SCOTT: Today we're going to tackle a fun time-traveling story that may or may not be weird. Spoilers:
It's weird.
Hey everyone! Welcome to Comic Misconceptions, the show that takes you into detail about
the things you think you know about comics. I'm your host, Scott Niswander. And I know
it probably seems that Superman pops up on this show a lot. I just can't help it. His
escapades are so crazy! But today, we're talking specifically about Lois Lane in Superman's
Girlfriend, Lois Lane #59. It's a crazy time-travel story where Lois goes back in time to save
Krypton from exploding. It's awesome, and it also leads us into this week's trivia challenge,
which was: Who did Lois Lane fall in love with while traveling back in time to save
Krypton from being destroyed?
BatmanwhoisthedarkknightJUSTICE, which is a fantastic name by the way, and many others
impressed me with their knowledge of the Silver Age (and understanding context clues as well)
by saying that it is in fact Jor-El, Superman's Dad. Which means that Lois Lane was almost
Superman's Mom.
It's a wonderful time-travel story, but to appreciate it as much as I do, there are two
things that you need to know if you don't already. The first one is the Phantom Zone.
Think of this as kind of a prison in another dimension. Jor-El invents a way to send prisoners
there and it puts them in kind of an incorporeal state, making the residents essentially immortal.
The second one is the city of Kandor. Now, there are a couple origins for this, but since
this is a Silver Age story, I'll just give you the Silver age origin for it. Brainiac
used to shrink down cities from all over the universe for study. But Superman defeated
Braniac and brought the shrunken City of Kandor to his Fortress of Solitude where he tries
to find a way to return it to its normal size.
Again, as I typically do, I'm generalizing here because that's not the important part
of the story. So let's dive right into it! So the issue starts out with Superman just
monitoring the Phantom Zone when he finds Lois Lane trapped inside.
So how did she get there? Well, it's a crazy story! Apparently Lois had been at a presentation
by one Professor Gordon who invented an "anti-nuclear ray" which would prevent the earth from exploding,
because we are in desperate need of one of those. Lois doesn't see this as a opportunity
to save Earth, but instead to take it to Krypton and save that planet from exploding.
A noble jesture, right? She wants to take the plans for this device to Jor-El and save
Krypton and probably the billions of lives on that planet, right? Well, actually, no.
She just wants to do it because she wants to impress Superman, a person she'll never
see if this plan works.
And in one of my favorite sequences in all of comic books, Lois borrows a time machine,
gathers Kryptonian clothes and anti-gravity boots, becomes completely fluent in Kryptonese,
and arrives at the planet in just four panels. No other explanation needed.
This is the Silver Age at its finest!
On the time machine, she has to dial the exact point in time she wants to go, but at first
she goes a little too far back to when Jor-El was in college. We know he's in college because
of the pennant in the background. Also, I don't think Jor-El knows how to read a books.
You can't have every page open at the same time, can you? I don't know. I don't read
anything without pictures.
Then she arrives at the right time, convinces Jor-El that she's a Kryptonian woman named
Lo-Ane, gives him the plans, and helps translate them from English to Kryptonese which she
is now a master in as of one page ago.
So there you have it. The day is saved. Lois goes back into her Time Machine to go home,
but unfortunately it has broken down because of the environment that she landed in. So
her new thought instantly after that happened is, "Well y'know, Jor-El's kind of hot. If
I can't marry Superman because I'm stuck in the past, I might as well marry his dad, right?"
Hold on! Hold on! You are stuck on a completely foreign planet in the past. Your entire life
as you knew it is gone. Your family, your friends, your loved ones, they all think you
are dead. And your first course of action is just to put the least amount of effort
possible into making your Time Machine work before excepting the loss of your past life,
and instead scheming to take your boyfriend's soon-to-be father away from his soon-to-be
mother based on nothing except his looks and his relation to Superman?!
I LOVE THIS STORY!!!
Lois becomes roommates with Superman eventual mother and Jor-El's current girlfriend, Lara.
Lois wastes no time springing into action to sabotage Lara's relationship with Jor-El.
They go to the salon together and Lois pushes a button that she thinks will make Lara's
hair green. But she accidentally pushes the button for her machine, since she doesn't
understand how Kryptonian technology works, and turns her own hair green.
They then all go dancing together, and remember those anti-gravity boots Lois got from Jimmy
at the start of the issue to protect her from Krypton's extreme gravity? Well, she dials
the boots down to even lighter, which I guess makes her dance better? Anyway, she steals
a dance from Jor-El and he accidentally throws her because of how light she is.
Somehow, even though Kryptonians are not super-powered on their own planet, Jor-El manages to run
to his flying car and catch Lois in it before she hits the ground. That's pretty impressive,
and Lois can not catch a break.
Then, Lois hatches one last scheme. Something so diabolical, and more evil than anything
that could come out of the mind of someone even like Lex Luthor. She knows that Lara
and Jor-El have a date scheduled for the fourth of whatever unit of time Kryptonians use in
calendars. So she changes it in Lara's planner to the fifth. Scandalous!
