In January of 1960, Lois might have had cause to be concerned---to regret her wanting to be independent of Superman, despite knowing his secret for decades---for Lori Lemaris, as young-appearing as she was thirty years previously, returned to the surface, and this time accepted his proposal. Yet she was wounded by a superstitious fisherman, and Superman searched the seas (aided by Aquaman, his Justice League friend) for a cure. He was willing to give up his life on the surface to be with her. This is one of the few cases where John Byrne's retelling of the story is closer to the truth than Siegel's original story---not only was Clark only a college student, with no secret identity when he first met Lori, but Ronal, the merman who saved Lori, was from another colony of their undersea race. Yet Ronal and Lori fell in love, and Superman lost her again---and forever, when Ronal and Lori married.

In April, 1960, Linda Lee found a child with super-strength---who turned out to be the child of Bizarro and his bride, rejected by his people because he looked normal. Later he reverted to his true Bizarro form---and Superman had to face hundreds of raging Bizarros, each as strong as himself. If he hadn't used the imperfect duplicator to create blue kryptonite, which would weaken only Bizarros, he would have never survived.

I forgot to mention, in the previous article, in the story that was fictionalized as "Lana Lang, Superwoman", Lois and Lana temporarily gained super-strength via a transfusion from Clark, to protect them against the return of Brainiac. That was in November of 1959. I mention it because they both redonned their costumes when bathing in an underground cave reactivated their powers for a short while, in "The Battle of Super-Lois and Super-Lana" around May of 1960.

In July of 1960, Aquaman returned to play "Mental Man", a hero from a comic strip that Lois made up. (The whole scheme was suggested by an earlier, entirely fictional story about "Mental Man" in the early fifties. Neither Lois nor Clark were above borrowing ideas from comic books...)

In August, Superman journeyed to Mxyzptlk's plane of existence, and took great pleasure in bedeviling his run for office.

Late in 1960, Supergirl joined the Legion of Super-Heroes and gained an admirer in Brainiac's descendent, Brainiac 5.

In November of 1960, in "The Conquest of Superman", Luthor escapes and from his "Luthor's Lair" devises a plan to rob Fort Knox. He actually succeeds, hoaxing "Superman"---or so he thought. When he found it was a Superman robot, he returned the gold in disgust. This story is from Ed Hamilton, but Siegel suggested the basic plot and Weisinger handed it to Hamilton to write.

Luthor is a complex character. He admired such barbarians, pirates and criminals as Genghis Khan, Atilla the Hun, Captain Kidd, and Al Capone. Those were his behaviorial models---conquerors, those who took advantage of others, those who seized loopholes in the law---but his scientific idol was Albert Einstein, and he tried to escape and be free every March 14th, Einstein's birthday, and strove to imitate and understand Einstein. He would address even a statue of Einstein as "sir". Einstein, only 14 years older than Luthor, was the only one who made Luthor feel like he finally had an equal.

Superman had to use a Superman robot because he was busy fighting his other great villain at the time, Brainiac, who had unleashed on him the menace of "red-green kryptonite", which caused him to keep on donning hats...to concel the third eye it gave him in the back of the head.

(Around this time, Superman discovered several isotopes of Kryptonite. Kryptonite itself was extremely rare, and these isotopes were even rarer. Red Krptonite caused unpredictable changes in Superman, but they only happened once, the first change "innoculating" him against further changes of the same sort. The changes were also exagerrated---they couldn't turn him into a giant or tiny, for instance, since that would defy the law of conservation of matter, giving him suddenly much more mass than he already had. Nor did he discover these in his boyhood, those were fictionalizations of the "Superboy" series. There was also the rare-to-almost nonexistent gold kryptonite, which presumably could rob him of his super-strength forever, and white kryptonite, which destroyed plant life, and blue kryptonite, which could only hurt Bizarros. All of these found on Earth were turned to iron at the beginning of the next decade.)

It's ironic that at the end Superman captured Brainiac by using the extra force of his third eye against Brainiac's force shield...and that while Luthor was beating a Superman robot, Superman was really capturing, not the real Brainiac, but a humanoid computer in the shape of the real Brainiac. Superman would fight this humanoid computer repeatedly, but wouldn't meet the real Brainiac again for decades...

Superman,by the way, the son of the greatest scientist on Krypton, had used the Kryptonian science he had glimpsed in Supergirl's rocket to make and perfect humanoid duplicate robots of himself. Supergirl, reared by two Kryptonian scientists, was a great help. However, by the seventies, increasing enviormental pollution would render the robots defective and useless.

