Over the holiday break, I tried to catch up on some of my Showcase reading, and was doing fine until I read two oddball tales in a row.
The first was the Jimmy Olsen tale where he meets Superbaby. A scientist has developed a ray that "turns back time," though all we really see it do is change a "modern" 1950s telephone into a more retro, crank-operated version, a child's model of a 50s sedan into one of a vintage Model T, and Jimmy's signal watch into a pocket watch. But never fear, the watch can still send its ultra-sonic signal, only now it's not Superman who responds, but Superbaby!
Now I'm as forgiving, even appreciative as the next guy when it comes to Silver Age goofiness, but this stuff is just nuts. Why would a time-reversing ray revert a phone, a toy or a watch to an earlier design? If you turned back time for your phone, wouldn't you revert it to whatever it was before it was a phone? Basically so much plastic and silicon? How come the watch is totally re-engineered *except* for the mechanism that sends the signal? And why would Superman himself, not even in the room at the time, be affected by anything that happened to the watch? Especially when Jimmy's hand, directly in the path of the ray, is NOT transformed to a child's hand...or worse?
Well okay, so maybe there's nothing there that's all that unsettling per se, except for my concern over what Otto Binder was smoking in 1954, but the next tale I read was flat out icky. In "The Maid Of Might," a new super-powered woman appears on the scene and quickly wins Superman's heart. The two have a very public courtship, making out in public on more than one occasion, and poor Lois is heartsick. Ever the sensitive soul, Perry White assigns Lois to cover the romance, and heel that he is, Superman is fine with the idea. ("Take notes, Lois...I'm about to propose to her"). At one point during a whirlwind tour of Earth, Superman remarks to his paramour about the Taj Mahal, "Isn't it beautiful?" She doesn't even look: "His EYES are beautiful..." she thinks to herself.
The happy couple announce their engagement and their intent to live together in her dimension. Earth gives Superman a royal send-off and *poof!* the couple disappears. Only it turns out they haven't gone to another dimension, only to a secret cave under the ocean, where Superman can keep tabs on an alien invasion force that he knew would only make its move once they were sure he was gone. Thus he faked the romance to provide a story for why he would leave Earth. Now at this point one would usually be worried about poor Lois being put through the wringer for nothing (AGAIN!), except for the even more troubling issue of just who this "Mighty Maid" is...turns out she's Kara Zor-El, Superman's cousin, whose existence is at this point still unknown to the world at large.
Superman returns to Metropolis at story's end and explains to Lois that the marriage was called off because "She was too young for me"...turns Mighty Maid was only 15 years old, old enough to marry in her dimension but a bit dicey in ours. ("That's true," thinks Superman, exhibiting his typical fast-and-loose grasp of honesty, "Supergirl really is 15!") A nice, happy ending...except now we're left with the disturbing mental image of Superman making out with his own first cousin...a 15-year-old girl...on more than one occasion. Not to mention that thought balloon of Kara's where she swoons about how beautiful cousin Kal's eyes are.
"DC Comics...Turns Out Maybe They Never Were For Kids After All...Our Mistake."
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