It's easy to sit back nowadays and label Mort Weisinger a "misogynist" and "mean-spirited" for the humiliating situations he put Lois Lane through back in the Silver Age. But I think we too often overlook who the target audience for these stories were, and what they craved back then.

That's why I think the second letter in this column from Danny Rining is enlightening. Danny relates how the local Superman Club (with about a 50/50 boy-girl mix, no less!) voted overwhelmingly that Lois needed a "super-spanking" for being such a pest to the Man of Steel! It seems that the kids back then enjoyed seeing the characters undergoing some form of humiliation - maybe because they could relate to it on some level, but more likely because it was just worth a good laugh.

So, while Mort Weisinger the person may indeed have been a despicable human being, there is ample evidence that Mort Weisinger the editor was very much in tune to what his readers desired back in the heyday of 1958-64.

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"As for contentment, that is a myth.  Give a man everything he wishes and he will be unhappy, because he didn't wish for more; give him more, and he will die of his worries.  Only a turtle, asleep on a sunny log, knows contentment!"
-Merlin to Prince Valiant

            Hal Foster 3-7-43
Last Edited By: Osgood Peabody Feb 9 11 9:33 AM. Edited 1 times.