The Many Faces Of… Super-Weddings

Superman is famous for the outfits he wears. Whether it’s the red and blue tights that he dons when he’s leaping tall buildings, or the suit, tie and spectacles that he sports in the Daily Planet newsroom, he is always easily identified by his fashion. But what about the times when he’s had to trade in those outfits and put on a tuxedo, stand before friends and family and say “I do”? Can one woman really tie down the Man of Steel? And what about the weddings of Superman’s supporting cast members? In this special wedding edition of “Many Faces…”, we’ll take a look at some “super weddings” from the comics and TV.

Superman and Lois Lane have actually “gotten married” multiple times in the comics, particularly in the 1960s, when “imaginary stories” were popular. These wedding stories took place in alternate universes or were clearly labeled as “what if” tales that were not officially tied to continuity. In one of the most famous of these stories, “The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue” in 1963, Superman is split into two different versions of himself, one wearing a red costume and the other a blue one. In a triple wedding, Superman-Red marries Lois Lane, Superman-Blue marries Lana Lang, and Jimmy Olsen marries Lucy Lane! Again, this was an imaginary story (though, as writer Alan Moore would later note, “aren’t they all?”), and as such it took place outside of continuity.

The daily Superman newspaper strip married off Clark Kent and Lois Lane in 1949. Interestingly, Lois still didn’t know Clark was Superman, despite being married to him. This went on for a few years, before the writers apparently decided it was a bad idea and had Clark wake up to discover that the whole marriage had been a dream!

Jimmy Olsen was not immune from his own offbeat wedding tales in this era. In Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen #21, “The Wedding of Jimmy Olsen,” Jimmy becomes convinced that Lois has a thing for him, and imagines being married to her. Years later, in issue #100, a story called “Jimmy Olsen’s Weirdo Wedding” featured Jimmy using a Super-Physique Formula to impress Lucy Lane so she would marry him, and Superman building the couple a huge mansion to live in.

In 1978, DC Comics celebrated Superman’s 40th anniversary with Action Comics #484, an issue which featured the wedding of Superman and Lois Lane… of “Earth-2.” The wedding was legit, but it took place in an alternate reality. These characters were not simply written off, however. The Earth-2 versions of Superman and Lois recently played a major role in DC’s “Infinite Crisis” storyline.

When the live-action “Superboy” TV series kicked off its second season in 1989, Sherman Howard stepped into the role of Lex Luthor, replacing actor Scott Wells. In the season premiere, “With This Ring, I Thee Kill,” Lex kidnaps Lana Lang and forces her to marry him. The true intent of the wedding is to draw Superboy out, so Lex can attack him with a powerful new weapon that is supposedly strong enough to kill the Boy of Steel. Instead, the weapon temporarily paralyzes Superboy, leaving him confined to a wheelchair… a haunting image in retrospect, given the paralysis of famed Superman actor Christopher Reeve just a few years later.

In the third season of “Superboy,” a much more bizarre pairing takes place.  In the two part “The Bride of Bizarro,” Luthor agrees to make a Bizarro Lana as a bride for Bizarro.  In exchange, Bizarro agrees to help Lex kill Superboy by stealing a stash of kryptonite.  Things, of course, don’t go as planned, but Bizarro still gets to fly off with his pale-faced bride in the end.

In late 1990, DC Comics decided it was time to finally have Lois and Clark take the next step in their relationship. This time, it was no dream sequence or alternate reality. In Superman #50, Clark asks Lois to marry him, and she says yes. Shortly thereafter, he finally lets her in on his biggest secret. In Action Comics #662, he tells her that he is Superman.

Though they were now engaged in the comics, the TV version of Superman didn’t have it quite so easy. As the first season of “Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman” drew to a close, Lois nearly married Superman’s greatest enemy! The series cast Lex Luthor as a romantic rival to the Man of Steel, competing for Lois’s affections. In the episode “Barbarians At The Planet,” Lex pops the question, and Lois accepts. In the season finale “House of Luthor,” Lois actually walks down the aisle, but has second thoughts as she realizes her true feelings for Clark. She decides she can’t marry Lex, and moments later he is exposed as a criminal and commits suicide by jumping from his penthouse office. The episode features Lois, in her wedding dress, trying out potential married names (“Lois Lane Luthor… Lois Luthor Lane… Lois Lane Kent?”). This scene predates a very similar one in the movie “The Wedding Singer” by several years!

At the end of the second season, Clark finally gets up the guts to pop the question to Lois himself. He asks her to marry him in the season finale. In the third season premiere, she answers him by revealing that she knows he’s Superman. They finally become engaged several episodes later, in the episode “Ultra Woman,” when Lois turns the tables and pops the question to Clark.

Though the super-couple was finally engaged, Lois was not the only woman for whom wedding bells tolled with Clark. It is worth noting that in the alternate-reality tale “Tempus, Anyone?” in season three, Clark is engaged to Lana Lang and they are planning their upcoming wedding!

Around this same time in the comics, Lana Lang was getting married as well… to Pete Ross, Clark’s boyhood pal from Smallville.  Their wedding takes place in Action Comics #700.  Years later, Pete and Lana would have a son together and name him Clark Peter Ross.

