Superman 150 – remembering Krypton, Lois vs Lana to the death, and everyone forgets Superman

It’s Superman – the attention hog on the cover of issue 150 (Jan. 62).

Siegel and Plastino open this issue as many characters observe a memorial day, marking the anniversary of Krypton’s destruction.

Krypto builds himself a Doghouse of Solitude in outer space.  This has nothing at all to do with the main story, but it is the first time we see this location, which will pop up periodically over the next couple of decades.

After building the doghouse, Krypto joins Superman and Supergirl in the Fortress, where they remember the destruction of Krypton, and their origins.  The Kandorians in the bottle participate as well, recalling how Brainiac shrunk and captured them.  The Phantom Zone prisoners are shown, with Superboy’s enemy Dr. Xadu having a cameo.

Bizarro and Bizarro Lois are shown on their world, joining in on the festivities to mark the cataclysm.

Superman, Supergirl and Krypto head into space, and gather up enough material to build a full scale replica of Krypton.  Then they populate it with androids of everyone who had died, including their parents.

This planet, later called Rokyn, did return a few times.

The feud between Lois Lane and Lana Lang reaches a breaking point in this story by Bernstein and Schaffenberger.

The sparring between the two women gets physical, and they publicly challenge each other to a fight to the death.  They even recruit Jimmy Olsen as the referee.  Of course, they do not really plan to kill each other.  They intend that Jimmy will use his watch to signal Superman, who will come to end the fight, by announcing which of them he chooses.

But Superman suspects that the women are up to something, so he uses robots of Lois and Lana, making each of the women think that they actually had killed the other one.

When Superman brings the two together, they turn on each other, and the fighting begins anew, taking both over a parapet – but these are just robots as well.  The women guessed that Superman guessed that they were up to something.  Oh, my.  The weird and twisted games these people play with each other for our amusement.

Siegel, Swan and Boring conclude the issue with the cover story, in which no one remembers Superman.  Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White all know who Clark is, but not Superman.

Superman tries to show off his powers, but finds rocket jets on his belt, and springs on his shoes.  Of course, this is really all that is needed to indicate that Mr. Mxyzptlk is behind it – as he was in the 1940s story this is adapted from.

Once Mxyzptlk’s role is revealed, the story reverts to the name game.

 

Superman 143 – Bizarro tries to scare people

Bizarro gets to star in the cover story from Superman 143 (Feb. 61), by Binder, Boring and Kaye.

It is the forerunner of the Bizarro World series, opening with an explanation of Bizarro World, and the backwards way they do things.  Bizarro and Bizarro Lois now have two children, so apparently Bizarros age at a much faster rate than humans.

They are shown to watch television shows from Earth, but react in very different ways.  When Bizarro sees an ad for a Frankenstein film, he is enraged that the creature is considered the scariest thing on Earth, and heads there to prove he is the most terrifying.

But Bizarro heads to the film studio, and everyone he encounters assumes, for one reason or another, that he is not what he appears to be, and no one gets frightened.  Superman observes much of this from a distance.

Because Bizarro is getting increasingly upset at not scaring people, Superman causes an electrical discharge, making peoples hair stand up, which Bizarro takes as a sign of fear and leaves happily.  He brings with him a Superman puppet, which is considered scary by his kids.

A really solid tale for a Bizarro story.

 

Superman 140 – The Son of Bizarro

Binder, Boring and Kaye craft one of the best Bizarro tales in Superman 140 (Oct. 60), as Bizarro and Bizarro Lois have a child.

Both Bizarro and Bizarro Lois are horrified to discover that their son has been born deformed – he looks like a human.

The other Bizarros are equally repulsed, and demand the child be destroyed.  Instead, Bizarro puts him on a rocket and sends him to Earth.

The baby is found and brought to the nearest orphanage – which happens to be Midvale Orphanage, where Linda Lee is living.  She winds up taking care of the powerful infant, even though this puts exposing her existence as Supergirl in jeopardy.

Supergirl brings the child to the Fortress of Solitude, and Krypto is more than eager to play with the boy.  After a machine explodes, Supergirl sees that the boy’s skin has altered to become that of a Bizarro.  But she assumes this is the result of the explosion, an accident she blames herself for.

The Bizarro boy uses the duplicator ray on Supergirl, creating a Bizarro Supergirl who is far more devious and malevolent than other Bizarros, and who plots to kill Supergirl.

Meanwhile, Bizarro has seen that his son now looks like him, and thinks that Superman is keeping his child away from him intentionally.  While the logic on this part is a bit off, it is Bizarro logic, after all, and good enough to cause the Bizarros to launch an invasion to regain the child.

To prevent an all-out Bizarro attack on Earth, Superman uses the duplicator ray on a pile of kryptonite, altering to blue kryptonite, the only thing capable of killing Bizarros.  This is the first story to have blue kryptonite.

It proves successful in keeping away the Bizarros.  While all this was going on, other Bizarro children have been born, and the fact that they start off looking human, and then change to Bizarros, gets understood.

So Bizarro returns home with his son.  Bizarro Supergirl lays a trap for the real Supergirl, but winds up getting killed herself, from exposure to blue kryptonite.

No other Bizarro Supergirl is created until after the millenium.