Cora the Car Hop's hidden sexual themes

Cora the Car Hop is a filler humor strip that ran in various issues of DC Comics' Superman's Girlfriend, Lois Lane and a couple issues of Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen. Drawn by comic strip veteran Henry Boltinoff, the strip premiered way back in 1958 in Lois Lane #2.

The majority of the gags include some scenes that would have seemed mildly humorous to a child, yet would have been a bit risque to the mature reader. While I doubt the average reader of comic books of the era would have been sophisticated enough to see past the surface humor to the more adult aspects of the comic, when viewed by an adult the strip comes off as weird and fetishy.

Many, many years ago I wrote a story featuring Cora, Cap, Varsity Vic and many of the rest of the Boltinoff ensemble featuring updated, realistic, deconstructed and grim-n-gritty versions of the characters. Even Super-Turtle showed up for a cameo. Then Alan Moore hit the comics scene followed by his imitators and successors, so I trunked the script because it felt like I was going over a well-trod path.

Today, Cora would undoubtedly be portrayed in comics as performing an entirely different service for her customers.

Check out Cora's adventures here at Cora the Car Hop.