Why do fools...

It's no April Fool! Science Fiction Romance Station is having a blog hop starting today and lasting all month, to highlight our authors' characters'  goofiest moments when it comes to love. And you know what?

We're giving out prizes! Good ones!

But I'm not telling you about them until the end.

I fretted over which scene to use for this installment, and decided on one from Applesauce and Moonbeams, because it was the only one I could think of that didn't contain many spoilers. What you need to know before reading this: Our hero, David, is a telepathic psychiatrist from Las Vegas who specializes in teaching people to fit into the uncomfortable niches their futuristic society requires of them. Now his mind has been blasted into the head of one very pampered kitty cat, Jonathan, who lives on the moon. So David is now a moon cat. His owner's niece, Pippin, is an avant-garde artist who has been celibate for far longer than she has wanted. No, there's no bestiality. Sheesh! Pip invites a fellow artist, Sevan, to her studio one day. David's been subconsciously trying to communicate his situation to Pippin, enough so the name "David" comes to her mind. Oh, and the "snake bites" are decorative cosmetic patches that prevent skin wrinkles. The Nineties, Teens, etc. numbers indicate different body types. Let's join the action:

It was all too chummy for David. He’d trotted in after them, weaving his way between Sevan’s feet until the man had to stop to let Jonathan lead the way. Instead, David stopped as well, even sat to lick his shoulder, until Sevan forged ahead. Then it was back to the weaving.

“Davi— I mean, Jonathan, stop that.”

“Nice cat. And this is a great space,” Sevan said after an awkward pause. “Do you mind—?” He gestured at a table next to the modeling stage and she began to clear her equipment off it.

“Part of it was a farewell gift from the folks on Earth,” she told him.

That got them talking about their families back home. Sevan pulled materials out of his bag: a lazy susan with two blocks of gray Insta-Klay, a pack of armature wire, and sculpture tools whose edges looked part kindergarten and part lethal.

David didn’t like this guy. He didn’t like the way he moved: like a clumsy, well, human. And he smelled funny. David half-listened to Pip’s story, though it should have fascinated him through enlightenment gained. Why, when Pip’s family had insisted she study marketing at university, she had maneuvered them into a deal guaranteeing her a double major that included fine art. If that didn’t reveal the soul of a true businesswoman, what did?

But Sevan didn’t understand. He was interested in other things besides saving Pip’s soul and forming her into a useful and content member of society. At the least he should reiterate what she said and restate it so that she knew he was hearing what she had to say. He needed to establish emotional feedback if he was here for what David thought he was here for.

And yet Pip seemed like she was responding to him. Worse, she smelled like a huntress.

David hated Sevan’s holographic snake bites. They were too flashy and bespoke a huge ego. Well, Nineties as a rule had ego problems, didn’t they? The opposite of Teens, Nineties were completely sure of themselves because of their dominating size and often adopted flashy accouterments to finalize the business of attracting mates.

Snake bites should be muted so you could focus on someone’s features. Pip, of course, went all the way with hers. They were skin-colored. When she smiled, you saw the smile and not the flash of silver or magenta attached to the flesh.

David blinked at her. On her it worked. Rather endearing, actually. The snakebites on that low-make face were a way of telling the world that she was not a woman to fake her way through life.

The two humans wrestled a tapestried chaise from one of the front rooms up onto the low stage. It was purple with bright daisies woven into the fabric. As Sevan rotated the stage, Pip took a seat. David jumped up onto Pip’s lap and nudged her so she’d scratch his chin. He leaned into the caress. Sevan set up lights whose brightness Pip directed by vocal control.

“Good enough,” they decided together. Sevan took a position by his Klay.

Pip set David down on the main floor and stood up. Then she slowly dropped her robe. Underneath it she was naked.

“How do you want me?” she asked.

“No, no, no!” David yowled.

Sevan took a step back from David. “Does he bite?”

Pippin frowned at David and then turned a warm smile to Sevan. “He’s just angry because I stopped petting him.”

David stormed to himself as he paced back and forth. This was not going right!

Pip settled upon the chaise like the Queen of Sheba, all temptation and womanliness and control.

Sevan made some suggestions as to pose and gesture and Pip complied, snuggling back into the cushions to get comfortable. Sevan moved his primary light and stepped back, then—

Don’t TOUCH her! David wanted to scream. He trembled where he stood as Sevan arranged Pip’s arm so it haloed her head, thrown back against the line of the couch.

