Unbagging Superman Vol. 1 #215
Superman, Vol. 1
#215
Release: Apr 1969
Cover: Apr 1969
Creators
| Artist | Curt Swan |
| Cover Artist | Neal Adams |
| Inker | Jack Abel |
| Editor | Mort Weisinger |
But this is only the beginning of our imaginary story…a tale of love lost forever…yet found again…the puzzling paradox of Lois Lane…Dead…Yet Alive
As a kid, I used to get a lot of digest comics. My mom liked them because they were a good value for the money, costing quite a bit more than a standard comic but containing multiple comics’ worth of stories. I liked them for those reasons and also because they mostly contained reprints of older stories, and in those days, I didn’t have many other options for filling in the gaps of knowledge of what had happened in the comics in the decades before I’d started reading comics.
One of my most treasured digests – though one that was long ago lost to the ages – contained a collection of “Imaginary Stories” starring the Man of Steel.
“Imaginary Stories” were what they called out-of-continuity stories that told of events that have not happened, events may or may not ever happen.
I wrote about one of the imaginary stories featured in that digest – the cover story, in fact – in a Spotlight Sunday post years ago.
Many of the imaginary stories focused on Superman settling down and getting married, such as the one I’m here to write about today, which was also reprinted in that digest.
While it wasn’t always the case, the stories that featured a married Superman often depicted a less-than ideal life for Superman and the missus – whomever the missus in a given story might be – likely to “prove” why it would be a bad idea for Superman to get married in a “real” story.
This one is kind of a mixed bag in that regard, as it starts out in tragedy but has a happy ending of sorts.
Our story starts with a funeral for Lois Lane attended by her friends, family, her grieving husband, Superman, and their daughter Laney.
As young Laney, who has inherited her father’s superpowers, attempts to say goodbye to her mommy for the last time, Superman explains that Lois isn’t actually in the coffin being lowered into the ground due to the nature of her death at the hands of one of Superman’s many enemies.
Upon hearing this story, the impetuous Laney flies off to find the Dimension Master to punish him for killing her mommy, but Laney isn’t able to control her powers well and topples over a statue, which gives her pause. Besides, there’s no way of knowing where the Dimension Master is.
Laney’s aunt, Lucy, offers to take Laney home, but Superman says that he’ll take her home with him to the Fortress of Solitude, as her powers are too much for Lucy to deal with.
Upon their arrival, Laney immediately notices a forbidden door that she must never enter – and I’m sure that won’t come back later – but not knowing her own strength she pulls the handle off when she tries to open it. Leaving a Superman robot to guard the door while Laney plays on some super-exercising bars, Superman returns to Metropolis.
In some discussion on Bluesky about this issue, the question of what last name Laney goes by came up. Laney Lane seems silly, but surely it would be Laney Kent.
Not so, as this story posits a world in which Lois married Superman, not Clark Kent. As far as the world is concerned, Clark Kent is a bachelor who lost out on the girl of his dreams.
Clark has to put on a brave face to keep the world from knowing his secret as he looks through the headlines that remind him of what he’s lost.
However, he has to remember what he still has, and so he returns home to Laney and the two of them have some super-fun, like building the world’s largest snowman and going on a super-sleigh ride.
We jump forward a year to the anniversary of Lois’s death, and as a surprise that is well-intentioned but creepy, Superman unveils a Lois Lane robot designed to keep Laney company.
Oh daddy! She’s so real! You’d almost think mommy was alive again!
Laney, however, isn’t the only one who’s taken in by how real the Loisbot (Lobot? No, that’s something else.) seems.
I was inspired to write this Unbagging after finding a Facebook memory from five years ago in which I’d posted the panels of Superman and Loisbot going up the stairs and kissing in the moonlight and captioned it, “CLARK AND THE REAL GIRL (PG-13 · 2007 · 1hr 46min · Romance/Comedy).”
I posted a screencap of the memory on Bluesky, which led to the discussion about Laney’s last name, and made me decide to write this post.
In any case, Superman soon comes to his senses just before Loisbot’s batteries run out.
But not all hope is lost, as there’s a chance that Superman might find new love at the beauty pageant he’s been asked to judge.
Despite Clark’s skepticism, Superman does find love, albeit not new, as it seems that Lois is actually alive and competing in the pageant!
A quick look at her arm with his X-Ray vision reveals that this woman who so resembles Lois is indeed the real deal, as she has the same healed break that his late wife had.
Or is she? (No, she isn’t.)
The Dimension Master pops up and says that it was done just to torment Superman, and confirms that Lois is indeed dead, and was not sent away to some other dimension.
Before Superman can act, a spaceship appears and blasts the Dimension Master and the Chameleon Queen, and Superman is shocked to see who it is that took his enemies out.
I was always weirded out by Superman thanking them, as saying “dump their bodies” along with the mention of the husband and wife being “wanted dead or alive” was that Lex and Brainiac had killed them, and even as much as he must have hated Dimension Master, it seems out of character for him.
Anyway, back at the Fortress, Laney is still eager to see what’s behind that forbidden door, so she takes the life-size Laney doll that Superman made for her – making life-size duplicates of people was Silver Age Superman’s love language – and tosses it past the guard robot on a course into Superman’s lab, causing a fire as the doll collides with some chemicals.
While the robot is distracted, she smashes her way through the door.
Superman arrives in time to witness a horrific repeat of the worst day of his life.
Fortunately, after doing some investigation he finds that the radiation did not kill Laney, but rather, as he’d hoped in vain might be the case with Lois, it sent her to a parallel Earth.
After exposing himself to the same radiation, he’s transported to the other Earth and tracks Laney down.
