If somebody ordered a banner that said "good luck in the next world" you'd call the feds, right?

It's a farewell party for Lana Lang, in today's book: from 1982, Superman #375, "The Stoning of Lana Lang" Written by Cary Bates, pencils by Curt Swan, inks by Dan Adkins.

Lana Lang is going to be leaving earth, to go live on Tynola with "the super-man of her dreams--Vartox!" The atmosphere there was poisonous, but Vartox had apparently given her a special aura so she could survive there. While she had said goodbye to Clark Kent in a previous issue (this was part three of a three-parter, which I didn't realize at first) she's glad to get a dance before she leaves with Superman, who she claims to feel as close as a brother to. I don't know if that rings true; this might not have always been the case, but I feel like she would always have gone with Supes if she could.

Vartox makes an appropriately dramatic entrance, namely smashing through the roof and tossing Superman out of the building, for having the gall to touch his woman. He had a ton of powers (pulled completely from the writer's ass at a moment's notice...) but while he could hurt Superman, he couldn't hurt Superman: all his zaps and tricks were painful, but not enough to kill him. But a quadruple-power jolt bounces off Superman, and while everyone else hit the deck, Lana caught one, and was turned to stone!...you really thought "The Stoning of Lana Lang" was going to be something else, didn't you? 

The shock of that snaps Vartox out of it, and he allows himself to be taken into custody; while Superman takes Lana to his Fortress but is unable to reverse her condition. Still, Jimmy had been at the party taking pictures, and Supes starts going through them for clues. Meanwhile, Vartox laments the third girl in a row he had lost: he had lost his wife Elyra when his planet Valeron blew up, and his "first love" Syreena had been a murdering supervillain behind his back! (I don't know enough to say when Valeron got it, but how many "last survivors of a lost world" was DC going to have?) Of course, since he's bringing her up, Vartox is visited by Syreena's ghost. He smashes out of prison, about the same time Superman discovers Lana wasn't hit by a ricochet, but a separate beam aimed right at her from someone else.

Vartox had quickly realized the ghost was in fact the real Syreena, who had also escaped the destruction of Valeron, a daring breakout from prison and escape in a rocket, that's given all of one panel. She was also well prepared for revenge, having implanted in her lungs a poison harmless to her, but deadly to Vartox. She has him beat, until Superman shows up to save him, and then she's singing a different tune: she could save Lana, so she and Vartox could be happy. Syreena does in fact save Lana, but turns to stone herself. Moreover, the aura was gone, so Lana could no longer go to Tynola. Maybe someday--ah, maybe not. Vartox flies home, with the stone body of his ex...I'm not sure what you do with that? It'd be weird to keep it; weird to throw it away, weird to put her back in prison; so I don't know.

Also this issue: "Last 'Scoop' on Krypton!" Written by Bob Rozakis, art by Gil Kane. On "67 Eorx, 9999," a reporter sneaks into a meeting of the Science Council: Jor-El tells them Krypton is going to explode, and the rest of the council not only doesn't buy it, they pass a ban on rocketry and space exploration...if you read this back in 1982, you were probably thinking "how could they be so stupid and short-sighted?" Reading it today, you're just surprised they didn't sit on Jor-El and try blowing up the planet themselves...The reporter keeps working his story, as council member Fel-Kar puts his man Par-Es on watching Jor-El, and the reporter watches them. Sure enough, Jor-El breaks the council's edict by launching his kid's dog into space; but Fel-Kar tells Par-Es to keep watching for now. Eventually, when the quakes strike Krypton, Par-Es decides he should've told the council before, but Fel-Kar doesn't care: he wants Jor-El's rocket for himself! The reporter stops him, with his recorder the only evidence of Fel-Kar's treachery...found years later by aliens who don't speak Kryptonese. Reporting doesn't seem that satisfying a profession, I gotta say.

EDIT: I had to scan the above, since I had to see how Syreena turned out as a statue: there's a Sam & Max where they're about to be dipped in molten wax, and the bad guy asks them to strike an interesting pose when they go in, because they'll be impossible to move later. And there's a Farscape episode where Crichton has to spend 80 years as a statue, and tries to strike a triumphant peace-sign flashing pose...

...apparently becoming a statue really hurts.