And why is Black Panther still using Daredevil’s issue numbering?

Putting aside any jokes about this being an Oz-like shower scene, this cover is disturbing and hilarious on a number of levels. I like to interpret it as a metaphor: Ed McGuinness is claiming the title of “artist of absurd musculature” from Rob Liefield.

Apparently there was not a single dictionary at the Marvel office in 1975. That is the only reason I can think of for suggesting that circus spelled sideways is death.

Also, is that guy throwing live bats as if they were batarangs? PETA is going to be pissed.

This is actually one of my favourite covers, but it doesn’t really make sense. Normally when people talk about cancelling Christmas it is because the have no money, or some disaster has befallen them around December, or they are using it as a hyperbolic threat in punishing a 7 year old.

The cover would make it seem that 1. Spider-Man has something to do with Christmas; and 2. the choice to cancel or not cancel Christmas has something to do with our Friendly Neighbourhood Spider-Man being able to hide from the Incredible Hulk. Once seen, Christmas is over.

In addition this isn’t even a Christmas issue, so go figure that one out. Oh, and the Hulk looks a wee bit constipated.

The most long-awaited battle? Not true then. Not true now.

The Cover: Unless Lois Lane happened to get freaky-deaky with a Native American at some point in the comics and had a baby real quick, it’s safe to say that she has stolen someone’s baby. I can only imagine years of pining after Superman without any success have finally snapped her fragile mind and caused her to abduct a native baby and adopt a native persona herself. Look at the sheer amount of crazy on her face! Even if we ignore the fact that Lois probably stole a baby, check out the size of the rocks being thrown at her. They’re the size of a human head, which means that crowd is out for blood! Why they’re trying to kill Lois Lane is beyond me but they seem intent on killing her with rocks to keep their distance from her crazy.

The Story: Lois Lane starts off with doing a news report on the Mother of the Year in a slummy part of Metropolis. During an interview, Lois is berated by a mother who demands to know what right Lois has to ask about these kinds of things when she’s not a mother herself. Lois, being the semblance of sanity, decides to try to adopt a child! Two pages in and we’re given a glimpse into Lois’ insanity. She wants to adopt a kid for the sake of doing a tv spot on motherhood? Of course no orphanage would give her a kid for such insanity…oh wait, the reason that they denied her was because they don’t give kids to unmarried women? Ah that makes sense. Having given up on her dreams of crazy motherhood, Lois requests a different assignment and is asked to cover a rain dance being performed by some Pueblo Indians.

Arriving at the Santa Fé reservation, we’re treated to some clips of amazing American ignorance and racism by the gathered crowds. Though if these guys all seem to hate the Natives so much, why would they pay to go watch them do a rain dance? That would be like me paying money to see a Celine Dion concert and then complaining about it the whole time. So the natives arrive and then declare that there will be no rain dance because their sacred ritual wasn’t meant to be commercialized by sleazy organizers taking advantage of their traditions.

Ah, rednecks, everyone's favourite kind of Americans.

The crowd doesn’t react too kindly to this and a brawl ensues as apparently the white man starts fights when they can’t watch the red man dance. In the midst of this, Lois spots a woman holding a baby and asks her to leave before she gets hurt and the mother of the year responds that her baby must learn to be hurt by the white man. Brain hurt aside, Superman shows up to disperse the crowd. As the crowds break up, Lois follows the leader of the Pueblo; a dude by the name of Johnny Lone Eagle who decides to lecture Lois on how the white man has decimated the environment. To further their problems, these Pueblo left their government reservation and founded a town in a valley that they have claimed for themselves. Now a millionaire wants to build a dam nearby which will flood them out. The Pueblo decide that they will become suicide bombers to destroy the dam to save their village. You know, disregarding the fact that just because you blow up a dam doesn’t mean they can’t rebuild it. So Lois apparently decides that the only way stop the madness is to spread the message to others through the ancient method of smoke signals! That’s right, she decides to tell the plight of the Pueblo to the world by sending up smoke signals of her story. What the bloody hell is that supposed to do? Are there millions of people looking in her general direction on the edge of their seats for any signs of smoke signals?