No! Pip was David’s to use. She was going to learn from him when he got his body back.

He was going to shape her, not this man.

She shifted slightly and Sevan said, “That’s great. Right there.” He walked around her, shooting photos from different angles. Sevan returned to his worktable and quickly began to construct an armature from his wire. When he applied bits of clay to it and the form grew to that of a human woman, David seethed.

Through the blackness of his rage he wondered if he could force Sevan out of his body and jump into it himself.

“Shall I talk to myself to keep awake, then?” Pip asked.

“Sorry.”

David didn’t like the play in her voice. She was a lonely woman. A woman who should be well-kept. This man was not a good match for her; anyone could see that.

David growled low.

After a long while of fiddling with the clay, Sevan announced, “Break.”

“Thank God.” Pippin reached for her robe and wrapped it around herself to check the work in progress. Sevan stood back from it, scowling at the figure.

“Ah, so sculptors feel it too,” she murmured to him with a sly smile. She moved near him and stroked his arm. When she spoke, her breath must tickle his ear. “It’s a very strong start. You have real talent. Can I get you a drink? Or would you like a... longer break?”

At that he turned to her. His head cocked slightly to the left as he regarded her now robed, as if he hadn’t been studying every inch of her naked. His gaze darkened from angst to arousal.

“I wouldn’t mind a chance to stretch,” he said.

Pip wrapped her arms around his so-talented Seventy arm. “I know a great place to do that,” she whispered in his ear.

David sank his claws right into Sevan’s Seventies calf.

Sevan let out a very feminine shriek. Pippin jumped back until she saw what had happened.

“Da— Jonathan! Sevan, are you hurt? Jonathan—bad cat! No! Bad cat!”

David stood up on his hind feet and used Sevan’s leg as a scratching post.

“Get it off me! OFF ME!!”

“Jonathan! No! No, get down! Sevan, he’s not doing it in spite. It’s just a cat thing. He thinks you’re a tree or something. Jonathan!”

David easily avoided Pippin’s swipes as she simultaneously attempted to soothe her would-be lover and capture David. He had to release, but he circled around, looking for another opening.

Sevan sank to the chaise and held his lower leg, howling at the ceiling.

Pip swung David up to her chest. She reached for Sevan’s shoulder as he bent to cup his wound. Blood dripped from several deep scratches.

“Is it bad?” Pippin asked. “He’s never done anything like this before. Nothing at all.” She hovered over him. “Should I call 911? Can I get you a pain patch? Bad cat!”

Sevan glared at David. “That cat is insane!”

David hissed at him, making sure his spittle found Sevan’s eyes.

Pip fought the growling, spitting animal in her arms. “Bad Jonathan!” She ran to the french doors and tossed the cat through them, snapping them shut before he could get back inside. David threw himself against the doors, hard enough so they rattled.

----

Oh dear, David was a baaad cat. If you like that, you can click on the book cover at the upper right to find a page that gives more info and places/formats you can buy it.

And right above that is a place to sign up for my very infrequent newsletter. If you do, you'll get a confirmation letter that has a secret code for you to get a FREE e-version of Touch of Danger, vol. 1 of the superhero romance series "Three Worlds."

Did someone say "Contest"? Okay, here's the info! SFR Station is offering three prizes: Grand Prize: $75 gift card (your choice of iBooks, Nook, Kindle, or All Romance) PLUS 16 ebooks. 2nd prize: $25 gift card and 12 ebooks! 3rd prize: $25 and 8 ebooks! Let's see… Oh, the Internet and all the codes… Here's where you enter: a Rafflecopter giveaway They say you only have to enter on one blog to be entered in the big contest.

Did I say "all"? Lots of people are giving little April Fools excerpts. You can sample from a wide variety, and I think this will give you a listing of links for everyone: 

If that didn't work, try going here instead, a simple little link. THE CONTEST RUNS ALL MONTH, so there's plenty of time to try out everyone's sites.

I think clicking on the button and picture at the top of this blog will also send you in the right direction, at least if I'm reading the HTML correctly.

AND WHAT THE HECK…
I'll give away a free ebook of your choice of my titles to TWO lucky people! All you have to do is leave a comment on this blog.

Hope you have a very funny and entertaining April Fool's Day! Me, I'll go back to my rocking chair and think lovely luddite thoughts.

