PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 3

Successful spinoffs, in contrast, usually take a path opposed to that of funneling charisma-characters into ensembles, where they have collective stature. Usually a given icon is introduced in a Subordinate relationship to a Prime icon or icons, and then the Sub icon gets a separate serial, thus accruing some degree of stature, depending on how the serial fares in terms of either quantitative or qualitative escalation. -- INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE STATURE PT. 2.

In PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 2, I described how a particular stature-bearing icon, Robin the Boy Wonder, completed a phrase shift away from being an icon within a superordinate ensemble to being (in the identity of Nightwing) a stand-alone superordinate icon. Here I want to deal with a phase shift related to a subordinate icon graduating to a qualified superordinate status-- qualified, because the icon remains stature-dependent upon the icon from which she was derived.

For most of her existence, Lois Lane was a part of Superman's subordinate ensemble. Starting in SUPERMAN #28 (1944), the girl reporter got a backup series in that title for about a year. Now, for the length of time that said series existed, Lois Lane was the superordinate icon, while Clark Kent/Superman, whenever he appeared, became a subordinate icon. But for Superman that was a very qualified status, since Lois's popularity was contingent upon that of Superman. 

Now, in the essay referenced in the quote above, I went on to describe how the "spin-off" Batgirl functioned as a subordinate icon within the Batman serials up until the point that she graduated to her own serial. However, BECAUSE Batgirl appeared to be fast-tracked to getting her own series within about five years of her debut, she was also a proto-crossover. Lois by contrast was a pure subordinate icon, and neither her 1944 serial nor the Silver Age one that lasted for about thirteen years-- SUPERMAN'S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE-- really did anything to lesson her standing as what I've labeled a "Charisma Dominant Sub." My same verdict holds even given the existence of a couple of television shows in which Lois and Superman were arguably equal Prime types, those being LOIS AND CLARK and SUPERMAN AND LOIS.   

Now, all the serials in which Lois is a stature-dependent Prime and Superman is her Sub do not count as crossovers, the way all of Batgirl's appearances in BATMAN serials do hold that status, simply because Batgirl became a "Stature Dominant Prime." By the same token, Superman does not have any crossover-status with Lois in her own serials, in the way that he does when he teams with Batman in the WORLD'S FINEST feature. The "phase shift" associated with a support-icon being spun off in a separate feature, but a feature that does NOT alter the overall status of the feature's star, is distinct from the one in which such an alteration of status does take place. For this, the example of Robin-turned-Nightwing is instructive, because once Nightwing is independent of Batman he's no longer automatically aligned with the Bat-universe. One example I cited was that because Batman meets Ra's Al Ghul after discontinuing his partnership with Dick Grayson, Ra's Al Ghul does not belong to the Grayson-verse. Thus, whenever Nightwing and Ra's Al Ghul cross paths in any story, that's a charisma-crossover, because Ra's is exclusively Solo Batman's foe. If Ra's has a later encounter with one of Batman's later Robins-- Jason Todd, Tim Drake-- then there's no crossover, because those Robins at that time are aligned with Batman. If one of those Robins phase-shifts his way into a new identity, as "Jason Todd Robin" did to become The Red Hood, then any encounter between Ra's and Red Hood would be a charisma-crossover.

Now, in the Silver Age LOIS LANE feature, unlike the short-lived Golden Age one, the Prime star sometimes met other icons who belonged to Superman's Sub-cosmos, such as Lex Luthor. Everything in Superman's cosmos is also in the dependent cosmos of the girl reporter, so Luthor and other Super-villains have no crossover value, as they would if they interacted with Batman under the WOR LD'S FINEST umbrella. 

Lana Lang presents a slight anomaly, because, by the rules I set up in Part 2 of this series, Lana belongs to the SUPERBOY cosmos, not to that of SUPERMAN, because the personas are different even though they belong to the same person at different ages. Further, at the time that Lana made adult appearances in LOIS LANE, she also continued to appear as her juvenile self in the SUPERBOY title. Lana Lang remains a "Charisma Dominant Sub" in the SUPERBOY feature, but Mature Lana Lang's status is not identical with that of Juvenile Lana Lang (who, incidentally, had only debuted two years previous). 

The former first appears in a 1952 story, "The Girls in Superman's Life," in SUPERMAN #78, but this story is just a one-off. Mature Lana does not show up again until the first Silver Age LOIS LANE comics, 1957's SHOWCASE #9. The two stories don't blend, because the SHOWCASE story ignores Lois having previously met Mature Lana in 1952. Mature Lana is a Sub to Superman in 1952 and a Sub to Lois in 1957, and she continues in that capacity whenever she appears in either feature from then on. She's arguably more strongly aligned to the LOIS feature than the SUPERMAN one despite having probably made more total appearances in the latter. This superior alignment to the LOIS feature s qualitative in nature, because Lana as a competitor to Lois for the hero's heart proved much more significant in that feature than any function(s) she served in assorted SUPERMAN stories. Since "phase-shifted Lana" makes two separate but not congruent debuts in both 1952 and 1957. I would regard that both debuts are crossovers, whether between Superman and Mature Lana in 1952 and between Lois and Mature Lana in 1957. 

