Mort Weisinger's Idea of Funny

What the? From Superboy #72 (April 1959):

Why would he put that postscript in there?  He had to know that there were plenty of Superboy readers who were still at the age where they believed in Santa.  It's hard to come up with a reason other than the obvious; that Weisinger was a first class jerk.

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Lois Lane's "Fictional" Adventures

From Lois Lane Annual #1, comes this list of "famous" old Lois Lane tales:

Why the scare quotes? Well, it turns out that a few of these stories never existed. Action Comics #20 is the January 1940 issue, and the (untitled) Superman story in that issue has Superman dealing with a headstrong actress; Lois doesn't even appear in there.  The May 1944 issue of Superman is #28, and it doesn't include any story with Lois on Krypton; at that point Superman didn't even know the name of his home planet.

Lois did not commit any crimes, perfect or flawed in the November 1945 issue of Superman, although she did meet a modern Annie Oakley in May 1951 (Superman #70).  She was featured in Mrs Superman (Superman #76) and wanted in Action #195, and had six lives in Action #198 and X-ray vision in Action #202.  The stories listed in the Showcase tryouts and Lois's own magazine are real, so overall, there were three stories (the first three) that never existed, out of the fifteen.

And, oddly enough, that turns out to be pretty good as the next Lois Lane Annual had seven phony baloney stories:

The others ["Lois Lane's College Sweetheart" (Action Comics, March 1939); "Lois Lane on Krypton" (Superman, May, 1944); "Lois Lane's Super-Dream" (Superman, August, 1945); "Lois Lane in Smallville" (Superboy, July, 1945); "The Girl of Gold" (Action Comics, June, 1952); "When Lois Met Green Arrow" (Adventure Comics, December, 1952); and "The Luck of Lois, Lana and Lori!" (Showcase No. 8)] were invented for this list for reasons that will almost certainly remain unknown.

Well, my guess is that Weisinger just didn't care if he got that list right; back then the assumption was that nobody would ever check this stuff.  There are some pretty obvious problems with the above list: Superboy didn't have his own magazine until 1949, and Showcase #8 was a Flash issue, not a Lois Lane tryout.

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The Trouble With Robots

One of the central themes running through DC comics in the Silver Age was a reverence for science combined with skepticism for applied science (i.e., technology).  Few plot points illustrate this better than the continual problems that Superman (and Superboy) had with his robots.

They were originally created to help Superman out of jams, particularly in situations where both Superman and Clark Kent had to be somewhere at the same time.  However, they were unreliable at best, often shorting out due to electrical disturbances, or sunspots.  And at times they were unavailable for other reasons:

And on more than one occasion, they nearly revealed his secret identity:

At least twice, his robots went rogue.  Ajax, a robot who was transformed into an android by members of the Superman Revenge Squad in Superman #163, apparently went off the reservation and tried to kill Superman, although it turned out that he was just pretending to do so to fool the SRS squad.  And when Superman tried to create an android of his own in Superman #174, it turned out to be mistake-prone and attempted to take Superman's place by convincing Clark Kent that he had never really been super.

But nothing reveals Superman's trouble with robots more than the story in Action #299, surely one of the wackiest in the entire Silver Age.  He receives a robot named LL-35 from the planet Jax that is supposed to be much smarter than even Superman himself.  LL-35 makes a suggestion:

Here are the robots he builds according to the instructions:

Kryptonite vision, you say?  I can't imagine how that could possibly backfire on Superman.  Unless, that is, some aliens tampered with the robots' loyalty tapes:

Well, that's pretty unlucky.  And for the next several pages, the robots torment our hero, using Red Kryptonite to turn him into an elastic man, and later giving him three faces:

Superman doesn't even get out of this using his wits; instead he gets lucky.  See, this was all taking place on an alien planet, where every day, a fallout dust disintegrates metal:

Any other examples of Superman's robots causing headaches for him?

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Those Pagan Kryptonians!

A rather surprising response from Weisinger, who generally portrayed Krypton as far more advanced than Earth. Of course, you can see the problem; if he responds that they had some different kind of religion (or no religion at all), he's implying that's superior. So he almost had to come up with the answer that he did.