--Carol Strick

It's a Mod, Mod, Mod Wondie!

In the past two months I’ve seen numerous articles (even a film!) about Wonder Woman that disparaged her Mod Era either in passing or at length.

Obviously, the authors didn’t know what they were talking about.

Wonder Woman’s “Mod Era” in which she gave up her powers and functioned as an extremely skilled and human being, began in issue #178 (first volume), Sept-Oct. 1968, and ended in issue #204, Jan-Feb. 1973. According to primary editor/writer/artist Mike Sekowsky, "We are not kicking a winner... -- the Old Wonder Woman was a loser -- she was a loser for so long the book was going to be dropped as a matter of fact. The sales figures on the new Wonder Woman now make her a winner…."

Wondie had been hit hard not only by the death in 1947 of her creator, William Moulton Marston, but by Frederick Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent, in which Wondie was accused not only of being a lesbian but being into BDSM—and attempting to preach those ideas to the kids who read her books.

Well, yeah, but she also had a boyfriend who was often by her side in her adventures and a significant proportion of that bondage was there so she could break free of it not only physically but metaphorically. Still, National Periodical Pubs./DC Comics had to make some tweaks on the Wonder mythos so that parents could be assured their children could read the books without “harm.” (Cue the “Spartacus” auditorium scene of In and Out.)

So Wondie became kind of obsessed with Steve, who in turn became rather controlling and scary. Wondie couldn’t go after villains directly anymore—that would be unfeminine—so she dared them that she couldn’t accomplish incredible feats. Invariably she did, so the villains then dutifully trotted off to jail to fulfill their half of the bargain.

To fill out the books, then-writer Robert Kanigher concocted the “Impossible Tales,” stories in which different-aged versions of Wondie teamed up for “family” adventures. As that series went on, the “Impossible Tales” label was often left off introductions, or the introductions made no sense at all, so that the Wonder Family: Wonder Woman, her mother (“Wonder Queen;” how regal she was!), her sister Wonder Girl (I adored her!), and toddler little sister Wonder Tot (squee!), were all a real family. (Some of us readers came from dysfunctional families and loved when we were exposed to stories of families that actually loved each other.) When DC decided to cash in on the teenaged craze, Wonder Girl signed up for the very first adventure of  the Teen Titans.

But even if WG’s popularity was such that she took over the cover for two issues (with her logo being the prominent one), that era too ran out of steam, and Kanigher introduced the “Return to the Golden Age.” He subsequently APOLOGIZED (!!!) in a lettercol for subjecting his readers to this ghastly era.

After that DC suddenly realized that Wonder Woman was an actual superhero, and gave her superhero-type stories of a Silver Age kind of feel. She teamed up with Supergirl twice and both times had to suffer through a romance-driven plot because you know: they’re chicks. Chicks are only good for romance stories. (How I wish the Supergirl writers could have read a few issues of the new Ms. Marvel to see just what a female teen superhero can do! Let’s throw in PAD’s run of Supergirl as well.)

So this is where we were when sales bottomed out on the book.

And this is what Mike Sekowsky (and some others) gave us:

After the Mod Era, we got a handful of issues with the intriguing Nubia (who was never seen again [save one issue of Super Friends] for decades), and then Kanigher once more gave us a kinda-sorta Return to the Golden Age, this time with incredibly sloppy art featuring lots of buxom women and stories teaching kids that men were evil, while women (especially women who didn't admit men to their ranks) were good. The stories may have had slightly modern settings, but they were the same old dreck he’d shoveled at us before.

Then by some miracle (Kanigher was gone!), Wondie rejoined the Bronze Age with the Twelve Labors storyline, a semi-solid set of superheroic tales. After that, it was all standard super-stuff for her. But if it hadn’t been for the Mod Era, she wouldn’t have been still a DC character. Her series would have been cancelled, and rights would have reverted to the Marston family.

And I would never have fallen in love with the concept of Wonder Woman. It was this panel that cemented it all for me:

Not just one character, but WOMEN, plural, women with few if any powers, standing up to Ares and his army! They were all strong-willed; they were all beyond competent. They trusted and followed Diana. I’d never seen ANYTHING like this in my life!

So tell me again how the Mod Era sucked. Let’s step outside, shall we?

Want to know more about the Mod Era? Of course I have an index! It’s here. You can waste a lot of time reading it.

