Today in Comics History, Friday the 13th: The day Lois killed a dog

This is an expanded and updated version of a post originally published November 28, 2012.

It's Friday the Thirteenth! Which really is only a bummer if you're superstitious. Modern, educated people — like, say, journalists for a Great Metropolitan newspaper — don't believe in superstition! Why, in the clickbait pageturningbait of Pre-Crisis The Daily Planet, Perry "Non-Chief" White doesn't have a superstitious bone in his body! He also doesn't have a soup bone in his body, and that's only the first disappointment in this story for dogs.



from "Lois Lane's Kiss of Death!" in Lois Lane #7 (February 1959), script by Robert Bernstein, pencils and inks by Kurt Schaffenberger
In any other universe (except perhaps Peter Parker's) this editorial edict would lead a dull and mundane tale of Lois reporting on something light and frothy that will get printed, if she's lucky, on the "Life In These Here United States" page. But not in a Pre-Crisis Superman tale! Yep, it all adds up to this...


...and the death of a dog.



Yes, the death of a dog! Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an Imaginary Story! Not a...what else have we got? Oh yeah, not a What If...?, as this is decades before Roy Thomas would invent those.

No, here's just another example of Silver Age Lois Lane acting foolhardily, imprudently, and...well, just all-around Lois Laney. In this case, however, she's not trying to trick Superman or Clark...she's thumbing her nose at Death itself herself. Then again, that was pretty much the general theme of all of Lois's Silver Age 7⅔-pagers.


On the one hand we all want to applaud Lois for debunking superstitious nonsense. Then again, this is the DC Universe, with its magic, aliens, and imps from the Fifth Dimension. A little portion of some belief in the supernatural pretty much comes hand-in-hand with knowing Superman, doesn't it?

Then, Lois killed a dog.


I love how ticked off Lois looks in that last panel. "Eh, screw that dog!" And why wouldn't she...


...when in the same issue, her editors insist that Lois's pinnacle of potential is a housewife. Interestingly enough, I'm pretty sure Lois eventually became all those things Ethel Guiness suggested. But no...a housewife. To paraphrase a line from MAD magazine's parody of Grease: What a wonderful message for the youth of America!

Here's another fine message of equality for women, from a letter column a few issues down the line (Lois Lane #10):


You all know my extreme admiration for Alfred Pennyworth, but man, if DC is wondering why more women don't read comics...it probably can't have helped that for dozens of years, one of your leading female characters was portrayed, issue after issue, as a duplicitous, conniving, untrustworthy shrew.

Also, she killed a dog.


Yes, truly, this was The Greatest Lois Lane Story Ever.