In honour of “blog” being Merriam-Webster’s “Word of the Year” for
2004, here’s what I believe is the first occurrence of the word in a
comic book…in 1959.
In 1959, the Lois Lane comic featured Clark Kent and Lois Lane in a story in which our two favourite Daily Planet
reporters end up in one of those “valleys that time forgot” that
eventually appear in every suprerhero comic. It’s typical “goofy age”
Superman fare: Lois and Clark end up in some crazy situation in which
Lois acts all stuck-up and Supes uses his powers surreptitiously.
What
makes this comic noteworthy is the use of the word “blog”.
Unfortunately, it’s not “blog” as in “weblog”, but “Blog” as the name
of a cave-dwelling nebbish.
Just call her “Mrs. Blog”! The splash page of the comic.
Note Lois’ and Clark’s attire in the comic panel above. Although the
pith helmet and khaki clothes are suitable for jungle trekking, they weren’t
actually planning on going to the jungle; their plane just crashed
there. They were doing some work in Mexico City, where they were
wearing those clothes. I’m pretty sure that Mexico City was not
a jungle, not even in 1959. They must’ve been walking around in those
outfits while the locals laughed at the ridiculously-dressed gringos.
A weak-muscled jellyfish
with awesome pecs, a six-pack and biceps and quadriceps the size of
tree trunks. It must be the glasses that are throwing her off.
Remember, this was before geek chic.
The valley in which the plane crashes is full of pretty noble savages.
They check to see if Lois is married before hooking her up with
the last single member of the tribe.
Introducing…Blog! If you put a baseball cap on him, he’d look just like “Cooter” from the old Dukes of Hazzard TV series.
A number of comic book plotlines from this era are what I like to call
“superhero knows best”: an arrogant “normal” bites off a little more
than he or she can chew, and the superhero smugly teaches the normal a
lesson with the assistance of super-powers.
Someone should write a book titled Women Who Send Suitors on Suicide Missions and the Men Who Love Them.
Here’s where the fun begins. Even though the cavemen say that Lois is
their prisoner and that they can go all Abu Ghraib on her, poor Blog
still has to prove himself worthy by performing three tasks
(essentially a 75% off version of the Labours of Heracles). Wendy made
me do the same thing; the three tasks she assigned to me were:
- Belch the alphabet and these two smilies:
- Go to the grocery store while extremely hung over and rearrange the Campbell’s soup cans in alphabetical order
- Give her a backrub
Lois, who’s developed a severe case of self-centredness after
having Superman as her personal bodyguard, decides to give Blog a
series of impossible tasks in the hope that he’ll chicken out. What she
fails to account for is the male ego, especially when in the pursuit of
a hot chick. It’s the reason why a lot of young men’s last words are
“Hey everybody, watch this!“
Nope, nothing Freudian about that meat on a stick. Nope, it’s just a perfectly innocent penis. I mean drawing.
Luckily for Blog, Superman is there. Supes uses his powers to make it
seem as though Blog performed the impossible tasks assigned to him by
Lois. After Blog completes the third task, Supes uses his super powers
to help Lois escape from the valley of the cavemen. He could’ve done
that from the very moment the plane crashed, but then there’d be
no story, would there?
Chicks dig blogs!
Download the comic [1.9 MB .zip file]. If you
have one of those programs that can read .cbz files (like CDisplay for Windows or FFView for Mac OS X), change the filename extension of the file from .zip to .cbz.
