Reign of the Supermen #339: Superman Robot X-3

Source: Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane #30 (1962)
Type: RobotWe end our week-long theme of mechanical Supermen with the tale of X-3, another Silver Age tale that reveals those Superman Robots to be more trouble than they're worth.

Lois Lane is doing a story on Professor Burke's super-telescope, which can provide image and sound of stuff happening on other planets in real time. The science isn't important (and I mean that in a variety of ways). What's important is that one of the planets Lois Lane sees is one where Superman gets home to his mermaid wife, mermaid son and mermaid pet after a hard day's work. Scenes of this alien domestic suburbia of course destroys her very soul.
Lois feels like the other woman who's just found out about her beau's fishwife. Naturally, she gives Superman a little cold shoulder (it doesn't help that he calls his last space mission "easy as pie") and runs back to the super-observatory to creep the happy family. Like any family, they've got their problems:
Strange? Yes, but it's just so the next time Lois sees Superman he can claim his latest mission was like "taking candy from a baby". She slaps him and they have a big argument and Superman doesn't know what the hell she's talking about. After he talks to Professor Burke, he kidnaps Lois and brings her to Planet Suburbia where everything is revealed.
AND LOIS BELIEVES NONE OF IT! Well, she HAS been burned more than a few times by Superman's super-dickery. So Superman explains and tries to make it convincing... Shortly after he created his army of Superman Robots and trained them, he was exposed to Red Kryptonite and turned into a ghost. Just then, an astronaut's capsule got stuck in permanent orbit, so the robots sprang into action. X-3 put the capsule on track, but got hit by a meteor and was destroyed.
Boy, that's unlucky. X-3 has to tell the rest of the story... X-3 floated in space until he fell on a small planet (the science isn't important). Meanwhile, on the former water-world of Varda, the last surviving mermaid, Mooki, fled her dying planet in search of water (THE SCIENCE ISN'T IMPORTANT!).
She finds X-3 and rebuilds him, but she's too dried up and dies, leaving him with a final telepathic message (THE SCIENCE! YOU KNOW THE REST!) that though she did her best, he wasn't rebuilt to fly off planet. After he buries her, X-3 builds his own robot Mooki and makes her his wife. He also builds a son, Nipper, and they live in a Robot Paradise that is the envy of Lois Lane. Superman, gentle soul and bestest future husband of all, lets X-3 have his Eden, and I guess, they're still there now.

Comments

Oh, for a Showcase Presents Superman's Robots volume.
Siskoid said…
There'd be enough material if you included the post-Crisis stuff.
Oh, yes. Hey, what about Superman Family, that Dollar Comic? Any robots in that run, or was that the "modern" era? Any Golden Age robots or Mr. & Mrs. Superman robots?
Siskoid said…
The Golden Age robots are usually "dummies" animated with superspeed and ventriloquism, but they'd be part of the continuum (see my post on Superman Robots (Pre-Crisis) last weekend for more.

My research found more than two dozen pre-Crisis Superman Robot appearances, but since stories were shorter back then, that's still a slim Showcase package.