Yeah, there was that, too...

World's Finest #80
'The Super-Newspaper of Gotham City'

The editor of the Gotham Gazette is working on a big story, to save sagging sales, but time is running out. Bruce Wayne, who's a big fan, wants to help, so he calls Superman, and asks if Clark Kent and Lois can help out. Perry started his career over at the Gazette, so of course he agrees.

The editor has a nervous breakdown, though, so it's up to Batman to solve the case. Lois steps in to be the editor, and bosses around her 'star reporters' Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent. Robin does the leg work on the case while Bruce and Clark compete for scoops. Robin finds the bad guys, and Superman and Batman swoop in for the capture.. and the story. Paper saved!

World's Finest #81
'True History of Superman and Batman'

Superman and Batman see to have gone nuts, undoing stuff and redoing it differently! (These are both epic Silver Age sequences.. Superman takes all the animals out of a zoo and builds an ark instead! Robin dresses up as Batman and Batman the crook and 'Batman' lassos him from the moving Batmobile! no idea what the 'orignal' was, but who cares!)

As it turns out, a historian from 4000 years in the future wants his book to be right, so he forces them to do stuff over in exchange for not revealing their secret identities. Of course, Lois gets involved and tries to use her feminine wiles to get a peak at his book. Meanwhile, SUperman and Batman worry that one of the feats they're supposed to re-do is stopping a tornado, which they can't risk. Luckily, Batman logics out that the historian can reveal there secret ids without ruining his book, so they all have a chuckle and part as friends. Lois then tells the boys she didn't care about their identities, she just wanted to know who would marry Superman!

The best part, though, is that Superman actually DID build a zoo using an Ark (back in Action #45), so he didn't actually need to re-do it at all!

Action Comics #262
'Supergirl's Greatest Victory'
Binder/Mooney

We start out with an origin recap.. Supergirl decides to give solving Krytonite another time, this time with a vaccine. You have to give her credit for practical thinking! A new meteor happens to land, so she tries getting closer to it every day (which is exposure therapy, not a vaccine, but whatever), and it seems to work.. until it doesn't when she tries to rescue Superman when he bumbles into a different meteor (there sure are a lot of Kryptonite meteors around!).

They escape by turning some gold to lead with their x-ray vision (hurray Silver Age Science!). It turns out that a metal eater from Superman's zoo escaped for a bit and laid and egg, and the baby was eating Supergirl's meteor, so the radiation was getting weaker, so she wasn't REALLY becoming immune. Too bad.

The best part is the random (and very cool) creatures we see in the Fortress of Solitude scenes... man, it's a shame that got left behind in the silver age! Not sure what the deal is with the title is, though, since she totally failed.





Action Comics #263
Binder/Mooney
'Supergirl's Darkest Day'

With Superman in space, Supergirl has to save a shipwrecked boy from a storm, only he doesn't speak English and has a strange medallion on. He ends up in the Orphanage (because, you know, there's no other one on Earth), and Linda is in charge of teaching him English so he can say where he's from.

He manages to discover her secret identity when she stops a tree from falling on the building in the dark, and turns out to be an alien prince fleeing from his evil Uncle in disgrace.

Linda does what any good Supergirl would do, fixes his ship and goes home with him to help him in court. She manages to produce his parents (through their transporter), who where apparently presumed dead, and all is well! She goes home with a note saying 'Johnny' remembered a relative and went home, then put her Linda Lee robot away. Linda Lee robot, you say? Yup, apparently she has one... nice!

I was a little disappointed at the lack of cool alien art in this one, but the scenes in the storm with a whale attacking 'Johnny' made up for it.

The title confuses me though, as did last issues, since this was a big win for her.. sure, someone discovered her identity, but it wasn't her fault, and he's on his own planet now.

Gotta love the alien legal system, too:

I've seen pictures when looking for images... I haven't got there in the Omni yet, though. It's amazing how the stories can follow a pattern yet still have some really bat crap crazy stuff in them every issue!

Back in those days when comics were bought by the general public, the DC editors were under the assumption (and probably correct) that the vast majority of their readership would stop reading comics after 5 years.

They instituted a 5 year rule- not to reprint any comic story sooner

They also believed that after 5 years, it would be unnoticeable if they re-used older comic story plots

There's soooo much glorious Schaffenberger art in the Lois Lane issue wildfire2099 just reviewed, but I thought it was an interesting touch that they included an older Wayne Boring image for Supes/Lori in the lead story's last panel.

 


It's from Superman #135. 

She was also big in the Superman TV show, which is probably where a lot of 50s-60s comics readers first saw Superman. Jimmy Olsen probably benefited as well.