This is actually a good time to talk about DC's covers, and why they're so memetic. Long-time Superman editor Mort Weisinger had a practice of basing stories around a pre-drawn cover. He would commission an artist to draw a cool cover, and then hand that off to the writer and artist of the comic to create a story around it. This leads to the stories having a very free-flowing, stream-of-consciousness feel that's a lot less polished than modern comics.

As was the style at the time, these comics often had three short stories per issue, so the cover story was not the only one you got. This story, "The Girl In Superman's Past," is the third one but it's got the most relevance to the overall Superman mythos. The story is set during Clark Kent's college days, when he was no longer a Superboy, but not yet a Superman.

Clark encounters a woman in a wheelchair and uses his powers to covertly rescue her without giving himself away. The woman introduces herself as a foreign student named Lori Lemaris, and she is remarkably willing to accept his bullshit explanation for how he saved her. For those keeping score, this is his third love interest with the initials "L.L.".

Clark and Lori start dating, and Clark is immediately smitten by her, although he does notice some more of her unusual qualities, like how she can talk to fish and how there's a big tank of water in her home but no bed. Clark is so in love that he proposes marriage to her, and he's fully ready to reveal his secret identity, when Lori reveals that she's always known he was Superman. However, she turns him down and refuses to explain.

Clark does the sane and normal thing and spies on her with his super powers, and even sneaks into her home to snoop around. Once again, Superman has no respect for anyone's privacy. Dude has absolutely peeped on everyone in his building while they were masturbating. Superman at first thinks Lori is a foreign spy, but soon he puts together the truth.

Lori Lemaris is a goddamn mermaid.

I love this so much. It doesn't make any kind of sense, there's nothing to establish that mermaids exist in this world, and it contradicts other established undersea communities, but they are going for it and it somehow works. Lori and Clark are oddly good for each other, but they come from very different worlds and they can't stay with each other, and by the end I was really sad that they couldn't make it work.

Another surprisingly good thing is that Lori is actually really good disability rep. At no point does Clark think anything less of her because she uses a wheelchair, and she's a character with her own agency and goals and a complete inner life. There is one mention of "curing" her but even that is something that Clark only brings up when he thinks it's what she wants. I dunno, it's just very good even for today.

I had never seen Smallville before, I'm going through it on Hulu now, and I was disappointed to find out that Lori Lemaris never appears on it. Like, even if she wasn't a mermaid, it would be great if Clark had a love interest who just happened to use a wheelchair. You hardly see that on major networks today.

Next, oh boy, it's more fifth-dimensional imps. I'm not a huge fan of Mr. Mxyzptlk but I like him better than Bat-Mite. I think it's the fact that his appearances are more like a puzzle than an encounter with an annoying fan. Superman has to get Mxy to say his name backwards, and each time he appears, Mxy has a new gimmick to keep him from getting poofed. This time it's an alarm clock in his hat that only ever goes off when he's about to say his name backwards.

Okay. Sure. Fifth dimension.

Superman is able to put him back in his place by playing audio of him saying his name backwards which somehow causes dimensional vibrations to happen and blah blah blah this isn't even real science. This brings up the huge plot twist that Mxy doesn't even need to say the words himself to lose the game. Clark can just play a tape recording of him and instantly send him back home.

This will never be mentioned again.

Lastly I wanna look at a flashback story showing how Clark Kent got his job at the Daily Planet. Superman just sort of sprung fully-formed from the head of DC editorial so there wasn't a lot of narrative development. Clark Kent was working at the Daily Planet with Perry, Lois and Jimmy since before we started reading, and he was always working there since before we started reading. Comics like this are a good way of filling in the blanks.

Of course, this was the days when Your Dad was getting a job, so anyone could just walk into a newspaper office, talk directly to the editor and say "Sir, I know how to do a lot of words goodly, let me be a news paper man," and the editor would say "If employed you wish to be, first complete my trials three!" like he's fucking Guybrush Threepwood.

Perry White is normally a well-meaning grumpus who's trying to wrangle the extreme personalities under him into something approaching a functional newspaper. It's not easy to do when the only three employees with names are each the star of their own comic book. Here, though, he is outwardly trying to sabotage Clark's job interview, and might be secretly trying to murder Superman.

To start with, he makes Clark recite 20 years of Daily Planet history, from memory. To be fair to Clark, he doesn't read off the facts with x-ray vision or anything, though he does have a super-memory. That is a good skill, but not essential to being a reporter, as Perry is right to point out. He sends Clark out on a series of wild goose chases with the intent of finding any excuse to shitcan him.

Perry sends white off on a snipe hunt to the zoo, knowing there's no story there. Clark decides to just fake the news instead, causing a panic among the zoo patrons, manhandling some endangered primates, and violating every tenet of journalistic integrity. Chat, I don't think Clark Kent deserves this job.

Perry doesn't think so either, although Lois Lane is uncharacteristically supportive of Clark. I think it's just her natural instinct to stick up for the little guy. Perry next sends Clark to the carnival, thinking that nothing newsworthy could happen there. Metropolis is the most accident-prone city in the world, so the ferris wheel gets stuck. Superman saves the day, Clark gets the scoop, and Perry is still not impressed.

Perry White's final task for Clark Kent is to get a picture of Superman holding a lump of kryptonite. As you can see, this is the era when just being in the room with the green stuff is enough to instantly incapacitate Superman. Why is he trying to get a picture of Superman holding The Rock That Kills Superman? He has to have some idea of how this is going to go down.

Superman gets out of this by taking a picture of himself holding imitation kryptonite, Clark Kent gets the job at the planet, and Perry White curses himself that his assassination was a complete failure. This is one of those stories where nobody comes out looking good. Well, except for Lois, you can always count on Lois.