In the “Lois & Clark” episode “I Now Pronounce You…”, Clark Kent finally marries Lois Lane!  Or, not.  In fact, he actually marries a frog-eating clone of Lois, the real Ms. Lane having been kidnapped by a jealous Lex Luthor, resurrected from the dead and on the loose.  Fans were livid over being tricked, though they should have been suspicious when the previews for the episode compared the wedding to that of Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley.

In the following season, the appropriately titled episode “Swear To God, This Time We’re Not Kidding” finally saw Lois and Clark get married for real… no back-from-the-dead boyfriends or clones this time out.  They do, however, have to contend with Delta Burke guest starring as a villain called The Wedding Destroyer, and some weird encounters with David Doyle as a guardian angel named Mike.

Simultaneously with the TV wedding, Lois and Clark got married in the comics as well.  “Superman: The Wedding Album” hit stands the same week in October 1996 that the wedding episode of the show aired.  The issue was jointly written by all the writers of the Superman comics at that time, and the art was provided by 30 different artists who had worked on the character at various times over the years.  Jimmy Olsen is the best man, and Lucy Lane is the maid of honor.  Clark, who had sported long hair since returning from the dead in the “Reign of the Supermen” storyline, finally gets a haircut in time for the ceremony.

In 2001, Lois’s little sister got married too. Lucy Lane had been dating Daily Planet reporter Ron Troupe for several years, and became pregnant with his child. They got married in the ninth month of her pregnancy, and their son was born shortly thereafter. They named the baby Samuel, after Lois and Lucy’s father.

When “Smallville” recounted the tales of Clark Kent’s youth beginning in 2001, his friend Lex Luthor proved to the quite the ladies man. Lex had several weddings over the course of the series. His first was an impulsive union in the second season episode “Heat,” in which Lex marries high school biology teacher Desiree Atkins. The marriage is later annulled when it is revealed that Desiree is a meteor freak who uses pheromones to make men fall in love with her, and she was just after Lex’s money.

Later that same season, Lex took a little more time and care in planning his second wedding, this one to Dr. Helen Bryce. This time, we actually get to see more of the preparation for the wedding, like Lex and Helen’s rehearsal dinner. Lex picks Clark as his best man, but Clark misses the ceremony because he’s busy accidentally blowing up the Kent storm cellar by destroying his space ship with a kryptonite key. Helen promptly tries to kill her new husband in a staged plane crash right after the wedding. Needless to say, this marriage didn’t last long either.

In the episode “Scare,” an experimental fear toxin is accidentally released at LuthorCorp. Though it does not appear in the actual episode, a deleted scene on the DVD box set presents a startling hallucination of Lex on his wedding day. Presumably he is marrying Lana, but when he pulls back the veil, it’s his mother standing there. We then see that she is covered in blood, and she blames Lex for Julian’s death and accuses him of being as evil as Lionel. Talk about family issues.

But, Lex does not have a monopoly on ill-fated weddings. In the season four episode “Unsafe,” Clark, under the influence of red kryptonite, marries teleporter Alicia Baker. They are hastily hitched in Vegas, in a chapel with neon lighting and an old lady playing the piano. Clark eventually comes to his senses once the Red K is gone, and by the episode’s end it is revealed that the marriage wasn’t legal anyway. Alicia is killed off in the following episode.

In the sixth season episode “Promise,” Lana Lang marries Lex Luthor.  Lana’s Aunt Nell returns for the occasion, having been absent from the show since season two.  When Lana stumbles upon Clark’s secret, she realizes why he’s been so distant from her and decides she doesn’t want to marry Lex after all.  However, she is forced to go through with it when Lionel threatens to kill Clark if she doesn’t.  To complicate things further, Lana is pregnant with Lex’s child.  Or, at least, she thinks she is.  A later plot twist reveals that Lex tricked her, and she was never pregnant after all.  By the season’s end, Lana is so desperate to get out of the marriage that she fakes her death and implicates Lex in the supposed murder.

With the eighth season episode “Bride,” another “Smallville” couple prepares to walk down the aisle.  Chloe Sullivan, Clark’s longtime friend and stalwart ally, is set to marry Jimmy Olsen, bow tie wearing cub photographer.  Their relationship dates back to the beginning of season six (though the aforementioned episode “Unsafe” suggests that they’d met and had a romantic encounter before that).  They have had a few bumps in the road, ranging from Jimmy’s insecurities about Chloe’s friendship with Clark, to a deranged jewelry shop owner who hooked them up to a lethal lie detector to test the sincerity of their love.  Also complicating things is Davis Bloome, the Metropolis paramedic who has become close with Chloe.  Just how his feelings for her may affect the wedding remains to be seen.

Superman has been involved in many weddings over the years. True, some turned out to be dreams, or clones, or sometimes the wedding was just a ruse to try and get someone’s money. But, despite all this, there is a common theme here. The search for love. Whether it’s Superman finally deciding to share his secret with Lois and build a life together, childhood pals like Pete Ross and Lana Lang building romance out of friendship, or even the villainous Lex Luthor opening up his heart and seeking acceptance, we all look for that lifelong bond with that special someone. Even someone like Superman, who can bend steel in his bare hands and outrun locomotives, wants someone he can joke with at the end of a long day, hug him after a bad dream, or just share a quiet moment when it all gets to be too much. In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer, in secret identity or cape and tights, we’re all looking for that same happiness.

Note: The views of Russ Dimino don’t necessarily represent the thoughts and feelings of everyone at KryptonSite.