In January 1961, Superman, with the aid of the Legion time-bubble(not shown in the story), journeys to a seperate space-time continuum where he can change its history. He saved the Christians in the Roman Colliseum and Nathan Hale and Abraham Lincoln, among others. Yet it was a parallel world.

In February 1961, Luthor created a device which contacted across the centuries and teamed up with the future Legion of Super-Villians. They imprisoned Superman on a planetoid just outside of Saturn's rings, and the adult Legion of Super-Heroes showed up to fight their enemies. Superman used the Legion flight-ring to journey to the nearby rings of Saturn and used them to free Saturn Queen from her criminal impulses.

As we will see, each time Luthor encountered superior technology he was enough of a genius to comprehend it and use it to improve his own technology. He was a great genuis on his own, and with the aid of the immortality serum invented by his son, Niles Caulder, he would grow younger, not older, over the next decade. From 30th century technology to Brainiac's Coluian technology to Lexorian technology, each time Luthor learned more, until he was finally centuries ahead of his time.

On April 1 1961, the JLA fight Dr. Light, and Superman and Batman switch uniforms to fool him. While this was happening, a ship based on Hans Zarkov's notes on Kal-El's rocket was being prepared. A crew of four manned it, but cosmic rays combined with the odd radiations from the Kryptonian-derived engines triggered superhuman abilities in the four passengers(including Zarkov's nephew, Reed Richards), and they became known as the Fantastic Four.

In May of 1961, Superman finds a hidden plan left by Luthor at one of his hideouts, for a way for Luthor to kill Superman. Appalled by the completeness and cleverness of the plan, Superman leaks it to Siegel, who used it to base his plot for the magnificent "imaginary story", "The Death of Superman."

Later that year, Superman was going to reveal Supergirl's existence to the UN, the President, those select goverment agencies that knew of his existence, when she unexpectedly lost her powers. After several hurdles, including being adopted by the Danvers (who may have been Carol Danvers' aunt and uncle), she was revealed to the UN and to President Kennedy by August 1961. Soon afterwards, Superman and Supergirl share a hallucination, in "One Minute to Doom" on the anniversary of Krypton's doom.

In September 1961, Superman and the rest of the Justice League fought the Lord of Time and the Demons Three. Note that when Superman tried to propel his fellow members, he put them in a transparent sphere---very much like the Legion time-bubble---suspiciously like the Legion time bubble. Actually, the time bubble did the travelling, and Superman just hung on outside so he could spot the right year with his super-vision, without worrying about being jostled by the seven heroes within the bubble.

February of 62--in a sort of trial run for "Crisis of Infinite Earths", Superman and the League face the "Riddle of the Robot Justice League", where the JLA saves not only our entire universe, but all other universes.

In May of 1962, he fought with the JLA against the giant stone men who were "Untouchable" Aliens.

Later in April 1962, Superman thinks he is dying of a Kryptonian disease, Virus X, but is actually being weakened by a small piece of Kryptonite lodged into Jimmy Olsen's camera. The Legion of Super-Heroes and Supergirl try to help him fulfill his last deeds before he died, as he thought he was dying. Ed Hamilton, who writes the story from a suggestion by Siegel circulated by Weisinger, takes plenty of fictional liberties with the idea. (He would later write the totally fictional yet magnificent and not-to-be-missed "Superman in Kandor", where Superman and Jimmy become Nightwing and Flamebird and save the "last city of lost Krypton".)

In July of 1962, the JLA fought a Tornado-being, and didn't realize they were being observed by another, for clues on how to defeat his own evil self.

For practically all of August and part of September of 1962, Clark was missing. He had a report that a meteor was going to hit the new Telestar satellite, the first communications satellite of the era, launched in July 10, 1962. With the aid of the Legion flight-ring, he flew up into orbit. Instead the meteor---a mixture of several isotopes of kryptonite---gave him the compulsion to bury his uniform and identification. Then he found he lost his powers, and finally his memory. Evidently he had a deep-seated desire to "start again" liberated by the kryptonite.

He took the name "Jim White", subconsciously adopting Jimmy's and Perry's name, and met Sally Selwyn, a ranch and oil hieress who fell in love with "Jim"---and he with her. But thrown by a bucking bronco, he became paralyzed. Yet she still wanted to marry him....not because he was a good lover, as some of his previous conquests could attest, and not because he was super-strong, as might be seen in Lois' case...but for himself, his personality alone. A bully's cruel trick sent him into a stream---

Luckily he was found by Aquaman, who had been patrolling the inland streams, searching for Superman with his JLA communicator. He knew, from the buried clothes, that Clark was somewhere in the area...and Aquaman found him, half-drowned. He took Clark to Lori's people, who nursed him back to health in an air-filled chamber, until Clark recovered his full strength.