CONTEST!!! Yay, it’s another contest, with $200 gift cards available to be won. Go here to enter. The contest runs until April 5^th. Good luck!

A Little March Tease!

I recently joined the Scifi Romance Group on Facebook (they spell "Sci Fi" differently than I do) and today is a day to advertise our books via blog posts. So here I present a tease of Applesauce and Moonbeams, which isn't Sci Fi Romance but rather Sci Fi with Romantic Elements. Yes, there's a difference. Ah, categorization!

Let's set the stage: Our Hero has been in a battle that ended on the Lunar Express, a shuttle going from Earth to Luna. Unfortunately (actually fortunately, or I'd have no plot), he lost that battle and has collapsed into one of the passenger sleep pods. I'll let Pippin take it from here...

---

How odd. Pippin had expected to wake up brimming with unbounded zest, free from the crushing gravity that had been Earth for the past six weeks. She should be home: back on Luna.

This trip had left the rest of her life hanging and her nerves shattered. They had already been stretched thin as a plastic sheet. During the past six weeks that plastic had been pulled and distorted, finally snapping into shreds by a lack of time and more gravity than a human body was ever meant to bear.

What she needed was a long vacation. What she faced was the most important deadline of her life.

Now at last she could pick up where she’d left and get on with everything. She’d have to do so at a dead run; her schedule was squeezed unbearably tight. Instead, she found she literally couldn’t move. Was some fear of failure immobilizing her? Or worse: artist’s block?

I should have refused to go to Earth, she reminded herself as she put up faint struggle to open her eyes. She thought she’d left Earth behind four years ago. But poor Jonathan. He couldn’t have lasted much longer without Terran help. And of course, poor old Aunt Evie anxiously waited for him at home.

Evie certainly couldn’t have survived the trip, so Pippin had put her dream on hold for six weeks. Forty-two irreplaceable days. She’d accompanied Jonathan throughout his ordeal, and had now brought him back home. She hoped he appreciated her sacrifice. She knew Aunt Evie didn’t.

Her time was her own again, but time now ran oddly. It was dark. Oh yeah, she had her eyes closed, but there didn’t seem to be any light on the other side of her lids. Open, open, open, her mind commanded, but her mistreated body groaned, Five more minutes.

She still felt heavy, though maybe half or a third as bad as the horror Mama Terra had been. Not only heavy but a tad claustrophobic. She squeegeed the sleep-slime in her mouth with her teeth, trying to taste what the problem was as her senses slowly awoke. Ew, got some hair in her mouth. She spat it out.

It was really quiet in here. Funny odor; guess that was the plastic sleep suit they made her wear, with its plumbing and sensors and everything. It really smelled icky. More than ripe; kind of rotten, like when they brought in a big batch of manure from the Luna C waste facility to receive its final rounds of sterilization. That couldn’t be her, could it? Ew, ew. Never!

She must be still in the sleep pod. Cocooned to withstand the hard acceleration that powered the Express, it fed her enough drugs to keep her unaware of the day-and-a-half ride. The faint sounds she made as she squirmed echoed back to her, reminding her of how tiny it was.

People weren’t supposed to wake up in their pods, were they? Had something catastrophic happened? She started throwing off the drug effects at that thought. Was there something wrong with the ship, that the sleepers had been awakened prematurely so they could deal manually with the emergency—or at least say their final prayers?

Meteoroid collision? Crew decompression? Was no one left at the controls?

Maybe some glitch had cut off her nutrients or, God help her, her air, and some keen animal instinct had snapped herself alert so she could jump up and—

Not bloody likely, with this weight pinning her down.

Funny, it didn’t extend to her arms or hands. Her left foot also seemed to be free of it. Still, it was... well, something. An object of some kind, a smushing load, a—

“Wooo-AAAAHHH!” she shrieked. “Dead body! Dead body!”

She scrabbled her free fingers, searching for some kind of help button to alert the staff. There must be a help button. And a staff that was awake. Please, God, a— “HAAAAAALLP!” She ended it in a pure, unadulterated screech guaranteed to penetrate six inches of solid steel if need be.

Suddenly it occurred to her that her screams might use up all available oxygen.

Oxygen or zombie initiation? “YAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! EEEEEEEEE!”

Excited voices penetrated from the other side of the pod. She shrieked as loudly as she could: “Dead! BODIEEE! Lemme out! Lemme OUUUUT!!!”

