You know, Sue, I sometimes feel I shouldn't be hanging around these boards at all, seeig as how I'm not really a "Lois and Clark" fan, but a much more general "Superman and Lois" fan. (But honestly, if I don't hang around here, where else could I go?)

Anyway. I grew up with a Superman who thought of himself as Superman. (No: I honestly don't think he thought of himself as Kal-El.) Clark Kent was just a silly disguise that he used because... because... well, I once read a story that explained to me that Superman needed a break from his Superman duties sometimes, he needed some down time pure and simple, and his Clark Kent identity provided him with that. But he most certainly didn't think of himself as Clark Kent, because Clark Kent was not a real person.

But Superman was in love with Lois Lane. Or at least, when I was barely fourteen years old I became convinced that he was in love with her. Later I was not so sure. Superman had a very cool, extremely PG - correction, an extremely G-rated - relationship with Lois. Put it like this: Whatever he did with her, he didn't mind if anyone saw him doing it. So when he dated her - as Superman, of course - he happily did it in public, splendidly dressed in his red and blue suit. Lois was waiting for him on a busy street of Metropolis, and he came swooping down from the sky, literally sweeping her off her feet as he carried her off to their date. So what did they do on their date? Why, he took her to a really lovely restaurant, of course, where they had a candle light dinner as the other restaurant guests looked on. Did he kiss her? Come on. This is Superman. What would the children say if they saw their hero kiss Lois? I remember another story, a Valentine story, where Superman was sitting next to Lois on her couch, looking rather relaxed. He had his arm around her, but he wasn't kissing her, oh no, and then he explained to her that they could never have a real relationship unless she became invulnerable so that his enemies couldn't hurt her. Well, sigh. And after he had said that he took off, promising Lois to search for a way to make her invulnerable. Yeah. Fat chance of that.

Ah, but... there really were times when Lois seemed to move him. Where he seemed to want her. Of course, the basic premise was, and remained, the idea that Lois couldn't be with Superman unless she was super. And since she wasn't, she couldn't be with him. This idea was taken to its logical conclusion in the movie Superman II, where Superman became non-super for Lois's sake, but she couldn't become super for him. When he had to become super again he had to leave her, and so, inexorably, they went their separate ways. And I gave up on Superman.

Later, when Superman was re-invented as a guy who was really Clark Kent, who just used his Superman identiy as a disguise to make it possible for him to have a life, it suddenly became possible for him to court Lois Lane for real. You bet I was ecstatic, but a tiny part of me somewhere was disappointed. What about Superman? You know, the guy who really was Superman? Would he never be able to be with Lois?

Sue, your story does just this for me - it makes it possible for Superman, my childhood hero, to have a relationship with Lois. I really think that your Superman is the man I thought I saw and fell in love with when I was barely fourteen years old. The Superman who really, seriously loves and wants Lois. The Superman who is vulnerable because of his love for Lois. The Superman who spends so much time longing, dreaming, wanting, orbiting... (which is why he seems to be hanging around outside Lois's window all the time....)

Did I tell you before that I didn't like your story, Sue? Did I? If I did, forget whatever I said. You have given me my childhood hero in this story. Granted, he is a little more... well... a little more, uh, inappropriately dressed than I could ever imagine him being when I was fourteen. At least he was that in part one of this "Proof" series. Well, I'm so far from being fourteen these days, and I'm so far from wanting him to be modestly dressed in his super-suit all the time.

I guess I can only say that Queen Sue strikes again. If only Siegel and Shuster could see their hero now. If only the guardians of the innocence of children of the fifties and sixties could see him. A few days ago I watched the movie Pleasantville, where the parents of the teenagers not only do not recognize the word "sex", but also they are completely unfamiliar with the activity itself. (You have to wonder how they managed to become parents in the first place.) Ah, well. In Pleasantville, people go from being black and white to glowing in glorious technicolor when they are introduced to various forbidden fruits. When I was a kid, Superman really was in black and white, at least in the comic books here in Sweden. Queeen Sue is seducing him, making him blush like a rose. We know that the suit partly comes off, that has been proved without a doubt by what we have already seen of your story. Now I, at least, am waiting for my hero to "know" Lois, in the Biblical sense of the word.

Love your story, Sue.

Ann