MYTHCOMICS: "THE WITCH OF METROPOLIS" (LOIS LANE #1. 1958)

This post by A. Sherman Barros reminded me the cover story for LOIS LANE #1, whose winsome witch-incarnation appears six years before a similar and better known image in the BEWITCHED TV series. However, even on an image-to-image basis the LOIS LANE cover is more interesting. Not only does the cover-copy suggest that witchy Lois is going to one-up her super-powered swain at last, artist Kurt Schaffenberger puts her in ragged clothes, as if to suggest that by so doing the sorceress-reporter has put herself outside the bounds of standard attractiveness-- though she does have enough feminine modesty to ride side-saddle only.

In my comments-response to Sherman I said I saw this story as a near-myth, but on reflection, Otto Binder's "Witch of Metropolis" plays into a rich tradition of "the war between men and women" that began with Superman's debut in ACTION COMICS #1. The fact that Lois doesn't really become a witch-- and I doubt any adult reading this blog will find this much of a spoiler-- doesn't take away from the story's ability to play to the main character's resentment of her often elusive boyfriend.

Within the decade of the fifties, this first issue of Lois Lane's own comic had been preceded by two tryout issues in the SHOWCASE title. Those issues and the other two stories in LOIS LANE #1 quickly established that Fifties Lois was going to be a lot like Fifties Jimmy Olsen, a somewhat admirable protagonist who nevertheless got involved in a lot of wacky escapades, often prompted by egotism. Yet one thing interesting about "Witch" is that the story doesn't begin with Lois doing anything wrong or unseemly, unless one counts laughing at old superstitions. And some of Lois's scorn is justified, since I strongly doubt that any "Jekyll and Hyde" witches existed outside Otto Binder's imagination. One might argue that Lois's imagination is also working overtime, since page 2 shows her imprudently sniffing the fumes of an experiment involving a "youth serum"-- and yet she, unlike even the more clever kid-readers of the comic, ought to have known that her getting old might have a little something to do with said serum.

Even her next-page encounter with Superman doesn't show Lois in a foolish light; at most, one might say that she lets her feminine ego keep her from confessing her embarrassment to the Man of Steel. Having totally bought into the idea of a curse passed on to her from the long dead witch Molly Todd, she also buys into the idea that she has magical powers.

I'll jump ahead a bit and reveal that Witch-Lois doesn't have supernatural powers. Superman has seen through her charade, and he uses his powers to keep her delusion going, for the usual hard-to-believe reasons. Later in the story, the hero's rationale will be that he played along with her fantasy so that she wouldn't have a hypothetical breakdown. However, even though the girl reporter isn't the victim of a curse, the idea of having magical powers does bring out her inner Hyde. After exulting in her ability to ape one of Superman's powers, she uses her "magic" to spy on a film project to get a great scoop. It's only at the end of this page that Lois expresses some invidious emotions toward colleague Clark Kent, who "gets the juiciest jobs."

While Lois didn't spy on the film-set with any idea of one-upping Clark, it's her express reason for doing so when she swipes the documents Clark was assigned to pick up. From there, it's just one step to making an assault upon Superman's most prized secret, by conjuring up kryptonite to discover his double identity. 

Obviously, the whole dumb-show of Superman managing to anticipate every one of Lois's whims is absurd, particularly giving her fake kryptonite. (And what was going to be his plan, if "Miss Hyde" won the internal struggle and tried to zap Clark Kent with her fake chunk of Kryptonian real estate?) The moral of the story is that even though Lois's "Miss Hyde" personality is totally the result of her own fantasia, she does manage to resist the urge to cause harm to her beloved, even if it means he continues to exclude her from his confidence. However, on a mythopoeic level "Witch" serves to put on display some of Lois's feminine resentment of her often manipulative love-interest, which even extends to the desire to expose and at least wound him. Superman's not nearly as much of a dick here as he is in many other Lois-stories, and Lois isn't as much of a blockhead-- and for those reasons this feels like a variation, albeit a minor one, on the "men and women at war" theme.

On a side-note, though other artists depicted the lady reporter in the SHOWCASE stories, all three stories in LOIS LANE #1 were illustrated by Kurt Schaffenberger, the artist who would be most associated with Silver Age Lois-- though he was much better known for making her a glamour-puss than a glamour-wielding sorceress.

MYTHCOMICS: "COURTSHIP, KRYPTONIAN STYLE" (LOIS LANE #78, 1967)

Silver Age LOIS LANE comics have taken a lot of heat for making the female protagonist look foolish, often by some contrivance brought about by her supposed boyfriend Superman, seeking to teach the impulsive lady reporter some sort of "lesson." Some commentators have jumped to the conclusion that the LOIS book was some sort of kiddie-level diatribe against the female of the species.

Of course, this doesn't entirely cohere with the fact that girls of middle school age were most likely the audience that made LOIS LANE a successful magazine throughout the sixties, though the title petered out in the early seventies. Certainly the conventional wisdom of the times asserted that boys did not buy comics that starred girls, with the possible exception of the more lubricious titles (SHEENA and the other jungle-girls, for example). I was brought up in that Silver Age culture, and I can remember feeling disdain for "girl comics," even though I have no idea where that perceived taboo came from. So assuming that most of LOIS's readers were young girls, it's hard to see why they would have supported a title that made their gender look bad, even in the days before full-fledged feminism took hold.

