AMAZON ART #43

I'd just barely started collecting comics in the year 1967, when LOIS LANE #73 appeared on comics-stands. I probably didn't see it until a couple of years later, though. I don't remember thinking that the cover was any different than a dozen other DC covers in which the heroes were being betrayed by their girlfriends or best friends. Only with greater perspective did it seem really unusual to see a 1960s "children's comic" show anything that might suggest a sexual fetish, even though said activity has been displaced in that Lois is whipping a puppet of Superman rather than the hero himself. For what it's worth, the story proper explains that Lois is enacting a ritual based in some obscure tribal magic, to expel a supposed demon from Superman by whipping his puppet-double. Further, the whole magilla is also a fake-out designed to make a villain reveal himself, so there's no sex as such in the story.

A few months prior to this issue, Lois Lane encountered another famous comics-female, in a two-part story in issues 70-71:

Catwoman, interestingly, had been exiled from DC Comics since 1954, probably because she was the only villainess Frederic Wertham named in SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT. The good doctor focused on her sadistic character by saying that she "is vicious and uses a whip." The only reason the Cat Came Back when she did was because she was one of the villains that the ABC BATMAN teleseries chose to adapt in the show's first (half) season. The show's first Catwoman aired in March 1966. Months later, when it must've become apparent that her appearance on TV hadn't triggered a new comics-crusade, editor Mort Weisinger-- who was generally in charge of the SUPERMAN-related titles-- decided to bring back the villainess. She still wore her original purple-and-green costume, though as I recall her signature weapon was nowhere in evidence. The whip did make one minor appearance in Catwoman's first TV show, and rarely appeared thereafter on TV, but it quickly returned in the comic book and even animated cartoons.