We’ve had a lot of fun here over the years with various issues of LOIS LANE in which Lois is either scheming to marry Superman, marrying someone else instead of Superman, or crying as someone else marries Superman. So imagine our surprise to finally find an issue of LOIS LANE where Lois actually marries the big galoot, yet still somehow ends up in tears.
It all went down in SUPERMAN’S GIRLFRIEND LOIS LANE #82 (April 1968), in “The Tragic Fate of the Superman Sweethearts!”, written by Leo Dorfman and drawn by Irv Novick and Mike Esposito, under a Neal Adams cover:
Here, a hypnotized Lois is compelled to enter a mysterious craft that takes her to the far future, the year 4068, where she meets the futuristic inhabitants and marvels at their technical advances:
When she asks where their future version of Superman is (good ol’ Lois and her one-track mind), they show her why Superman had no descendants:
It turns out that Superman and Lois died on their honeymoon, the future historian explains, murdered by a crimegang called The Executioners, who manages to poison Superman’s plane (Superman has a plane?) with Gold Kryptonite dust.
The plane crashes, and a now-powerless Superman and Lois are kaput:
Lois returns to the past and tells Superman of her time-travel trip, deciding not to tell him of what she’d learned, hoping to avoid it. Instead, Superman is spurred to propose:
By the way, this is the douchiest, male-chauvinistiest Superman I’ve ever seen. Look how he refers to her just moments earlier:
“36-24-36”? Yeesh. And Lois wants to marry this guy?
Of course, Lois accepts, and the two are married secretly:
Just as the future predicted, their honeymoon flight is interrupted by the Gold K cloud, and Superman succumbs. Maybe Lois should have mentioned, I don’t know, any of this to him?
Of course, it’s all a ruse: Superman had figured out the plot and played possum, having used a temporary antidote to Gold K (which had never been seen before and wasn’t seen since, by the way) to avoid losing his powers. Seems like a bit of a waste of time, but I guess if you’re Superman you do these things just to keep yourself interested.
It’s also suddenly revealed, almost as an afterthought, that Superman was brainwashed into proposing, with a “Green K Brainwash Ray.” I guess you can pick those up at the Metropolis Radio Shack.
But what about Lois’s knowledge of the future? A trip back to 4068 reveals that she had actually visited “Katraz,” an intergalactic island prison where they hate Superman and pass the time pretending he had been killed. Or something. It’s all kind of murky, to be honest.
Now that the future is wide open, Lois decides that the thing she’s wanted and obsessed over for years? No thanks.
So it’s time for a Super-Annulment, it turns out. You can almost hear Superman’s sigh of relief.
“The next marriage will be for keeps,” says Superman. Knowing this comic, I doubt it…
Scott Tipton admires how calmly Lois handles seeing her own death. If you’ve got questions about Lois Lane or comics in general, send them here.
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