For the first time in her life, Pippin Applegate fainted.

---

Hope you liked that! You can find out more about this book here, including buy links. (It's $3.99 for e-book.) (And darn it, even though it looked perfect the other week, I see I have to nudge the type on that webpage just a tad once again. It never ends, does it? Siiigh.) And remember, if you sign up for my VERY infrequent newsletter at the top right side of this blog, you will get a FREE e-copy of Touch of Danger, vol. 1 in the "Three Worlds" series!

The greatest book you've never read!

Forget those AWFUL, PUTRID Steve Martin movies! They are zero, nothing, nada like the original book!

What book? Cheaper by the Dozen, by Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr., and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey. (Illustrations on the first printing, which I show here, were done by Donald McKay.) (That's right; I stole my parents' copy of the book and kept it for myself!)

The Steve Martin movies showed an inept father of 12 whose lesson to be learned in the first movie (I haven't had the stomach to watch all of the second one) was this: Children are king. Whatever they want, the parent should provide, no matter what the dreams the parent has to give up to achieve that.*

Phooey! Frank Gilbreth would have had a fit!

Frank and Lilian Gilbreth were industrial engineers, the first to do motion studies of various professions. (Look 'em up on Wiki for some fascinating facts.) Their firm operated from 1910 until 1924, when Frank died. After that, Lillian, who was also a psychologist, took over the business. But this book isn't about the business, it's about their family. As the dedication reads:

To DAD

who only reared twelve children

and

To MOTHER

who reared twelve only children

Can a man shave faster by using two razors? Yes, but he loses time
in administering first aid to himself afterward.

Frank, who was crazy about kids, wanted to see if the improvements he'd made in industrial efficiency could work in a familial setting. (He also knew he had health problems and wanted to make sure the family would survive well without him.) So from the birth of his first child, Anne, he began experimenting.

He asserted that baby monkeys could function at advanced levels compared to human babies, and tried to get Anne to, for example, learn to swim while she was still an infant. Oh well, that didn't work, but other things did.

The family grew, gaining 12 kids in 17 years. (Poor Lillie!)** The Gilbreths instituted family councils, sealed bids for household jobs the kids could do in addition to their regular chores, and such things as learning from language records during "unavoidable delay" (using the bathroom).

Gilbreth painted Morse code on the walls and bedroom ceilings of the family's vacation house, and the kids used their silverware at dinner to tap out messages—and receive rewards—during dinner. CAREless CHILDren: dash dot dash dot = C. I'll always remember that.

The children buried coffins of pencils for advertising newsreels, helped develop the touch typing system (aided by sharp taps of a ruler to their heads when they made mistakes), and they lived in fear of a younger sibling skipping a grade to land in their class.

If one got sick, they all did, and set New Jersey health reports suddenly skyrocketing. There's one section that deals with the kids' tonsils coming out. For some time Frank had been wanting to capture multiple identical operations on film so he could teach doctors how to operate quicker. Now all but one of his kids needed tonsillectomies. Perfect! He decided to have the operations done at home while a cameraman filmed everything.

I'll let you discover what happened along the way.

Anne wasn't keen on wearing long underwear, so she
got a job and bought her own clothing.

The Jazz Age arrived just in time for the older kids, three girls, to be in high school and dating. Bobbed hair, nylons, short skirts, stripped-down Model T's, and greasy-haired collegiate sheiks made Frank Gilbreth's blood pressure skyrocket. Still, he and his wife managed to muddle through and even enjoy the process—a little—along the way.

The ending is sad, but the rest of the book is great fun. There's a sequel, Belles on Their Toes, that I read ages ago and recall that it seemed a bit repetitive. It did mention that Mary, the second child, had died at age five of diphtheria. At Lillian's Wiki page, I discovered that there was also a stillborn baby girl in the Dozen (which was always referred to that way, though after Mary died there were only 11). The eleven Gilbreths who survived childhood ALL graduated college (imagine!) and lived long lifetimes, like their mother. You can read more about the family at this website or here.

Because Amazon is offering the book at only $1.99, I bought it just because, and discovered that Ernestine had written an introduction to the book (which maddeningly listed the questions people most often asked her, without giving any answers), and that there are photos at the end of the book showing the family back then and as time went by. The 1923 photo includes them all, and sure enough, all the girls have bobbed hair. There's another picture from the 80s with Frank Jr. and three brothers, but the brothers aren't named, darn it. The 1920 picture of Frank Sr. and Lillian doesn't show Frank as being nearly as large as the book paints him. Don't know if he was having a good year or if the book was just using literary license. (This could have been the point at which he began slimming down on doctor's orders.)

