Everybody talks about how Silver Age Superman is a dick, but a less remarked-upon quirk of the era’s writing is that Silver Age Lois Lane is obsessed with proving that Clark Kent is Superman specifically because she’s convinced if she does, he’ll be obligated to marry her.
Initially it’s implied to be a blackmail thing, but later Silver Age writers seem to have forgotten that and taken “Clark Kent must marry Lois Lane if she discovers his secret identity” as an axiomatic rule, to the point that Kent would often voice worries that he’d be forced to marry other characters who were close to putting the pieces together – regardless of whether they’d expressed any interest in the first place!
Now, do you know which character apart from Lois Lane has the best track record for figuring out that Clark Kent is Superman across all the various reboots, elseworlds, and miscellaneous adaptations?
That’s right: Batman.
So, logically
This particular chain of telephone game characterization fascinates me, because it’s such a clear a to b while still being so bizarre. Which is relatively par for the narrative restrictions put in place by the comics code, but I still wonder if there’s a way to sneak the idea into a modern telling. With the way the last couple decades worth of superhero movies have been ashamed of being superhero movies, probably not.
It really depends on which part of the idea you’re trying to resurrect. The initial “Lois Lane is a crazy stalker who’s trying to prove that Clark Kent is Superman because she plans to use the proof to blackmail him into marrying her” premise would probably fit right into the modern idiom, though it would obviously read very differently than it did in its original, more cartoony Silver Age context. The whole “Clark Kent is for unspecified reasons obligated to marry anyone who uncovers his secret identity” thing that it eventually evolved into would be trickier.