The crazy face and the dialogue make it sound like Lois is a kid who found a penny on the ground and not a grown woman who is now in charge of a baby.

After her pointless smoke signal story, Lois stumbles upon Singing Rain; the woman with the papoose from the riot who has fallen on her head after stumbling. The next day, as the Pueblo prepare to engage the construction workers to attack the dam, Superman shows up to dismantle the dam and move it to a new location. I’m not even quite sure how this makes sense, but I’ll roll with it. Returning to the town flush with happiness for the Indians, Lois returns to find Singing Rain dying of…who knows what? The fall from earlier? With her dying words, Singing Rain gives Lois her baby and asks her to take care of him. Apparently just handing over babies is a normal thing in Superman’s world so Lois takes the baby home to take care of. While driving around with the baby, Lois swerves to avoid a truck and flies into the river. As she desperately tries to escape with the baby, she drifts into unconsciousness only to wake up in a hospital bed.

Yes, the man who saved her happens to be the baby’s father. He happened to be in the army truck that Lois dodged and was believed to be MIA in Vietnam. Happy reunited with his daughter, the man doesn’t even question what sort of messed up circumstances to cause this crazy white woman to have possession of his daughter and what happened to his wife!

Our story ends with Lois being elected foster mother of the year and having stated that despite the skin color difference the baby and her have the same heart.

The Rating: 1/10 Lois does take some flak for taking on the papoose but the cover never happens or even comes close to happening! It just hurt my brain reading this piece of crap.

The Cover: What can I say? It’s Wonder Woman flipping Lois Lane over her head while Superman is sitting on a rock enjoying the show. Why are they fighting? Well, because Wonder Woman is apparently like the bully at the beach who kicks sand in your face and takes off with your girl. Superman is really loving the girl on girl show since he’s watching it with a big smile on his face. Apparently it doesn’t matter that Lois has spent years pining after him. He’s like some trophy that can be won.

The Story: Our tale of girl on girl action kicks off with Lois’ dreaming about Wonder Woman marrying Superman. After waking up from her terrible nightmare, Lois turns on the tv to find Wonder Woman asking Superman to help her put on a charity show at the circus. After being put on the event by the Daily Planet, Lois meets with the recently de-powered Diana who asks her to lend her a power stone from the museum while keeping it a secret from Superman. So despite having nightmares about her stealing her man from her, Lois decides to play along and help out.

Later at the circus, as they perform their charity routine, the crowd urges them to make out and Superman and Wonder Woman are only too happy to oblige. Lois is writing a news article about it and when the article becomes a hit, the public becomes more and more interested in Superman and Wonder Woman as an item. Lois is sent out to chronicle their relationship.

I think we can also take this panel to mean that Superman is using his x-ray vision to ogle Diana's body.

Lois begins to follow the pair around town as Diana takes Superman around the hipster district as her character at the time was changed to be more of a 70’s hipster chick. Superman and Diana then get their dance groove on at the local disco when Superman is having so much fun dancing, he dances fast enough to set the floor on fire! Admonishing himself for his clumsiness, Superman reminds everyone that this is why he can’t relax with ordinary people. This once again gives ground to the theory that he could never have sex with an ordinary woman because he might break her by accident!

What kind of dance is Superman doing? Super fast moonwalking?

Lois is so distraught over this that she enrolls in a class that teaches acrobatics, karate and judo. Why? Well we find out the reason in her dream. She seems to believe that if she can beat Wonder Woman in a fight, Superman will love her instead. So the lesson that this comic is trying to impart is that if you can use physical violence, you can win someone’s affections.

