Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane

'I Am Curious (Black)!' is one of the Bronze Age DC Comics that shows a growing movement toward social relevance. No doubt inspired as much by Black Like Me as by the films I Am Curious (Blue) and I Am Curious (Yellow), from which it gets its title, the story has Lois Lane doing a story on Metropolis' Little Africa borough. When she is unable to get any of the black residence to speak with her, she has Superman use Dahr-Nel's Plastimold Machine in the Fortress of Solitude to transform her into a black woman. When she returns to Metropolis, she almost immediately begins to learn how The Other Half Lives.

Like a lot of the late 60s / early70s social-issue comics, it can get a bit preachy at times, but really it's not as bad as I was expecting. It does have a bit of a LOL moment when Lois tries to browbeat Superman into marrying her (has to happen in nearly every issue) by playing the Race Card.

Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane often drew from DC's stable of romance comics artists - in this case Werner Roth - who weren't so much adept at drawing superhero musculature as creating beautiful women with great emphasis on facial expressions, and that holds true for this issue too. But since we aren't dealing with super battles here, the art is just wonderful for this kind of story.

One of the things that makes this issue so great, is the final page which contains no dialog whatsoever, but delivers the great sense of hope in the brotherhood of mankind that lies at the heart of the Superman series'.