Superman starred in more than his fair share of strange stories during his 80 year career as the Man of Steel. And without strong continuity or any established rules for what Superman can and can't do, writers in the '60s had plenty of room to put Superman in all sorts of crazy scenarios. But crazy doesn't even begin to describe the time Superman decided to clone himself and brainwash the planet into bringing about world peace. Sound odd? Well that's exactly what happens in Superman #162, a comic that may go down in history as one of the strangest Superman stories DC Comics ever published.
The comic begins with a simple enough premise: Clark Kent finds himself lagging behind on a list of his "unsolved super-problems": restore the shrunken city of Kandor to normal size, find a cure for Kryptonite, and "wipe out crime & evil." Faced with such a dilemma, Superman decides to speed up the process using his very own "Brain evolution machine," powered by kryptonite, that will make him 100 times smarter so as to fix these super-problems as fast as possible. The machine works, but it has one unintended side effect: Superman has now been split into two versions of himself, a Superman Red, and a Superman Blue. This isn't the first time Superman has been transformed into something new, but the craziness from this story doesn't only come from Superman's new transformation: it's what he does next that cements this comic as one of the strangest Superman stories of all time.
With two Supermen instead of one, the Kryptonian duo quickly gets to work at solving their super-problems. Firstly, they repair Brainiac's "Enlarging Ray Gun" and use it to transform the citizens of Kandor back to it's original size. Next, they go into outer space and find a magnetic meteor that will attract every piece of kryptonite in the universe and transform their atomic structure into "normal minerals, chemicals, and gases!" With that problem out of the way, Superman Red and Superman Blue next call upon their "Superman Emergency Squad" (yes, this is a thing) and set about rebuilding Krypton in its entirety at super speed. After convincing the people of Kandor to move to a different galaxy without a yellow sun-because apparently having all the powers of Superman doesn't appeal to them, the Superduo decide its finally time to rid the world of all crime and evil.
To accomplish this they first manage to build an "anti-evil ray" that hypnotizes people into being good.This sounds like something a supervillain would do but Nobody in the comic seems to have a problem with it. Next the duo build a series of satellites (that look like disco balls) in order to project these rays down on the entire population at once. Thanks to the rays, the newly good Lex Luthor manages to invent a miracle cure that eliminates all disease from the world, and the two Supermen decide to retire from heroism. Superman Red decides to marry Lois Lane, and Superman Blue marries Lana Lang, conveniently ending their love triangle and creating a crime-free utopia once and for all.
Despite never being canon the idea of two Supermen was referenced by DC in the 90s. In 1997 Superman spontaneously developed new electric powers and was transformed into Electric Blue Superman for about a year. This eventually led up to the 1998 Superman Red/Superman Blue one-shot, where Superman was once again split into two different versions. Unlike the original comic though, these two Supermen had conflicting personalities and there was no second love interest around to pair them both off, forcing the two to compete with each other for Lois Lane's affection. Thankfully the two eventually did fuse back together, and Superman eventually did lose his electricity powers, leaving the entire story a brief but entertaining reminder of one of Superman's strangest adventures of all time.
