Superman's Life Was Saved By a Kryptonian Humphrey Bogart

This is "My Name It Ain't Nothin'," a look at when comic books guest star celebrities, but their names are changed so as to avoid any legal problems.

Today, we take a look at the time that Superman was saved by...Humphrey Bogart?!?

I bring this up a lot, but this is another one that someone suggested to me via means other than e-mail (brianc@cbr.com or cronb01@aol.com). As I always say, THAT'S TOTALLY FINE! I am not judging you for it. It just means that I can't find who suggested it afterwards. I'll always remember the suggestion, but not the suggestion-giver, so if you want credit, please e-mail me your suggestions. If you just want to see the idea used, then hey, go for it! It's totally cool by me! EDITED TO ADD: It was Trey Kelso. Thanks, Trey!

Okay, the issue at hands is 1969's Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #98, in a story by Robert Kanigher, Curt Swan and George Roussos.

Robert Kanigher was one of DC's biggest writers for DECADES, however, during that time, he was mostly known for only writing one major superhero, as he was the main writer for Wonder Woman for over two decades (from the death of William Marston to the debut of the "New Look" Wonder Woman in the late 1960s). Otherwise, Kanigher was famous for war stories and for romance comics. Around the mid-1960s, Kanigher started to do less romance work and take on more superhero work, as well. Short stints on various titles. Once he lost the Wonder Woman gig, he expanded his circle even more. Mort Weisinger had lost a lot of his regular Superman writers by the late 1960s and so Kanigher started doing some Superman work for Weisinger, including become the regular writer on Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane. Kanigher, of course, is famous for his outlandish plots, as he, like another famous DC Comics Robert, Bob Haney, was more about whatever he felt like writing that particular day, whether it fit the overall character's arc or not. Basically, characters didn't really HAVE arcs in most Kanigher stories. Crazy stuff just happened every issue (although he tried to get with the times, as it were, a bit with his early 1970s Lois Lane work and his early 1970s Flash stuff, as well, when he became the regular writer of that series).

As a result, you'd often have these stories that would start in one place and end up in a WHOLE other place, since Kanigher didn't concern himself with overall arcs. So you'd get these interesting dramatic changes within the stories. In this story, Lois Lane is being celebrated for her 1,000th day volunteering as a nurse at a local Metropolis hospital. She notes that there is a scientist there who is continuing to do his radiation experiments even though he is dying. Anyhow, Superman takes her on a trip to an asteroid that he names after her. While there, she drinks the nectar of a flower on the asteroid. When she visits the hospital and the radiation expert, she sees that is now glowing from radiation. She assumes that this means that she is near death after being exposed to so much radiation, so she decides to do some risky stuff to help others (like draw out a deadly snake or grab a bomb from a hijacker on a plane). Eventually, Superman takes her to the Fortress of Solitude to watch the Northern Lights, which are oddly intense right now. This is one of the weirdest aspect of the story to me, honestly, as Superman takes her to the Fortress to see the latest addition to the Lois Lane wing of the Fortress...a Honeymoon cottage?

What in the freakin' WORLD is up with him taking her to a "Honeymoon cottage" that he made for her? "I can't marry you, but I built you a honeymoon cottage just for, I dunno, laughs, I guess?" How weird is Superman?

While there, they are attacked by a monster that escaped from the Kandorian Zoo and got out of the bottled city and grew to normal size (I imagine the Kandorians are all, like, "Gee, I'd like that to happen to US") and attacks them. It is about to kill them and Lois is happy enough to spend her last moment with Superman when suddenly...

Yes, Tra-Gob, an escaped Phantom Zone prisoner has shown up at just the right time to save their lives! Tra-Gob, of course, is Bogart backwards, and as you can see, Curt Swan and George Roussos have based the character's look on acclaimed movie star, Humphrey Bogart...

Bogart, of course, was famous for playing a whole lot of criminals in his career, but not just criminals, but complex, multi-faceted criminals (he played plenty of heroic characters, as well, of course, but even in most of his heroic characters, he typically played complex heroes with an edge to them, like Rick in Casablanca, where you never quite know where you stand with him before he ultimately turns out to be a hero). Plus, one of Bogart's most famous films, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, involves criminals double-crossing each other and sure enough, we see that in the past, Tra-Gob was betrayed by his fellow crooks and his life was saved by Jor-El and thus, when Tra-Gob escaped, he felt that he owed a debt to Jor-El's son...

I adore the bit where the other prisoners are trying to give Tra-Gob grief over his actions. It is also interesting that Tra-Gob didn't just take the pardon. I mean, I get that he wants to go straight, but dude, if someone offers you a pardon, TAKE IT.

Anyhow, we then learn that the radiation that Lois was exhibiting was harmless and, of course, Superman knew it the whole time and didn't think that Lois would notice, which is why he never told her that she was not, in fact, dying. The radiation explained why the snake slithered away from Lois earlier in the story and why the bomb went off and why the Northern Lights were more intense (and why Tra-Gob was able to escape from the Phantom Zone)...