The next day, Wonder Woman meets up with Lois while Superman watches and they just have at it. Despite all the training Lois has done, Diana proceeds to pummel the crap out of her and throws her all around the place while Superman looks on silently but grinning. While we don’t get to see repeated panels of Lois being beaten up, the text description reveals that Lois has been beaten to a weeping pulp to the point of numbness and possible paralysis. What’s Superman’s response? Stopping the fight? Taking Lois to the doctor? No, the guy just up and flies away with Wonder Woman, leaving Lois to cry in the dirt in pain! This has to definitely rank in one of his finest womanizing moments ever.

I think Wonder Woman just pimpslapped Lois Lane!

So after they fly off, Lois decides to spend her time spying on Wonder Woman. Since Wonder Woman no longer has her powers and can only fly as a result of Lois lending her a special rock, Lois believes Wonder Woman still isn’t a perfect match for Superman. As she uses viewing technology to watch Superman and Wonder Woman, she sees Wonder Woman talk to Superman about her superpowers and performs a bunch of feats like saving a NASA shuttle and…getting blown up by a nuclear bomb! Yes, apparently in the DC Universe, nuclear bombs can be detonated by accident in the U.S without any repercussion.

Later on, Diana shows off the house she bought for her and Superman to live in after they marry and takes, I mean demands, Lois go watch her shop! Now that’s how you rub it into someone’s face. While trying on a wedding dress, Lois notices Diana acting funny and afterwards, breaks into the house only to find…Wonder Woman in the basement! Yes (we should have seen this coming by now) it turns out that Diana has been captured and an imposter has taken her place. All of a sudden the imposter shows up and captures them both. She reveals that she really is a Kryptonian criminal from the Phantom Zone that recently escaped. Why was she tossed into prison? Well, she came across a crashed alien probe that had technology that turned pebbles and sticks into food that was meant to revolutionize the planet and provide food for the starving masses. And since she wanted to sell it and become rich, she destroyed the probe and evidence when the Kryptonian police investigated. For her crimes she was sent into the Phantom Zone and only recently escaped. How she got the idea of posing as Wonder Woman and marrying Superman is beyond me. Maybe she just wanted to be able to get her freak on with someone without breaking them?

I DEMAND YOU WATCH ME SHOP!

As the imposter is about to blast Lois out of the picture, Superman shows up hurling red kryptonite dust at fake Wonder Woman to subdue her. As he flies off with the Kryptonian criminal to return her to the Phantom Zone, Superman mentions to Lois that he found her by following her voice because he wanted to tell her he decided not to marry Wonder Woman as he cared for her too much. Wait, did I miss the part where Wonder Woman or Superman proposed to each other? Maybe in the DC universe if the media says you are right for each other, you just go with it. Also, if you care for her so much…why did you just fly off while Wonder Woman beat the living tar out of her? Ah, romance the Kryptonian way.

The Rating: 7/10: We do get a fight between Lois and Wonder Woman and they do wear similar outfits on the cover. The big difference is that while Superman has the giant grin on his face on the cover and on the inside, we don’t get him cheering on Wonder Woman inside. The only way this could get better is if they decided to mud wrestle each other.

The Cover: Um, I’m not quite sure what else can I say about this cover. Lois Lane seems to have Superman chained down to a table with Kryptonite chains while a crazy looking puppet Superman is being whipped by Lois Lane with a cat of nine tails. Look at that expression on Lois’ face! She’s gone crazy with rage! Why is she doing this? Well, I’m personally hoping it’s some kind of kinky bedroom play that they’ve got going there with Lois dominating Superman by making him feel powerless.