It does raise an interesting point, though. Surely Clark was brought up in whatever religion the Kents practiced, most likely some form of Protestantism. And yet his creators and longtime editor and publisher were all Jewish (which is probably why, after the Golden Age, there were almost no stories that mentioned Christmas or any other religious holiday).

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Perry White, Businessman First, Responsible Journalist Second

I've been working my way through the complete Action Comics run of the Silver Age, and stumbled on this panel:

Gee, Perry, I don't know if this qualifies as a sure-fire gimmick, but I've often thought that maybe you should hire a third reporter and another photographer, and not always send Clark and me out to cover the same story....

In Action #331, Lois bribes a pressman to run off one copy of the Daily Planet with the headline story that Clark Kent is secretly Superman.  However, the joke is on her and Perry, as the pressman is suddenly taken ill and his assistants print the entire run of the paper with that news.  Fortunately, Clark has an idea:

Hey, if it makes the Planet a couple of bucks, who cares if we sacrifice our credibility?

What I find so amusing about this is that Perry could easily be considered a stand-in for Mort Weisinger.  Think about it; Weisinger was always using gimmicks to sell Superman comics, from Imaginary Stories to fake covers, to dream sequences, to Red Kryptonite stories.  And, I might add, he was very, very successful at this, which undeniably made his bosses at DC quite happy.

Any more examples out there of Perry looking for gimmicks to boost circulation?  I am sure there are plenty.

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When Did Superman's Heat Vision Start?

As many of you probably know, Superman's heat vision was not an early power. Both Superman and Superboy originally used "the heat" of their X-ray vision to melt things. This changed at some point fairly early in Weisinger's tenure. I am not quite sure why; was it because of the obvious problem that bullets were made of lead and thus not affected by X-rays? So I started going through the early Weisinger Action issues, looking for the changeover. What surprised me at first was how common the "heat of my X-ray vision" meme was in Superman. To give you an idea, it popped up in Action #254,, #255, #256, #258, #259, #262, #263 and #264, or in 8 of 11 issues. But after that it vanished for awhile, only appearing in Action #271. And even that appearance comes with an asterisk:

But in actuality that particular panel is being narrated by a fake Superman and Luthor henchman named Gypo. So it is far from certain that really represents a real instance of the heat of Superman's X-ray vision being used. On the other hand, it is fairly easy to pinpoint the first use of Superman's heat vision in Action; it appears in Action #275 (April 1961):

Okay, so in the second appearance of Brainiac, heat vision was established? But you know the problem; there are several other Superman mags to check, so I decided to start walking it back from April 1961, partially to see if there was an earlier appearance and partially to see if there was a more credible last mention of the "heat of my X-ray vision". There was no mention of Superman's heat from eyes power in Superman #144 (April 1961), but I did find this in Superman #143 (February 1961):

End of story, right? Not quite, however, for when I went forward to see when the first mention of Superman's "heat vision" came, I found mention of the heat of his X-ray vision in stories published after April 1961. The latest mention I can find now is from Superman #146 (July 1961):

The first mention of heat vision I can find in Superman issues comes from #148 (October 1961):

The transition from "heat of X-ray vision" to "heat vision" is pretty easy to track in Superboy. From Superboy #87 (March 1961):

While in the following issue (April 1961):

So it appears pretty obvious that the changeover came between the issues published in March 1961 and April 1961. Update: This is also one of those areas where you cannot trust the reprints. When I went to read the Superman story in Action #259, the closest issue at hand was the reprint in 80-Page Giant #1 (August 1964), where this sequence occurs:

But after noticing that there were several mentions of "heat of my X-ray vision" after this, I hunted down the original, and sure enough:

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The Continuing Dilemma of Brainiac 5

Mort Weisinger and his writers had continual problems with the Legion of Super-Heroes.  In a way, this is not terribly surprising.  The Legion was initially intended for just one story, the original tale in Adventure #247.  But a few issues later, Mort began putting letters pages in Adventure, and while I haven't been able to locate any letters that were actually published, it seems logical to assume that at least some fans wrote in requesting a return of the superhero team.  And so, over time, they became a regular part of the Superman family, eventually supplanting Superboy himself as the cover feature in Adventure.

