Superman in the Pre-Crisis Era (reviews by Polar Bear)

[Ish Kabbible]

The only thing I hold against this issue is that it inspired all of those crappy Electric Superman Red and Blue comics.

[Polar Bear]

"The Showdown Between Luthor and Superman" by Hamilton, Swan & Klein (17 pages)

from Superman #164 (GCDB link)



found in Superman in the Sixties

Synopsis: Luthor, having broken out of prison again, challenges Superman to a 1:1 fight under a red sun, where Superman will be powerless. Superman agrees, and they fly off in a rocket ship. After they arrive, they box, and Superman gets his head handed to him. He thinks, "I've got a mental block! I'm so used to being invulnerable, I can't help feeling that if I even punched him once, the blow would kill him!" Still, two panels later, his "instinct for self-preservation makes him forget his mental block" (the only Hamilton-esque eyeroll of the entire story) and he takes out Luthor with one uppercut.

Upon his recovery, Luthor tries to take out Superman with quick-growing cacti, then with a boulder, but Superman is able to evade both problems. Wandering about, Superman finds a deserted city and a water source. Luthor, in contrast, finds farmers, about to lose their crops to "monstrous birds." He quickly adjusts a machine to chase the birds off, and finds himself the object of admiration. It turns out this is a post-apocolyptic world, and the people's forbears were a scientific people, but the current generation doesn't understand the devices of the past ages. Luthor (being Luthor) quickly figures out many of the machines, including one that teaches him the local language, and the people gather in the streets to cheer him on! "It's strange," thinks Luthor. "I never had a crowd cheer me before, and I rather like it!"

He tries to find another water source for the farmers, but most of the water is simply gone. "I can't let these people down when they think I'm a hero," Luthor meditates. Superman soon wanders in and is captured, but when the people threaten to kill him, Luthor steps in and saves his life, saying the two must engage in single combat--indeed, that the combat must be equal, so Superman must have access to the same technology as Superman. The next morning, a stadium is filled with a roaring crowd--roaring for Luthor to crush Superman! The kryptonian manages to hold his own against Luthor's weapons, so Luthor must use his hands, and, kneeling astride the Man of Steel, he throttles Superman by the throat.

Plot Spoiler: But then, Luthor remembers he cannot find water for them, and he allows Superman to defeat him. As their space ship leaves to return to earth and they pass a yellow sun, Luthor suggests, "I can't get them water, but with your powers, you could! There's an icy planet just ahead! You could throw vast masses of ice back to that desert world!" Superman agrees, but when he confronts Luthor with the idea that he had taken a fall on purpose, Luthor denies it--though his thought balloon betrays him to us, the readers. When the water arrives, the people on the desert world thank "the great Luthor." The story closes with Superman visiting Luthor in prison to show him a "photo through a super-telescope in [his] fortress": a statue in Luthor's honor! Luthor is truly touched.

Artwork: Mostly typical three-tier work, with the exception of one more experimental layout Swan just couldn't make work without the dreaded red arrows. The three-tier format isn't to his detriment, necessarily--even Toth tended to stick to this layout, as did Kirby when he was in a hurry. It's just that Swan apparently doesn't know how to change it up effectively.

Also, I count about twenty panels with completely empty backgrounds, and that's just too many, and the fisticuffs on page five lack the explosive power they would have under a master of movement like Romita, Kane, or J. Buscema. As always, though, Swan nails many excellent, complex facial expressions.

Observations: Well, it seems to me that Luthor really should have won. If Superman can beat Luthor even without powers, than why is Luthor so darned dangerous in the first place? Okay, with that out of the way...

This is a more complex Luthor, a Luthor with a sense of honor and self-sacrifice. This Luthor is more well-rounded and believable, not a simple hatred machine. (In fact, he's rather like Doctor Doom, now that he has his own land where he's nigh-worshipped.) Under the right conditions, this is even a man who could turn around and stop being evil. Somehow, though, I doubt those conditions will appear. Once again, we have Luthor's life as a tragedy, his best years swallowed up into a self-imposed exile into hatred, his legacy disintegrated into defeated villainy. Sad.

I thought Superman's visiting Luthor in prison to show him the statue was a nice detail.

Overall: Despite my complaints with the art, this issue is still a solid A, and the best Hamilton story I've read so far. I hope this is an omen of things to come instead of a lone flash of brilliance. I'm looking forward to seeing more adventures on this planet.