The story: Our story of whipping kicks off with an unmanned probe landing on an unnamed planet where it begins to gather samples for study. While it’s doing this, a creature made of pure force energy enters the spacecraft saying that it can finally escape this planet and go to one with inhabitants. Weeks later, we jump to the return of the space probe while Lana and Lois are waiting to get the news scoop over each other. Right away, we can see that Lois isn’t quite all there. I mean, check out the panel below. See that look of anger when Lana gives her a mild insult? If I was Lana, I would look at that expression and realize that she’s 2 pills away from wearing a diaper while driving to dump my body in a swamp. Anyways, Lois bypasses by the amazing non-existent security of the spacecraft and begins to take photos of it when the pure force creature pops out recognizing Lois of being of a, inferior intelligence and takes over her body!

Look at the amount of crazy in her face. Heck, even the alien recognizes that she's not all there in the head.

After taking control, the creature in Lois’ body steals a jeep and smashes through the army base to freedom. Then, out of the blue, the creature stops at a reservoir and deciding that it needs to create a fuel to power itself up, it pulls an alien MacGyver and creates a chemical catalyst out of Lois’ makeup kit and the jeep battery. Note: At no point until now did it say it ever needs to consume a fuel for itself nor is this ever addressed again in the story. While turning the lake into some kind of fuel, the cops arrive and the alien drives up a mountain until the altitude knocks him out and forces him to leave Lois’s body. Really? He managed to drive a rickety jeep up a mountain so high up that he passes out?

So, when the cops find Lois sleeping on top of a mountain, they just chalk it up to her being a hostage and take her back to Metropolis. When she gets back, she hurries to show Clark the developed  photos of the spaceship when the alien (which was following her) is worried that he’ll show up in the photographs and leaps into Clark Kent to control him. Wait a minute…he’s worried about showing up as an image in a photograph when he’s flying right in front of them? How does that work? Gah, my brain hurts. But moving onward, the possessed Clark quickly takes a lighter to the photo and burns it despite Lois’ protests and suspicions of him acting like a dick. See now, if she knew he was Superman, she could just chalk it up to knowing Superman is a dick,

You know what's a great idea? Having your photographer fly a helicopter right into your building!

Meanwhile, Jimmy Olsen, who happens to be flying the Daily Planet’s helicopter, loses control of the thing and crashes it into the building. Why would you give your photographer a helicopter to fly? Especially Jimmy Olsen who seems to get into more trouble than anyone else? So after they help Jimmy to the hospital, Perry sends Clark/alien to a beauty contest to judge it and after he chooses the ugliest girl, Lois becomes even more suspicious about Clark and chooses to talk to him near the edge of a cliff for no good reason. After she confronts him about his oddness, the alien decides that the most logical way to ease her suspicions is to have Clark pretend to fall off the cliff to his doom! But as he hits the water, the alien finds out that he is Superman and begins flying around with Lois until the altitude causes him to lose the ability to control Superman. Seriously, this alien whose ability is to be pure force has the weakness of altitude? Once the alien is forced to leave Superman’s body, they quickly deduce that something is controlling their bodies and Superman uses his super-vision to look at the ASHES of a photograph (the frigging ashes of the photo!) and learns that there was a presence in the picture. They quickly read a book on Kryptonian magic and learn that the only way to defeat the demon is to construct a puppet of Superman and whip it while the real Superman is being restrained by Kryptonite chains.

Apparently Lois Lane doesn't believe in inner beauty at all!

While Lois is whipping the puppet, the force thing is watching laughing at the idea of Kryptonian magic until he sees the magic working and the puppet burst out of the wall it is chained to while Superman is held steadfast by the Kryptonite. Since it doesn’t know Superman is weakened by Kryptonite, it assumes that the puppet has drained Superman’s strength and leaps into the puppet to inhabit it. But it is stuck! Superman and Lois have pulled a trick on it by pretending to be doing Kryptonian magic and making the puppet with a special sealing that captures any presences that enter it. With the presence caught, they send it plus the puppet into the phantom zone to never bother them again.

The rating: 10/10: OK, for the first time, we have a perfect score of cover relevance to story! Granted it was an easy score to grant given that there was no text to change the context but the cover scene is almost exactly the same as the interior story. Crazy looking Lois Lane whipping a puppet? It’s all in there!