But the process was not without some growing pains.  Because the stories had been written on an ad hoc basis, there were contradictions here and there.  For instance, in the initial story, the Legion was set 1000 years in the future:

But in some stories, the Legion was set only 100 years in the future.  This seems like a minor problem, except for one thing.

In Action #267, Weisinger gave Supergirl a tryout with the Legion.  However, either he or his writer for that story, realized there would be problems with having Supergirl and Superboy in the same club.  After all, wouldn't Superboy then know that a Supergirl would arrive on Earth several years later?  So they made the Legion that Supergirl tried out for the descendants of the original LSH:

As I have discussed in the past, when DC reprinted that story years later, they edited the text, so that Supergirl was joining the same Legion.  In the interim between the two appearances, Weisinger had come up with a solution to the dilemma of having Superboy know of the existence of a Supergirl in the future.  Supergirl had hypnotized him into forgetting her except when he was in the future.

But there was another problem that popped up that never was resolved in the Silver Age. Supergirl actually was rejected for membership in the Legion in that first story, although there was a reason.  She had been exposed to Red Kryptonite, which turned her temporarily into an adult.  Since the Legion was for teenagers only, she was unable to join that time.

She finally made the grade in Action #276.  In that issue, she met another applicant, with a strangely familiar appearance:

Note that the coloring in that panel is in error; for most of the story, Brainiac 5 has a green face, like his ancestor (and like his hands).  Also note that the numbering appears wrong; Brainiac's son would be Brainiac 2, his grandson Brainiac 3, his great-grandson Brainiac 4 and his great-great-grandson would be Brainiac 5.  So his great-great-great-great-grandson should be Brainiac 7.  Of course, the possibility exists that only male descendants of Brainiac inherited the name. 

But the problems don't end there.  Remember, this story is supposedly taking place 1000 years in the future.  Unless the Brainiac clan has an extraordinary lifespan, wouldn't his great-great-great-great-grandson be living more like 150 years in the future, rather than 1000?  A likely explanation is that the writer thought the Legion was only 100 years in the future.  A generation is usually considered to be 20 years, Brainiac 5 (ignoring the great-great-great-great grandson mistake) would be around 100 years after his ancestor.

A further dilemma was introduced in Superman #167, when we learned:

Weisinger and his writer had a ready explanation for Brainiac 5:

Except that doesn't really explain anything.  For starters, if Brainiac II escaped and despised the original Brainiac, why would his descendants continue to be named after the computer?  So maybe they did find him and brainwash him into thinking that Brainiac was indeed his father.  But there's still a problem. Remember, Brainiac 5 supposedly had a super-genius mind; that was his super-power that got him into the Legion.  But Brainiac II was just an ordinary boy (from a planet where the inhabitants had green skin).  How did his descendants get so smart?

By the way, DC has now apparently decided to ignore the story in Action #276.  Remember, this was the story that showed Brainiac 5 and Supergirl getting inducted into the Legion:

But in modern reprintings of Adventure #247, the original Legion story, one of the characters in several panels has been recolored to look like Brainiac 5.  For example, in the Millenium edition:

But in the original there was no green-skinned lad:

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You Can't Judge a Book By Looking At the Cover?

I decided to test that old saw by looking at the covers of several books I haven't read in many years and don't remember the story. Of course, I do have an advantage in that I know Weisinger's tricks.

Looking at the cover: My guess here is that Superman XXX didn't really commit those crimes; they were misinterpretations of actual events that were harmless.

Inside the book: Close. Superman did not commit those crimes. The other man on the cover is a descendant of Luthor, who oddly enough runs a Superman museum in the future. While he's not evil like his ancestor, he's upset at the Lad of Steel for helping out a competitor and thus is showing him an illusion created with that helmet he's wearing.

Looking at the cover: I'd guess it's some sort of trick to fool the aliens.

Inside the book: Nope, it's an effect of Red Kryptonite.

Looking at the cover: Must be Red K again.

Inside the book: Dingdingding, although Weisinger did throw a curve at me. It's an imaginary tale about what might have happened if Superboy had been exposed to Red Kryptonite on the day he announced his presence to the world.

