Christmas Eve with the Super-Heroes

Remember that time that Ferro Lad and I shared a Christmas story of explosions, cloning, and death? Well, in an effort to keep Ferro Lad from continuously asking if we can open the Christmas presents early, I've decided to distract him, with a story of Christmas.





As I was saying, a story of Christmas, starring our friends Superman and, God help us all, Lois Lane. In a rare, shocking twist, Lois actually isn't the worst person in the story.







As I was saying, our story comes from the pages of DC Comics' "Christmas with the Super-Heroes", published in late 1974 but cover dated early 1975:



A giant, tabloid-sized comic, it contains charming holiday moments like a man trying to strangle Batman with Christmas decorations:



and Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman's younger sister, beating up some thugs in a junkyard while dressed as Sexy Santa:



because that's what Christmas is all about. It also contains our story:



Guessed who the most awful person in the story is yet?

I'll give you a hint: it's not Lois, and it's not Santa.

Our story opens at a tiny, sad train station in Christmastown, USA:



Yes, in keeping with the tone set in the rest of the book, we start with a broken family and a shattered tradition handed down through generations. Things are also about to get worse, as Lois and Clark discover on the way to Christmastown's annual holiday festival:





Not only is Christmastown's Santa missing, but they're flooded.

Merry Christmas.

Fortunately Clark Kent is, of course, Superman. Diverting Lois to cover the floods while he covers the holiday festival, Superman flies off to find the mayor of Christmastown and reassure him:



I'm as confused as the mayor. Tell us, Superman, how will the flooding make this the best Christmas ever? Is it because you're going to use your super powers to fix the floods and reverse hundreds of thousands of dollars in property damage? That's why you start cutting down trees, right? To build a super-dam or something?





Wait, what?





Superman isn't going to do anything to stop the floods. Instead, he's going to build a party barge to float over the ruined livelihoods of the citizens of Christmastown as they struggle to shore up the levees that will prevent things from getting even worse. And he's going to make toys while he does it. Because that's the best use of his many awesome super powers.

A party barge.

If only there were some way he could add to this floating ark of human misery, some final touch that would make it even more awful?



Oh, right. We can force the old guy with the missing grandson to ride on it and pretend to be Santa.

Superman is a horrible person.

Meanwhile, Lois is, shockingly enough, actually trying to help someone who isn't her or named after her:



She wants to help that poor man with amnesia that she found in the water.



Or she wants to put him to work hefting sandbags. Seriously, Lois? If Superman wasn't busy playing a fiddling Nero over the drowned homes of Christmastown you'd be the worst person in this story, for making a man with neurological trauma and a head injury perform physical labor in wet, freezing conditions.



True. It's not like Superman's doing anything to stop the flooding, and morale at the levees seems pretty bad:



Worst Christmas ever. Too bad there's no superhero around to fix things, right? Wait, what's that coming in from upstream?



Yes, that's right, it's Superman's "Let Them Eat Cake While the Insurance Companies Deny Their Flood Damage Claims" party barge, complete with sad Santa:



Lois drags her amnesiac laborer over for a closer look, in pursuit of a better story, and somehow her relentless pursuit of a Pulitzer leads to a Christmas miracle:





All that's left now is for Superman to redeem himself by taking care of the flooding, right? Look, there he goes, up into the sky:







I'm not sure how things worked on Krypton, but here on Earth dropping a blizzard on top of heavy flooding isn't really a perfect Christmas.

Great job being a horrible person, Superman.



So, there you have it. A story of family, Christmas, and natural disaster that Lois didn't cause.

Merry Christmas, from all of us.

"Your comics posts are awesome. More of those, please."

Tonight, on Day 24 of 30 Days of Blogging (which I think we need to just go ahead and make a thing for every April from now on; this could be the next NaNoWriMo, people), I've come to a topic suggested by my friend Dee:

Your comics posts are awesome. More of those, please.

