Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #105

Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #105 (On Sale: August 13, 1970) has a cover by Murphy Anderson. The big news this issue is found in the little blurb at the bottom of the cover. DC is introducing its third new character of the month, heck of the day.

We begin with Lois Lane in "Death House Honeymoon," a 12-page tale by  
Robert Kanigher, Artie Saaf and Mike Esposito. The 100, a criminal combine that will be around Lois Lane for many issues to come, invades Metropolis, but a mysterious female crime-fighter called The Thorn serves public notice that she will hunt them all down. Meanwhile, Johnny Adonis (nice name, if you can get it), a murderer sentenced to the chair, asks Lois Lane, whose life he once saved, for a last request: to marry him just before he is executed. 

She complies, and the two are married, but a jailbreak ensues before Johnny can be taken to the chair and Lois is taken hostage. She is later dumped in the river by the convicts where she is rescued by mysterious new crime-fighter, the Thorn and both women are saved by Superman. Johnny is killed by one of his fellow convicts while trying to defend his wife, Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Adonis.

Our back-up story is the premiere of DC's newest heroine, Rose and the Thorn in "Night of the Thorn" by Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru and Mike Esposito. After her father, Detective-Sergeant Phil Forrest, is killed in a gun-battle with the 100, Rose Forrest suffers a personality split. 

Though she feels herself normally incapable of violence, while asleep she becomes the Thorn, a costumed crime-fighter driven by her father's memory to fight and defeat the 100. She rescues Forrest's partner Danny Stone from the 100's killers, but, as Rose, does not suspect that she has become a secretary to a 100 member.

I do appreciate new characters, even if all three of them are created by Robert Kanigher. Now I'm not saying that Kanigher's writing is derivative, but two of his three new characters' shtick is that they have basically split personalities (as we will see in the next issue of All-Star Western). Now most people would not look at El Diablo and Rose and the Thorn and say, "Hey, this is the same recycled idea," but I would. I know there are a lot of things that are different between the two characters, but come on, they launched on the dame day. Hard to not notice. 

Edited by E. Nelson Bridwell.