Now, LOIS LANE, like its companion spinoff JIMMY OLSEN, varied between showing the protagonist as foolish in some stories but clever in other ones. Thus any girls who consistently read the book would probably have twigged early on that Lois wasn't ALWAYS a goofball. Given that circumstance, it's possible that those contemporaneous readers just didn't subject their comics-characters to intense sociological scrutiny, precisely because "clever Lois" counteracted the influence of "foolish Lois." This meant that at times Lois-- despite being locked in to her permanent status as "Superman's girlfriend"-- was shown as having her own agency.

"Courtship, Kryptonian Style" (whose title was borrowed from at least one of two similarly titled Italian films of the sixties) straddles the "Clever Lois/ Foolish Lois" categories, as well as extending the same largesse to the protagonist's frequent rival/guest-star, Lana Lang. Writer Leo Dorfman and penciler Kurt Schaffenberger jockey back and forth in their depictions of Lois and Lana, who both seek to free themselves from their enthrallment to Superman but still end up competing for his "hand" in the end.

"Courtship" is technically the second half of a two-part story, but the first part, from LOIS #76, is really just a set-up for Part Two. In #76, both Lois and Lana come across what seems to be a magical genie in a bottle. This genie comes complete with Middle Eastern garments and orange-hued skin (maybe brown skin was a bit too suggestive for the time?), and he calls himself Vitar. Lois and Lana both use Vitar to make frivolous wishes designed to gain attention from Superman, and each explicitly wants to trump her rival. However, it turns out that Vitar's origins lay in a totally different type of bottle-- the Bottle City of Kandor, a Kryptonian city preserved as it were "under glass." Vitar, using some sort of cosmic viewscope to follow Superman's exploits, resents the fact that the hero keeps two women on the string (harem envy, anyone?). 

Vitar's genie-imposture doesn't make any sense, even for a Silver Age story. But Vitar's apparent sincerity-- that he would like to marry either Lois or Lana if they all get the chance to know one another well-- impresses the women. So, since any woman who married Vitar would have to join him in the Bottle City, both Lois and Lana elect to leave their regular lives behind and emigrate to Kandor. Dorfman, knowing that this is not a permanent change, expends no effort on explaining their mind-set. The only important thing was to show the women making an attempt to distance themselves from the man who repeatedly claims he can't marry any mortal woman, lest she be slain by one of the hero's many enemies.

All that said, Dorfman hedges his bets. No sooner do Lois and Lana begin their new life in Kandor than they start missing Superman, just as he is seen (however briefly) yearning after them. To their consternation, the ladies becomes jealous when they observe (via another cosmic viewscope) one of Superman's heroic deeds. They witness the Man of Steel enjoying the presence of two Kandorian girls who are exact doubles of Lois and Lana, who are allowed to leave Kandor to lend the hero a helping hand. (It's the Kandorian double of Lois that the reader sees on the issue's cover, bouncing bullets off her boobs, and neither she nor Kandor-Lana has any real designs on Superman.)

 The only real romance-oriented threat comes from Vitar's ex-girlfriend Serena Vol, who tries to sabotage the ladies' entrance into Kandorian society in a fatal fashion.

The ladies are told that Kandor does not allow "idleness" on the part of its citizens, so Lois and Lana have to have their aptitudes analyzed by an "analyzer beam" in the "psychodrome." The women are told that their real aptitudes are not their actual jobs-- reporter and newscaster-- but rather, that Lois would be best off as a detective and Lana as an archaeologist. This development is the psychological core of the story, for even though the ladies get their talents boosted by Kandorian info-downloads, the change gives readers the chance to see Lois and Lana living lives independent of Superman. 

Not for very long, though. Vitar (who no longer has orange skin, BTW) dates both women briefly, but he quickly intuits that they're still batty for the Metropolis Marvel. So he reveals, out of nowhere, that he has an invulnerability serum, but only enough for one of the ladies. It's presented as a given that if one of them becomes immune from harm, Superman will just have to marry the Invulnerable Girl, irrespectively of whether he really loves her better than Non-Invulnerable Girl. Vitar proposes a test-- like Superman, Vitar is big on testing his loved ones-- saying that the woman who can solve a recent crime, the theft of a Kandorian artifact-- will get the serum, and by extension, the Man of Steel. (Does Vitar contemplate making up to the less successful woman? Dorfman does not say so, but it would be a logical conclusion.)

So Detective Lois and Archaeologist Lana begin their separate paths to track down the artifact-thief, and Dorfman is at his most clever in figuring out ways in which both girls' specialties can shine. While they're still separate, both ladies are briefly menaced, and though neither woman sees her assailant clearly, they both assume it's that ex-girlfriend Serena Vol. It's strange that neither Earth-woman suspects the other Earth-woman, given that their history is one of undercutting one another. The two women come together and track down the thief together, though Lois technically wins the contest because she's had Kandorian karate-skills downloaded into her brain, allowing her to beat the guy up. Winning the contest means nothing, though, because Vitar then reveals that his invulnerable serum just wears off in a short time.

And what mysterious women were menacing the lady sleuths? No, not red herring Serena Vol. It was the two Kandorian doubles, with "Kandor-Lois" trying to help "Earth-Lois" win the contest while "Kandor-Lana" did the same for "Earth-Lana." This may have restored the readers' expectations in the tendency of Lois and Lana to trump each other-- even if their doubles do the dirty deeds. But this last bit of craziness turns the Earth-girls off Kandor, and they implore Superman to bring them back to their home, their status quo, and, one assumes, their uninterrupted day-jobs. For a romantic finish, Vitar marries Serena Vol, forgiving her for her rash actions because 'twas all for love, I guess. 