The main point to take in is this: you'll enjoy this book enormously! In addition to being a memorable family comedy, it also shows the transition society made moving into the Twentieth Century and celebrates that rarity of the time: a professional, educated woman. If you haven't seen the 1950 movie with Clifton Webb and Myrna Loy, save it until after you read the book. There was also a 1952 movie, Belles on Their Toes. Audible has an audiobook of Cheaper, and the sample sounds pretty good.
_____

*It also showed that you can dream up a book, write it, get it published, and become a best-selling author within the space of something like 3 months. Riiiiight.
**Make that 13 kids in 17 years, counting the still-birth daughter. Lillie also birthed all those kids at home, except for the last one, Jane, whom she had at a hospital. Lillie came home wondering why she hadn't done that before, because it had been such a pleasant experience.

No new blog this week...

…Because I'm sick. Currently I'm more interested in the fact that I just picked up two boxes of lotioned Kleenex and a bottle of Dayquil.

The only good thing about all this is that I'm catching up on Maverick and Deep Space Nine—both first seasons. Good stuff! (Though so far Maverick's plots have revolved around a "mistaken identity" theme.)

Stay healthy out there!

The apple doesn't fall far...

This morning for some perverse reason I was watching The Roy Rogers Show during breakfast. Well, that and the news and QVC in little blips as I surfed. I noticed that Roy had a male sidekick named Pat, a man with a rubber face who made all kinds of OTT expressions and generally played Barney Fife to Roy's Andy Taylor. Pat was dumb as dirt.

But in this morning's half-hour episode, poor Pat got hit on the head. A lot. I counted at least three times that he was hit so hard he went unconscious. The bad guys on the episode miraculously missed being shot (of course none of the good guys were), even though everyone had unlimited ammunition. Well, except at one point Bad Guy #1 ran out of bullets, Roy jumped him, they had a fist-fight, and the next thing you know, Roy's grabbing BG#1's hand, in which BG is holding that empty gun, and the gun fires into the air.

As Bats-Man (from Mad Magazine) once so wisely noted, "TV writers have no logic!"

But the bad guys also got hit on the head, several times, to the point they were rendered unconscious. I figure that because poor Pat got hit so hard on the head so often was the reason why he was so slow of wit. Keep that in mind…

A couple months ago one of the Legion of Super-Heroes groups on Facebook was talking about Superboy #197, Sept. 1973, the one where the cover has Saturn Girl's gawd-awful bikini miscolored, and where cover artist Nick Cardy used an old reference, which is why cutey Element Lad is wearing a Legion flight belt from the Legion's earliest days.

This was still early, around the seventh or so issue, of the beautiful Dave Cockrum run of the Legion. Each story unveiled new costumes for the Legionnaires. Dave had previewed four of the costumes in The Legion Outpost, the Legion Fan Club's fanzine that I dutifully subscribed to, and I was excited to open up each new issue (if it had a Legion story) to see what other costumes would be showing up. I was mad about costumes! Still am.

(By the time this issue came out I had been notified that Dave was using my suggestion of a new look for Light Lass. He'd already designed one but had forgotten that she and Lightning Lad [for whom Dave had designed one of the all-time spiffiest comic book costumes EVER!!!] were twins. Mine matched the new LLad costume, which was no coincidence as I had dashed off a new design as soon as I'd received the Outpost with the new-look Lighting Lad on the cover, and sent it off to DC. Ayla's new threads premiered in Superboy #202.)

ANYWAYZ, that's not what we're here to talk about. Scripts for both stories in this ish were by Cary Bates. The first story was "Timber Wolf: Dead Hero, Live Executioner!" But we aren't concerned here with ol' Brin Londo, he of the Wolverine 'do.

We are merely concerned with page two. (You should be able to click on these for a larger view.)

Spring is in the air; in fact it is April as Lana Lang and her next-door neighbor, Clark Kent, lounge under an apple tree. Tra la! How could anyone have problems with this?

Well, first it's April. Those are ripe apples overhead. I believe the earliest apples in the continental US ripen in July.