There is a Fortress on this Earth, proving that there’s a Superman, but it’s slightly different. Superman takes a look around to see what else is different and finds that, sure enough, this Earth’s Lois is still alive, and better yet, she’s not married.
This Lois is just as much of an impetuous daredevil as the Lois he married, and as she tests out a “gill serum” that will allow her to breathe underwater, she runs afoul of a giant octopus, and Superman has to rush in to the rescue.
As Lois wakes in the hospital with Superman at her bedside, she thanks him for saving her again and apologizes for being such a pest, but Superman thinks to himself how much he “loved that ‘pest,'” and, caught up in the moment, he asks her to marry him.
Departing the hospital, he thinks about wedding arrangements but then encounters a fly in the ointment: this world’s Superman!
Superman explains the situation to his double, who is none too thrilled about the fine mess his counterpart has gotten him in.
However, we cut to the next day and find that the wedding has happened, and we see Superman carrying his blushing bride to this world’s Fortress of Solitude, where Lois is thrilled that they’ll be all alone in their cozy love nest.
However, Superman reveals that they won’t be alone, and once inside, he introduces her to Laney, who is excited to see her mommy alive.
You do look very much like Laney’s mother. She’s…er…an orphan! Would you like to adopt her, Lois?
Lois agrees, noting that she feels drawn to Laney as if she really were her own daughter.
Also, you kind of had her boxed in there, Superman. Was she really going to say no?
Anyway, it turns out that the two Supermen hit on an off-panel solution: they would simply swap worlds.
Back on the original Earth, the bachelor Superman checks in on the other Earth using his super-vision and is pleased to see that Superman, Lois, and Laney are a happy family, and he’s relieved that he doesn’t have to get married…but then instantly decides that maybe he should make himself miserable by looking up this Earth’s Lana Lang.
(Okay, I may have editorialized a bit.)
On the other Earth, the original Superman looks in on Lois’s grave and thinks that he’ll never forget his first wife, but the pain is gone now, and he’s happy with his new Lois.
The value of owning the original comic this story is from is that unlike the digest reprint of the story I also get the second story included in this issue, though that one isn’t as memorable as the main story, and seems like it might be a reprint.
(Yep. Originally appeared in #106.)
This story, by Edmond Hamilton Wayne Boring, Stan Kaye, and Pat Gordon tells the tale of “Superman’s First Exploit,” in which a discredited scientist is bugging Superman asking him where and when his rocket landed on Earth.
Naturally, he doesn’t want to tell him.
However, The Daily Planet gets a suggestion for a contest: finding out who remembers Superman’s earliest super-feat.
The scientist is using the contest to dig up information on Superman, and Superman isn’t happy about it.
People submit various stories, but none of them date back far enough to be his first, until someone tells a story about seeing a super-baby in Smallville.
Superman himself confirms that as his first feat, but is challenged by the scientist who suggests that he may have performed a super-feat even before landing on Earth, as he would have become super shortly after rocketing away from Krypton.
Superman searches his memory and recalls seeing a bright, pretty light that prompted him to exit his rocket ship and chase after it with his newfound powers.
Shortly thereafter, he landed on Earth where he was found by the Kents, though he doesn’t share that last part in the telling of his tale.
But the scientist has learned what he needed to know. Years earlier, he had sighted the meteor that was headed towards Earth, predicting it would hit Metropolis. It caused a panic, and when no meteor struck, his career as an astronomer ended in disgrace.
With the telling of this tale, it turns out that he was right all along, and it was only because of Superman’s first exploit that the meteor didn’t hit.
Superman vows to clear the man’s name.
Yeah, the main story is better, though it’s always a pleasure to see Wayne Boring’s barrel-chested Man of Steel.
And the main story is the main focus of this Unbagging.
It’s one that always stuck with me, so years back when I was at a comic show and saw this issue, I had no choice but to pick it up.
Looking at it now, it’s pretty messed up, what with its Rick and Morty ending and some of the other oddness in it, like the Loisbot, and questions about how Lois could be legally married to Superman rather than to Clark, and why they lived in a house in the suburbs where a villain could just poke his head in the living room window while Superman is reading the newspaper in his Barcalounger and Lois casually knits.
Also, if you’re going to have your superpowered kid living with you, maybe find someplace else to store your dangerous radioactive materials. You’re more careless than a parent who doesn’t have a gun safe, Superman!
It probably helps not to think about it too much, but even as a kid I couldn’t help but do that.
And as the discussion about Laney’s last name on Bluesky makes clear, it’s kind of hard not to.
(For what it’s worth, based on the marriage being to Superman rather than Clark Kent, I would think that her name would be Laney Kal-El, as per Kryptonian naming conventions.)
Still, it’s better than a lot of the imaginary marriage stories, and I was always happy to read any story I could that featured Superman and Lois properly together.
One thing that always stuck with me for some reason was the design of the other Earth’s Fortress. I liked those little glas domes on the top of it.
Jack Abel’s inks on Curt Swan’s pencils gave Swan’s art a different look from what I was accustomed to, to the point that I’m not sure I recognized it as his work back when I originally read it. At the very least I didn’t remember it as being Swan.
That said, he delivered as reliably as he ever did throughout his decades of drawing the Man of Steel’s adventures.
Plus, there’s a great – albeit sad – Neal Adams cover, one that I suspect was at least a partial inspiration for a somewhat more off-putting cover from decades later.
It’s actually a pretty good story and much less creepy than the story that is the subject of this Unbagging, but that cover by Bryan Hitch is a choice.
In any case, the oddness and creepiness aside, the story of “Lois Lane…Dead…Yet Alive” is undeniably an interesting one, and it’s remained active in my memory all of these years for a reason.
Born and raised in the sparsely populated Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Jon Maki developed an enduring love for comics at an early age.
