That's the Way the Cookie Crumbles...

Surely you remember "the Best Lois Lane Panel Ever"?

Thanks to Absorbascommando Don Reisig, we know that that Golden Age panel was reprised in the Silver Age. Or was it?

In the Golden Age, it looked like this:
Lois has engaged an eminent psychiatrist (you can tell from the beard) with the most powerful Yellow File Card of Piercing Insight imaginable. Where was this man when Hal Jordan lost it, I ask you? Lois is an active participant in her own recovery, alert, leaning forward aggressively into the doctor's territory. Plus, she's wearing one of the spunkiest little outfits I've ever seen, right down to the kryptonite green gloves. That's a Golden Age outfit that screams, "Don't muck with me, doc! I've got a problem and I'm here to solve it!" No shame, no shyness; there's a reason Lois is in Action Comics, folks. Dr. James Lipton is all aquiver and can barely keep up with the Lois's psyche, and the whole scene's more like a riveting evening on Inside the Gal Reporter's Studio than a shrink session.

But, oh, in the Silver Age! In the Silver Age, it looked like this:Lo, how the mighty have fallen! No more Viennese experts for poor Lo-Lo. She's stuck with the bored and weary corner pharmacist, who, instead of using a Famous Freudian Filebox, is calmly scratching out her prescription for Xanax on a cheap steno pad from the Rea & Derrick he works at, immediately aware that she's a hopeless codependent mess. And she is, lying there in some frumpy suburban hausfrau outfit like a worn-out dishrag, draped supine on a cheesy hospital cot like a M*A*S*H extra, with her hand stuck to her forehead in the universal "woe is me" symbol.

You disgust me, Silver Age Lois! Where is your Golden Age verve, your gal-elan, your moxie? Gone, all of it, eroded by month after month of cruel identity hoaxes, hissies with Lana, bizarrely extreme yet still temporary transmogrifications of your physiognomy, and imaginary stories spent shacking up with chubby Lex Luthor. There it lies, a silent but eloquent indictment of post-war American society, the remains of the Toughest Cookie in the Golden Age, eaten away by the acidic insanity of the Silver Age.