It’s the summer of 1966, and in the pages of Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane # 66; the woman with stretch marks on her DNA goes through one of her oddest transformations yet in ”They call me the Cat,” a story written by Leo Dorfman, penciled and inked by Kurt Schaffenberger, and edited by Mort Weisinger.
This time Lois’s change is not swift and it’s not something normal like getting older, or fatter or becoming a toddler. No this one takes some time, and is weird the whole trip.
As things start it’s rough for the four people who work at the Daily Planet, the air conditioning is out, and it’s the hottest day of the year, well it’s rough for some of them, Clark is faking it of course.
To ease his employees suffering Perry White has order up a round of iced lemonade, (and I do note the guy with the drinks has 7 cups so perhaps there are a few others workers we never see) that’s when we find there is another, along with Clark, who is not suffering with the heat. It seems that Lois says she is freezing and even with the help of a blanket, the fur coat of Perry White’s wife that is heading for storage, and the heat wave she continues to shiver.
That she is really, really cold is demonstrated when a cup of hot tea she is drinking turns to ice in her hands. This of course calls for Clark to duck out and reenter as Superman so he can fly Lois to the Metropolis version of the Mayo Clinic, where no doubt the Dr. House of Earth I will eat this up with a fork, don’t be silly, this story is set in the Silver-Age.
Superman’s first move is do what he knows will “cure those mysterious chills,” he flies her, fur coat and all, to Death Valley were Lois proclaims herself colder than ever.
Next he takes her to the Fortress of Solitude and puts her in his Venusian hothouse, mean tempter 650 degrees; nope still frosty, colder even says Lois. Really grasping at straws now, and Superman apparently having become a devout Christian Scientists when we weren’t looking, his next move is not a hospital, but to put Lois in an experimental space suit he has been working that will let him take her into the sun, yeah, not near, into the sun.
Just why a man who baths in the sun to get rid of `space germs’ after a long mission in space needs this, he says nothing. However even he admits it is risky. But off into space and the sun they go anyway, but to no effect, on returning to Earth Lois still has the chills.
At this point Superman admits he is at his wits end and takes her somewhere else, Metropolis General? Of course not, Kal-El apparently still has issues with all those doctors who were always trying to give him inoculations when he was Superbaby, and takes her to some scientists he knows at Metro U.
They too are baffled by Lois’s condition, but do note that it seems to be getting worse, so Superman decides to bring in an expert, (about time yah big lug) and fly to Paris to get Dr. Leroux… the world’s leading expert on cryogenics. (What?!?)
However when he returns with Leroux Lois is back to normal with whatever it was leaving no ill effect on her, the “doctor” proclaiming that it “must have been zee virus that gave le chill,” and things return to normal.
Back at the Daily Planet Lois is given her next assignment, and the pathogen takes the next stage in its development, her job, report on the flower show at the Coloseum (sic) Oh Lois! Being sent to cover a flower show? That’s worse than covering a dog show, at least something might happen at a dog show, watch out or Perry will have you writing the obits next!
Something however does take place at the flower show after all, on being shown the grand prize winner (a huge floral display depicting Superman, what else?) and left alone with it Lois starts to eat the flowers and can’t stop herself before the left arm is gone. (Alright! Stop over psychoanalyzing this right now! I can hear you doing it, it’s that loud.)
Later that night when Lois reports for night duty at the Metropolis Hospital where she works as a volunteer nurse (?!!?) things get complicated when a patient awakens to find her eating a big bouquet flowers left for him.
Narking to Superman the doctor tells him about her actions and how “Lois’ strange mania is unknown to medical science,” here we perhaps find why Kal-El stays clear of the doctors in Metropolis, this one not being able to find anything about pica the disorder that makes people eat odd things, usually however things more odd that flowers, nor does he know there are over 40 types of flowers that or are quite safe and edible, if a bit bland, making them at most a little trendy, not a victim of a “mania.”
The doctor then gives it all over to Superman saying he can’t come up with anything, but perhaps his “super brain” can. (Oh… so that’s why Sups stays clear of them. Note: if you ever find yourself sick in the Big Apricot get out of town as fast as you can, even if you have to crawl to the Greyhound station.)
