Superman #159

Superman #159 (1963)
by Ed Hamilton & Curt Swan

We already saw in the previous issue that Ed Hamilton and Curt Swan could deliver a surprisingly good story when given enough space to work with.
The same exact team handles the following issue… with wildly different results.

This is an imaginary story, which begins when Lois Lane was just a baby in the mid-west.
In basically all incarnations of Lois except the original, she’s either a city girl or a military brat; that helps to distinguish her upbringing from Clark Kent growing on a farm.

Modern readers may be familiar with the concept of her father being in the military, but that’s a post-Crisis thing. Originally, Mr. Lane played basically no role in stories involving his daughters.
In this “imaginary story”, he plays the role of Jor-El.

Two things to notice in this introduction.
The first is that the reason behind the destruction of Earth is its sun going nova, which IS something that will actually happen (this story is just a few billion years early), as opposed to Krypton exploding through entirely fictional means. I don’t know if this is because Hamilton is a sci-fi writer who actually knows a bit about science, or because by 1963 readers would know that planets don’t tend to explode.
The other thing is that, in this version, Lois doesn’t have a younger sister (Lucy had already been introduced in 1959).

Lois is sent to Krypton, because of course she is. In case you missed it, she’s fine despite the higher gravity and will get superpowers because her father exposed to some Convenient Rays.

From this incredibly detailed map, the Kryptonians are able to figure out that she’s from Earth.
Sounds legit.
Also I guess nobody else on Krypton had any means whatsoever to identify the ship, because they manage to keep it a secret.

Then again her foster parents are zoo-keepers and they found her in a jungle, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Krypton jungles had weird animals that messed with radars.

Lois receives her new name of Kandi Kan… which is way better than the “Lo-Is” that I was expecting. It’s also not respecting the naming conventions we know from the regular Krypton: women don’t get the same last name as men, they get the full name of their father as a surname.
So since her father’s name is Khal-Kan, she should have been called Kandi Khal-Kan.

I can’t imagine why they didn’t do that.

This is when Kandi meets the future Not-Superman.

Krypton is NOT going to explode in this reality, otherwise it’d be a pretty short story.

We now begin my least favorite part of any Elseworld: when everything from the main continuity ends up being recreated for increasingly convoluted reasons.

At the very least she doesn’t get Supergirl’s costume, but she becomes Supermaid and even gets her own gender-bent version of Lana Lang.

This part might answer my critique of Krypton not spotting the spaceship… despite having the technology to prevent the planet from exploding, their space program is WAY less advanced than you’d expect.

Supermaid received ALL the Superman powers through that Convenient Ray.

And the weaknesses too.

If silver blocks Earthite radiation, does that also mean that it blocks X-Ray vision?
That’s going to be A LOT more expensive for the criminals who want to hide from her!

Kandi’s foster parents die because of Virus X, in a surprising bit of continuity reference.

She ALMOST quits being Supermaid. Thankfully a recording from her foster parents convinces her to go on; I doubt she would have escaped the Comics Code getting after her for that outfit.

This clearly separates the Superboy parallel from the Superman parallel… except Kandi won’t change her name, she will still be Supermaid.
I understand avoiding calling her Supergirl to avoid confusion, but she really can’t be Superwoman?

Up to this point, the Superman/Supermaid parallels were slightly forced but still acceptable.
This is just dumb.

Not only Kandi gets a job with a Perry White ripoff AND a Jimmy Olsen ripoff… but she also gets involved with Dr. Lu Thoria.

If you don’t immediately figure out her deal the second you read she’s called Lu Thoria… hello, English isn’t my first language either, but I suggest learning some of it before reading this site.

Honestly, Supermaid is pretty good at her job. She stops Brainiac the first time they meet!!!

I have SOME doubts on the medical expertise of Doctor Not-Superman.

When this kind of Elseworld doesn’t spend the majority of the time re-creating the same exact status quo, it also spends time hammering the idea of the roles having been reversed.

Jor-El had figured out Supermaid’s origin, so his son is hoping to get powers for himself.
To become some sort of He-Supermaid, if you will.

Too bad he finds out that Lu Thoria is *gasp* a villain!
Who wants him at her side because… uhm… because he’s hot I guess?

Who could have seen THIS coming???

One key difference between Lu Thoria and Lex Luthor… besides the obvious… is that she doesn’t seem to be equally super-smart, as she needed to steal from Brainiac’s ship.

While Supermaid is busy looking for Lu Thoria, Dr. Not-Supermen duplicates the Convenience Ray. Which I guess means physicians and physicists are the same thing on Krypton.

Careful, if you turn yourself into Doctor Manhattan the Comics Code will come after you WAY harder than when they saw Supermaid’s off-duty clothes.

While I-Can’t-Believe-It’s-Not-Perry-White is busy ranting, Jor-El investigates what made Lu Thoria evil.

Sure it LOOKS like she went evil because she went bald, but trust me the real answer will make more AND less sense.

Dr. Not-Superman may have lost his powers already, but rest assures his sexism is alive and well.

He could’ve just told her “She’s hiding in a Earthite field”.

I mean, she’s perfectly capable of capturing Lu Thoria once Jor-El gives her protection against Earthite!

So why IS Lu Thoria evil?

Because head trauma.
This is why I said it makes MORE sense, as in real life there actually is a history of brain damage causing changes on one’s personality…

…but it also makes LESS sense because the real problem wasn’t the blast of the explosion, it was the “evil radiation”.

This is the first panel of the last page, where the story SHOULD have ended.

Except Supermaid runs into some Purple Earthite that leaves her powerless…

…and gives ALL her powers to the new Superman, ending the story.

And this is where I’m grateful that I’m reading this from a scan and not from the original physical copy, because I don’t think I would have resisted the urge to throw the comic away.

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Historical significance: 0/10
As to be expected by an Imaginary Story.

Silver Age-ness: 20/10
Every single cliché of the era doubled by the sheer amount of coincidences.

Does it stand the test of time? 2/10
Ugh, I hate this kind of Elseworld, and they were everywhere at DC during the Silver Age.
They answer any “What would happen if…” question with “The exact same status quo you’re familiar with will somehow happen again for immeasurably convoluted reasons”.
Which is a pity because I believe there is a decent story buried very deep in here, but every single time the story has the chance to do something new and interesting it immediately goes back to the old same story already done to death.
There’s some very weird multiversal determinism in these kind of stories: no matter how different the starting point is, EVERYTHING must bend over backwards to somehow restore the status quo that the reader is already familiar with.
Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get the appeal of these and I can’t imagine doing one today without getting into pure parody. At least we have some amazing Curt Swan artwork, but I expected more from Hamilton.

Stupid Lois Lane Kandi Kan moment
I was certain that I would find something here, but… nope! She acts as logically as you possibly can given the Silver Age and she’s arguably more reasonable and successful than the regular Superman.
Which makes the ending even more frustrating! What, DC couldn’t bear the thought of ONE universe where the biggest hero around is a girl?