I always liked the fact that Carol was Hal's boss. It was something fresh, as the love interests of heroes tended to be either their co-workers or subordinates.
That was a pretty cool idea. What worked about that was not so much that Carol was GL's boss, but how seriously she took being his boss - I said above that it was because as a woman of the time in a position of power, being trusted by her father with a company, Carol consequently has something to prove.
Obviously Carol Ferris is in love with Hal Jordan, but she can't be with him because it isn't all about what she wants.
There just isn't a good enough reason on this level for why Lois and Superman shouldn't get together. It's interesting to note all the writers that focus on Superman's psychology like Wein and Pasko (and recently, Busiek) have had Superman and Lois (or Lana) have a relationship.
The other Silver Age love story that broke the mold was not in the Silver Age itself, but happened afterward, between the Atom and Jean Loring...and the reason is because it just didn't work out: they got divorced, and Jean just didn't WANT her man back, and the Atom was swinging a sword in a tiny city with a tiny princess. In other words, they both were in love, fell out of love, and moved on with their lives.
Though I love a good love story as much as anybody else, the most aggrivating thing about the Silver Age love stories is how the hero and his girl are made for each other and they stick together. This makes sense for characters like Hawkman and Hawkwoman, who are a little like the Korean couple in LOST: they're from a stricter, Spartan, less-decadent culture that values absolute loyalty and they are in a situation where they are isolated from others and dependent on each other. I doubt that Hawkman has even so much as looked at another woman since they were married.
But I find it somewhat hard to believe that Elongated Man and Sue, or Iris and Barry have as few problems as the comics make it look, that they're as perfect for each other to the extent they show. I especially don't buy Adam Strange and Alanna being as perpetually happy as they are. Take the relationship problems for any interracial/intercultural couple and multiply that by a billion to get some idea.
This isn't cynicism, this is just how relationships work; most of them eventually end.
Look at all the failed relationships Captain America's had over the years (I personally, liked that South American revolutionary chick in the Daisy Duke shorts that Jack Kirby created). Which is why the Jean/Ray relationship made sense to me.
I would say because of the inherent flaw in the S/CK/LL triangle. What's the point to it? No one got it, or no one wanted to get it and with no real direction, we end up with the least offensive version of the relationship we could get - and instead of actual intelligent story telling, we are getting what an editor might think is a good story.
First, thank you for the observations, Criadoman. They're interesting, I agree with what you're saying, and the comparison to K-Metal never even occurred to me. Something always bothered me about Superman and Lois and I can't quite put my finger on what it was. The idea their so-called triangle relationship is fundamentally flawed is intriguing, and that even way back when Siegel was taking steps to correct this by incorporating Lois as Superman's partner or girlfriend, and clarifying how Superman felt about her.
And I believe there is much thinking by writers to try to make sense out of something that is inherently flawed. The most sensible direction was simply to have them as they are now, a team and married - or phase Lois out completely.
There's a thread somewhere, where I defend the Super-Marriage, and if you notice, I don't really put forth why the relationship is a good idea, and I never realized why until now: the Lois/Superman/Kent relationship is painfully artificial, implies negative traits in both Superman and Lois, and there's no real, in-story logic for it to continue; the permanent triangle we've gotten accustomed to breaks down because, unlike Carol and Hal, it wasn't designed to have any longevity.
Superman is just confused. He lost his identity through longing to be a regular guy - and up in the air about to be Superman or to be Clark, and simply couldn't tell anymore.
Interesting point. I'm reminded of Martin Pasko's speculation that Superman is NEITHER Clark Kent or Superman, that BOTH personas are to some extent, created and artificial as a consequence of Superman's displaced origin giving the character a massive identity crisis.
Though I agree that Superman created Clark Kent because of his humility (otherwise, he'd be someone other than an ignored reporter), but I'm not sure if I'd attribute that to a desire to be normal; Superman quite clearly loves his powers and enjoys them.
Rather than making Superman more Superman, we end up with a plethora of friends, family and cute pets and Dobie Gillis relationships.
I too, agree with the belief that the reason the Silver Age went wild with too much of a good thing gimmickry and expansion sets to the Superman concept, is because the character of Superman himself was not clear so they worked around him, with the various colored Kryptonite and so on as distractions from the fact Superman's standing still.
Superman, post-Code, did indeed lose his "edge" as an adventure character, and he does suffer from excessive sanitization...though Frank Miller makes this point much more eloquently than I.
Carol was very fortunate to be conceived and developed by a very forward thinker who really did have a direction for her, and a dynamic between the three (GL/Hal/CF) that actually did make sense - and could be continued forward from there.
It's interesting to compare the Superman Mythos to the unfolding of the Green Lantern story; it's like comparing a haphazard city like Madrid or Barcelona to one with a grid system that was planned, like Seattle. Things that aren't explained in the Superman mythos have an explanation in the Green Lantern mythos.
It strikes me when reading early GL, how none of the elements felt tacked on, that it all seemed to flow naturally as if it was all conceived from the outset: the revalation of the Lantern Corps, the Guardians, Sinestro, Qward - everything that is really significant about the GL mythos is there, built element by element with a blueprint for worldbuilding in mind.
My problem with the "explosion" of the Super-Mythos was, as it all wasn't planned, it was never as cohesive or interesting as the Green Lantern mythos, where everything fits together, and everything is in a specific idiom: with Superman you get things from wildly different periods smushed together, but with Green Lantern, everything is science fictiony adventure.
I've argued that it's not as important to have a "volume" of ideas, so much as it is to have a few good ideas that are well-developed. And GL is certainly thought-through. The early stories answer questions like, "what happens if GL uses his ring...to make a ring copy?" Or "what if GL falls asleep when wearing his ring, and has a dream?"
And GL does something that not even Superman did: it thought through the introduction of powers. Consider: in the first appearance of Tomar-Re, Green Lantern creates a duplicate of himself to fight for him...and Broome takes the effort to explain that this is only possible under a specific set of circumstances. If you think about it, having the power to create energy duplicates makes a monkey out of just about any superhero story! A problem of mine with Superman is, he's given powers but nobody thinks through what the effect of this character having the power would be.
I'm not saying that Superman suffers in the comparison to GL at least in every way, but that, as you said, because Superman was first, he made mistakes later characters corrected.
Of course, I'm also the same guy who really like Krypto, Supergirl, et al. So, go figure.
The only time I ever really hated the character of Supergirl is when Alan Moore wrote her: prior to him, she was a gutsy, intelligent, independent and deeply (and occasionally, violently) passionate character. She was not and never was a ditzy Gidget type, even in the Silver Age. Supergirl, asking vacuously if "she grew up to be pretty" was very out of character, and its unfortunate that when the so-called Silver Age Supergirl is brought back by writers that pretend to know who the character is, like Peter David or Jeph Loeb, they bring her back with a grin and poodle skirt instead of with guts and elbow grease.
If I was a supervillain, I'd much rather fight Superman than Supergirl, because under the right set of circumstances, if you threaten someone close to her...Kara Zor-El just might rip limbs off.
There was one moment where Krypto ever "worked" for me, and that wasn't in a Superboy or Superman story at all, but in an Elliot S! Maggin Green Arrow/Black Canary back-up in ACTION COMICS. In this story, Krypto used his mouth (and canine superintelligence) to actually figure out and work a doorknob and latch. That's the only moment the character transcended his origin as an embarassing piece of detritus from the Weisenger Years. If writers remember that Krypto is super-intelligent (by dog standards, anyway)
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