Superman’s brilliant “super brain” solution to this development is to fly Lois to a rainforest in Africa that only he knows about which contains a type of flower unknown to the rest of the world which play a musical tune when wind blows through them. Sups then flies off “to take care of an important chore” leaving Lois to photograph the blooms.
She of course proceeds to devour this rare species whole while Superman watches with his telescopic vision, “my cure was a complete flop,” thinks Superman.
The next day however when as Clark Kent he takes her to lunch all signs of the dread “mania” of vegetarianism are gone and she not only turns down a salad, but the flowers on the table as well and downs a porterhouse.
The next day everything is so back to normal that window washers are once again falling from the fiftieth floors building, only this time (do they even give these guys any training in Metropolis, or just depend on Superman to pluck them out of the sky as they fall?) the Man of Steel it seems does have chores out of range and the washer is left dangly from his belt.
Seeing this from the Daily Planet, which is across the street from the other building, Lois has the sudden urge to leap out of the window and using a covenant wire that for no decidable reason connects the two structures goes to the aid of the window washer, doing this via a pair green furred and clawed legs and feet with four “toes” one of which seems to act like a thumb, that have replaced hers. (Hey! And we have a reason this is here on this site.)
She only notices her change when it is pointed out to her by the Man of Steel arriving tardy. Her response is to trudge dejectedly back to work. Say what you want about her, the woman had a heck of a work ethic.
She even covers a story when, while shooting a scene for a movie the operator of one of the special effects, which consists a 150 foot long mechanical centipede at the time being used to crawl up a building, has a heart attack and can’t be reached.
Lois once again comes to the rescue by walking up the building, then the mech and giving the man medicine to keep him alive (aspirin?)
Sure enough, as soon as this is done her feet revert to normal and she falls, but as usual Superman saves her. Superman warns her to fight her dare-devil urges, the whole thing with the feet not even being brought up.
The next day while on the street Lois helps an exotically dressed and veiled woman recover some pearls that have fallen from a broken necklace of hers, in gratitude the woman, who introduces herself as Princess Zerma of Arctor, takes Lois to lunch. There she shocks Lois by first turning her soup into ice by touching it, then following that up by downing the flowers arranged on the table.
Being the courageous and inquisitive reporter we all know her to be, Lois response to this by getting up and booking it out the back door of the restaurant. This however gives both Lois, and us, the chance to see Zerma racing after her on a pair of big green claws along a spiked fence.
Cornered by the veiled and turbaned “woman” she reveals all, pulling off her veil to reveal a fanged alien face and explaining that she comes from the frozen planet Arctor where everyone lives off “frost flowers” and scoots along on big old furry feet like hers, she then explains herself.
Of course it’s all about Superman, whom the princess has been watching on her space monitor for years, and having decided him to be a marvelous specimen revolves to marry him.
But realizing that he will be repulsed by her alien looks (and yet for some reason she isn’t repulsed by what would be his alien looks to her) she of course takes the only course left, take over Lois Lane’s body.
This is first attempted via a “transmuter dome,” her turban, which fails to do the job and only temporally transfers some of Zerma’s normal traits to Lois.
Realizing that she has to be close to get the job done she travels to Earth, and after getting a free lunch out Lois takes over her body, but not before Lois is able to `babble hysterically,’ only the babble is really Lois setting things up so that on going back in the Venusian hothouse it proves, due to her freezing ability being weakened by the combination with Lois, it’s too much for Princess Zerma, she spites from Lois, and beats a hasty retreat back to Arctor with Superman feeling pretty smug that yet another space princess has the hots for him. Forget that this lead to him taking the chance of killing Lois by dipping her in the sun.
So that once again an alien… well not menace, let’s say stalker, is defeated by people being fooled into thinking Lois and Superman have something even remotely like a normal close relationship.
Oh… and at no point in the story does anyone call her the Cat.
The second story in this issue involves Lois being bitten by a bug and dreaming that she’s a witch doctor, accidently blinding Lana Lane, curing her and then watching her marry Superman.
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