welcome back. So yeah, that’s what the book is in general, and how it is.

For a general audience, it’s probably something of a curiosity, a tragic tale of how this industry treated the artists who founded it and the dirty secrets behind our most beloved heroes, a so-perfectly-dramatic-you couldn’t-invent-it true story of cosmic ironies. Coupled with naughty but safe coffee table-ready fetish art for guests to chuckle over while you finish brushing your teeth or finding your wallet before you go out.

I think that for an audience already immersed in the wonderful, horrible world of comic book creation, publishing and consumption, it’s a rather more urgent work—or at least Yoe’s opening essay is.

If there’s a positive aspect of Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel’s experiences with the comics industry, I suppose it would be that they offer the ultimate cautionary tale for creators interested in the field and, I would hope by 2009, publishers on how to treat creators (I assume—or should that be hope?—that the folks running the comics industry today grew up sympathizing with the Siegels and Shusters of the world, and are now in comics because they love comics and are dedicated to not repeating the sins of the past, whereas the folks running the comics industry at its infancy were mostly guys from other industries who saw away to make some bucks).

And Yoe tells that story here, with a focus on Shuster. The opening essay neatly summarizes the ups and downs of Shuster’s life and career, rather elegantly relating things I had read about it before (the anecdote about the down-on-his-luck Shuster taking a job as a delivery boy and on one occasion having to deliver something to the offices he used to work at always stuck with me), and some new, equally sad anecdotes I had not (including a story about Shuster drawing Superman’s for strangers to prove he created him). And then there’s the subject of the book, the fetish art Shuster provided to accompany BDSM prose porn.

That being the reason for this book’s existence, it gets a lot of attention here, and I think it will prove particularly interesting in light of some fairly common topics in the comics blogosphere/comics media over the past few years, including the legal discussions revolving around the Siegel and Shuster families’ claims to certain aspects of DC’s Super-franchise and the mid-‘50s crackdown on comics that was the subject of David Hadju’s 2008 book The Ten-Cent Plague (recently released in paperback!)

It’s one part of the book I’d recommend pretty much anyone reading this blog read, and yet it’s hard to recommend the book itself too enthusiastically, as Yoe’s essay accounts for a relatively small amount of the entire $25 package. And the rest of the book is BDSM fetish art, which a lot of folks might understandably not want around their house.

(I should note though that as sensational as the art work might have been to 1950s audiences, it’s really rather tame. It looks pretty weird, and there is a lot of submission and people getting whipped and threats of sexual violence and rape, but they are more suggestive that exploitive; for the most part, they are things that are about to occur, and perhaps they do in the prose stories, but they’re not illustrated. The only nudity is the occasional nipple or the side of a woman’s ass. There’s no intercourse at all, and no gruesome wounds or anything; only things like scratches on a man’s chest or a woman’s bottom indicating that perhaps the raised whip has already fallen. Also, it is all Shuster art, so it’s hardly realistic looking, so much as it looks like excerpts from some kind of BDSM how-to manual).

I’d usually suggest the library for those who might not want to part with $25 for a comics-related work (or who might be troubled by some of the imagery), but given the subject matter, I’m not sure how common this will be in libraries (at least a few already have it at the moment, according to Worldcat.org). I know I was afraid to bring my review copy with me to the library to make any scans from it, and I’m glad I brought the ComicsArt catalog instead as I ended up sitting next to a little girl at the library playing video games on the next computer over as I went about scanning pictures of the Justice League fighting Dr. Destiny.

At any rate, there’s a link to my review of it, and a more long and rambly endorsement of the well-written and revelatory first 35 pages, but there are a few more reasons that I think it may particularly appeal to those in the comics blogosphere. Well, two more.


1.) Stan Lee’s introduction. Yeah, Stan Lee writes a one-page introduction, and it’s a pretty nice piece of writing, avoiding most of the peculiar personal tics one so often associates with Lee (it does end with the word “Excelsior!” however).

“One of the ironies of life is the fact that in comic book stories the good guy always wins out, and yet in real life neither Jerry nor Joe reaped any financial rewards from their creation,” Lee writes.

He mentions that he knew Siegel, but had never met Shuster, which struck me as a somehow impossible fact. The Golden Age comics industry that exists in my imagination all happens on the same block, and all the creators eat at the same diners, share cabs and meet at the same bars after work, I guess.