[foxley]

So is this the origin of planet Lexor that Lex would rule back in the late Bronze Age when I started reading comics?

[Ish Kabbible]

So is this the origin of planet Lexor that Lex would rule back in the late Bronze Age when I started reading comics?

That is correct

[JKCarrier]

Under the right conditions, this is even a man who could turn around and stop being evil.

Eliot S! Maggin teased this possibility in several of his Luthor stories in the '70s and '80s.

[Polar Bear]

"Beauty and the Super-Beast" by Robert Bernstein, Swan & Klein (14 pages)
and "The Sweetheart Superman Forgot" by Siegel & Plastino (12 pages)

from Superman #165 (GCDB link)



found in Superman (super-spectacular 100-pager) #272 and Superman in the Sixties

Synopsis: In "Beauty," Lois takes a trip on a rocket ship, while Lana leads an excavation to find Circe's tomb. Superman must knock aside an incoming meteor that threatens Lois, but he can't destroy it until the second try. Soon afterwards, Lana finds Circe's tomb and is stunned when Circe herself awakens, still beautiful after all these years. She says she wants Superman to marry her, and she'll order him around like a fool until he agrees. She reshapes his head into a lion's and a mouse's, then orders him to delve down under the earth to get some gravel, then to juggle upside down on a street corner. While doing her nonsense, Superman manages to dig an excavation for the new city hall and stop a burglary. She finally gives up and returns to the past. But that's not the end of the story. Nothing is as it seems...

In "Sweetheart," Superman runs into red-K, the effect this time being that he dresses as Clark Kent, discards his ID, gets amnesia, and goes powerless. For the remainder of the story, he becomes a ranch hand, Jim White. He makes an enemy of Bart, a hand who likes the rancher's pretty, young, and available daughter, Sally. "Jim," distinguishing himself as kind and resourceful, soon proposes to Sally, and she accepts. Bart then arranges an "accident" that leaves "Jim" in a wheelchair, but Sally still loves him. Bart then tries to scare "Jim" with a rolling boulder, but when it hits the chair straight on, "Jim" goes over a cliff and into the water, where he loses consciousness. Sally, assuming he committed suicide, is distraught.

Plot Spoiler: In "Beauty," we were totally "hoaxed." "Circe" was actually Saturn Woman (who wore a completely-convincing but absolutely unnecessary plastic mask), Proty II accompanying her. It turns out that the so-called meteor was actually a "counter-energy ray" created by the Superman Revenge Squad. It was supposed to remove Superman's powers, but instead, it made him only able to use his powers while upside-down. Superman used his "super-sonic ventriloquism" to order Krypto to go to the future and fetch Saturn Woman, who returned to the present, dressed as Circe, and buried herself where Lana was digging. The Superman Revenge Squad thus was fooled into thinking their device hadn't worked at all, meaning it will be discarded and never threaten Superman again.

In "Sweetheart," Aquaman had been patrolling the sea at Just The Right Moment (TM), and he brought "Jim" to Lori, who helped give him artificial respiration. Upon awakening, Superman regains his memory and his powers, but has no memory of his time as "Jim." He wonders what he did during his time away. The final caption tells us to "watch future issues for the most ironic Superman tale ever published," evidence of a sequel in the planning.

Artwork: Rather plain work from Swan, though better-than-average inking by Klein. Plastino's work follows the typical six-panel grid and features a lot of smirks and a limited range of angles for faces.

Observations: Here's the cattiest I've ever seen the Lois/Lana romantic contest-of-wills. This story also firmly sets Lana as being more than an archaeologist's daughter; she's a TV reporter and an expert in archaeology herself. It also puts forward the idea of "America's first female astronaut," an idea that would not become fact until Sally Ride flew in the space shuttle in 1983.

Superman states about Circe, "She can render herself immune to my super-powers ... while I am vulnerable to her magic!" This would seem to be the first clear-cut statement I've seen about this vulnerability, but since it's a hoax, his statement is essentially meaningless.

"The Sweetheart Superman Forgot" should really be called "Clark Kent's Got Game." Seriously, how many people have said or would say "Yes" to a marriage proposal by Clark/Superman so far? Lori, Lois, Lana, Lyra, the Supergirl-lookalike from another world, that mountain queen, Sally (note the sly double-l in the middle of her name) ... it must be those Kryptonian super-pheromones, a power he doesn't talk about very much...

