FRIDAY FRENEMIES : THE LANA LANG OF 500 B.C.

I think she's switched teams, personally.

The last time we checked in on unconsummated fuck rivals Lana Lang and Lois Lane, Superman's Girlfriend was traipsing back through time to drug her romantic competitor insensate through the entirety of her teenage years. Well, this time, let's hop back to Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane vol.1 No.40 (April 1963) where Lana gets her own back, largely by attempting to strand Lois in the distant past and married to a stranger under false pretenses. Evensies!

We open the story with Lois rushing to the opening day of an exhibit of rare artifacts from the world of the ancient Greeks, and which is being displayed at an Applebee's basically. "The Temple of the Gods" restaurant resides in a Roman amphi ... parth ... I actually just realized I don't know what the kind of Roman building of which I'm thinking is actually called. "A Chili's" apparently, since this one is just a thematic Olive Garden or something.

The Greeks who staged the siege on Troy must have been very very small ...

Anyway, Lois is also dressed up in Roman or Greek or "Ancient of some sort" garb, which is the required dress code for this weird Bobby McGee's Conglomeration-slash-Natural History Museum situation. This will be lucky, but it's also embarrassing, since Lois' rival Lana is also there, and also wearing old-timey garb from the region in question. Don't you hate it when you show up somewhere and someone else is wearing the same toga?

Protesting a little too much for a woman wearing a cape.

Lois decides she needs to beat the embarrassment with the soothing, reassuring buzz of "a scoop." It's my belief that "a scoop" is mid-century Metropolis slang for "heroin," by the way. Anyway, it leads Lois to examine the artifacts uncovered by Lana's scientist uncle, Professor Potter, the daffy old inventor who also occasionally  helps Lois fucking merk his niece. Also hilarious here is that Potter evidently found all this ancient shit in a time capsule, meaning his time and labor investment in this is ::raspberry::

Anyway, let's get to the plot. Lois plays grab-ass with what is alleged to be -- and also fucking is -- Circe's wand, and finds herself transported to the past into ancient Greece. There, as often happens, she finds an invulnerable hero who looks like Superman (In this case, Achilles) and a romantic rival who looks just like Lana Lang (a woman calling herself Ilya, IF THAT IS HER REAL NAME which no it isn't, it's Lana).

See, Lana saw Lois disappear to ancient Greece, and decided to use the sandals of the Greek God Herm- uh... Mercury, that is ... to break through the time barrier and follow her friendly foe.  There, she adopts the disguise of Ilya and uses all sorts of glad-handing and ventriloquism to convince Lois to fall in love with Achilles and stay in the fucking past, goddamn it, and die in antiquity fucking a goon Superman. Lana remains fucking awesome.

Literally the best offer you're ever gonna get, Lois.

While Lana plays the role of friend and confidante, while secretly twisting all kinds of knives in the background, Lois develops a new rival -- Circe, the witch of the Odyssey. It's weird how all of these people knew each other. I wonder if they all went to the same small, midwestern college.

It comes down to a showdown between Lois and Circe, and Lois loses because she is nuh-ha-hot magic in any fashion. Luckily, Circe just sends Lois back to the present-day and Lana follows discreetly behind with her magic sandals. Maybe she screwed Achilles just once, or twice, while she was there. Why waste a good Superman lookalike, is what I always say.

The keenest part of the story is the ending, which wraps up all sorts of evil and inanity in a handful of panels. Lana quietly admits to her treason and, I dunno, it's deception on a grand scale if nothing else, stranding someone in the past just to steal her boyfriend. Meanwhile, the clueless ace reporter Lois wanders back to the Daily Planet offices and bores Clark with a tedious story about just another quotidian trip to the past, and then Clark shuts the whole thing down by doing that "LL" thing that the Silver Age Superman comics got daffy for in their dotage. Enjoy: