I should probably leave this thread alone by now, but I can't resist making one more comment (and along the same tired path as before, too).
Terry, you talked about the "Imaginary tales" in the comics from the sixties. I remember them well. I remember the one where Clark married Lois, and she died, leaving him alone with a super-son. (Eh... a death-of-Lois story.... surely we have never heard of something like that before?) I most certainly remember Jimmy the Turtle Boy. I don't remember a specific story where Superman married Lori Lemaris the mermaid, but I certainly remember that Lori was portrayed as a potential love interest for Superman in many comic book stories. (This is why I can't read Nan's Home series, where Clark is married to a woman named Lori who is apparently a reincarnation of Lois. To me, however, the name Lori is inseparably connected with Lori Lemaris the mermaid and Clark's potential unfaithfulness to Lois with Lori, and seeing him married to a woman named Lori after the "real" Lois is dead is more than I can take.) And I vividly remember the Superman Blue/Superman Red story, where Superman was split in two. You could say he was suddenly "twinned". One super "twin" wore red and the other "twin" wore blue, hence the names Superman Blue/Superman Red. What really happened was that Superman could suddenly live
two lives and therefore also marry two women. And he did, too: One of him married Lana and the other one married Lois.
But, Terry, there was never an Imaginary story where Lois and Clark got married and
Clark died, leaving Lois alone with a super-son. And there was never an Imaginary story where Lois married an exotic lover like Aquaman, King of the sunken city of Atlantis, or a story where Lois was twinned so that she could get to marry two guys herself - never a story where one of her married Superman/Clark Kent and the other one married Batman/Bruce Wayne. Because getting two spouses was something that Superman could do, but it was not the proper thing for Lois Lane.
I recently recounted a true story of how an Afghani man told my friend that he had two wives because he had so much love in his heart that it was enough for two women. Apparently Clark, too, is similarly full of love, because this is what he tells Lois in one of the nfics that are eligible for this year's nKerth awards (Clark has just told Lois that he has had a sexual relationship with another woman):
Because in all that time, I never stopped loving you. Even after that day in the park. I just couldn't stop, no matter how much I wanted to.”
“You say that,” she said, “and I really want to believe you. I can't tell you how much I want to believe you. But I just don't understand how you could love another woman and still say you loved me at the same time.”
“Because love is not a limited commodity.”
Hmmmm. I can just imagine Lois telling Clark that she fell in love with Dan Scardino and loved him passionately and had sex with him even though she had already fallen in love with Clark at that time. But why shouldn't she have sex with Dan Scardino in spite of her love for Clark, since love is not a limited commodity?
The thing is - I
want love to be a limited commodity for both Lois and Clark, and that is what I'm all about as a Lois and Clark shipper. But just like there were in the comic books from the sixties, there are stories here where Clark, like that Afghani man, has so much love in his heart that he needs to give it to more than one woman. And therefore, like LabRat suggested, I will just have to avoid those stories and read the other ones, where Clark loves only Lois, just like I always wanted him to.
Ann