The story is very self-conscious, breaking the fourth wall repeatedly to point out to the reader how ironic certain circumstances or events are. I found that kind of annoying. Bart was perhaps unrealistic in just how simply mean he was, but I've always had a hard time understanding why people are mean, so I may be overly-critical here.

This issue shows the strength of the Superman concept--it can be used for whimsy and tragedy, action and romance. On the face of it, one would think Superman is just the personification of the super-hero genre, but in fact, he encompasses the entire spectrum of genres--heck, with his time-travel powers, we've even got historical fiction in there. This fact, I think, is they key to why Superman not only appeared in World's Finest and JLA, but also ruled a family of half-a-dozen titles back in the sixties (Superman, Action, Jimmy Olsen, Lois Lane, Superboy, and Adventure/Legion).

Sally did indeed appear once again, but in a story I don't own, the back-up in #169. Here's a link to that story's synopsis from Mike's.

Overall: B- for the Super-Beast story; I dislike the fake-magic-hoax meme that went through Silver Age Superman titles. A- for the "Sweetheart" story, which I sure liked a lot, despite my quibbles.

[Polar Bear]

"The Fantastic Story of Superman's Sons" by Hamilton, Swan & Klein (26 pages)

from Superman #166 (GCDB link)



found in DC's Greatest Imaginary Stories

Synopsis: In this imaginary story (not in continuity), Superman's wife gives birth to fraternal twins, Kal-El II and Jor-El II. As it turns out, Jor-El II has super-powers, whereas Kal-El II has only the powers of a human. As the pair grow, Jor-El II starts teasing Kal-El II about the latter's lack of powers, but after a father-to-son talk, he stops his obnoxiousness and tries to include Kal in more activities. But it's too late; Kal-El II starts "becoming brooding, shy, and anti-social."

When his son is about ten or twelve years old, Superman tries to ameliorate the situation by bringing Kal-El II to a planet with a purple sun (??), where he'll have super-powers. And then Superman leaves him there, alone. And proceeds to celebrate Christmas without him.

Yeah.

Anyway, Kal-El II gets homesick and sends a signal into space, so Superman brings the boy back home to be powerless again. He then tries to give his son super-powers through scientific means, but it doesn't work out. After some criminals try to kidnap him and he has to be saved by a robot, he runs away from home--however, he cannot escape his father's supervision. (Get it? Super vision? Hat tip to my lovely wife for suggesting that line.)

Superman then tries a new approach. Instead of powering Kal-El II, why not de-power Jor-El II? So he goes with them to Kandor, where they'll be powerless. He leaves the pair (who now look to be about 15 to 17) with a professor to enter Kandor University, and he returns to earth. Unfortunately, Jor-El II, even without his powers, is better at sports and weightlifting than his twin, so Kal-El II goes back to hitting the books. But then, a costumed criminal with super-gadgets steals a device from the science building, and the game is afoot! Kal-El II suggests that the pair find their father's Night Cave and become Nightwing and Flamebird! Jor-El II agrees, and off they go, fighting a giant Kryptonian squid and the Mystery Raider himself, but failing to capture him. Jor-El II, of course, is Nightwing, and he's better at the super-hero schtick than his brother, whom he has to rescue more than once. At the same time, though, he's dismissive of his idea that the Mystery Raider is tied in with a mystery from Krypton's past, shutting his brother down when he tries to research the issue in the library. Finally, though, Kal-El II pushes his brother to leave Kandor, saying, "I know I'm right.... Faster! Faster! We have to warn the world of danger!"

Exiting the bottle, they catch up with Superman, and the super-powered father and son fight lizards, snakes and giant apes created by a "reverse evolutionary ray" brandished by the Mystery Raider, who had left Kandor just before the twins did. As they fly away to try to find him, Kal-El II wants to help, but his father says, "I'm sorry, Kal, but without super-powers, you couldn't help! The search for the raider will be dangerous!"