Having devoted all this time to the psychological myth of the empowered love-slave, I have to add the non-mythic note that I thought the name "Serena Vol" was unusually resonant for a nothing character who doesn't even have a line of dialogue. I finally recalled that about a year before this story, Leo Dorfman scripted the first Silver Age appearance of The Catwoman for two issues of LOIS LANE. And for one panel, Dorfman does use the canonical real-world cognomen for the Feline Felon-- "Selina Kyle." Perhaps he came up with a similar name because he subconsciously thought of Serena Vol as-- "catty?"

MYTHCOMICS: "LOIS LANE'S SUPER-DAUGHTER" (LOIS LANE #20, 1960)

This story was actually the second in a series of two imaginary "what if Lois married Superman" stories, which ran back to back in issues 19 and 20 of the LOIS LANE magazine. I presume from this that editor Mort Weisinger accepted an initial pitch for both stories, instead of choosing-- as he sometimes did-- to wait awhile to gauge audience interest. There may have been a sequel or two that followed, but these two were produced so as to be read back-to-back.

The first story from #19, "Mr. and Mrs. Clark (Superman) Kent," however, is not as symbolically resonant as the second one from #20, though both stories were written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Kurt Schaffenberger. "Mr. and Mrs" is not much more than a "beware what you wish for" homily. Superman marries Lois Lane, thus supposedly fulfilling the dream she's cherished since she first met him (at least in Weisinger's universe), finds out her dream isn't all it's cracked up to be, for in public she's simply the wife of the hero's alter ego Clark Kent. The fact that he's Superman is of course kept secret from the populace, so that no one-- especially Lois' longtime rival Lana Lang-- knows that the superhero is off the romantic market. It's a pleasant enough story, but "Lois Lane's Super-Daughter" strikes a deeper chord.

About three years after this story appeared on newstands, Betty Friedan's THE FEMININE MYSTIQUE was published. Building on material the author had gathered during the late 1950s, Friedan sought to make clear that modern American women had become desperately, symtomatically unahppy due to the imposition of a "mystique" upon their lives; one that kept them from fulfilling themselves as rounded human beings. MYSTIQUE was a major influence upon Second-Wave feninism from that time on. But Jerry Siegel's "Super-Daughter" presciently taps into some of the same discontents, though obviously it does so within a juvenile context, and within the context of a continuing superhero melodrama.

A few fans of Silver Age Superman have wondered why, after Superman's cousin Supergirl appeared on Earth in 1958, he didn't "man up" and adopt her in his identity of Clark Kent. I don't think the question was formally addressed in the actual continuity, and I'm sure that the proximate reason the character did not do so was that his editor and writers didn't want him playing Adoptive Daddy in every story. But there was still a kernel of logic in Clark's reticence, for during this time-period social services personnel generally took a dim view of single men or women adopting children of any age. Given this state of affairs, having the teenaged Kryptonian placed in an orphanage to seek adoption by a bonafide married couple-- which eventually does transpire-- doesn't strain my credulity.

What's interesting from the story's beginning is that the moment Clark and Lois are married, Clark springs it upon her that he'd like them to adopt this teenaged cousin that he's never mentioned before.

Lois looks a little bit poleaxed by this revelation, but she's married "for better or worse," and when the adoption agency complains that she might not be able to handle a new child and a job, Lois does what anyone in the period would deem The Right Thing.

Keep in mind that this Lois is not the fire-eater from the Golden Age. Though it would be absurd to assert that the Lois character was thoroughly consistent, since her moods could fluctuate according to the needs of a given story, it is at least part of Weisinger's conception of Lois that she has an irreducible domestic side to her personality. Mort Weisinger may well have been the sort of man whom Betty Friedan criticized for wanting women to become wholly domestic once they became wives. Nevertheless, for the time, the demands of the adoption agency seems not unusual, and the strength of Siegel's story is that one does see certain disadvantages to the world of domestic bliss.

True, there's almost no trace of mother-daughter bonding in the story, except for minor scenes like this one:

But it probably would have been a little beyond Siegel's skill-set to be THAT attuned to the ways of modern women, and besides, the main thrust of the story is all about Lois's discomfort with this perky intruder who's been thrust into her domestic world before the former lady reporter has even had a chance to get used to her new husband. The problem is only aggravated by the fact that both Lois' husband and her de facto daughter belong to a world of super-powered endeavors to which Lois cannot aspire. Here's one of the tandem "super-feats" to which Supergirl alludes on the cover of #20:

Worse by far, though, is that Supergirl's powers make Lois's function in the household irrelevant.

There's an exquisite irony in this setup that I wonder if Betty Friedan could have appreciated, even without the fantasy-content. Lois sacrifices the "exciting life" she enjoyed as a girl reporter, but her reward is to be marginalized within the household that is supposedly her domain. Yet through it all, Lois masks her pain, a veritable Stella Dallas of the comic books, an icon of maternal martrydom. Yet, where Olive Prouty's character accepts her marginalization, Siegel's Lois manages to manifest her hidden hostility in one of the most roundabout ways ever conceived, even in a Mort Weisinger comic book.

