Believe it or not, Clark Kent asked Lois Lane out on a date in the debut issue of Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) Lois accepted, but was far from enthusiastic. Was she holding out for a hero?

Clark Kent definitely did not turn out to be the hero Lois was holding out for. He not only didn’t stand up for his date, he expected her to dance with a man she didn’t want to dance with. Lois is forced to take matters into her own hands literally by slapping the aggressive suitor as Clark cowers. The bully attacked Clark instead of Lois. And that coward, Clark let him.

Lois Lane

Though Lois had every right to be angry, readers sympathized with Clark since they were “in on the joke”. Lois would have to wait another 50 years. Lois summed up Clark’s lack of appeal nicely. However, this has been an eccentricity of the comics from the beginning. Clark seemed to desperately want Lois to love him and yet he presented himself as not only a lie, but a singularly unattractive lie as well. Admittedly Lois Lane was no real prize in the beginning either. The difference, of course, is that Lois was not pretending to be anyone else and expecting to be loved for that “secret identity”.

Who did not stick up for you in your life? Was there a time when you might have defended someone and did not? Or have you ever assumed a secret identity? Have you ever participated in a chat room with a different name?

March 1944
How to Date a Superhero

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