Kal-El II, left to his own devices, flies a "speed plane" to the Fortress (which his brother hadn't locked) and takes a time bubble to Krypton. He introduces himself to his grandfather, Jor-El, as a student eager to learn science. The two go to a demonstration the following day, and what should they see in use? Scientist Gann Artar, who has invented a reverse evolutionary ray, of course! Jor-El forbids the scientist from pursuing any more experimentation along those lines, so later that week, Krypto's father, bring struck by a ray through the window, is suddenly "transformed by artificial atavism into a terrible monster of Krypton's past!" Jor-El II freezes the beast with an invention of his grandfather's, and then Jor-El comes up with a gas that reverses the process. Krypton sentences Gann Artar to the Phantom Zone, and Jor-El II, armed with his knowledge of how to make the gas, returns to the present. (There was also a subplot where he tried to show Jor-El how to make a time-bubble, but it turned out that he couldn't change the past.)

He discovers, via the Zone-o-phone, that Gann Artur escaped from the Phantom Zone during a recent space-warp. Learning from his mother where Gann was hiding, he arrives to the Wild Mountains, only to find his father and brother falling victim to kryptonite poisoning, the radioactive rocks surrounding the Mystery Raider's fortress. But kryptonite holds no danger for Kal-El II, who simply walks past the rocks to confront Gann...

Plot Spoiler: Gann flies at Kal-El II, but Kal quickly unwraps the lead sheeting that he'd been holding, revealing a Phantom Zone Projector he quickly shoots at his opponent, sending him back to the punishment he had escaped. He then drags his father and brother away from the kryptonite, eliminating his inferiority complex once and for all.

Artwork: We are never shown the face of Superman's wife; it's always in silhouette. About all we know is that he married a caucasian who's shorter than he is.

The Swan/Klein team continues to be good at its forte, facial expressions, and weaker when it comes to depicting fisticuffs, intensity of action, and a sense of danger. I still miss Kaye's inking. (If you miss him too, it turns out he worked on the newspaper strips IDW is reprinting in Superman: The Silver Age Newspaper Dailies, which I'm afraid has somehow made it onto my want list.)

Almost every page (except the splash and the half-splashes) is a standard three-tier, six-panel page. The one different page has two tiers, one narrow one of three panels, and one tall one of two panels, used to portray giant dinosaurs--a good artistic decision.

Observations: Hamilton has learned a lot about how to tell stories in comic books. A number of traits he once had that irritated me are now gone. In fact, we're starting to have a substantially larger proportion of panels without narration; one story I read from the 1950s had only one caption-less panel, but now, about a third-to-half the panels on any given page have no captions! This is quite an advance.

Why Superman doesn't enlist the aid of friends--notably Batman and Green Arrow--to train Kal-El II is outrageous. It really bothers me how he treats Kal-El II. I was trying to get into the story, but the thought wouldn't stop coming to me: "This is not the same man who was Batman's best friend." I know, I should just let Superman be Superman ... but I can't. Superman's relation with Bruce is part of what makes him who he is. (Not to mention that his most dangerous enemy, Luthor, had no super powers!) Having had those experiences, he simply would not be that condescending and dismissive toward Kal-El II.

I liked the way Kal-El II and Jor-El II's relationship developed over the course of the issue. Kal-El II's thought balloons were used to especially good effect. I would love to have seen Jor-El II's thought balloons, too; I think that would have added a lot to the story.

Overall: B. Food for thought when it comes to parenting while not being a jerk.

Mxyl says: I found it very interesting that Superman's wife was never fully shown, though the shape implies that it's Lois.

[Polar Bear]

"The Team of Luthor and Brainiac!" by Cary Bates (plot), Hamilton, Swan, & Klein (27 pages)

from Superman #167 (GCDB link)



found in The Great Superman Comic Book Collection

Synopsis: Luthor escapes from jail, attacks Superman remotely, fails, and realizes he can't beat Superman on his own. He uses his recently-invented Time-Space Thought-Scanner^TM to look for a brilliant mind, and learns the true origin of Brainiac, a computer invented by other computers (up till now, he was thought to be an alien), computers that had taken over their planet. He vows to find Brainiac and team up with him against the Man of Steel.

Luthor quickly finds Brainiac in a cell constructed by Superman, and using his brilliance, frees him. He reveals his knowledge of Brainiac's secret, making Brainiac suddenly want to kill him, but Luthor says he can increase Brainiac's intelligence from tenth-level to twelfth-level if he'll help Luthor defeat Superman. Brainiac agrees. After the surgery, Brainiac is about to attack Luthor, but then the Man of Steal reveals that he's also installed a timer into Brainiac, a timer that will deactivate the robot, despite his brilliance, at certain intervals unless Luthor resets it. Brainiac knows he's stymied, and once again agrees to help Luthor.