Yes, that's right: not only does Lois "just happen" to whale on the backside of a robot who looks just like Supergirl in her secret ID, a snoopy women from the adoption agency literally invades Lois's private home just in time to catch Lois in the act of unleashing her fury at the (first) unwanted intruder. I particularly enjoy how tearful Lois is in the story's final panel, perhaps revealing just a touch of the schadenfreude she may be experiencing from Supergirl's "unhappy ending." Will Lois ever make things up to Superman? Well, maybe or maybe not, but either way, she won't have a fifth wheel getting in the way.

I should note that though a fair number of stories from this time-period contain hints at some sexual stirrings between the two super-cousins-- particularly "Superman's Super-Courtship"-- "Super-Daughter" actually works just as well without any such elements of sexual transgression as it would with it. I could see the story entering new terrain if it were ALSO about a nubile young adoptive daughter nudging out an older wife from the affections of the adoptive father. But mythically speaking, the story works quite as well as a melodramatic-- as well as comical-- look at the marital disadvantages of a former working woman in the era of the Comic-Book Silver Age.

LOIS, MANSPLAINED

Since I remarked in the previous essay that I thought Lois Lane was a more intrinsically "mythic" figure than Jimmy Olsen, I'll provide a little justification of that statement here.

In the first official "mythcomics" post here, I only touched upon the significance of Lois Lane in passing, but I've noted elsewhere that she's highly significant as the "chosen bride" of Jerry Siegel's "Christ with Muscles," no matter how far in the future their unison might take place. This 2014 essay provides a refutation to Noah Berlatsky's rhetoric of victimization-- i.e., that Lois was always being maltreated by the main hero-- and shows that, even though she had her share of faults, she was on the whole an admirable character, and something of a "tough cookie" for her time.

In the next day or so, I'll devote a mythcomic essay to one particular Lois tale, and it comes from DC's long-running LOIS LANE comic book, which presented a somewhat different version of the character. Whereas the comic-book Jimmy Olsen was strongly modeled on the radio/television character-- even if comics-Olsen showed some significant departures-- Lois seems to have been remodeled less with reference to the "Adventures of Superman" TV show and more in line with what editor Mort Weisinger thought would sell to his readers. There's a fair amount of anecdotal evidence to the effect that SUPERMAN'S GIRL FRIEND LOIS LANE was more oriented toward female juvenile readers, and even though all of the raconteurs on the title were male, it seems a safe bet to say that they re-modeled Lois in line with their perceptions regarding feminine soap-opera, albeit adjusted for a juvenile audience. If Lois had held on to any of her streetwise toughness and courage during the period when Jerry Siegel was drummed out of the DC ranks, that last remnant of that previous characterization was well and truly gone by 1958, when the magazine was launched (following a tryout in the SHOWCASE magazine, by the bye). Lois wasn't seen to slug anyone, as in the panel above, until about 1966.

Perhaps because Lois, unlike Jimmy, was viewed as a full adult, there are more adult concerns in the stories, albeit filtered through a juvenile lens. Many of the stories are just as silly as the ones in the JIMMY OLSEN title, but there is a greater propensity to allude to Lois as a mythic concatenation of womanly traits. This often reflected negative characterizations typical of men's humor, like accusations of overweening feminine curiosity-- but even these retain a certain larger-than-life quality. In the remainder of this essay, I'll briefly touch on some of these myth-kernels, though with the caveat that nearly none of them qualify as mythcomics.

Though the character of the Weisinger Lois was a little too hard-nosed to go in for occult matters, I find it symbolically significant that the first issue of her series attributes to her a "witchy" power. Note Superman's apparent fear of having his powers surpassed.

Here's the first of many issues in which Lois is "body-shamed" in some way. Some find these sort of tropes to be representative of the whole series, which is certainly throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Though Lois isn't really any sort of tough jungle-babe in this story, it's amusing to see her take a leaf from the book of Sheena. Some will recall that Sheena preceded Superman in being the first major comic-book character published, even though the jungle-queen's sales didn't take off until after the Man of Steel became a superstar.

One of the first stories really condemning Lois for the sin of curiosity. The big giveaway? Lois has the head of a cat, or rather, she thinks she does, having been given a post-hypnotic suggestion to punish her for an act of intrusive curiosity. It's interesting that the hypnotist in this case is female, though.

Weisinger recycles a trope used by Siegel in an earlier story, in which Lois was supposed to get powers from a super-blood transfusion.

Jimmy Olsen's relationship with Superman never lent itself to stories like this one.

Second of a two-part story in which Lois marries Luthor and spawns an evil son. However, he later marries into the family of Superman and Lana. Ah, if only Weisinger had edited Greek plays!

"The Snoopiest Girl in History" reveals that Lois traveled in time and gave rise to the legend of Pandora.

Lois again travels in time, gets stuck on Krypton, and decides it's a good idea to steal Superman's father from Superman's mother. Only at the end of the story does she realize that she might have ended up becoming the mother of the man she always wanted to marry. Writer Otto Binder must have been digging into his Freud the day he scripted this one.

Lois has the distinction of re-introducing Catwoman to the DC universe after the villainess had been exiled for eight years, probably because of her being mentioned in SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT. Sadly, no actual catfight takes place between the two Golden Age icons, though Lois does get to take a walk on the wildcat side by assuming Catwoman's identity.

"Shock story of the year," indeed. It's hard to believe no one at DC knew that Joe Shuster had done not entirely dissimilar work for a 1954 skin magazine.

Aside from a reprint issue, here's the last issue edited by Weisinger. Appropriate, since she starts off as a witch and ends up as the bride of Satan.

