Superman’s first great romance seemed a little fishy.
Actually, that bad pun doesn’t do justice to a good storyline. In The Girl in Superman’s Past (Superman 129, May 1959) and Superman’s Mermaid Sweetheart (Superman 135, Feb. 1960), artists Wayne Boring and writers Bill Finger and Jerry Siegel introduced readers to Lori Lemaris, a mermaid from sunken Atlantis.
The first story, an “Untold Tale of Superman,” begins with Clark Kent and Lois Lane bundled up to attend a football game at his alma mater, Metropolis University. Clark reminisces about how a chance encounter with a girl in a wheelchair on campus led him to fall in love with the mysterious beauty and moon over her. But when Clark asks her to marry him and is about to reveal himself, Lori cuts him off by telling him that she’s always known he’s Superman.
The shocked Superman figures out she’s a telepathic mermaid, and the two of them team up to rescue flood victims before they part.
“Once every hundred years, one of us is chosen to return to the upper world to learn of the surface people’s progress,” the lovely Atlantean explains. “This time I was chosen, and though I love you, I must now return to my people.”
“Lori, I – I understand!” Superman replies. “I’ll carry you to the sea now.”
As Clark is recalling his passionate farewell kiss with Lori, Lois remarks, “Clark! You were staring at me most strangely! Whatever were you thinking about?”
“I – I was thinking about a friend of mine, and why he never married,” Clark replies.
One poignant, ironic element of the story has the physically free man in the world drawn to what appears to be a disabled girl.
Finger’s stories about Superman were often memorable, and this one added a recurring character to Superman’s universe, despite the built-in contradiction with Superman’s friend Aquaman (Lori’s Atlantis and Aquaman’s Atlantis were clearly not the same place).
In the second story, the lonely figure of Clark Kent stands on a dark, wave-swept rock, trying to summon Lori with his thoughts. When she appears, she confides, “Many times, in far-off Atlantis, when I felt blue, I read your thoughts. I can read them now! May I answer them? Yes! You may kiss me!”
Jerry Siegel’s later Superman tales often show his hero in the grip of powerful, even violent, emotions. Here, after Superman determines he will give up the surface world for Lori, an embittered, jealous sailor tries to kill Lori’s pet dolphin, but ends up injuring the mermaid instead.
“If the woman I love dies, there will be no corner in the universe where you can hide,” an enraged Superman assures him.
But Lori is paralyzed, and no one on Earth can help her. That, of course, proves no barrier to Superman, who finds a doctor who can cure her on a world full of mermen. The physician succeeds — and he and Lori fall in love.
“It isn’t fair!” Superman rages. “I searched the universe to save that woman! What right has she to love someone else, after what we’ve meant to each other!”
Lori calms him telepathically, saying, “Superman, you don’t love me! You only think you do! It’s a pity you feel for me, not love!”
Superman wonders whether that’s really true. “All I know is that I lost Lori once before! This time … it’s for keeps!”
In stories like this and Superman’s Return to Krypton (Superman 141, Nov. 1960), Superman’s emotional attachments could appear to be satisfyingly deep and genuine. That was impossible in the regular stories with Lois or Lana Lang, constrained as they were by the requirement that their relationship never mature, that nothing ever change. Over the years, that forced Superman and Lois into a weird dance of “catch me/hide me” moves that seemed to combine some kind of mild psychological perversion with the confused romantic antics of children in junior high.
“There was no namby-pamby hand-wringing about marriage (a la Lois Lane),” noted the Confessions of a Superman Fan blog. “This was no teenage crush (a la Lana Lang)… he wasn’t marooned on another planet and pretending to be someone else (a la Lyla Lerrol)… he hadn’t lost his memory and powers (a la Sally Selwyn). He was unequivocally, madly in love with Miss Lemaris and ready to sacrifice his whole career and live with her in wedded bliss beneath the waves!”
It did seem odd, to me, that Clark Kent’s first real romance should coincidentally involve a being as fantastic and secretive as himself. Despite the weirdness of their relationship, Clark and Lori have more in common than we might initially think. For one thing, they’re both monsters.
“A figure like Clark/Superman fits the definition of the monster that Noel Carroll (1990) proposes in his articulation of ‘art-horror,’ a being that combines inconsistent categories in ways that, according to current scientific beliefs, cannot coexist (living/dead, animal/human, human/alien),” wrote critic Greg M. Smith. “Clark/Superman is, by this definition, a ‘monster,’ but not a horrifying monster. Like fantasy creatures such as mermaids, Clark/Superman combines categories in ways that technically make him a ‘monster’ without inspiring the kind of fear/disgust that would make him the centerpiece of horror (except, perhaps, to villains).”
This kind of doomed romance pattern can often be spun into an effective tale for adventure heroes because it has the advantage of seemingly bringing major changes to a continuing character who will, at the end, be left back at square one.
We saw it with James Bond and his wife, Teresa di Vicenzo, Capt. James T. Kirk with both Miramanee and Edith Keeler, and Mr. Spock and Zarabeth. Zarabeth was played by Mariette Hartley, who later landed the same kind of role as Dr. Carolyn Fields, the second wife of Dr. David Banner, in The Incredible Hulk.
In one story, Hartley ended up stranded forever alone in the prehistoric past; in the other, she succumbed to a tragic, fatal illness.
If I had a daughter, my advice to her would be “Honey, never marry a series character.”
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