Superheroes Behaving Badly XIII: Superman

Mothers, don't let your daughters date Supermen.

At various points in his career, spanning comics and television, Superman has demonstrated the ability to perceive almost anything, however infinitesimally faint, and to do almost anything, however ridiculous, and not limited to playing marbles with planetary bodies. One super-power he lacks, however, if we can trust the evidence, we might describe as simple human compassion; we can see this demonstrated, over and over again, with his disposal of the affections of would-be spouse Lois Lane in the sixties comic of the same name.

Maybe the chemistry of the sixties just got to him; after all, many living people recall that decade as the setting for some of their worst behavior, though many others fail to recognize it as such.

However, owing to his role as Grandfather of Superheroes, and the essential matrix of the superhero during the forties, Superman's visibility makes him the kind of role model who, one might hope, simply would behave better.

The Lois Lane Problem

More than one version of Lois Lane appeared by the sixties. Lois the rival reporter sometimes vied for a scoop against Clark Kent, who might or might not take advantage of his powers to get the drop on her. This Lois displayed considerable gumption, and saw fine form in the Fleischer cartoons, where she dared stow away on airplanes in order to get the story about (say) the mad scientist about to blow Metropolis off the map.

Of course, more than once, Lois played the role of Vapid, Silly Female, a role that became more popular in American culture after the end of the Second World War. America needed a pretext for ignoring the contributions women had made in the workplace (particularly since they needed to reabsorb returning veterans who wanted the jobs women had held), and a new myth of female incompetence - a vision that reached its height in the late fifties through the early seventies - took root. Note, therefore, that movies of the thirties frequently played women as much more aggressive and calculating than the equivalent pieces thirty years later.

Lois, too, became redundant by design by that point; no longer much of a rival reporter, she instead played the role of scheming pretender to the role of wife, whom Superman eluded monthly in the pages of Lois Lane.

What to Do with Unwanted Suitors?

Most guys in the world would love to have the kind of problem Superman cowered from month after month. Normal males deal with, or fail to deal with, the fact that the supply of their kind outstrips any demand for them; men wander in a sexual desert, hoping for some oasis, while women must dread another day in which it won't stop raining.

From a grownup context, then, Superman's behavior makes little sense. Superman books did not, however, target aspiring bachelors seeking mates; many of the customers of such merchandise might, plausibly, still entertain the notion that one should describe the female of the species with terms like "icky."

Superman writers, therefore, combined in their character a set of values that included adult notions and prepubescent and very male notions about the opposite sex, notions most at home on an elementary school playground. The female of the species existed, in such a milieu, as a target of pranks; as an object of derision; and as something to avoid lest an aspiring youth sacrifice his playground standing for no more reward than a vicious case of girl-cooties.

More Than Just Luck

Superman escaped the marriage bullet for almost sixty years, sometimes by virtue of luck, but his anti-marriage toolbox included more than simple chance. Nonetheless, good fortune seemed a typical means of keeping him away from the altar. Consider: In college, his girlfriend Lori, by virtue of a concealed mermaid anatomy, proved herself an unsuitable mate (by the standards of the day) by belonging to another species. Similarly, the one-shot Superwoman of the sixties - a dead ringer for Supergirl and therefore a disturbing suggestion of incest - proved unable to function under a yellow sun, so Superman parted ways with her. And similar fates befell other girlfriends, with devices like red Kryptonite-induced amnesia sparing Superman the burden of matrimony.

When it came to Lois' attempts to bring Superman to the matrimonial rein, however, the Man of Steel pulled out all the stops.

Scams, Miracles, and Crassly Calculated Strategies

While Lois Lane herself did plenty of misbehaving in the high era of the Misogynistic Superman, attempting to entrap him into matrimony by a number of clever devices that ignored the concept of mutual consent, and, in general, playing the role of schemer that paralleled Lucille Ball's weekly exploits on "I Love Lucy," Superman himself did not commend a legacy of good behavior to the future.

An honorable man might say that since he could not offer this determined woman what she wanted - marriage - he did not, in turn, expect her to wait for him. Or he might at least say "Not now, not later, nohow."

Superman, however, considered Lois a pest, and, though the description certainly fits someone who attempts to trick an unwilling male into life decisions to which he has no intention of committing himself, the cumulative weight of his defenses of his bachelorhood represented a pattern unworthy of a hero.

He might resort to the fake-out, including scams like marrying Lois to a Superman robot, or hairsplitting over some legalistic escape clause in the marriage contract (like signing the wrong name or signing the wrong document).

He might resort to other ruses and deceptions, such as having Bruce Wayne/Batman impersonate him in one of his identities so Lois would believe she had married the wrong man.

I never saw such a story, but I can't doubt that somewhere in the ash of the comics of the sixties, one could find an issue of Lois Lane where Superman might have resorted to some kind of mind control - perhaps a patented Kryptonian Memory Eraser Ray (TM) - to convince Lois that a wedding ceremony had never taken place.