NEAR MYTHS: [WOLF-MAN JIMMY], (1960/1961)

In this post I wrote:

As a matter of critical process I want to specify that I'm not simply critiquing this story's presentation of Jimmy Olsen in terms of the character's verisimilitude. If it were simply a matter of the character acting atypically in different sections of the same story, that would be simply a failure of the dramatic potentiality, which deals with the interactions of conscious personalities. What I'm critiquing is the degree to which Olsen's character is put into a mythopoeic situation-- that of transgressing on the sexual hunting-grounds of a friend / father-figure-- and then fails to follow through on that mythic potential. 

I happened to re-read a couple of JIMMY OLSEN stories published about three years after "Wedding of Jimmy Olsen," and it seemed to me that these stories came closer to "following through" on what little potential one might find in the trope of a simple character like Jimmy Olsen macking on his best friend's girl (or girls).

To be sure, Jimmy-- in contrast to Lois Lane, whom I view as a character of greater mythicity-- displays a pretty low amplitude in this regard. Jimmy was introduced by name in the SUPERMAN radio show, whose basic pattern was largely imitated by the successful 1952-58 teleseries. Prior to the major film adaptations of Superman, American audiences largely knew Jimmy, if they knew him at all, from the TV show, except for kids who read the JIMMY OLSEN comic, which indubitably came about in reaction to the show.

It's important to note that the dominant image of Jimmy from the show was that of a lovable goof, and for the most part this is the image that has remained ingrained in the minds of comic-book fans. The first three issues of the character's solo feature actually started out making him fairly competent, but I would guess that some editor clamped down on that, declaring that Olsen of the comics must be just as dorky as Olsen on TV. For most of his run-- which I discussed in this essay-- Jimmy remained a lovable goof, although with an important difference from the TV version: the character had a lot more romantic encounters in his own comic book.

I don't plan to sit down and hash over Jimmy's assorted love-connections, but I do think that cumulatively they contributed to his overall personality as a story-character. Thus, by 1960, the same fellow who wrote "The Wedding of Jimmy Olsen," Otto Binder, puts Jimmy in the position of a junior-level lothario, albeit for humorous effects.

Thus in the first of the two stories, "The Wolf-Man of Metropolis," his girlfriend Lucy gives him static about his amorousness:

Later, yielding to his tendency to do stupid things like drink untested magic potions, Jimmy becomes afflicted by a curse, causing him to change into a wolf-man at night, though unlike most fictional lycanthropes, Jimmy possesses no beastly urges. In fact, he can't even take advantage of Lucy when she obligingly dresses up like Red Riding Hood.

The second Curt Swan panel is refreshingly grim given the overall light tone of the story, though of course it's very politically incorrect today for him to muse about the unattractiveness of any woman. He does have a particular reason for so doing, though, since the curse can only be reversed by the kiss of a pretty woman. (Binder was perhaps conflating his werewolf tale with both "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Frog Prince.") Still, humor takes precedence over potential tragedy, particularly when Wolf-Man Jimmy tries to proposition a hot number to kiss him-- in the park, of course.

Superman eventually solves his buddy's problem, arranging for the cursed reporter to meet an unnamed (but presumably comely) woman in a dark room and receive her kiss. The reader later learns the female is Superman's cousin Supergirl, who alone possesses enough intestinal fortitude to suck a hairy face. At this point in time, Supergirl is unknown to the public, still being kept under cover by her avunucular cousin. A few stories, particularly this one, suggest a buried incestuous vibe between the two Kryptonians. If so, then Superman is being extraordinarily generous in pimping out his cousin in this manner. As icing on the clansgressive cake, the cover above shows two women fleeing from the Wolf-Man, who are probably supposed to be Superman's regular romantic interests Lois Lane and Lana Lang: however, Lana isn't in the actual story and Lois, who is, never sees the Wolf-Boy, though she does aggravate Lucy's suspicions about Jimmy's secret shame.

The second and last story of the reporter's adventures in lycanthropy-- scripted this time by Jerry Siegel-- doesn't seem to be as popular as the first on the Internet. It's significant that again, Wolf-Jimmy is presented on the cover as scaring the bejeezus out of a group of female characters-- respectively, Lucy, Lois, and Lana-- who are all in the story this time.

This time, though, Jimmy's not to blame for his curse. Mischievous Mister Mxyzptlk pops into Metropolis, spots Jimmy squiring around Lucy, and promptly falls in love with Lucy, just as the imp had previously gone gaga over her sister. Lucy rejects Mxyzptlk's suit by protesting that she has a boyfriend. Mxyzptlk decides to get rid of the competition in the usual roudabout way of all Superman stories from this period: he inflicts the curse on Jimmy with his magic but makes him think that he's imbibed the magic potion again.

In some ways Siegel ratchets up the comic absurdity of the "Frog Prince" trope. Again Jimmy seeks his Kryptonian pal's help. But though Supergirl imparts to Jimmy the same secretive smooch she did before, the affliction doesn't go away. In short order nearly every female character of the Superman universe at the time finds out about Jimmy's hairy problem. The result that he not only gets liplocked by his girlfriend, but also by Superman's inamoratas Lois and Lana, AND by the hero's former squeeze, the mermaid Lori Lemaris. Mxyzptlk watches them all fail, confident that Lucy will desert Jimmy in due time.