He recovered his memory of his day-to-day life, but at the time, he had no memory of Sally.

In November of 1962, the JLA were hunted, for Dr. Destiny had made superior duplicates of the JLA who were committing crime, forcing the authorities to make the JLA "The Super-Exiles of Earth", sending them off-planet. Superman fought a Super-Superman who was immune to Kryptonite, for instance.

In December of 1962, the Justice League fought the riddle of "Spaceman X".

Also in December 1962, Robert Stern and Steve Rude's "Incredible Hulk vs.Superman" took place. Luthor, under an alias as a munitions maker, tried to get ahold of the technology that created the Hulk to destroy Superman, setting it up with a battle between a robotic Hulk created by Luthor, and then later a battle between the real Hulk and Superman. (Internal evidence indicates that it happened in between Hulk #6,first run, and the Hulk's first adventures in Tales to Astonish. To save time and a convoluted explanation, Stern wrote Luthor as the later Luthor, the evil billionaire who was the first Luthor's illegitimate son.) That was their (Superman and the Hulk's) first meeting, although not published till 1999, and the two superstrong beings, so similar in their level of strength and leaping abilities, would meet---and fight--- at least twice more. Superman used his Legion flight-ring to literally fly through much of the adventure, though. Against the Hulk he needed every advantage he could get.

February 1963--- "Crisis of Earth-One" and "Crisis on Earth-Two" in which the Justice League meets the older Justice Society. Their old comrades must have felt strange about seeing Superman, Batman, and especially Wonder Woman fight with the Justice League. Together they fought a half-dozen of both team's foes....

Yet why was the Justice Society placed on a whole different parallel world?

Thereby hangs a tale...

Two years earlier, Barry Allen discovered the truth about Jay Garrick's existence and fought with him. Yet, towards the end he also found a reporter was starting to research the reality behind the Jay Garrick-Flash and the rest of the Justice Society....based on clues given in the comics....

To throw the reporter off, Barry Allen had Gardner Fox (whom he is shown dialing on the telephone at the end of that same story---so much for Earth-Prime...) place the entire Justice Society on a parellel world. It wasn't until the reporter died decades later, in 1983, that the Justice Society attempted to set the record straight.

April 1963, "The World of Doomed Olsens"--Jimmy Olsen becomes an honorary member of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

More importantly, in April of 1963, in the "Showdown between Luthor and Superman", Luthor lures Superman to another world, one which has a gas in its atmosphere that supressed the reactions that give Superman his super-strength. This desert world under a red sun would be the site of what they both hoped would be their final fight, both with only human strength. Instead Luthor found humanoids who were dying from lack of water. Luthor, touched for one of the few times in his life by their plight, deliberately "throws" his fight with Superman, in the hope that Superman could send icy asteroids diving into the desert world, directed by his strength and the starcraft he had used to reach that world. Superman does, and Luthor is acclaimed as a hero of that world, which eventually takes a new name, Lexor, after him. (This is an Ed Hamilton story. Siegel made several suggestions for stories that Weisinger gave to other writers. This is one of them.)

In May 1963, "The Man who Stole Superman's Secret Life"--- Superman remembers his life as "Jim White", his love for Sally Selwyn---and loses her forever.(I have to place it this far back, because the first story about Sally Selwyn couldn't have been written by Siegel until Superman experienced the second, and remembered.)

During that month, Clark also copes with Lois' embarassed reaction to a parody record called "The Superman-Lois Hit Record"(Clark subs for Steve Allen, an old friend, on the Steve Allen Show) and Lois is temporarily assigned doing a lovelorn column---her editor having no idea she used to do that several decades ago---and in a quite clever plot, misunderstands who is infatuated with her, in "Dear Dr. Cupid". Both stories were by Jerry Siegel.

In August of 1963, Luthor escaped and freed Brainiac. Or what he thought was Brainiac. Thereby hangs yet another tale. The original Otto Binder tale of Brainiac, and its followup by Siegel, both clearly state that Brainiac is a biological being, an alien but a biological one. This adventure, however, states that Brainiac is a humanoid computer, created by the machine-minds of Colu.

In a sense, both are true. There was a biological Brainiac that he first fought and a computer Brainiac. The biological Brainiac came first, a servant of the machine-minds. A computer Brainiac was built to keep him company on his long star voyages and also to serve as a decoy if caught by an enemy. Superman had caught the computer-Brainiac, never dreaming there was a biological one who had eluded him. He would encounter the biological one again, decades later.

