Friday, June 05, 2009

Deductive Reasoning....The Silver Age Way!

One of my favorite aspects of stories from the Silver Age of Comics is the way people - especially Superman - make these weird, non-sequitur intuitive leaps based on the most tenuous reasoning.
For example, the cover of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #14:


(Image courtesy of the Grand Comics Database)

Well, duh, Superman; what else could it possibly mean?
Of course, in the modern era of comics, Lois dressing up as Batwoman would lead to the assumption that she's decided to play for the other team, and her "secret romance" would probably be with Lana Lang.
(Hey, you didn't really think that Superman was at the heart of their "rivalry," did you? That much passion can only have one source.)

3 comments:

Merlin T Wizard said...

At least that's how it plays out in the little comic book upstairs, eh?

Jon Maki said...

Well...yeah, but it doesn't stop with Lana.
Also, I had thought that maybe in the actual story there was some sort of context that would back up Superman's conclusion, like maybe some scenes of Batman wooing Lois in front of Superman. Nope.
It pretty much plays out exactly as presented on the cover.

Merlin T Wizard said...

Maybe that's the reason we started getting covers in the 80's that should have said "Warning! This scene does not happen anywhere in this comic!"