Lois is drawn extra waifish there, to really sell Super-Fatso.

From 1969, Superman #221, cover by Curt Swan.

I wasn't expecting this opener, though: my son saw the cover, then this story, and blurted out "clickbait!" "The Revolt of the Super-Slave!" involves an isolated South Pacific island, where slaves are forced to grow and harvest a flower for use in nerve gas. Pancho had briefly escaped but was recaptured and brought back, presumably to keep the operation a secret; but he had heard tales of the wonderous Superman, who would surely help them someday. Pancho had sewn up a makeshift Superman costume, to inspire his fellow prisoners, and launches an elaborate and unlikely message-in-a-bottle like distress call for Superman, which of course works. Still, by the time Supes gets there, Pancho had lost a bit of his mind from repeated psychological torture, and believed he was now super himself! A lie Superman perhaps unwisely goes along with, and convinces the rest of the island of...(Written by Leo Dorfman, pencils by Curt Swan, inks by George Roussos.)

But, then we get to the meat of this issue--so to speak!--with "The Two-Ton Superman!" We saw "Half a Hero!" a bit ago, and this is another Cary Bates one, that also feels like way too much plot, but with less pages even. Clark Kent gets his name pulled from a hat by the army, for a demo of their Mars landing simulator. Which should be just fun, but instead Clark suddenly realizes, he can't let anyone seem him like this, and the simulator "takes off" into the sky--kinda like Green Lantern's origin! (A sad technician: "Aw, not another one! What keeps doing that?")

Superman explodes out of the simulator, now absurdly fat! Although, he's glad it happened there, rather than in a phone booth--oh, you cheaters! He wonders how he's going to cover this up, when he's seen by a passing plane: well, they could hardly miss him. Then, the alien Strog appears: Supes had helped his planet with irrigation canals, and was awarded a ceremonial drink of the "sacred scarlet nectar," but he had been the first to have any in a while, and it had gone bad. Somehow, alien poison + super-antibodies = real fat? Sure, okay. Strog doesn't have any help, and Supes had a hard deadline of eight the next morning to be back to normal.

After being forced to plug a dam with his own body, Superman starts a series of make-work jobs around the city; digging or demolition. Lois puts together that it's a "super-reducing plan," but also wonders if he's covering his disappearance as Clark. She then gets a message, to visit Clark at his apartment, but he warns her, don't come too close: Superman had saved him from a terrorist bomb, but he could be radioactive, and Superman hadn't had time to check before becoming fat. The lie is sold with an elaborate funhouse mirror set-up, to make the still-chunky Clark appear normal. He then continues his super-workout feats, but only gets down to maybe 350 pounds before eight: close enough that he looked about normal, anyway; but he needed to be his exact, usual weight for an appointment at a government research installation. They had a vault, with a Superman-shaped key, containing an experimental weapon nullifer; that Supes had to open before the deadline self-destructed the safe, which is over-complicated and dumb: that lock doesn't seem that secure, Superman himself even cheats it with anti-gravity discs to get back to his proper weight. Which, would he even need to do? He could fly! I feel like he could control his weight on a mechanical scale if he wanted to. Maybe I'm not that comfortable with Supes working with the government (and mainly, the military) anymore.