Also, it's good to see that the spiral notebook going strong on an advanced alien planet.
So on the night of the fourth, when the original date is planned, Jor-El is strolling in the
park with who he thinks is Lara. They sit down and start making out, but when the multiple
moons of Krypton all rise simultaneously, it's discovered that Lois had taken Lara's place.
Lara arrives, for some reason, and slaps Lois for thinking she could ever steal Jor-El from
her. But here's the kicker, she does. Jor-El compares the two of them in the moonlight
and decides that Lois is the more attractive one of the two so he dumps Lara on the spot
to go out with Lois instead.
Oh yeah, and remember the anti-nuclear ray which was the entire reason this story happened
in the first place? Well, according to the book, Lois and Jor-El built that together
by themselves between the night when they first got together, and the light of the next
day. Although, to be fair, I couldn't find any credible sources online of how long Kryptonian
days are. Also I didn't look that hard.
And right before they throw the switch to turn on the device that will save the entire
planet of Krypton and all of its inhabitants, the city that they built it in, anti-nuclear
ray and all, suddenly disappears. Turns out, they constructed the device in the city of
Kandor the day that Braniac shrunk it down! If that's not bad timing, I don't know what
is.
The components for the anti-nuclear ray are incredibly rare, which means that it cannot
be rebuilt. Lois bails on the ceremony, and, realizing that if she stays she will die with
the planet Krypton in the next couple years, decides to give her Time machine one last
go to see if it works. To her surprise, it does.
So Lois plans to leave but not before dropping in on Lara one last time to tell her to go
Mary Jor-El because "I'm through with him." Look, I don't really know anything about relationships,
but I feel like if a guy dumps you for someone else based on nothing but looks you probably
don't go running back to him as soon as you can, right? I'm asking a lot of questions
in this episode.
Before returning to her time and place on Earth, Lois uses the time machine to make
one last pit stop on Krypton a few years down the line where she visits Jor-El and Lara's
house who are now married with a son, Kal-El. Lois picks up the child and kisses him over
and over and over again because, and I quote, "I don't get much chance to do this to the
grown-up Superman on Earth!"
So that's weird.
But, at that moment, Jor-El is testing out one of his latest inventions. It is a ray
gun that can transport people to another dimension. He blindly fires outside hoping to hit a bird
or something, but he instead hits Lois Lane, making her the first ever subject to be put
into the Phantom Zone by Jor-El's device. She stayed there in an immortal state until
discovered by Superman from the beginning of this story.
I just love Superman in this story. He is not having any of Lois's shenanigans. He uses
the Phantom Zone Ray to bring her back to Earth and tells her to stop bothering him
while he works.
It's not until the very last panel that Lois realizes that if her planned had worked, she
would be Superman's mom. Which is kind of incorrect on a couple different levels, but
I want to touch on the fact that there's just a Time Machine sitting in the Phantom Zone
now. Or even the fact that Lois never even told Superman that he can go visit his parents
in the past!
I mean, Superman knows that you can't change the past. We talked a little bit about it
right here when he tried to save Abraham Lincoln from being assassinated. But if you want to
get on his good side, stop scheming behind his back and give him time with his parents
that you had. Minus the making out with his dad part.
What do you guys think of this fun time-travel story? Let me know in the comments! I'm always
down there checking out what you guys have to say; starting some conversations and stuff.
It's a lot of fun.
But alas, we make our way to the Weekly Trivia Challenge!
Since almost the beginning of the show, we've gotten requests to do an episode about Wolverine.
We talked a little bit about him in our episode about X-Men, which you can click on right
here. But there is one part of Wolverine's past that I find very fascinating. That is
Weapon X!
Now, the X stands for the Roman Numeral ten. Meaning it was the 10th installment in the
Weapon Plus program. This week's trivia challenge is:
Who is the most famous and successful subject of the Weapon I Program? Weapon One... Program...
whatever.
If you think you know the answer, or just want to leave your best guess, you can do
so in the comments below. If you are right, I could feature you on the show next week!
And I definitely appreciate the honor system that you guys had last week. Just kind of
throwing out your best guess out there instead of googling the answer, so thank you so much
for that. So get started on the Weekly Trivia Challenge!
First and foremost, guys, I want to thank Mike Cunningham, Aciid, LA Antemo, Tebigong101,
and RKCrystalSoul (I hope I'm pronouncing all of those correctly) for leaving such wonderful
comments on last week's video. You guys are super awesome. And even though we just passed
2600 subscribers — yay, by the way — I would still do the show even if it was just
a handful of you guys just leaving some really great comments. So thank you so much for that.
Also, I should say that I'm going to be moving in about a month or a month and a half so
during that time period that could be pretty hectic. We might go without an episode for
a week or two. Sorry for any inconvenience. I mean, the house I'm moving to won't even
have Wi-Fi for the first couple days, so that'll suck!
Any way guys, if this is your first time hanging out with us here at NerdSync, please do hit
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next week for more things that you thought you knew about comics. See ya!