Lori Lemaris: the mermaid of Tritonis and Clark Kent's college love

Who is Lori Lemaris, the mermaid who knew Clark's secret?

Lori Lemaris is a mermaid, with a real fish tail, who comes from Tritonis, a city of Atlantis in DC comics. She debuts in Superman #129, cover-dated May 1959 and put on sale on March 19, 1959. Bill Finger writes her story and Wayne Boring draws it. Stan Kaye inks the pages, Mort Weisinger edits the title, and Curt Swan draws the issue's cover. In this first story, Clark Kent meets her while he is in college and falls in love with her. She already knows he is Superman, even before Lois Lane does.

Her name also places her in a series of double-L initials, alongside Lois Lane, Lana Lang, Lex Luthor, Lyla Lerrol, Luma Lynai and Lucy Lane. Among the women of Superman's universe, she holds a place of her own. In the 1959 comics, she is neither his first love from Smallville, a role held by Lana, nor Lois, his colleague in the newsroom: she is the love of his student years, the one that ends up under the sea.

Superman #129: a student in a wheelchair in Metropolis

The 1959 story, “The Girl in Superman's Past!”, runs ten pages as the third story in the issue, and it is told as a flashback. According to a summary of the issue, it all starts at a college football game: Lois has a blanket over her legs, and that detail takes Clark back to his student years at Metropolis University. There, he had met a young woman in a wheelchair, her lower body always hidden under a blanket.

In this version, Clark is already Superman while he is in college. He first saves Lori from a runaway wheelchair, in secret, then pulls her out of an accident at an aquarium, this time in costume. The blanket hides a mermaid's tail: Lori cannot walk. The reason she lives on the surface is that every hundred years, her people send one of their own to study humanity's progress, and she is the one who was chosen; once her mission is over, she will have to go home and make her report. In the meantime, she has to immerse herself in salt water every night to stay healthy.

A secret read in his mind, a proposal turned down

The ending of the 1959 story turns the situation on its head. Throughout the story, Clark hides from Lori that he is Superman. When he asks her to marry him, she says no, and he soon discovers that she is a mermaid. But she had known from the start that he was Superman: like all her people, she communicates by telepathy, and she read the truth in his mind. For a hero who builds his life around his secret identity, that is quite a surprise. Lori promises him she will keep the secret.

She then explains why she turned him down: their two worlds are too different, and her mission awaits her under the sea. They part with an underwater kiss. In the comics before 1986, Lori thus becomes a woman who knows Clark's secret before Lois, and who still says no to him. This point clearly sets the versions apart: in John Byrne's version, in 1987, Clark has not put on the costume yet when he meets her, so there is no Superman to unmask yet.

Tritonis, the city of mermaids, is not Aquaman's Poseidonis

Lori comes from Tritonis, a city that also makes its first appearance in Superman #129. In DC comics, Atlantis has two major city-states. Tritonis is populated mostly by mermaids and mermen; Poseidonis is home to Atlanteans who look human, and that is the city Aquaman is tied to. Making Lori one of Aquaman's subjects would therefore mean mixing up two cities. Their paths do cross, though: in 1992, Lori asks him to keep a secret, and in 2025, she fights him.

The comics before 1986 also give her a family: her father Britt, her mother Omra and her younger sister Lenora, who enters the picture in Action Comics #284 (January 1962). A year earlier, Adventure Comics #280 even imagines an earlier meeting: Superboy runs into a younger Lori, then the mermaid's father erases their memories to protect the secret of Atlantis. These stories belong to the Silver Age, before DC hit the reset button on its universe.

Superman #135: a torpedo, Ronal and a lost second chance

Lori returns in Superman #135, cover-dated February 1960 and put on sale on December 17, 1959. “Superman's Mermaid Sweetheart!” is written by Jerry Siegel, Superman's co-creator, drawn by Wayne Boring and inked by Stan Kaye. Superman is reunited with the mermaid and asks her to marry him once more. Tragedy strikes fast: Hans Schmidt, a vengeful man of the sea, a sailor in some summaries and a fisherman in others, badly wounds her with a torpedo. Lori may be left paralyzed for life.

To save her, Superman searches the universe for a surgeon. He brings back Ronal, a merman doctor from another planet, who heals her. Lori and Ronal fall in love, and Superman steps aside. This is the first appearance of Ronal, created by Siegel and Boring, who later becomes Lori's husband. So Clark asked the mermaid to marry him twice, and never married her. Remember this Ronal from the stars: John Byrne's Ronal, in 1987, will come from Tritonis, not from another planet.

From matchmaking friend to death in Crisis on Infinite Earths

After 1960, Lori takes on a different role. Now Superman's friend, she tries to push him into proposing to Lois in Superman #138 (July 1960), then goes along with a staged scheme aimed at Lois in #139 (August 1960). She also teams up with Supergirl starting with Action Comics #269, where she is the one who calls the heroine to the rescue of Atlantis, and she comes to the aid of Jimmy Olsen. Measured against the hero's history, she is still a newcomer: in 1959, Action Comics #1 is already almost twenty-one years old.