I'm happy to oblige, and was inspired by a discussion a friend and I were having about sexism and comics earlier this week. I can't even argue that comics are not sexist since I've written about it before, like that entry I wrote a few years ago where all the girls in the Legion of Superheroes caught a crimson plague and the boys decided that they were unclean and sent them away or pretty much any entry about Lois Lane. Although the "crimson plague" story is a masterpiece of unsubtle symbolism, there's a Legion story that is just as bad, if not worse.

I give you, ladies and gentlemen, "Adventure Comics" #326:



The Revolt of the Girl Legionnaires.

Our story opens with Saturn Girl, Legion leader, calling all of the female members to a secret meeting. The girls are out doing the kinds of things that girl superheroes do, like signing autographs and... uh... dieting.



Nothing sexist there. Nope. I bet one of the boys just got done using that thing. Anyway, once she gets the girls there, Saturn Girl sets a diabolical plan in motion:



She sends away almost all of the powerful male members, and also for some reason Matter-Eater Lad. Once the boys are gone on their space cruise to nowhere, the girls divide up the remaining male members and mark them for destruction:



Shrinking Violet, for some reason, doesn't get a boy of her own to destroy. Maybe they already knew that by the mid 1990's she would be an out lesbian? Whatever the reason, the girls put their plan into motion immediately, starting with Light Lass:



Even her thoughts are evil.

With Element Lad confused and trusting, she strikes!



Element Lad is, apparently, a moron. Rather than just taking his boots off and escaping the mountaintop, he stays up there to die. Part of me thinks that he might even deserve it, just for being an idiot.

Meanwhile, Triplicate Girl splits herself up and prepares to destroy three men at once:





She gives them her rings... OF DEATH!



The shrinking chemical on the rings was provided by Shrinking Violet, a helpful fact that the girls gloat over after Triplicate Girl boxes them in forever and doesn't poke holes in the lid:



And now I have a question: This comic takes place in the year 2964. Why do safetly matches in wooden boxes still exist? There's no time to answer me because Saturn Girl is busy taking care of Superboy:







and Supergirl is destroying Chameleon Boy:



which didn't take long at all. That only leaves Star Boy running around free, but Phantom Girl is about to handily solve that problem:







"So long, chump!" might be the best line in this comic.

Up to this point, the comic doesn't seem incredibly sexist. If anything, it's almost empowering for women. The girls have outsmarted every male on their team, defeated them, and taken over the clubhouse. Those guys ARE chumps. Element Lad isn't even smart enough to take his own boots off, for God's sake. What could possibly be horribly sexist about this comic?

Maybe the shocking twist.

The girls are busy celebrating their victory with an all-girls dance party when someone buzzes in on the video screen, demanding their attention:



Who's that?



Oh. It's the Queen of Femnaz, a planet without men. While they don't come right out and call the lady from Femnaz a feminazi, they do mention that she brainwashed the female Legionnaires into destroying the males because she hates men, and banished them from her own planet.

Yeah.

A Femnazian convinced the girls to hate boys. Hi, sexist plot twist. We've been expecting you.

The Queen of Femnaz is calling now to reverse the brainwashing, which she can somehow do over the transmission even though she had to have the girls on her planet to brainwash them the first time. Once she does, the female Legionnaires immediately regret their actions in a flurry of tears:



And why the change of heart?

Oh, they had some trouble on Femnaz:



Wait, they worshipped the moon goddess by firing rockets at the moon? I feel like there might be some incredibly subtle symbolism there.



Invisible Kid? I thought you were stuck in a matchbox. Anyway, you can help me figure out what the moon rocket thing reminds me of?



Go on...



Oh.

The Femnazians worshipped their moon goddess by acting out a fertilization ritual that their men refused to participate in, fully emasculating them, and then sent the men away entirely. Yeah, this comic is subtle, all right. So what happened, then?



They broke their moon in half, and the pieces started falling down to crush them.



Not now, Invisible Kid. It's time for some boys to swoop in and teach these independent man-haters the error of their ways:





and they all lived happily ever after.

Until the violent revolt of the Legion of Superpets.