Showcase Presents Superman: Part 15

This is the fifteenth of numerous posts on Showcase Presents: Superman. I hope you enjoy this as much as I enjoyed the stories.Now, this won't be like most comic blogs with scanned pictures posted throughout. Mostly because I don't have a scanner, but the stories should speak for themselves, but also because I want to go through the whole book in the next few weeks, and I want non-comics readers to enjoy the kookiness that us comics readers understand from the Silver Age. While I may mock these stories, I am not making anything up, this is all straight from the comics! I love these stories and the character of Superman. This is great stuff! The cover scans are from the Grand Comic Book Database.

Superman # 126

"The Two Faces of Superman"

Long Story Short: Both Lois Lane and Superman are truly horrible, shallow, and amoral people.

This one is especially weird. Lois gets a phone call from Chet Hartley. Her friend set her up on a date with him as a favor to him if he came to Metropolis. She doesn't want to go, but agrees anyway, even though she has a date with Superman later in the night. Apparently they can date, but they can't marry, why buy the cow Superman? Anyway, Lois makes herself look like a maladjusted eight year old to scare Chet away. They go out dancing and it works, Chet is so embarrassed that he takes her home in time for her date with Superman. However, Clark saw her there with Chet, and felt like he needs to avenge poor Chet, by playing a prank on Lois.

On the beginning of their date, Superman proposes to Lois, but says she needs to know something before she can answer. She agrees, so he takes her back to a fake apartment that he rented earlier that night and shows her some flesh colored Superman masks. You see, he wears a mask to protect his secret identity, who looks exactly like Alfred E Newman. Seriously.

Lois, being the incredibly shallow person that she is, is horrified! She cries, is embarrased to be seen with him in public (so much for a secret identity), and even has a hard time kissing him. She finally realizes that it must have been a rubber mask (they must have had incredibly realistics masks in the '50s), so she agrees to marry him.

Now Superman has to get out of it! He tells her to meet at the Justice of the Peace at noon, and if she is one minute late, he'll call it off. So, he goes about sabotaging Lois, by welding her in her car with heat vision. He is then able to get out of it. He then pulls off his mask and shows Lois what she already knew, that he was tricking her to teach her a lesson. She is upset, but realizes that she can never trick him into marrying her, she'll have to get him to ask when he really means it.