The colors blurred into garish reds, blues, and greens around her. Ink seemed smeared into everything, a waxy sheen with shaded dapples of ink as the streets of Metropolis took shape around her. It felt like New York, yet brighter, more alive, humming with an innocence that the Big Apple had lost long ago.
Ah! That was definitely one of the things that drew me into the world of comics when I was a kid. The realism of it, but the heightened, inky, hypnotic unreality of its retro realism.
Though as she looked around, she noticed the setting wasn‘t the nineties. Lois was wearing a navy blue suit, which would be classic in any era, but the line on the back of her stockings and the shape of her heels, and her makeup, all bespoke of an earlier era…. Abbey turned back to the articles, studying the years. 1936, 1938.… The thirties!
The thirties! When Superman was created! In 1938! (Or, to be a bit more specific, in 1934, but Siegel and Shuster didn't manage to get their Superman published until 1938.)
Lois was meant to be with Clark, not Superman. That was the great love in the Superman story, Lois and Clark’s love, not Lois and Superman‘s.
I guess. But I know that for the longest, longest time, the Superman mythos said that Lois was in love with Superman and had no interest in Clark Kent. And no wonder: For the longest, longest time, Clark Kent was an utter nobody. He really was no one. He was a front, a disguise. In himself he wasn't anybody.
The Superman I grew up with was the Last Son of Krypton and the Earth's Resident Superhero. He was very very aware of his Kryptonian heritage, and he often paid homage to his lost home planet. His earthly foster parents were dead, and he didn't seem to miss them or think about them nearly as much as he was thinking about Lara and Jor-El of Krypton. On the Earth, Superman was close to a few other superheroes, particularly Batman, and he liked the adulation that he got from young Jimmy Olsen. When Jimmy's signal watch sounded, Superman would drop everything he was busy with to come to Jimmy's assistance.
When Superman wanted to relax, he would escape to his Arctic Fortress of Solitude, where he could unwind and be all alone:
![[Linked Image]](http://comiccoverage.typepad.com/comic_coverage/images/2008/03/23/fortress_1.jpg)
What about Clark Kent? Clark was the disguise that Superman needed to blend in among humans and earn a paycheck so that he could live among them. But Clark Kent was literally only skin deep.
And Lois? She was the one who provided Clark Kent with some amusement. He liked to tease her and allow her to
almost prove that he was Superman. In the end he always used his superpowers to cheat her out of that big discovery.
I like the idea of blending the comic world of 1938 with the world of LnC. I hope you don't lose the comic world of 1938 entirely, or at least that you provide an explanation for why the comic book world of 1938 has a Lois and Clark style romance, as I'm guessing you will give to us.
Keep the story coming!
Ann
