This is "Look Back," a feature that I plan to do for at least all of 2020 and possibly beyond that (and possibly forget about in a week, who knows?). The concept is that every week (I'll probably be skipping the four fifth weeks in the year, but maybe not) of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each week will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first week of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second week looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third week looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth week looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

This is a fifth week month (honestly, the way I do these things, it counts as a "Five week" month if there are five Saturdays or five Sundays in a month, which is a lot of months, really), so we go back to October 1990 for the engagement of Clark Kent and Lois Lane in Superman #50 (by Jerry Ordway, Dan Jurgens, Kerry Gammill, Curt Swan, John Byrne, Brett Breeding and Dennis Janke).

The whole thing kicked off in September 1990 with the start of "Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite," where Mister Mxyzptlk gives Lex Luthor a special kind of RED Kryptonite that strips Superman of his powers. Mxypztlk's conditions for the deal is that Luthor never reveal how he got the Red Kryptonite. Luthor savagely attacks the powerless Superman. It's rough stuff. One of the interesting things about this era of Superman is that it seemed like the creators were slowly coming up with ways to bring back old aspects of the Superman mythos to the Post-Crisis Superman mythos. You know, there is no more Supergirl, but then they introduce Matrix, who then shapeshifts into Supergirl, ya know? Or how Jimmy Olsen is transformed into a sort of Elastic Lad, but a tormented version of the idea. That sort of thing.

Part three of the crossover was in Action Comics #269 (by Roger Stern, Bob McLeod and Brett Breeding), where Starman impersonates Superman and steals the Red Kryptonite. Since it is magic, though, there's no way for Professor Emil Hamilton to reverse-engineer the object to get Superman's powers back. Instead, Hamilton creates a suit of armor for Superman. Meanwhile, the other heroes of Metropolis (and guest star Starman, whose comic book series was written by Roger Stern, as he created the character) have to step up their game to fill in for the powerless Superman.

This leads to Superman #50, where the powerless Clark Kent begins to think about starting a new life with Lois Lane now that he might just be a human being for the rest of his life. His mother sneakily sent along her family engagement ring to Clark, as she sensed that he was ready to propose.

The next day, at lunch, Clark actually DOES propose and Lois' reaction is...not what you're looking for...

It's interrupted by Luthor, who had been "helping" Lois' mother with an illness, just to force Lois to owe him. Clark steps in and actually plays a bold ploy by telling Luthor that he has the Red Kryptonite and that he'll return it to Luthor in return for a story.

A desperate Clark goads Luthor into telling him the secret of the Red Kryptonite, but Luthor knows that he promised not to tell Superman (and he wants to tell Superman so badly). However, Luthor figures that he has found a loophole. He can tell Clark and Clark will tell Superman! So he explains how Mxyzptlk gave him the Kryptonite...

At this moment, Mxyzpytlk is busy in the Marvel Universe in a page drawn by John Byrne, who cleverly suggests that Mxy and Impossible Man are the same person. Mxy realizes Luthor told Superman (Mxy doesn't care about the Clark Kent/Superman distinction) and he is PISSED....

He returns Superman's powers to him and everything is back to normal, as the rest of Metropolis is thrilled that the Man of Steel is back to full power.

Clark then goes to visit Lois and her family in the hospital, even though he is forced to hang out in the lobby. Sam Lane is really impressed with how well Clark has handled the whole situation and Lois realizes that she loves Clark and wants to marry him, so they go to the hospital parking lot and Lois accepts his proposal...

As you might imagine, Lois Lane and Clark Kent getting engaged was a BIG deal! This was national news, the sort of thing that you could tell a person who never reads comic books and they'll still be vaguely interested in it. What's fascinating to me is this was the same month that Tim Drake debuted his new Robin costume, so this was a big month for DC in terms of historic moments.

If you folks have any suggestions for November (or any other later months) 2010, 1995, 1970 and 1945 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.