Lana's an innovator in the field of getting mad at you for something she imagined you did. A real trailblazer.
Although, she has some competition on that front this issue! From 1972, Superboy #181, featuring "Super-Marriage or Super-Flop?" Written by Frank Robbins, pencils by Bob Brown, inks by Murphy Anderson; and "The Menace of the Mysterious Voyager!" Written by Leo Dorfman, pencils by Bob Brown, inks by Murphy Anderson.
Spoilers for a comic almost as old as I am: the "Mysterious Voyager," discovered in a nearly-instructible bunker buried beneath Metropolis, claims to be Jules Verne, but as you can probably guess, he's a fraud. He gets Superboy to take him to a bunch of top-secret wonders of the modern age, because he's really a spy. An American spy: he's a counter-intelligence agent, on a mission to prove Superboy was a security risk: "You may be super, but you're still a boy! You can be tricked...hoodwinked...flimflammed!" Duped! Bamboozled! Smeckledorfed!
Let's see: at least three full-time agents, months of training, authentic period props and fake time-machine, an underground bunker, a demolition crew, and your usual James Bond spy camera crap; your tax dollars at work! And they still can't fool Superboy, who notices "Verne" would have been more into music, and maybe not had a shirt made of nylon. But the government getting mad over Superboy's imagined misdeeds and shortcomings can't hold a candle to the master, Lana Lang; who defends her super-boyfriend for about thirty seconds into this one, "Super-Marriage or Super-Flop?"
Lana's friends tease her about Superboy not having time for her, but Lana is big enough to know he has to go where he's needed. That kind of maturity doesn't hold up for long; as Lana imagines a future with the Teen of Steel, after they settle down and she can nag him into getting a real job, like...door-to-door salesman? Selling weights around the world, to scrawny farmers and nebbishy nerds alike! Lana's friends point out a plothole in her fantasy, though: buying weights from Superboy, wouldn't turn anyone into a Superboy, it would be false advertising.
Superboy, innocently enough, returns to the malt shop, with a literal passel of orphans he saved from drowning, and Lana's still pissed at him? Daaaaaamn! Lana's friends cheerfully tell the confused Superboy, they aren't possessive like Lana...that reads a lot more suggestively than was probably intended. In front of the orphans, yet!
You beat me too it, but I do was going to have Superboy having to just stand there and take it while they bombard him for hours for with synonyms for bamboozled. Eventually even with his super-patience, he takes off while they're oblivious to it until finally noticing he left, then shit on him some more for being a typical impatient, immature teenager. Most DEFINITELY your tax payers dollars at work.
I notice with the SA, women, especially the girlfriends, potential girlfriends, wives of superheroes, are just plain bitchy, undesirable people. I'm guessing it's a combination of old, unhappily married men writing to appeal to young males, who no doubt are still in the girls are yucky stage. Pretty messed up if you ask me.
It doesn't seem as bad as all that- feels like more of a sitcom-style thing to me, and Superman sometimes veered into sitcom territory from around the Silver Age to the Bronze Age. Lana was actually one of the more calm ones usually, and even Lois and Lucy mellowed out with time.
I wouldn't be so sure that Lana's friends' comments weren't meant to be that suggestive. This was the period where they were trying to rope Superman into that Socially Relevant nonsense Denny O'Neil was pushing, so all the Superman titles went a bit more mature. Frank Robbins was far from your typical Superboy writer, so he had a bunch of stories in this era. Thankfully, they finally came to their senses and focused on the more classic style of Superboy stories (like the Leo Dorfman story) again.
You beat me too it, but I do was going to have Superboy having to just stand there and take it while they bombard him for hours for with synonyms for bamboozled. Eventually even with his super-patience, he takes off while they're oblivious to it until finally noticing he left, then shit on him some more for being a typical impatient, immature teenager. Most DEFINITELY your tax payers dollars at work.
ReplyDeleteI notice with the SA, women, especially the girlfriends, potential girlfriends, wives of superheroes, are just plain bitchy, undesirable people. I'm guessing it's a combination of old, unhappily married men writing to appeal to young males, who no doubt are still in the girls are yucky stage. Pretty messed up if you ask me.
It doesn't seem as bad as all that- feels like more of a sitcom-style thing to me, and Superman sometimes veered into sitcom territory from around the Silver Age to the Bronze Age. Lana was actually one of the more calm ones usually, and even Lois and Lucy mellowed out with time.
ReplyDeleteI wouldn't be so sure that Lana's friends' comments weren't meant to be that suggestive. This was the period where they were trying to rope Superman into that Socially Relevant nonsense Denny O'Neil was pushing, so all the Superman titles went a bit more mature. Frank Robbins was far from your typical Superboy writer, so he had a bunch of stories in this era. Thankfully, they finally came to their senses and focused on the more classic style of Superboy stories (like the Leo Dorfman story) again.