Paneling: Action Comics #309

Like the panel featuring Lois Lane complaining about a robot leaving her with a sore backside, there’s another panel that frequently pops up out of context on social media.

The difference is that this panel is a fake.

Or rather, it’s been edited to show something that it did not originally show, as the actual panel does not feature Richard Nixon.

The panel is from a story in Action Comics vol. 1 #309.

It begins with Clark Kent accidentally opening a letter that was sent to Superman care of The Daily Planet, which sparks the usual suspicions from Lois.

The letter – sent from the White House – leads Superman to perform some super-feats for the president, but those feats are just meant to keep him busy while a surprise event is arranged for the Man of Steel.

As part of the event, Superman will be honored by all of his friends – including Clark Kent!

Various hijinks occur, such as a kid almost exposing Superman to Gold Kryptonite, which would permanently rob him of his powers, and Superman’s mermaid ex-girlfriend Lori Lemaris nearly getting crushed by a falling spotlight.

And for those who are wondering, yes, spanking does make an appearance in this story.

Superman’s plan for dealing with having Clark Kent make an appearance is to summon one of his robots to play the part, but that plan is foiled by a Lois and Lana team-up.

His next plan – having Batman pretend to be Clark – is foiled when it turns out that Batman and Robin are there as guests.

Knowing that Batman is already there, Lois would immediately catch on to the ruse. But Batman foiled that plan by playing a trick on Lois anyway.

But that still leaves Superman in a lurch. His old pal Pete Ross, who is in attendance, could help out, as he knows Superman’s secret identity, having discovered the truth while they were still boys in Smallville. However, Superman doesn’t know that Pete knows the truth (or that Pete helped cover for him throughout his career as Superboy), so he doesn’t think to ask.

Still, shocking everyone – especially the reader – Clark does manage to show up!

Reader, have you guessed the surprising secret of Clark Kent’s appearance and determined the identity of the issue’s mystery guest?

Well, if you believed the oft-shared panel at the top of the post, you might think it was Richard M. Nixon,

But if you did, you’d be wrong, and off by several years, as this issue came out long before Nixon occupied the White House.

You are not, however, wrong about the occupation of the person masquerading as Clark, as it was none other than John F. Kennedy!

Thus, we finally get to the panel in question, the real final panel of “The Superman Super-Spectacular!”

Of course, Nixon or not, that statement from Superman has still aged very, very poorly.

Could you imagine this story being told now? Even setting aside the impossibility of our current president masquerading as Clark Kent, after it was all over, he would blab the secret to every dinner guest at Mar-a-Lago.

It would become yet another “sir” story.

“Superman came up to me, big man, more powerful than a locomotive, tears running down his steel-hard cheeks, and he said to me, ‘Sir, I need you to pretend to be Clark Kent to protect my secret identify.’ And I said okay, but I told him he has to stop being woke. The American Way isn’t woke, folks! There’s too much woke. And I don’t like that he’s here illegally. But we love Superman, don’t we folks? Oh, we love him. Those tall buildings, with the single bound. Mighty rivers! But he’s a strange visitor, isn’t he folks? He’s not a bird, or even a plane. Definitely not a plane like that beautiful plane that has been given to our country as a gift to become the next Air Force One. Only a sucker would say no to a gift like that.”

In any case, due to the lead time involved in printing comics, this story didn’t hit the stands until December of 1963, nearly a month after JFK’s assassination, and I think that while the edited panel is a good gag, the original is much more interesting in context.

---

---