He refers to Yoe as, “My colorful friend Craig,” which gives me weird mental images of this guy


and this guy

out together for a night on the town or playing chess together in Central Park or drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups while on stake out together. He’s a comics historian. He’s comics history personified. Together they’re cops. That show would be fantastic!

Finally, Lee writes that “Obviously, there’s far more sexy stuff here within these pages than you’ll find in any mainstream super hero comic book.” (Lee doesn’t read any mainstream superhero comic books anymore, does he?) But there’s the good part: “Much of it isn’t the sort of material that rings my bell…”

Ah! There you have it, True Believers. I’m sure many of you have, over the years, wondered exactly what kind of sexy stuff it is that rings Stan Lee’s bell, as it were. Well, while we still don’t know his exact turn ons, we can safely eliminate the sorts of stuff in here.


2.) Many of the characters resemble the Superman cast to a downright disturbing degree. I don’t know if “thrilling” is necessarily the right word (probably not, when discussing fetish art), but “exciting” doesn’t seem quite right either. “Interesting” definitely isn’t an interesting enough word.

But it’s thrilling/exciting/interesting the degree to which so many of the characters share features with those we’re familiar with from Superman comics (not unlike the experience of reading The Pin-Up Art of Dan DeCarlo and recognizing grown-up versions of Betty, Veronica, Josie and Melody in lingerie).

Yoe wonders if this was simply a matter of the way Shuster draws, or if it was a small act of rebellion and intentional subversion, whether conscious or unconscious.

I don’t know. Based on the simplicity of Shuster’s character design, I suspect any pretty brunette he tried to draw would end up looking a lot like Lois Lane. He just didn’t work in enough details to give his gals, say, different shaped noses or faces or eyes. They were mostly defined by their hair and clothes.

But hey, if you ever wondered what Golden Age Lois Lane looked like in her undergarments, her bra falling off to reveal a nipple, here you go!

Here, for example, is a bald bad guy who looks like Lex Luthor dangling a woman who looks like Lois Lane over a pit inhabited by…whatever that animal is supposed to be (a dinosaur, maybe?):

That’s from the strangest set of illustrations, in which the bald chap has all sorts of bizarre devices, none of which match up with the story they were used to illustrate at all (Yoe doesn’t reprint the actual stories, just brief summaries, and context for the individual images).

Here is (a cropped image of) Lois, dressed up like a sexy maid, whipping a shirtless and bound Superman:
Given the weirdness of many of Lois Lane’s comics adventures, I can’t be sure that this same exact thing didn’t happen in a DC comic book. Although that whip would have been kryptonite.

And here is a photo I took of a page featuring Jimmy Olsen getting Lucy Lane high on marijuana as part of her initiation into a teenage sex gang in a story entitled Never Been Kissed.
I never saw the 1999 Drew Barrymore vehicle with the same name. That’s…that’s not what that movie was about, was it?!
********************


Check out Yoe’s secret-identity.net site for lots of examples from the book, and the extremely colorful-looking launch party for it, which involved live re-enactments of some of the pictures, and some crazy superhero costumes.


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A couple days ago when I was preparing this post, I looked online to see if I could find a scan of the above image featuring characters who looked like Jimmy Olsen and Lucy Lane smoking, not wanting to bring a book of fetish art with me to the public library to scan.

So I Google image-d "jimmy olsen" and "fetish," hoping I'd turn up a scan of the image, and dreading I'd find amateur porn featuring naked people wearing nothing but green check-patterned blazers, bow ties and drawn-on freckles, or maybe Jack Larson's head photoshopped onto naked bodies.

I didn't find what I wanted, but I didn't stumble upon a world I feared might exist (Apparently, no one actually has a real Jimmy Olsen fetish).

The number one result was the cover of Secret Identity, and the first page full of results had the cover and some select, non-Jimmy Olsen-looking scans from Secret Identity. Here, for no reason other than I found puzzling over why some of these came up amusing, are the top seven non-Secret Identity related Google image results for "Jimmy Olsen" and "fetish."








The cross-dressing story was no surprise, but the robot? Turtle Boy? Weird. The search I did, by the way, was like Sunday or Monday night. I just did another one to see if it's changed much, and the results were indeed different. Just in case you wanted to repeat the experiment. And hey, who wouldn't?