The pair go off to steal rare materials needed for a gas that will remove Superman's powers, their travels eventually taking them to the red-sun planet where he's revered as a hero. Luthor proclaims, "I won't rob these people. They need all their resources!" and Brainiac accuses him of being a "softie." He also gets a kiss on the cheek from a local Pretty Young Thing. The next planet they go to has a surprise for Brainiac: it's the world of his origin, but the computer rulers have been overthrown by the local humanoids. Luthor and Brainiac finally land on earth and enter Luthor's underground lair.

Superman arrives soon after for a confrontation--but they seem to have been expecting him, for the power-removing gas is already in the air. Superman has only the strength of a normal human--and soon, not even that, for Brainiac shrinks him down to the size of a doll. Luthor and Brainiac hang Superman in a bird cage and proceed to argue about how to kill him.

Plot Spoiler: Superman rips his Clark Kent clothes (super-compressed in his cape, don'tcha know) into shreds, ties them together, and uses them as a rope to escape from his cage. He wanders around desperately, eventually finding Luthor's missile-launching room. Meanwhile, Luthor looks at Brainiac's invention for killing Superman--but no, it isn't--it's a hypnotic device! Brainiac mesmerizes Luthor into deactivating the timer and forgetting that Brainiac is a robot. After the "surgery," they discover Superman's escape, just as he fires the missile. Brainiac freezes him with a "coma-ray," but it's too late: the distant bottled city of Kandor has seen it on their monitors, and they send the Emergency Squad to the rescue. Capturing Brainiac and Luthor, they bring them to their city and put them on trial. Brainiac is sentenced to the Phantom Zone, but he tells them that Superman will never recover from his coma unless Brainiac frees him. He demands safe passage for himself and his associate away from earth, and all of Kandor votes to revive Superman and free the evil pair. When the Man of Steel awakens, he tells them, "You should not have foregone your just vengeance, merely to save me!" Still, he follows through with their arrangement, allowing them to escape. Brainiac drops Luthor off on "his" planet before flying off "into the outer darkness." Superman vows to catch bring the pair to justice and make Kandor normal again.

Artwork: Swan starts experimenting with his layouts in this issue. On a page with an interplanetary search, he makes each of his three tiers a single panel. A page with Luthor learning by machine shows images on two tiers, four panels, instead of the regular layout. But when he gets too far out of his comfort zone, in the page where he constructs a stack of four panels followed by one long, vertical panel, he resorts to the infamous red directional arrows. It will take years for Swan's layouts to develop fully, but we're starting to see a few snatches of it here and there.

Swan's expertise with facial expressions is on display as always, and his camera work is excellent. On the other hand, take those fight scenes. Please. Take them far away. He just can't depict impact. (Maybe in a decade or so Aparo will show him how Batman's fists make explosions.)



The inking in this issue displays a finer line than I'm used to from Klein. Maybe he switched nib sizes? In any case, I like the inking in this issue better than I have since Kaye's departure a few years ago.

Observations: GCDB claims, "The cover idea and plot that led to this story was submitted by Cary Bates as a teen age fan." So there's that.

Brainiac's origin is retconned in this issue, using the Everything You Thought You Knew Was Wrong method. They also explain how Brainiac-5 can be a "descendant" of Brainiac when he's a robot, and the explanation is quite satisfactory.

Ed Hamilton continues to write well, pleasing me immensely. I especially enjoy the way he's developing the planet that will soon be known as Lexor. He's also doing a great job characterizing Luthor in this issue (as he did on Luthor's last appearance, #164), though I have no idea why Brainiac cares if anyone knows he's a robot.

Overall: A+. Was there really any question? Great job, team.

[Polar Bear]

"Secret of Kryptonite Six" by Dorfman, Swan & Klein (13 pages)

from Action Comics #310 (GCDB link)



Found in Best of DC (digest) #36

Synopsis: Learning that Atlantis is suffering from an outbreak of "the spotted plague," Superman frees Jax-Ur, a criminal scientist, from the Phantom Zone based on his assurances of help. The two time-travel back to Krypton, where Jax-Ur not only devises his cure, but also gives Superman a sleeping potion and alters part of the Jewel Mountains so that they'll go to earth when Krypton explodes (what amazing precision!). Back in the present, sure enough, a hunk of jewel kryptonite now orbits our world.

