Imaginary Lovers

It's summertime, and the reading is easy. DC has put out another fun trade paperback of Silver Age stories. This one collects "imaginary stories." Now of course all of their superhero stories are "imaginary," in the sense that they're fictional. But these were stories where the writers would take a "what if" concept and roll with it, without any concerns about trashing characters or concepts for future stories -- because they occur "on an imaginary day which may or may not happen . . . ."

Mort Weisinger, editor of the various Superman titles in the '50's and '60's, evidently loved imaginary stories, because tales of Superman and his supporting cast dominate this volume. Alan Moore has said that Superman stories Weisinger edited were often based on what came out during Weisinger's psychoanalysis sessions. That would certainly explain the emotional roller coasters these stories travel.

July 1963's THE AMAZING STORY OF SUPERMAN-RED AND SUPERMAN-BLUE is one of the most joyful and optimistic comics stories ever written. In it, Superman divides into two beings, who, working together, solve not only every ongoing problem in Superman's life, but all of humanity's problems .

Then, immediately following that, we have August 1964's darkly nihilistic THE THREE WIVES OF SUPERMAN. Given that the primary audience for Superman stories at that time was young boys, imagine the impact of a story where Superman marries -- in succession -- Lois Lane, Lana Lang, and Lori Lemaris; and each wife (spoiler warning) dies horribly! It comes complete with subchapters with titles like, "The TRAGIC TORMENT of MRS. LANA SUPERMAN!"

There's also another weird marriage tale, from 1961, JIMMY OLSEN MARRIES SUPERGIRL, in which Olsen marries a girl who is in fact Supergirl's alter ego, then is flummoxed when Supergirl herself starts coming on to him and he is tempted into infidelity! (Incidently, in all of these stories, the married couples are depicted as sleeping in twin beds. No super hanky panky, even after marriage!)

Death and marriage are two primary focuses of these stories, which include THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN from 1961 and MR. AND MRS. CLARK (SUPERMAN) KENT from 1960.

The book begins with a 1946 story originally published not by DC, but by Fawcett, starring Captain Marvel (whose rights DC bought after driving Fawcett out of the comics publishing biz). This startlingly dark story, published little over a year after the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings, depicts a nuclear war in stark detail -- ending with Captain Marvel the only living being on Earth. Damn.

If you want to read a book of comic stories that are simply written, simply drawn, and yet delve deeply into weird psychology, this is the one for you.