THE ORIGINAL SAM LANE (AND LOIS' FIRST NUDE PHOTOSHOOT)

[alschroeder3]

As an old-time reader, I was very disappointed with the John Byrne post-Crisis reboot of Superman. I felt there was a huge number of great things thrown away with the silliness, and over the years many of the changes that came in with Byrne (a cold sterile Krypton based on Asimov's Solaria; the elimination of any other Kryptonian survivors) was gradually ignored and changed to become more in line with the Silver Age. Alan Moore's SUPREME used to good effect many of the story devices Byrne threw away.

But there is one change John Byrne made that I wholeheartedly agreed with; it was the change in Lois' father. He may be annoying, a military martinet who is half Thunderbolt Ross and half George Patton, with a lot of xenophobia to boot, but still...he was an improvement over the pre-Crisis version.

Why?

Let me introduce you to the ORIGINAL Sam Lane.

From "The Wedding of Lois and Superman", Superman meets Sam Lane the way he meets many of the Lane family...saving them from certain death.

According to this story, Sam and Ella Lane were simple farmers, very much in the Ma and Pa Kent mold. It's hard to believe sophisticated and streetsmart Lois Lane came from such a background, or often-snooty, often thrill-seeking Lucy Lane.

On the other hand, some part of Clark would have felt right at home there, given his early life on a farm.

As often happened in Silver Age stories (which have more coincidences than I LOVE LUCY plots, which they often resembled) a misunderstanding occurred when a snoopy neighbor only overhead half of a conversation between Sam Lane and Superman, and thought Superman had proposed--and spread the news to the entire rural town of Pittsdale, the pre-Crisis hometown of Lois.

Not to embarass Lois' folks, Superman and Lois played along with this until they could figure a way out--even the Silver Age Lois didn't want Superman to marry her because of a gossipy busybody's rumor.

Unfortunately, Sam had no compunction about embarassing Lois, with some Comics Code approved nudity...of a sort.

...A sort that many grown children have been humiliated by.

In some ways, the Silver Age version of Sam and Ella Lane made Ma and Pa Kent look almost... sophisticated.

This was an era when THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES and GREEN ACRES were very high in the Nielsen ratings, where many people still had rural parents and grandparents, and jokes about life on the farm were common.

But as a background for cynical, ambitious, streetsmart, overachieving Lois Lane it never added up.

My thanks to John Byrne, who at last-- gave parents for Lois ...we could believe might have molded her.

Comments

[darkknightjrk]

Yeah, agreed about the change with the Lanes--I didn't even think about Lois' personality at first, I just thought they were way to similar to Superman's background that it seemed convenient and, frankly, boring.

The current take has a tendency to be a little more Thunderbolt Ross than what I'd like, but at least it explains more of Lois' smart and badass side to her.

[q99]

And before he came back from the dead he wasn't *that* bad.

[icon_uk]

Coming from a small town with a decent sized farming population, I've known smart and badass people to come from them just as much as they do from them there city folks with their book learnin' and shoes and the like.

[flint_marko]

I think it was Marv Wolfman who introduced Sam as an army general, not Byrne.

[cricharddavies]

I've got a vague notion that Post-Crisis Lois' backstory was first explored in the WORLD OF METROPOLIS miniseries so whoever wrote that would have done it. Since that's the one that shows Luthor getting off on a video of teenage Lois getting strip-searched, I'm inclined to suspect it was Byrne.

Oh yes I did.

[flint_marko]

Sam Lane's first Post-Crisis appearance was in Adventures of Superman #424 by Wolfman and Ordway, which came out in January 1987. World of Metropolis started in August 1988, and I don't think he showed up there anyway.

[benuben]

Anyone else hears banjo music playing in background?

[superfangirl1]

I do but play by monkeys.

What?

It could happen in a superman book.

[jkcarrier]

I don't know, I can see Lois and Lucy leaving the farm and becoming "city slickers" just as an act of pure rebellion.

[arilou_skiff]

Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

[theflames]

Agreed, that's what I thought as well - it seems like something a lot of people I know who come from country backgrounds and then go to university (in a city) become.

[ozaline]

But Lois being a military brat offered a breadth of experience with different cultures as well as a familiarity around the military that's a great asset to her character. Nothing wrong with an ace reporter coming from the country (after all Clark did it) but really her military brat roots offer her some skills Clark doesn't have and I like that.

There's always the surgeon/slightly mad scientist version of Sam Lane from the Lois and Clark series.

[mastermahan]

Exactly! It actually makes an interesting parallel between Supes and Lois. Pre-Crisis Clark Kent was basically a facade, and this makes Lois's public persona a deception as well.

[donnblake]

...

Not really. It's perfectly possible to grow up in a small town and then become urbane and cosmopolitan without it being a facade.

[bradygirl_12]

I agree about Lois and Lucy probably rebelling against the farm and becoming 'city slickers'. A lot of people left the farm because they wanted more, and Lois' personality could have been just someone wanting more than simple country life and sharpening her ambition once she got to the big city, and the same for Lucy.

I like Lois having a sister. It's almost as if having siblings is verboten among DC superheroes. You have adopted sibs like the Bats and Arrows but growing up with a sib? Rare!

[icon_uk]

There was even a scene referencing that in the PAD "Young Justice" series where IIRC Arrowette bawls the JLA out for not understanding what it's like to be a kid hanging out with family and friends and asking how many of THEM had grown up with siblings... and not a one of them (Clark, Bruce, Diana*, Kyle, Wally, Arthur, J'onn etc) had.

* Diana looked on Donna as a sister rather than a daughter, but at that point their origins weren't linked AFAIK.

Original Sam Lane

[7dialsmystery]

When this comic was run, wasn't Sam Lane's generation the same generation that fought in WWII? He could still be a simple farmer who was drafted into the Army and then returned home to his farm when the war ended....like Superman's father Jon Kent did.