This pre-1986 Lori belongs to the Earth-1 continuity, one of the worlds of the DC Multiverse. Her story ends in Crisis on Infinite Earths #12, dated March 1986, by Marv Wolfman and George Pérez. During the defense of Atlantis, she uses a force beam to save Mera, who is trapped, then a shadow demon serving the Anti-Monitor kills her. This death only applies to the pre-1986 version.

“Lost Love”: John Byrne's Lori Lemaris, before the cape

In 1986, John Byrne rebuilds Superman from scratch with The Man of Steel. He reintroduces Lori in Superman vol. 2 #12, dated December 1987: “Lost Love”, written and drawn by Byrne and inked by Karl Kesel. According to a catalog record from the Michigan State University library, this issue is dedicated to the memory of Wayne Boring. In it, Clark still meets Lori in college, but he is not Superman yet. Lori, for her part, comes from a community of merfolk searching for Atlantis: she does not live in Tritonis yet.

The plot echoes the 1960 one, with one big difference. A fisherman stabs Lori and Ronal heals her, but this Ronal is a surgeon and sorcerer from Tritonis. Lori chooses him over Clark, and the framing story presents her as having died defending Atlantis. The truth comes out in Superman vol. 2 #63, a Dan Jurgens issue dated January 1992: Lori had faked her death, because she and Superman were too different. She saves him after a torpedo explodes, then asks Aquaman not to tell him anything.

The 1990s: legs on dry land and rooming with Lois

In the comics of the 1990s, Lori has legs when she is dry and turns back into a mermaid as soon as she gets wet. Ronal, for his part, goes bad. In Adventures of Superman #532, dated February 1996 (“Troubled Waters”, by Karl Kesel and Stuart Immonen), the black magic of his staff drives him mad, and he turns the people of Tritonis into monsters. Lori calls on Superman for help, and Ronal ends up turned to stone.

That same year, Lori moves in with Lois Lane in Action Comics #719 (March 1996). Taking in one of Clark's former girlfriends creates some passing tension for the couple, but the Daily Planet reporter and the mermaid become friends. In Superman vol. 2 #117 (November 1996, “Sanctuary”), Lori, accused of smuggling antiquities, jumps off a bridge to swim away; Steve Lombard thinks it is a suicide. Finally, she appears in Superman: The Wedding Album #1 (December 1996), the issue featuring Clark and Lois's wedding. Sources disagree about her role: a bridesmaid according to one, a guest at the bridal shower and the rehearsal dinner according to another.

Year One and Young Justice: a Lori Lemaris far from college

Not every version sets the meeting in college. In Superman: Year One #2, published in 2019 under the DC Black Label imprint, Frank Miller and John Romita Jr. place it during Clark's service in the US Navy. He follows Lori all the way to Atlantis, then comes back to the surface.

On television, Lori appears in the animated series Young Justice (La Ligue des justiciers : Nouvelle Génération in France), voiced by Kath Soucie. There, she is a sorceress, a general and the representative of Tritonis, with no connection to Clark at all. You can see her in season 1, episode 8, “Downtime”, which aired in the United States on March 4, 2011 (“Temps mort” in the French version), then in episodes 14, “Nautical Twilight”, and 17, “Leviathan Wakes”, of season 4, released in the United States on HBO Max on March 31 and April 7, 2022.

In live action, no appearance is on record, whether in Smallville, in Superman & Lois or in the movies. Fan pages only report that her name is supposedly spoken in the animated film The Death of Superman (2018), with no further confirmation.

Lori Lemaris in 2025: queen of Tritonis or Superman's friend?

Recent comics bring Lori back into the spotlight. In Batman/Superman: World's Finest #35, cover-dated March 2025 and put on sale on January 15, 2025, Mark Waid and Adrian Gutiérrez turn her into a former love of Superman who has become his friend. She comes to warn him that her husband, King Ronal, is planning an attack. Her rank is still up for debate: some sources present her as the queen of Tritonis, while a review of the issue does not give her that title. In this version, only one source also places their past meeting at Metropolis University.

The Aquaman series launched in 2025 gives her a completely different role. In #3, Lori leads the “Mercenary Maids”, a trio of mermaids working for Dagon. She stabs Aquaman and captures him, before switching sides later on. Between the 1959 student in a wheelchair and this mercenary leader, the character has come a long way.

Conclusion

Lori Lemaris has spanned more than sixty years of comics without ever marrying Clark. A student who reads his secret in 1959, she chooses Ronal in 1960, dies in Crisis in 1986, then is reborn under Byrne before moving in with Lois in the 1990s. Superman: Year One moves their meeting to the Navy, and 2025 makes her both a friend of Superman and an opponent of Aquaman.

For the woman Clark marries in 1996, the story of Lois Lane takes over; Clark's first love has her own story too, with Lana Lang.