Then a strange woman appears, kisses Jimmy, and instantly reverses the curse. It turns out to be Mxyptlk's own inamorata, Miss Gsptlsnz, another magical imp from the Fifth Dimension, making her first comic-book appearance. Jimmy, having been bussed by so many hot girls in the last few days, can't help thinking a rather uncomplimentary thought about his savior.

However, this touch is also a neat reversal of the original curse's parameters, since the reversal of the pesky imp's magic doesn't depend on matching the curse-victim up with a hot girl. Everything goes back to normal and the story ends with Lucy calling Jimmy a "wolf" again, this time because he got a lot of smooches from other women.

Again I'll repeat that I'm not endowing these stories with anything more than minor mythicity, the result of some clever mucking-about with fairy-tale tropes. But to the extent that Jimmy Olsen the Character possesses even a minor penchant for mythicity-- that of the young rival to his older buddy-- these stories come closer to the mark than "Wedding." I'll also observe that I wouldn't have a problem with the earlier story if I thought that the dominant character of Jimmy was that of an unromantic klutz, like say, Dilton Doiley of the ARCHIE universe, seen here in all his glory:

JOINED AT THE TRIP PT. 4

In PART 3 of THE ONLY DEFINTION OF ART YOU'LL EVER NEED, I followed up my examination of "art as fundamental play" with this reference to Bataille:

I considered putting forth a longer definition with special reference to Bataille's "two types of economic consumption," lining up "the reality-oriented aspect of consumption, "production and acquisition" with the dynamic of work and "the desire to pointlessly but satisfyingly expend one's energies" with the dynamic of play. 

I decided not to pursue that line of thought at the time. Now I'm bringing it up again because I've been giving more thought as to the proper pluralist evaluation of the kinetic elements of sex and violence in fiction-- though this will only be developed in subsequent essays.

In the ONLY DEFINITION essay-series, I expanded on my fundamental division of all art into two realms-- that of "thematic escapism" and "thematic realism"-- with reference to Jung's assertion that all creative endeavor requires play, regardless of how much of the "principle of serious work" enters into the mix. From this standpoint the two realms took on the formulas of "play for play's sake" and "play for work's sake."

Now, contrary to some critics, defending escapist narratives is not the same as defending bad narratives. Both realist and escapist narratives can be good or bad, but when they are bad, it is not with reference to one another, but on their own respective terms.

Superior narratives of "thematic realism," a.k.a,, "play for work's sake"-- are what most people would call "good literature." Such stories almost if not always have a moral or aesthetic point to convey, one that aligns with Jung's "serious work" principle. But the best "realist art" can make its rhetorical points without losing the dimension of creative play.  Faulkner's 1932 novel LIGHT IN AUGUST and Coetzee's 1999 novel DISGRACE both take as their subjects the evils of Caucasians abusing Negroes (sorry, there's no other established word that takes in both African Americans and Black Africans).  But Faulkner's novel contains great imagination and creative fertility, while DISGRACE is, well, a disgrace in that respect.  I only have space for a very simplified comparison. Faulkner's "Southern Gothic" exposes the absolute dependence of the then-modern South on the demonization of the black underclass, but makes it part and parcel of their existence, while Coetzee presents a South African scenario whose brilliant insight never goes beyond this Wiki-statement: that its protagonist "is a white South African male in a world where such men no longer hold the power they once did."

I choose to reduce the nature of inferior "thematically realistic" narratives to the following formula: such narratives suffer from "too much work," so much so that the rhetoric overpowers the principle of creative play.

Superior narratives of "thematic escapism," a.k.a. "play for play's sake," have a more involved relationship to the principle of serious work. In these stories the principle of work does not bond with the principle of play as in the previous form. It is always the nature of thematically escapist works to provide a vacation from morals and rigor. Yet the work-principle does have a decided influence on the quality of a "play for play's sake" narrative.

What does the realistic theme of "white sins against black people" look through the lens of thematic escapism? Well, an escapist story can express roughly the same sentiments as the Faulkner and Coetzee novels cited above, but the rhetoric will generally remain superficial because the narrative is predominantly focused upon fanciful content. A well-known example in the realm of comic books would be LOIS LANE #121.  Thus in this tale veteran white journalist Lois Lane temporarily transforms herself into a black woman so that she can see how the "other color" lives. I don't doubt that this story was well-intentioned, but to say the least it lacks the *gravitas* of even a bad literary novel like DISGRACE.

I provide this example only to illustrate the point about political affiliations; it isn't fair to compare a short comic book story with two prose novels. For that reason, and to provide a validation of my criterion that one can find "good play" even in novels with bad ideas, my contrary examples are Margaret Mitchell's 1936 GONE WITH THE WIND and Thomas Dixon's THE CLANSMAN.  Some may regard this a flawed comparison, because I must admit that I have not read the Dixon novel. I only know the CLANSMAN story from the famous film BIRTH OF A NATION, which was technically an adaptation of the play Dixon wrote from his own novel. Nevertheless, from what I've read the film is generally an accurate representation of the author's ideology.

Both CLANSMAN and GONE WITH THE WIND are primarily concerned with presenting an idealized view of the American South and its pro-slavery ethic, and any story-elements that might detract from that ideal are either ignored or dismissed.  Yet the aesthetic failure of Dixon's story is not that it holds stupid political views; it is that it has nothing else to offer. Dixon reportedly despised both Harriet Beecher Stowe's views and her novel, but he seems to have learned nothing from his predecessor about how to create appealing characters that can persuade the target audience into at least a consideration of the author's rhetoric. It's a mark of D.W. Griffith's genius that Dixon's paper-thin characters become vital when they're depicted by a master of the cinematic art.

