Lois Lane's natural hair color, Pre-COIE and Post-COIE

[Buried Alien]

In Pre-COIE comics, Lois Lane's (both Earth-One and Earth-Two versions) natural hair color appeared to be black, but Post-COIE, Lois's hair color appears to be brown. Was this a deliberate switch in characterization or just different coloring techniques?

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!

[Kuwagaton]

It was one of what seems like attempts to "correct" her hair as far as I know. Lois was based on Joanne Siegel, then portrayed by Noel Neill and Phyllis Coates. All three women had auburn hair if we go by existing pictures. You can see that many old comics give her a flow just like they had instead of a black bob, even when they still colored it black. Then the Sunday strips, and maybe a few actual comics that fell through the cracks so to speak, gave her the actual auburn hair.

Post crisis she went through all sorts of hairstyles but mostly auburn until I have to think somewhere between the animated series and For All Seasons. By OWAW I think she stopped being auburn until Rebirth.

[superduperman]

Post-crisis seemed to be trying to make a combination of movie Lois (with her haircut in her first appearance) and TV Lois. Byrne has never made it a secret that the TV show was his first influence so it wouldn't surprise me if that was what he was thinking.

[Jim Kelly]

Since black isn't really a hair colour, I assume that Lois has dark brown hair. Yes a lot of naturally dark brown hair looks black, but if you really examine the follicles microscopically you find they're deep brown. And if this hair is bleached, it will turn red. So it's enitrely possible for Lois to have hair that is dark brown (to the point of raven) and yet, either through sunlight or bleaching agents, turned a reddish brown.

When MAN OF STEEL came out, I remember that Lois had black hair. But when this series was reprinted the colouring was changed to auburn. I guess Byrne decided he wanted Lois to have hair the same colour as Noel Neill in the colour episodes of THE ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN, but his Lois much more resembled Margot Kidder, who had dark brown hair in the movies.

I imagine there were times in the early comic books and Sunday strips when Lois would have had her hair coloured brown. Because colourists were inconsitent and this seems to happen a lot in the early comics. The colour of one character's hair can go from yellow to orange to brown to blue-black depending on the whims of the colourist or the printer.

But it was easier to colour the hair blue rather than reddish brown or brown--because blue would be coded as B (a full blue on the plate), a reddish brown might be coded a YRB2, a deep brown as YR3B2 and a light brown as YR2B2. In other words, you only need one colour plate for the raven haired Lois, but if Lois has brown hair of any shade you need three different plates on register (yellow, red and blue). So blue is just the easier option and the worse that could happen is it prints off-register or doesn't print at all (leaving the highlights white). But for brown, if there's a mistake with the red plate (which is actually magenta), then Lois ends up with green hair. Talk about a dye job gone wrong!

[Kuwagaton]

That's absolutely true, and I've always overlooked that. Her hair looked virtually identical in those comics to her late stage pre-crisis hair, completely black. It's hard to even find pictures online because almost everything comes from reprints. I thought the dark straight bangs were really cool, actually.

I always thought Kidder's hair was really dark growing up, but I guess not. This was a neat write up on how the idea was to give her Neill features but the personality and mannerisms of Kidder.

https://www.cbr.com/superman-margot-...ne-john-byrne/

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Lois was also a red head in the early newspaper strips, predating Lana Lang by a few years

[DochaDocha]

I tend to think it was to add some visual diversity to the DC line, as well as the Superman books specifically. Too many prominent characters in DC have black hair and blue eyes.

[marhawkman]

Hmm.. Earth-91 had very dark hair....

About the same color of hair as Kal-El actually. Which meant their daughter(Lisa Kent) had... the same color of hair as Lois... like EXACTLY... the same.

[marhawkman]

Uhhh... wow... didn't even know half of these existed.....
https://www.fortressofsolitude.co.za...n-as-a-father/
So yeah... older books... had Lois with very dark hair almost exclusively, and elseworlds with super-kids typically shared that. Unless it was an elseworld where Lois wasn't the mother, then it's up to the hair color of who the mother is. This gets highlighted in the case of Superman 162. In that one Superman had been split into two people who didn't manage to re-combine.. and ended up marrying two different women. Lana Lang(orange hair) and Lois(dark hair).. and the hair color of the kids matches that.

Then in #166... Superman has two sons, one with his hair color the other brown... and they never explain who the mother was. Probably someone with brown hair.

[DochaDocha]

Regarding some of the older comics, was it ever a case of just being cheaper to have less color variation? Kind of makes me think of the old NES games.

[marhawkman]

Regarding some of the older comics, was it ever a case of just being cheaper to have less color variation? Kind of makes me think of the old NES games.

Yeah, that pic I posted has the same exact shade used for Lois and Lisa's hair and skin. which yeah, it's a thing I remember seeing a lot. colors are vibrant, but have less subtlety than modern comics.

[Jim Kelly]

I'm so thankful to my younger self for replying to these old threads, so I don't have to bother posting what I already posted.

Something I didn't mention in that post, after Crisis they also fooled around with the highlights in Superman's hair (still do). Instead of solid blue, they used a combo of colours (magenta, cyan, yellow) to create what was supposed to look more realistic (I guess), but it often came out looking grey and made the Man of Steel Grey look a lot older.

The reason they really did this (I believe) was to make fans think they were getting better quality. LOOK! we didn't go the cheap root and save ourselves a bundle of money--we went and made these special colours for you--now give us all your money.

I'm of the view that comic books are figurative not literal. Colouring doesn't have to match with reality.

[Jim Kelly]

How do any of us know what her natural hair colour is? I guess there have been a few stories showing her as a child (although hair changes colour as we grow older). Lois was known to change her hair colour every now and then. I don't necessarily believe that any of the colours we saw in the comics were natural. Only her hairdresser knows for sure.

[signalman112]

Sorry I don't know what comics this page is from.

LoisHair.jpg

[Jim Kelly]

It's from LOIS LANE ANNUAL No. 1 (Summer 1962)--art by Kurt Schaffenberger.