Before voluntarily re-entering the Phantom Zone, Jax-Ur hypnotizes Jimmy Olsen into exposing Superman to a piece of jewel kryptonite. Jimmy does so, after which Superman flies off--but everywhere he flies, things explode! Superman has apparently become a danger to society, causing detonations wherever he goes. But then Superman, flying over a man mowing his lawn, figures it out...

Plot Spoiler: ...The jewel kryptonite exposure changed nothing about Superman. Instead, the hunk of jewel-K orbiting the earth amplifies the mental strength of the Phantom Zone prisoners, giving them the power to set off explosions. Supes figured it out because the gas in the lawnmower hadn't exploded. So he tosses the artifact into the sun to be destroyed.

Artwork: Nice cover.

Inks a little tighter than before, layouts a little looser (s-l-o-w and conservative experimentation based on the six-panel grid), camera aspect pretty much mastered.

Observations: None, really. This might be Jax-Ur's first appearance, I suppose. It may be the only appearance for jewel kryptonite, too.

I wonder how many times someone from Earth-2 visited Krypton's past?

Overall: B. Mildly amusing.

[Polar Bear]

"Luthor--Super-Hero" by Hamilton, Swan & Klein (12 pgs), and
"Lex Luthor, Daily Planet Editor" by Dorfman, Swan & Klein (13 pgs)



I read the original issue

Synopsis: Superman takes a space ship to the red-sun planet where Luthor is hiding out, intent on taking him back to prison. He ends up stealing some "rainbow crystals" from a museum, and Lex temporarily gives himself super-powers and dresses up as a costumed hero, "The Defender," to pursue Public Enemy #1: Superman. Many chases, captures, & escapes ensue.

In the second story... it's kind of ridiculous. Luthor returns to earth & gets trapped in a time warp, lands in the San Francisco of 1906, then disguises himself as a man who happened to die right in front of him just at the moment of Luthor's arrival, the incoming editor of the Daily Planet. Superman uses a time-and-space detector to see where Luthor is, and it tells him to look in San Francisco in 1906 (*see note below). Superman goes back to said place & time, disguising himself as reporter Clark Kent to try to find Luthor. The criminal (disguised) recognizes Clark and thinks Superman sent the reporter back in time to locate him, so he gives him some fatal assignments, but the reporter (being Superman) keeps on not dying. Luthor then figures out it's really Superman, and he exposes him to red-K to take away his powers. Luthor then escapes, and Superman is stuck there right as the earthquake begins...It should be fun & silly, but it ends up just feeling some combination of boring and mildly insulting.

Plot Spoiler: It turns out that Superman recognizes the crystals from another world, where he learned that "they emit a subtle vibration that deteriorates brain activity." Luthor agrees to let Superman leave with the jewels, but they agree that their "feud is still on!"

In the second story, Superman survives the earthquake, gets his powers back, feeds hungry survivors, and returns to the future, where he finds Luthor trapped in a cell in the abandoned Alcatraz. Turns out his time/space machine malfunctioned. Superman laughs, "Ha, ha! You should have stayed on Lexor!" Luthor admits, "Ulp! I made a super-goof!"

Artwork: 'bout the same, 'bout the same.

Observations: Unusually tight continuity, Superman deliberately following Luthor after his Brainiac-provided escape last issue.

The role-reversal was very clever, complete with Ardora suspecting Lex's secret identity. Luthor's care for his people is again palpable, and he shows a tinge of honor in his discussion with Superman at the end of the first story. Hamilton's portrayal of Luthor is rapidly becoming the "definitive" take in my mind.

I found the second story somewhere between insipid and unreadable.

Overall: "Luthor--Super-Hero" A-
"Lex Luthor, Daily Planet Editor" D-

[foxley]

Um, doesn't that second story mean that Lex Luthor should now know that Superman is Clark Kent? Is it explained anywhere why he forgets, is tricked into thinking he has made a mistake, etc?

[Rob Allen]

Um, doesn't that second story mean that Lex Luthor should now know that Superman is Clark Kent? Is it explained anywhere why he forgets, is tricked into thinking he has made a mistake, etc?

He thought Superman disguised himself as Clark Kent, just that one time. Brilliant fellow, that Luthor.