Since this was based on a suggestion by Siegel, given to Ed Hamilton by Weisinger, there were plenty of unrealistic and fictional elements. Though Luthor did develop a vapor that robbed Superman of his powers, they did not shrink him to tiny size, nor did the Superman Emergency Squad, which is totally fictitious, take Luthor and Brainiac prisoner. They were caught, but by Supergirl before they could escape...and Brainiac demanded Supergirl let them go or Superman would remain paralyzed forever, just as he did in Hamilton's story to the justices of Kandor.

On November 22, 1963, President Kennedy was shot. Would Superman (an investigative reporter with x-ray vision and super-hearing) and Batman (one of several with the claim to be "the world's greatest detective") been satisfied with the Warren report? Or would they in turn have searched to find if there was any conspiracy behind Lee Harvey Oswald? If they found anything, it wasn't recorded...but Superman has often taken the law into his hands before. There were often months when Superman's adventures were replaced by "Imaginary Stories". Is it because Superman didn't trust even Siegel with the truth on this one...?

One also wonders about the similar assasinations of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. Yet what Superman did in response, remains speculation.

In very late November, we witness "The Bizarro Invasion of Earth" where a large group of Bizarros come to Earth, and due to their dim-wittedness and backwards thinking, are more of a nuisance than a menace.

In December of 1963, Superman and Batman fight "The Composite Superman"---an opponent with all the powers of the entire Legion of Super-Heroes, much more powerful than Superman. They just barely survive, in this Ed Hamilton-scripted (but Siegel-suggested) tale.

In February 1964, the Justice League and the Justice Society met again---and ironically took on a super-team from a real parallel world, which they called "Earth-Three" as an in-joke. The Crime Syndicate of America included, among others, an evil Superman-twin called Ultraman who gained additional powers every time he was exposed to Kryptonite. (According to a later Roy Thomas story, in their universe Krypton never exploded. Then where did the Kryptonite come from? I've always wondered about that...)

In March of 1964, Luthor escapes and returns to Lexor, and marries Ardora/Tharla, his lover there. Superman eventually tracks him down there, and Luthor seemingly dies, and to the Lexorians was killed by Superman. It's all a trick by Luthor to enter a deathlike coma for a while, so that Superman would be executed for his "murder". (Again, a story suggested by Siegel but given by Weisinger to Ed Hamilton.)

In May of 1964, Superman faces "The Triumph of Luthor and Brainiac".

In July of 1964 the Justice League first fights Brain Storm.

In August of 1964 the Justice League fights the Alien-Ator.

In September of 1964, Dr. Destiny finds a way to threaten the JLA from within their dreams.

Also in September of 1964, Superman temporarily becomes "The Coward of Steel".

In early December of 1964, "The Case of the Disabled Justice League"--in which Superman is blinded, fighting Brain Storm again.

In early May of 1965, Clark is supposedly "blinded" again--- by exposure to an ultra-bright substance from the ultimate weapon, that Superman captured from a despot. Quitting his Clark Kent identity at least for a while, Superman becomes "William Digby", a butler to a criminal but wealthy couple, and then "Clark the K", a British DJ, during the height of the British Music Explosion led by the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and others. This lasted till mid-June 1965. When the experimental animals also exposed regained their sight, he felt free to resume his Clark Kent identity, in this Siegel-scripted tale.

In June 1965, the Key tricks the JLA into disbanding. (One wonders if the Justice League's Key is the same criminal the Justice Society fought in their last published adventure of the original run of All-Star Comics in the early fifties...)

In July 1965, Metamorpho begs off joining the JLA, but helps them fight the Unimaginable.

In August 1965, the Justice League fights the Royal Flush gang.

In October 1966, they fight the Unimaginable again.

In February of 1966, Superman first encounters Maxwell Jensen, the Parasite, one of his most persistent and powerful foes. (I'm quite frankly unsure where Jim Shooter got his information, but both in his Superman and his Legion stories, he seems to tell the real deal.)

In October 1966, Superman faces "The Fury of the Kryptonian Killer", an alien who has vowed revenge on all things Kryptonian, since a large chunk of Krypton destroyed his world.

In December of 1967, Superman fights and defeats all the other Justice Leaguers to free them from the domination of the Key. He also fights one of his mightest opponents, Zha-Vam, a sort of cross between Wonder Woman (in origin) and Captain Marvel (in powers). This was from Otto Binder, courtesy of Linda Lee Danvers' letters. His powers derived from the mythological Greek Gods seem fantastic, but since we know of similar powers in Wonder Woman and the Marvel Family's cases, we can't dismiss it out of hand.