Secondly, Lana (an intelligent and fashionable young woman) is wearing white. And she's sitting on grass. Grass leaves stains; everyone knows that, especially those of the female persuasion because they're usually the ones who have to launder the family clothing. Lana has not spread out a blanket to protect her lovely white outfit from the grass. This story would be taking place in the late Fifties, extremely early Sixties, since Superboy by this time was lagging 15-20 years behind his stories as Superman. Stain-fighting technology now is not the best, but back then…

Lana expresses normal teenaged curiosity, wanting to learn the first practical steps of romance. She'd like to try a kiss with her friend. For some reason Clark is not so inclined. In fact he's sweating bullets about the thought of kissing gorgeous Lana, the only long-lasting opposite-sex-type interest in his boyhood.

Have the Kents been so puritanical in bringing up Clark? Has Red Kryptonite affected his natural desires and/or curiosity? Has he been questioning his sexuality? Man, it's just a kiss. Perhaps he's afraid that one kiss will unleash years of hot teen lust and he'll have Lana on her back in seconds! Well, he does do that, but not in the way you might imagine.

(Though I doubt Clark would do anything counter to the Comics Code he lives by. He's not like the hero in my Three Worlds series, who at intimate moments is too powerful for his own good, and is completely frustrated by his limitations when it comes to human contact. You can get the first book in that series free if you sign up for my newsletter [on top of the right-hand column here].)

In the midst of all this, Clark's alerted by a signal that means that the Legion of Super-Heroes needs his presence immediately.

Immediately, as in: 1000 years from then.

At this point in DC continuity, the Legion existed in the 30th Century. Clark could wait a couple weeks before heading off to the future. There was never any direct connection exhibited, any kind of time warping that showed that the Legion's future was EXACTLY 1000 years to the moment in the future. After all, Supergirl also visited the Legion, and she was from the present day Superman era as opposed to the Superboy era of the past.

So really, Clark has no reason to react quickly. But he does.

He uses his heat vision to prune off two large, ripe apples…

…that KNOCK LANA UNCONSCIOUS!

I'm sorry, but two apples falling on the top of your head are not going to make you black out. Clark had to use his super-breath or something to increase the apples' velocity so as to increase the force when they hit.

And they knocked out Lana. Superboy refers to this as a "nice nap."

I was going to explain this myself, but the website "Explain like I'm five" does it so much better than I could ever do. BiPolah (haw!) says to a questioner who has watched violence in movies, "There's a pretty fine line between knocking [movie characters] out and causing permanent damage, and it's not like they're out for hours so you can stuff them in a cupboard while you go off robbing the place. People that are knocked out from head trauma are usually out for a few seconds, perhaps minutes. Even there could be serious damage or a concussion. If they're out for much longer, you're probably looking at permanent brain damage or death."

mjcapples agrees: "Any time when you experience unconsciousness, it is a life-threatening injury that risks permanent brain damage. The exact ease of causing injury depends on several factors, including the location of the strike, the amount of linear and rotational force, and the duration of the impact. For example, impacts to the side of the head are well documented to cause injury much easier than impacts to the front or back. Also, a linear hit causes different damage than a hit with a rotational aspect, which is linked to breaking the blood vessels that feed your brain.

"As far as a general rule for head injury though, one of the basic formulas for head injury (the Head Injury Criterion), states that a score of 1000 is about a 50% risk of death and a score of 250 being a good indicator for a concussion."

I repeat: It's a "nice nap."
 
Let me get this straight. In order to respond to an emergency that is not an actual emergency either in terms of time travel or in what Clark finds when he arrives in the 30th Century (read the story), Clark injures his supposed close friend to the point where she likely has sustained a concussion (not a minor injury) and might indeed be lying near death while he departs.
 
While Lana never went stoopid after this story (she was never as dumb as Lois Lane was often depicted), one has to wonder how she managed to survive, and survive still with brains intact, unlike Roy Rogers' Pat.
 
We don't see Lana after the main plot has ended. Did she die? Did Superboy replace her with a robot, clone, or parallel-world double? Sure, she showed up in the second story in the book, but she looked decidedly different. (And don't tell me that's just because Bob Brown and Murphy Anderson did the art for that story!)
 
Threatening Mr. Clark Kent's ideas about his own sexuality does not seem to be a safe thing even for Clark's friends to do. Hm.
 
What do you think?

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