Mitchell's ideal, in contrast, is not just a superficial paean to the South: for many readers, it is the South. I've mentioned in this essay that GONE WITH THE WIND lacks the affects of the sublime, but that lack doesn't take anything from Mitchell's amazing ability to create characters who can seem well-rounded even though they may appear for no more than a paragraph or two.  Ironically, though Dixon actually experienced the Old South and Mitchell did not, Mitchell succeeds in putting across her fantasized ideal because the people inhabiting it possess the vitality needed to make it seem real.

Now, since I'm downgrading Dixon for over-dependence on his concept of "serious work," that might sound like CLANSMAN, like DISGRACE, could be guilty of the same fault: that of "too much work." On the contrary, though, CLANSMAN suffers from "too little work"; of Dixon's inability to provide the verisimilitude that could make his characters come alive, even in the service of a poorly reasoned ethic.  Mitchell doesn't consciously pattern her characters on literary archetypes, but she knows how to invoke such figures as the whore, the Madonna, the scapegrace, and the vixen with enough verisimilitude that they seem to be real people. This apparent grounding in reality provides the "decided influence" I mention above. Play is the dominant mode of both GONE WITH THE WIND and THE CLANSMAN, but only GONE WITH THE WIND puts any work into the game-- and as some may have noticed, often the best games are those on which the players exert the most effort.

Hmm, I worked in Bataille this time, but nothing on goal-affects. Maybe next time.

JOINED AT THE TRIP PT. 3

I suppose that the main reason I felt the impetus to expatiate on the differences between my goal-affect theory and Fukuyama's "thymotic theory" is that PART 1  deals with the relationships of fictional sex and violence, and because I've defined *megalothymia* and *isothymia* as being dominantly aligned with violence and sex, respectively, as in the 2009 essay VIOLENCE *AIN'T* NUTHIN' BUT SEX MISSPELLED PART 2:

While there are ways in which sexual partners can attempt to "assault" one another-- ways which include, but are not confined to, rape-- sex is dominantly isothymic, in that sex usually requires some modicum of cooperation. Violence, then, dominantly conforms to Fukuyma's megalothymic mode insofar as it usually involves a struggle of at least two opponents in which one will prove superior to the other, though in rare cases fighters may simply spar with no intent of proving thymotic superiority.

However, though I'm sure I've emphasized, possibly to the point of tedium, that art should not be gauged in terms of what Jung called "the principle of serious work," I may not have made clear that fictional sex and violence are not as easily assignable to the two thymotic categories as are their real counterparts.

The example of "non-violent sex" cited in LEAD US NOW INTO TRANSGRESSION-- SWAMP THING #34-- certainly does represent *isothymia* at its finest. Over the course of previous issues the ongoing association of Swamp Thing and Abby Arcane has caused them to fall in love. Once they've acknowledged that love, Swamp Thing wants them to enjoy the closest thing they can to sexual interaction. Abby eats a tuber grown from Swamp Thing's mossy back. The result is that the differences of human and plant are transcended as their spirits intertwine in a metaphysical version of Bataille's "sensuous frenzy."

However, in fiction "non-violent sex" does not exclude all possibilities of *megalothymia.* 

The Superman-Lois Lane relationship is so iconic that it's frequently become a target for its alleged anti-feminist qualities, as discussed in more detail here.  This discussion does not touch on sex as such, since it was a given that the Superman comics could not allude to sexuality beyond lingering looks and the occasional lip-lock-- though in WORLD'S FAIR COMICS #1, Superman does get an interesting "ride."

As I don't have a scanner I'm relegated to description of the rest. Superman, who will often complain of Lois getting on his back in a purely figurative sense, finds that the lady reporter had literally grabbed hold of him. When she won't remove herself, he does a somersault. She isn't dislodged exactly, but the next panel shows her no longer holding him, as she says, "That was fun, let's do it again!" This is probably the closest that a juvenile-oriented publication could come to showing a man and woman enjoying a good sensuous frenzy, though Superman is rather disoriented by Lois' ardor and quickly flees the premises.  

Silver Age SUPERMAN stories have, with some justice, drawn some criticism for portraying the Superman-Lois romantic relationship as one in which the male uses guile rather than violence to assert his will over the female, usually with the excuse of "teaching her a lesson" to correct her feminine snoopiness and self-assertiveness. Granted, this are stories about "romance," not "sex," but it's not hard to imagine how the same deceptiveness could be employed in more explicit situations.

At the same time, though Mort Weisinger would never win any awards for gender equity, he was too savvy an entertainer not to change things up a bit from time to time, so that the girls-- with whom the female readers would presumably identify-- could win one.

In both of these stories, Superman and his prospective girlfriends trick and deceive one another to gain the upper hand.  I define this sort of story as an entirely non-violent manner of seeking *megalothymia* in a sexually based relationship, for all that there is no sex as such.  Stories like this are worth considering as a corrective to the Wertham-ite notion that violence is the best indicator of the human desire for dominance.  Again, both sex and violence possess such propensities, falling in line with my earlier expressed maxim, "Might makes ego."

In PART 2 I said that I would review the goal-affects with resort to Bataille, but that will have to wait for PART 4.