Lois Lane & Rose And The Thorn - Together!

I'm sure everyone here has read, or at least is aware of, the most ( in ) famous issue of Lois Lane. The one that always appears in 'What the @*!' lists. Y'know, this one? If not, search the net, loads of sites have uploaded it over the years. Go ahead, read it, I'll wait.

Well, didja know there was a sequel? And that it guest starred Lois' back-up strip heroine Rose And The Thorn? Yep, our Lois is no fairweather friend to the black community, and in this issue, teams up again with Dave Stevens, former black militant and the guy who had his life turned around by Ms. Lane, convincing him that not all uptown chicks are bigots, by the simple expedient of giving him a blood transfusion from her own whitebread bod. Way to go, sister.
As I've said before, I read Lois Lane for Rose And The Thorn, but actually, the headliner's stories of this period are kind of fun too. It's easy to mock this kind of thing, but I'm no subscriber to the 'guilty pleasures' theory. If you like something, you like it regardless of what anyone else thinks about it, and the worst you can say about I Am Curious ( Black ) and The Foe Of 100 Faces is that they're a bit clumsy and cheesy. They're certainly well-intentioned, and in that far-ago time of comic book relevancy, that's enough for me.
Plus you get Superman ( with Murphy Anderson redrawn head ) practically begging The Thorn to join the JLA. ' Thorn--Don't vanish! You battle crime and injustice--just like The Justice League! Let me sponsor you for membership! Plus you're ridiculously hot! '
You're fooling no one, Supes.
And by the way, just what was it with Vince Colletta and stripes? In every single story he ever inked, there's somebody in a striped tie ( go ahead, check out all those old Thor's if you don't believe me ) but here he has Black Brother Dave, his hot mama Tina AND evil boss Morgan Edge all striping it up like maniacs. Was Vince, like, Little Dot's arch nemesis or something?

Rose And The Thorn

Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane? Nobody bought that book, right? I mean who cares? Well, I bought it, but not for Lois, for one of the great DC back-up strips of the Bronze Age, Rose And The Thorn.
What with it's central theme of demure wallflower dressing up as leather-clad ass-kicker, It's probably best not to delve too deeply into the sexual politics of this strip, not to mention it's take on mental illness, but somehow Rose And The Thorn isn't sleazy, or at least not as much as it would've been in, say, a Warren magazine.
These were the days when superheroines were sexy, but not freakishly out of proportion or borderline pornographic, and were all the better for it.
Rose herself is a bit of a cipher, and it's the ballsy Thorn that keeps you reading, which I guess is kind of the point, that being her real, buried personality.
For a back-up strip that nobody but me read, Rose And The Thorn had some pretty heavyweight talent in the art department though. Here, for instance, we have Ross Andru, Gray Morrow AND Dick Giordano.
And isn't Rock And Rose the greatest title ever?