Polite Dissent

The last day of the work week at Polite Dissent means only one thing: Lois Lane Friday!

Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane #126 “The Brain Busters” (first story in the issue)
Cary Bates, writer
John Rosenberger, penciler

Lois Lane and Clark Kent are headed across town to the WMET television studio to interview the suddenly famous clown, Captain Dingle. On the way there, they run across a street full of people acting very strangely. Some are singing and dancing, others are acting like children. The people aren’t the only ones affected; even the pets are acting weird. Clark conveniently disappears and Superman appears. He freezes the rain into sleet and the cold snaps everyone out of their bizarre behavior.

Lois continues on to the studio where she meets the station manager and Captain Dingle himself. They invite her to watch the tape of a recent Dingle episode and she agrees. At first she loathes the show, but soon she begins to like it. After watching the episode, she finds herself obsessed with the show and can’t wait to see it on Saturday morning.

Riding the subway home she is surprised to hear everyone talking about Captain Dingle and how they’re not going to miss the show this weekend. She is surprised by how popular a children’s television show is. Acting on a hunch, she takes out her camera with a special high speed film. Snapping a picture of the show she discovers…subliminal messages! She deduces that the people she and Clark spotted the previous day were the test subjects for the subliminal messages and that the station manager must be up to something.

Lois takes a cold shower (in her clothes, for some reason) to break the subliminal mind control and alerts Superman. With his help, she stops the station manager and his goons from robbing a bank while everyone else is watching Captain Dingle.

Sadly, the scene from the cover image never actually appears in the story; Captain Dingle is an innocent dupe of the evil station manager.

This idea of using subliminal messages to control someone’s mind is nonsense. Subliminal messages simply do not work. The original study that purported to show a dramatic increase in the purchase of soda and popcorn at a movie theater using subliminal messages has been shown to be a hoax. No legitimate study has demonstrated any evidence that subliminal messages can influence behavior; in fact every study shows just the opposite – that subliminals have no effect upon behavior (and that includes those expensive subliminal self-help tapes).

However, let’s suppose for just a minute that subliminal messages did work. That would explain the bizarre actions of the people, but what about the pets? Since when can dogs read?

(Honestly, if there is anything vaguely subliminal in the story, it’s the clown’s name.)