What Does Superman Do With His Wedding Ring?

Today, let's figure out what Superman does with his wedding ring when he transforms from Clark Kent into the Man of Steel!In Comic Book Questions Answered, I answer whatever questions you folks might have about comic books (feel free to e-mail questions to me at brianc@cbr.com).This one is tricky, as it wasn't actually a question asked of ME, but rather just something that the awesome comic book writer, Dan Slott, asked to his Twitter followers (or Twitter readers in general, I suppose) and it piqued my interest as I knew the answer and I thought it would make for an interesting column, so, well, here we are!Dan tweeted out:

We know the answer to this because it was actually a plot point in the Superman titles in late 1999 and it caused a whole "to do" for the Man of Steel!

The Superman titles underwent a dramatic creative shift at the end of 1999, with all of the longtime creators who had been working on the character throughout the decade parted ways with the character, with Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway and Louise Simonson finishing off their long and well-respected work on the Super-titles. The then relatively new creative team on Superman: The Man of Steel of Mark Schultz, Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen remained and writer/artist Stuart Immonen and scripter Mark Millar remained on Adventure of Superman (at first, at least), but Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly came aboard as new writers on Superman and Action Comics, respectively.

In Loeb's first issue, Superman #151 (by artists Mike McKone and Marlo Alquiza. Amusingly, Loeb's run started with guest artists, as the artist that he was planning on working with on the series, Ed McGuinness, was not available in time to start the run. McKone, though, is one amazing fill-in artist!) the Daily Planet went back to its old Status Quo (after Lex Luthor had taken control of the newspaper and even removed the iconic globe on top of the building) and we see Clark Kent and Lois Lane, married reporters, and Clark is wearing his wedding ring when he runs to turn into Superman....

This was an issue, because as we see at the end of the story, Superman STILL HAS HIS RING ON!

But that's not that big of a deal, right? So he has his ring on once, who would notice? Well, as you might have noticed from that page, Jimmy Olsen was right there, snapping away on his camera and sure enough, we see in Superman #152 (by Loeb, McKone and Alquiza) that Jimmy did, in fact, get a shot of Superman's wedding ring and we get the true answer to the question, which is that Lois thinks to herself that she knew that Clark would one day forget to take off his wedding ring, which, inherently, means that the answer to "Does he take off his wedding ring when he turns into Superman?" is "Yes."

Jimmy, though, is torn. He doesn't want to blow up Superman's spot, so although Lois let him make the call himself, Jimmy decides to photoshop out the ring. He's proud of himself until he discovers that other newspapers ALSO have the wedding ring shot and the Daily Planet looks stupid as the other papers are running with "Who is Mrs. Superman?"

In the next issue in the Superman titles, Adventures of Superman #574 (by Stuart Immonen, Mark Millar, Joe Phillips and Rich Faber), the citizens of Metropolis are obsessing over the whole "Mrs. Superman" question when an old Superman villain, Obsession, who is obsessed with the Man of Steel, shows up, now trying to refer to herself as Mrs. Superman...

She ends up actually sacrificing herself for Superman in the story and she dies.

The next book in the Superman titles was Superman: The Man of Steel #96 (by Schultz, Mahnke and Nguyen) and first, Perry White gets a nice speech to Jimmy about how they, as reporters, can certainly affect how people perceive news by treating dumb stories like this with no respect, but they can't just lie about stuff and that with modern technology, Jimmy will be more tested than reporters ever were before him and so he has to be stronger than ever.

We then get to see how Superman gets out of this public relations mess and it from the Justice League holding a press conference where Wonder Woman holds up a wedding ring and reveals that she and Superman are married...as are all of the Justice League, as they are all married to JUSTICE!

Clever bit, especially since it naturally ties in with the Legion of Super-Heroes, who actually DID use rings for that very purpose.

In the next Superman book, Action Comics #761 (by Joe Kelly, German Garcia and Joe Rubinstein), the story is dying down, but Lois still is dealing with a little bit of a blow to her self-esteem over the fact that she knows most of the world already has an idea on who would be the perfect Mrs. Superman and it isn't Lois but rather, Wonder Woman...

Things get even crazier when Superman and Wonder Woman are stuck in the issue fighting a magical war for a thousand years and Superman begins to forget about Lois, but never quite cheats on her with Wonder Woman.

Finally, in Superman #153 (by Loeb, McKone and Alquiza), Superman reveals to Jimmy that the ring actually IS a for real wedding ring and that he can't tell Jimmy WHO he is married to, but he wants to show that he trusts Jimmy enough to let him know that he IS married to someone...