Looking at the cover: It's clearly some sort of fakeout. We know that nobody could invent anything that would harm Superboy other than Green K. I'm going to guess in this instance that it's a plan to fool some crook.

Inside the book: Bzzt! It's the adult Luthor, who has brought back Superman's Fortress of Solitude in time to Superboy's era, complete with weapons from Kandor that can harm Kal-El.

BTW, note the bit about the Agony and the Ecstasy.  It's clearly intended as a reference to a 1965 movie of the same title.

Looking at the cover: Mort gives this one away. Since Superboy and Clark are one and the same person, they must have been split somehow, and Red Kryptonite seems the logical culprit.

Inside the book: Dingdingding, but with still another curve. In the story, Superboy is turned into a monkey by Red K, and later grows enormously in size. Beppo, the super-monkey is affected by the same Red K, and turns into a human. While human-sized (he later grows giant, just as Superboy had) the scene on the cover happens.

Overall I was 3 for 5.

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The Curious Case of the Time Trapper

Faithful readers of the Legion of Superheroes must have been confused at this sequence, which appeared in Adventure #317:

Why confused? Well, it turns out that this was the first mention of the Time Trapper in a Legion story. At the very end of that story (which mostly did not concern TT) came a semi-explanation:

In the next issue, we got our first glimpse of the villain:

Note in particular his physical appearance there. Over the next year or so, we'd see more futile efforts by the Legion to break through:

The Time Trapper turned out to be working behind the scenes in that story, trying to find out the secret of the Legion's super weapon, the concentrator:

But it turns out that he does not have the real secret of the concentrator and flees into the future again. Amazingly, the Time Trapper story would not be resolved until Adventure #338, almost two years after he was first mentioned:

In that story, the Time Trapper has recruited an evil female, Glorith of Baalour, to help him doom the Legion. We get a strong indication of the plot here:

However, when she tries the trick on several members of the Legion, they do not regress in age past babyhood:

Frustrated in his plot to turn the Legion into blobs of protoplasm, he joins Glorith, after first letting Superboy and Brainiac 5 through the Iron Curtain of Time. He leaves them trapped in the future and sets about training the baby Legionnaires to rob for him:

Then he brings them to a planet where elements in the atmosphere will resume their devolution. But this causes problems, too:

But one of the babies has spotted the Time Trapper's ring, which is responsible for keeping Superboy and Brainiac 5 in the future. He switches it off, allowing them to join the group. The Trapper makes a proposal:

Brainiac 5 agrees, but there is a trick:

End of story? Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that it quite literally is the end of the Time Trapper in the Silver Age; he did not appear again outside of a hallucination sequence in Adventure 363. Which, if you think about it, is very odd. Here's this villain whose confrontation with the Legion had been built up over the course of two years, and yet they dispose of him in a single 16-page story? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense. So I began digging for clues and speculating a bit. The first clue is that initial mention of the Time Trapper in Adventure #317. It appears obvious that there was supposed to be a Time Trapper story which appeared before that, but which was bumped for some reason. And if we look at the cover to Adventure #317, we get a pretty good second clue:

Speculation: Perhaps the Time Trapper story which appeared in Adventure #338 was intended to appear just before #317, but editor Mort Weisinger belatedly realized that this would give him two consecutive stories featuring Legionnaires turning into babies? This fits, especially when you consider that Adventure #338 was written by Jerry Siegel, while #317 was written by Edmund Hamilton. Weisinger could have instructed Hamilton (or artist John Forte) to include a couple panels mentioning the Time Trapper.

There are certainly still some problems with this speculation. For example, the story does not end with the Time Trapper in the future, creating the Iron Curtain of Time. But this objection is easily overcome; Weisinger simply had the ending of the story rewritten because now it took place after the events in #317, instead of before. Note as well that the story in Adventure #338 did not explain what secret the Time Trapper was supposedly concealing from the Legion in the future.

So my best guess is that the Time Trapper story that was supposed to be published before Adventure #317 was in fact the story that ended up being published in Adventure #338, with some changes. Incidentally, the Time Trapper himself may have been based on the Time Master, a similar character that appeared in Wonder Woman #101:

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