In January of 1967, Superman faces "The Victory of Zha-Vam", and finally the climatic "Battle of the Gods" in which Zha-Vam is finally defeated, in February. That month Superman and Batman both faced "The Return of the Composite Superman".

In February 1967, the JLA and the JSA fight the "black sphere" villains, who were so tough they could shred Superman's uniform.

Also in February of 1967 is "Superman's Race with the Flash" at the behest of U Thant, then Secretary-General of the UN.

In June, the Justice League(including Superman) meet the Impossibles in the "Justice League's Impossible Mission". (Uh, not the Hanna-Barbara super-team/rock group.) Superman, in that adventure, found himself de-powered once again.

In September of 1967, Superman faces "The Return of the Parasite".

It's worth noting that Superman almost entirely ignores the Vietnam War. That might be a reflection of his standing in the UN-backed Justice League, but the only adventure that he goes to Vietnam in has Clark Kent acting as a medic,saving lives, not taking them--- and Superman fighting an American G.I. made superhuman and fighting for the Viet Cong, called...what else? --King Cong. Otherwise, his pacifistic feelings, his disgust at the folly of war, had returned full force, aided by his reporter's research into the corruption of the South Viet government, and his super-senses assuring him of the folly on both sides.

He was as bemused as anyone by the youth movement of the sixties, but when it came to the peace movement, his heart was definitely with them.

As for Superman's attitude towards Richard Nixon, who succeeded Johnson in the White House---well, there will be more on that in the article about the next decade. Suffice it to say what the world learned in the White House tapes was no surprise to the reporter with super-hearing and vision, and his feeling of disgust at corrupt politicians had not dimmed since the thirties.

The government put no pressure on the JLA, not wanting to jeopardize its standing as guardians of all the Earth against extraterrestrial threats by having it back America in Vietnam, and losing its support from the communist bloc countries. (Between Superman, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman, the government were probably afraid to put any pressure on...)

Besides, they had other heroes who fought for the American side of the war. Iron Man's origins were ultimately tied to the Vietnamese conflict for instance, and he returned to it occasionally, as he did to fight the Vietnamese scientist Half-Face and his pawn, the Russian called the Titanium Man. The Avengers, who were directly working under the NSA, the National Security Agency (an Avengers I.D. card could even give one access to the President, if need be.) were more the U.S. government's superhuman arm in the sixties.

There was also an odd short-lived "miracle man", a Green Beret that appeared at odd instances in the middle of combat and seemed able to do miraculous things, a "Super Green Beret". Unfortunately, when he was looking the other way, a bullet impacted with his skull, and he died, without any identification on him. (If he could work miracles, he never wished himself invulnerable...or maybe he did. There were reports that his beret started to blow off, and then he was hit...) Roger Wilson, another Green Beret, said he recognized the grown man in the Green Beret uniform---as his twelve-year-old nephew, Tod Holton.

Roger Wilson, of course, was hospitalized for battle fatigue and hallucinations...although it is an odd coincidence that his twelve-year-old nephew, Tod Holton, disappeared that night, never to be seen again...

In February of 1969, Black Canary joins the Justice League, as the League and the Society fight the living star Aquarius.(Superman didn't fight the Earth-Two Superman, who doesn't exist. He fought a magically-created duplicate of himself, as would happen to the other JLAers by the next adventure, a by-product of Aquarius' mystical powers.)

In June of 1969, Snapper Carr betrays the Justice League, and they move from their Secret Santuary to a satellite headquarters in geosynchronous orbit above the Earth.

In July of 1969, the JLA fought the polluting aliens, the "Doomsters". In the course of the adventure, Superman is knocked out by another Green Lantern, Tomar-Re, by mistake.

I barely skimmed over all the adventures in this crowded decade. Yet big changes were in the wind. The latest publisher of the Planet, a older man named Britt Reid (who now owned many papers, not just the Daily Sentinel), was talking about possibly selling it to someone else...and that would bring big changes to Clark's life and career.

Clark hoped it wouldn't be to J.Jonah Jameson. He had heard a lot about that eccentric publisher....and didn't really think he could handle both Jameson and Perry White's tempers.

Instead, someone else made a greater bid...named Morgan Edge, a communications mogul, at the very end of 1969.

PARTIAL LIST OF SOURCES:

Of course, TARZAN ALIVE and DOC SAVAGE: HIS APOCALYPTIC LIFE by Philip Jose Farmer.

Those interested with comments, suggestions, things I have forgotten, things I messed up, contact me at...
E-Mail:al.schroeder@nashville.com

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Speculations Copyright © Al Schroeder. Superman is owned by DC Comics, Warner Communications, and the Siegels. All other characters copyrighted by their respective owners.