The Cover: Obviously Sinestro has become tired of Hal Jordan being known as the playboy of the cosmic seas and is determined to upstage him. Sinestro has bound Hal to some kind of weird yellow table construct that looked like the artist was too lazy to do a proper job of a table. Hal’s ladies seem to be fawning over Sinestro like the cover of a Conan comic. What is with the pose of a lady sitting down clutching a guy’s leg anyways? Wouldn’t that impede your movement and be uncomfortable?

The story: Our tale of cosmic pimpage begins with Green Lantern attending the opening of a museum dedicated to space travel. He flies down and snubs the reporters at the event and Green Arrow at the same time. They apparently have had some kind of falling out over Green Lantern gallivanting off in space without his buddy. It really looks like a married couple fighting. Switching back to his street clothes, Hal meets up with Tom and Carol before they sit down to listen to a presentation when all of a sudden, Sinestro blasts a hole in the wall and randomly sets stuff on fire. During this attack, Sinestro rants about how unworthy humanity is and continues to blast the museum apart before flying off.

"I could give rain to drought affected areas...or start impromptu wet t-shirt contests"

This leaves Hal to transform into Green Lantern and use his power ring to not only hold the museum together and rescue civilians, he creates a giant fire hose and makes water from it to put out the flames. Somehow Green Lantern has gained the power to make water from nothing. Which makes me wonder why doesn’t he just use his ring to rejuvenate drought areas of places like Africa and so some good? Probably because that would also make for a super damn boring comic and would last for 1 issue tops.

In the aftermath of the attack, Hal decides that he needs to blast off into outer space and chase after Sinestro but no before he delivers a verbal slapping to Green Arrow about it not being his business. Green Lantern arrives on Korugar to search for Sinestro, but we should note that he never once explains why he is searching for him on Korugar out of all the billion planets Sinestro could be. He would return to the one planet where all of the inhabitants want to kill him. Jordan meets with Katma Tui who directs him to a Null Chamber operated by Sinestro’s father; Korugar’s version of an opium den. Jordan busts into the den only to be attacked by Sinestro himself who is posing as his father who is trapped and being drugged by the Null Rays.

Null rays...or streams of pee? you be the judge!

Yeah, Korugar’s version of opium are yellow beams that get you high which kind of sounds pretty cool. Well, since the beams are yellow, Hal’s ring can’t protect him against them so he is immediately intoxicated by the pee beams and sees visions of Carol Ferris and Kari Limbo, his former lovers most noticeably NOT fondling Sinestro. While Sinestro is gloating over trapping Hal in his yellow drug beams that look like urine splashes on the page, Katma Tui comes to the rescue and frees Jordan. Free from his stream of opium pee, Jordan begins to pummel the crap out of Sinestro until he decides to flee by…turning sideways? I swear, they must have decided to break the 4^th wall by having a 2D Sinestro turn sideways and make himself invisible.  

Every villain should escape a hero by turning sideways once in a while

Anyways, now that Sinestro has fled, Hal decides to thank Katma the only way a stud like him knows how. With a kiss! But alas, Katma feels nothing because of the most epic line for alien women in the DC Universe ever: “Thought I resemble your Earth women, I am not female as they are! Your…kiss…has no meaning for me.” So, does that mean that they have no defined gender by human standards or was she just not male and John Stewart was in love with a dude?  

Rating: 1/10: There was almost nothing in this comic that resembled the cover. Never once did Hal even hallucinate that his lady lovers were fawning over Sinestro. In fact, the only thing that really did happen was his being trapped in a bunch of yellow stuff. Actually on closer examination, doesn’t the cover make him look like he is drowning in a floating pool of pee? And on even closer examination, this comic was pretty damn boring. 

