When you’re an all-powerful superhero like Superman, you often need something big to challenge you. And while the Man of Steel is accustomed to smashing giant robots or facing off against Kryptonite-powered weapons, sometimes the challenges Superman ultimately faces are just… weird.

Take for example the time Superman returned to Earth from a deep space mission only to find that everyone on the planet had mysteriously swapped genders! While this was weird enough, what happened next was enough to make even the Man of Tomorrow think he was going crazy.

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This bizarre Silver Age-style adventure happened in Superman #349 in “The Turnabout Trap!” a story written by Martin Pasko and drawn by legendary Superman artist Curt Swan. Taking place a few years before the Crisis on Infinite Earths event rebooted the DC Universe, the tale occurred at a time when DC Comics stories still had a whimsical touch and reveled in the weirdness they put their characters through.

It began innocently enough with Superman speeding back to Earth after taking on an interstellar mission. Switching to his civilian identity, Clark Kent is astonished when nobody seems to recognize him at the Daily Planet. Things get stranger when he sees a “Louis Lane” and “Jenny Olsen” report to their editor “Penny White” who wants to know where “Clara Kent” is. Beating a hasty retreat, Clark quickly learns this world is protected by a “Superwoman” and—after using his telescopic vision to spy on the Justice League Satellite—discovers it also has a “Batwoman,” “Wonder Warrior,” “Black Condor,” and female Flash.

Surprisingly, these new discoveries actually serve to calm Kent – who reasons he must have taken a wrong turn and wound up in a parallel universe where the male and female sexes have been reversed. As these things did happen fairly regularly in the pre-Crisis universe, Superman simply decides to fly into space and discover the dimensional gateway he accidentally flew through – only to discover there’s a barrier around the Earth preventing him from leaving it. Confused, he returns to the Daily Planet, where he’s shocked to find that “Clara Kent” and “Superwoman” are two different people here.

Suddenly wondering if this whole thing is just a cosmic-level prank, Superman approaches Superwoman – who immediately recognizes him as one of the worst villains on the planet and attacks him. Knocked off balance, Superman has to next face a Superboy (basically a female version of Supergirl in hot pants) who depowers him with a Kryptonite-gas helmet and leave him in an isolated area under guard from the Justice League’s male Amazon Wonder Warrior.

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Superman gets out of this predicament by using super-hypnotism to lull Wonder Warrior into a deep sleep and then getting some buzzards to shatter the (apparently very weak) glass of his helmet. Taking out a recovered Wonder Warrior, Superman steals his Lariat of Truth and then calls out the person really responsible for all the weirdness – Mr. Mxyzptlk. As the 5th-dimensional imp is capable of rewriting reality with his powers, Superman reasons he was able to transform the real Earth (and possibly other parts of the DC Universe) into a gender-swapped version of itself.

Mxyzptlk appears and confirms Superman’s theory, explaining that after his fiancé revealed she was really an old hag, he had his marriage annulled and became jealous that Superman still had Lois Lane. Deciding to create a world where Lois couldn’t exist, Mxyzptlk swapped the genders of everyone on the planet just to screw with Superman. However, the Man of Steel decides he’s had enough—and uses Wonder Warrior’s lasso to trap Mxyzptlk and get him to say his name backwarda, returning him to the 5th–dimension and reversing everything he did.

Gender-swapping was actually a popular trope in the Silver Age of Comics (and continues to pop up every now and then in modern stories and creative cosplay). To suddenly have the entire DC Universe go through a reality-wide sex change did seem to be a bit of overkill, although Superman seemed to take the whole thing in stride. Then again, after living through stories where he became a giant ant or regressed to a super-powered baby, having the world suddenly swap genders wasn’t exactly the strangest thing the Man of Steel encountered.

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Michael Jung
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Michael Jung is a mild-mannered freelance writer-for-hire, actor, and professional storyteller with a keen interest in pop culture, education, nonprofit organizations, and unusual side hustles. His work has been featured in Screen Rant, ASU Now, Sell Books Fast, Study.com, and Free Arts among others. A graduate of Arizona State University with a PhD in 20th Century American Literature, Michael has written novels, short stories, stage plays, screenplays, and how-to manuals.

Michael’s background in storytelling draws him to find the most fascinating aspects of any topic and transform them into a narrative that informs and entertains the reader. Thanks to a life spent immersed in comic books and movies, Michael is always ready to infuse his articles with offbeat bits of trivia for an extra layer of fun. In his spare time, you can find him entertaining kids as Spider-Man or Darth Vader at birthday parties or scaring the heck out of them at haunted houses.

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