Showcase Presents Superman: Part 13

This is the thirteenth 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! While I may mock, 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


"Superman's Hunt for Clark Kent"


Long Story Short: Super-amnesia!


Once again the story starts with Clark Kent taking off for a two week vacation. His plan: spend the vaction trying to find an antidote to kryptonite. Fun! I'd rather do Hawaii. He is in the middle of an experiment when, due to a "queer twist of fate" there is an explosion and Superman awakes with amnesia!


He is soon attacked by a polar bear which forces him to realize that he has super powers. He makes it back to Metropolis ("instinctively") where he overhears someone call him Superman. So he heads to the nearest Superman Museum (seriously, he calls it "a" Superman museum, not "the" Superman Museum) where he studies posters of all his powers. He also learns he has a secret identity.


As Superman is wandering around he realizes that he wants a secret identity again and since he can't remember his old one he becomes a blonde Brit named Clarence Kelvin. He then gets a job at the Daily Planet and is assigned Clark's desk while he is on vacation. Two things: everyone at the Daily Planet is an idiot and Metropolis is a small, small place. Kelvin has to run off to save some sailors from a whale and when he returns Lois immediately claims that he must be Superman (again, idiots).


He has to get his memories back, so he goes to a scientist who 1.) explodes a bomb with him in a shatterproof bell-jar, 2.) shoots him headfirst from a cannon into a steel plate, and 3.) dips him in liquefied hydrogen (that's really cold for you non-sciency folks). Still no memories.


Then...out of nowhere...a solution! He will "fly at super-speed," overtaking "light rays that left the Earth long ago" and see things with a "collecting lens" Yeah, I don't get it either. Anyway, he sees that he is Clark, which makes him remember everything, then he fakes being Clarence Kelvin one more time so he can reveal himself to Lois. Kelvin leaves and is never seen again, Clark returns, and no one has a clue.


Whoa.