The Cover: I love this cover, we’ve got what appears to be Jean Loring dressed up ina a fancy dress commanding a ragged Hawkman and Atom to work or die! It’s got that whole Egyptian slave thing where they are building a pyramid or something. There’s so many questions to be asked about this cover: Why is Jean batcrap crazy? Why don’t they turn around and whip a rock at her?

The Story: Our tale of  desert slavery kicks off with Jean Loring during a trial when facing the jury, she is struck by a moment of the crazies and sees the face of a dude she sent to the electric chair. Acting a little crazy, she excuses herself and rushes back to the hotel where we cut to Ray Palmer arriving at the hotel only to find Jean Loring having reached the realm of absolutely nutso and has began trashing the hotel lobby and chasing people with lamps. He then proclaims that something must be wrong as Jean Loring would NEVER go crazy and do something like this….AHAHAHAHAAHAH maybe like 15 years later Brad Metzler saw this book and got the inspiration for Identity Crisis from this.

Note how he is smiling while he slaps his wife

Taking charge of the situation the way only a superhero knows how, he slaps her face back into coherence and then because he happens to carrying an alpha-wave detector he notices a strange source of radiation in the floor of their hotel room. Sending Jean to her room to keep her safe, Ray shrinks down into the carpet where he finds some old crazy haired man in armor armed with an alpha wave gun who beats the stuffing out of him and forces him to flee by growing again. Ray collapses onto the floor and wakes up later only to find Jean gone. Leaping to his feet, he grabs a phone and calls the only person who can help him find a missing person…not Batman, not Superman, not even Ralph Dibny..but Hawkman whose idea of detective work is hitting someone in the face with a mace.

I wish all comic books had judo lessons in their pages

So Ray leaps through the telephone line to talk to Carter and explains the situation. Carter reveals that coincidentally, a suit of armor matching Ray’s description was found in Death Valley so they go on a road trip to the desert. Using some science mumbo-jumbo, he assumes that there is a race of tiny aliens that live in the desert. Yes, that is his first guess…tiny aliens living in a desert. As they shrink down and approach a palace they see in the distance, they are attacked by flying machines and captured where they are taken to see Jean who has drank the kool-aid and refers to herself as Queen Jean now.

Atom: Not only is her mind ruined but her laugh is terrible and the kid who drew on her had trouble staying in the lines!

After being brought to Jean, her captors reveal that the reason that they captured her is that she is the long lost decendant of their original queen and the law of their land is that the queen must be crazy. Seriously, they have to have a crazy queen so they purposely made some kind of machine that makes her insane. This is possibly one of the most flimsiest reasons to make someone insane this side of a Jimmy Olson or Lois Lane comic. They toss some restraints onto Hawkman and Atom that will explode if they use their powers or try to escape and put them into to work digging holes and carrying rocks. But it also seems they aren’t trying to build anything in particular…so…yeah. But they get sick and tired of this after a day and what seems to really break the straw of the camel’s back is hearing Jean laugh at them! Given the sound effect is “hee hee hee heeyah!” I can’t blame them. So they fake their deaths by pretending to fall off a cliff and then sneak back into the building that powers the machine that is stopping them from using their powers and overpower the guards there.  After beating them up, they demand that they fly away with Jean who is still crazy as a doorknob. Returning to a safe location, they grow back to large size but surprise! Jean is still crazy and seems to have the mental capacity of a 5 year old and that’s how the story ends! Seriously, that’s how it ends, with Jean crazy and not even a “to be continued”. Just The End. Like this.

The rating: 7/10: While the intent of the cover is in the story, we’ve got Hawkman and Atom working for Jean Loring who is commanding them, she never says the line and they don’t get that haggard in the story. In fact the title of the issue is kind of off as well, since the Queen never commands them to die. What really makes this issue impressive is that the storyline isn’t neatly resolved in one book. There’s the long term impact of Jean being seemingly nuts.

David Diep is a News Editor for ComicBookDaily, an Assistant Manager at Big B Comics in Hamilton, Ontario and once beat the Atom in a judo fight.