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.
No comments:
Post a Comment