In the 1950s, the S on Superman's Chest Stood for 'Sociopath'

On Facebook I often get ads for Comixology because I buy comics from there on occasion.  Their ads usually show various comics, often tied to something I'd bought or looked up.

For some reason one of the comics it showed was issue 10 of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane from back in the 50s.  On the cover Lois has turned into a baby and Lana Lang is trying to convince Superman to adopt her.

Since I've written literally hundreds of age regression stories, I finally got curious to see how a "professional" did it.  Or if maybe this was one of those fake-out covers where it shows something that doesn't really happen in the story.  And since it was old, it didn't really cost much to satisfy my curiosity--though the Comixology price was probably about 20x what it originally sold for.

This turned out not to be a fake-out cover, as what is shown on the cover does actually happen.  Lois and Superman go to some scientist's office and since Lois has seen a few wrinkles lately, she decides to use the professor's "youth ray" to make herself a little younger despite Superman's warning not to mess around with the thing.

The ray works, but it works too well as she turns into a teenager and then keeps getting younger until she's a baby.  Supposedly the only way to change back before she can regress into nothing is a burst of Superman's "X-ray vision."  What was confusing to me is that the writer seems to use "X-ray vision" to mean both the kind that sees through walls and stuff and the "heat vision" that can melt stuff.  Lois dresses as a teen and then a Girl Scout and then a little kid to try to get Superman to use his "X-ray vision" but he doesn't and she turns into a baby and he takes her to Lana Lang to care for the baby until he can find the baby's parents--because he supposedly doesn't know the baby is Lois.

Then there's an M Night-style twist.  Superman reveals that he's known all along what Lois was doing but he wanted to teach her a lesson for being impetuous.  He let her regress into a baby just to teach her a lesson about defying his warning and playing around with the machine.  And all along he's had some formula that can change her back--though it would work overnight.  And just to top off the creepy sundae, he threatens to spank her if she doesn't drink the formula.

Yeah, so Superman is basically a sociopath.  I mean, how else could he let it go that far without doing something?  Wouldn't her turning into a teenager or a little girl be enough of a "lesson?"  He has to let her go all the way back to a baby?  

We tend to think superheroes being fucked up started back in the 70s or 80s when stories got all grim and gritty, but what was considered "normal" back in the 50s was pretty fucked up already.  I think I read something in Comic Book Resources or one of those clickbait sites that the kind of story I read was pretty typical.  Back then, Superman was kind of a dick to Lois and Jimmy Olsen with "pranks" like the one above.

The two other stories in that comic basically have Superman stalking Lois to bail her out of jams.  In one she goes to Italy and meets some con artist and falls madly in love with him.  Superman follows them around to try to find out what the guy is up to.  Eventually the con artist tries the scam with another woman and Superman stops him.  

The last story had Lois pretending to be a medium to capture some bank robbers and Superman secretly helps her to pull it off and winds up busting some mob guys.  It was slightly less creepy and sexist than the other two.

It's another example of how the "good old days" weren't really that good.

But as is common, it did give me an idea for a gender swap story.  If Amazon still let me do age regression stories I'd do it that way, but instead I'm doing it a different way.  The story tentatively called The Exclusive, is about a reporter who used to be a big time network anchor until a scandal got him fired.  He's doing a story about some scientist's machine to reverse the aging process and when he triggers the machine, it turns the reporter into a hot young woman who soon gets a new lease on her career but has to deal with sexism and other stuff in the process.  And then things take a turn for the worse...

So provided I finish the story and release it, I should make back what I spent on this comic book--and then some.  That way I can call it a business expense, right?