Superman might and would do any of this, not just once, but on a monthly basis, within the pages of Lois Lane, and he could somehow continue to look at himself in a mirror - in fact, he might implicate the reader as a co-conspirator with the end-of-story wink that said, Well, I really put her in her place, didn't I?

No Escape Even in "Imaginary Tales"

One would think the occasional "imaginary story" would feature a Superman who ultimately resolved his differences with Lois and settled down to the role of husband, but these stories typically left Lois in worse condition than the normal cat-and-mouse game where Lois would refuse to respect Superman's autonomy and privacy and Superman would refuse to respect anything at all about Lois.

One formulaic imaginary tale would allow Lois the wedding she always dreamed about, but somehow work it so the whole matter invariably came to a tragic end. For instance, in one tale, Superman resisted Lois' plans of matrimony until such time as he could find a solution to the safety-of-Lois problem by giving her superpowers. Thus fortified, Superman reasoned, Lois need no longer fear becoming a vicarious sacrifice to appease angry villains for Superman's own deeds. However, the very solution itself - Lois' powers - turned out lethal, and, in this story, Lois died. Thus we end stories with Marriage Scenario A.

Marriage Scenario B usually didn't present much more real opportunity for happiness. In this category of imaginary story, Superman would give in to Lois' demands for marriage, but would impose a ridiculous regimen of protective conditions, starting with the removal of Lois from productive labor (remaining at her job as a reporter would, theoretically, make her a target) to the removal of Lois from the terrestrial biosphere altogether (putting Lois in a locked satellite around the earth would theoretically protect her from villains trying to kill her).

Who, though, we might ask, did Superman really intend to protect here? In politics, such patronizing and condescending "protection" generally earns derisive titles like "the nanny state." In the sense of real human beings, though, we may note that extremes of security can themselves become worse than the alternatives from which they intend to protect. For instance, you could protect your teenaged daughter by putting her in a narcotic coma and keeping her in a bed under a drip-IV for the rest of her life, but would you, with this strategy, do her anything like a favor?

In Scenario B, Superman usually never really got the freedom-risk relationship in his head in anything resembling an adult fashion, and either he or Lois tended to end up dead or ruined as a result, leaving either of them in the condition of many of Superman's (and Clark Kent's) prospective girlfriends and fiancees.

I have to conclude that something not explicitly mentioned in these stories went on in Superman's head. He didn't so much intend to protect Lois from supervillains as from his own writers, who, should Lois have married the Cad of Steel, would have not resisted the temptation to cast his spouse as The Hostage Wife of the Cad of Steel.

So, though a logical reason existed where writers could not allow the existence of a fulfilling marriage scenario between Lois and Superman, even in a so-called "imaginary story" (we might accurately describe all Superman stories as imaginary), no one adequately addressed the reason why Superman would treat Lois so shabbily in terms of the internal logic of the story.

Living a Blended Male Fantasy

By attracting and then rejecting a stream of eligible females, Superman could enjoy the benefits of female company without inheriting any of the accompanying obligations. This situation represented one of the central wish-fulfillments of the stereotypical sixties-seventies male, a figure given much to indulging adolescent whims without considering their human cost. Our culture still suffers somewhat under the burdens created by those who act out such unrealistic fantasies, and by enablers who allow them to entertain the Hefner Fallacy: that men can engage in non-reciprocal arrangements with females, taking what they want but in no manner providing anything they feel disinclined to offer.

We can therefore consider this synthesis of Superman as a bad example, not yet mature in spite of nearly thirty years of publishing history behind him.

A Cad's Reward

After an on-again, off-again game of cat-and-mouse lasting over fifty years, Superman and Lois Lane finally wed. Granted, Superman had, in general, abandoned the bizarre game of matrimonial keep-away that defined his interaction with Lois and an unfortunate body of other females throughout the sixties. Another quarter of a century had passed, and the Superman model of the day had gone through the hands of Byrne and Ordway, writers not particularly fond of the "let's-toy-with-lonesome-females" story.

The Weisinger-era Superman gave way to the more mature, and definitely more gallant, Bates / O'Neill era Superman, and, after the passage of some years the Byrne-Wolfman model would replace this, followed by the Ordway model. The Last Rake from Krypton did not survive into the seventies, and the values of a different generation of cartoonists would prevail in the interpretation of the Godfather of Superheroes.

Nonetheless, the more humane versions of Superman would never completely extirpate the memories of ten years of scattered and abandoned girlfriends who had become personal and storytelling inconveniences. Products of a luckier day - in today's comics some supervillain would deal with them by blasting them to a pile of ashes when writers needed them out of the way - these short-term love interests would nonetheless stack up. The wounded alumnae of the amours of Superman could themselves form a formidable body of individuals, having in moral credibility something that the Superman Revenge Squad did not; and at their head one would expect a scorned, scarred, and cynical Lois Lane to lead some campaign for justice for the mistreated.

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