Uh...Lois punched Clark...wth

[techtweeter]

you are missing the point, her hand should be broken

Yes you are right Obiwan8, remember back in Combat when she and Clark were in the steel cage before Titan entered and they were supposed to be fighting each other. Lois was trying to get Clark to spar with her and she punched him in the stomach and nearly broke her hand while accusing Clark of having a steel plate under his jacket as she shook off the pain.

But I also agree with another poster that Clarks reflexes are so fast now he probably went with the punch and I'm not so sure just how solid of a blow Lois landed because her real goal was the kid and his phone. The overhead shot sort shows her stumbling past Clark to crash into the kid and successfully dislodge the phone from the kid's grasp.

Although the close-up of her face as she went for Clark revealed a pretty mean scowl and there may actually have been a little bit of the Mad-dog Lane personna surfacing. She had worked hard to keep Clark in the dark about chasing Sacks down at the nightclub because she did not want Clark getting hurt since he isn't "bulletproof" as stated in her voice message to "Zlur" when she asked him to be her wingman instead of Clark. Ironic isn't it if she really did mean to hit him for real since her ultimate goal for keeping him out of the loop was to protect him.

[luthorian]

I wonder what it actually feels like to "hit" Clark. Can Clark somehow make his skin elastic because otherwise it should compare to punching a wall. I really doubt Lois would enjoy doing that. Guess it has to compare to hitting any human otherwise she'd feel the difference.

[RyanE]

She "punched" (I think she faked it then too.) in Combat. Although she hit in the stomach, and that did hurt hand. Maybe Clark just dodged/supersped/ away at the last second to make it look like she hit him.

[heromyth]

True. Didn't Clark try to dodge? She probably didn't get the full face. Same would go for Oliver when he punched Clark last season (oh wait he lost his powers?).

I'm not sure the writers are always well versed in the Superman canon or even possess a basic understanding of his powers or his physiology. Superman is the man of "steel" and that isn't meant to be purely metaphorical. Every bone in Lois' hand should have shattered on impact; then again, Clark was hit repeatedly while playing football so perhaps he developed a method for only pretending to be hit, but I'm not sure how he'd manage to pull that off. He cited his ability to control his powers when Chloe inquired about how he plans to consummate his feelings for Lois without hurting her but how can he control the fact that he's made of sterner molecular stuff and thus mere mortals wouldn't survive a head-on (pun equal parts inadvertent and unavoidable) collision with him. Lex figured this out in the pilot when his sports car struck the unsuspecting yet inherently denser object in Clark on the bridge.

[uncaged]

When Lois punched Clark in Combat he didn't have anywhere to move even if he'd wanted to. She punched him right in the gut when he wasn't paying attention and she got hurt. Clark reacted with her punch this time and who's to say that it didn't hurt her hand a little bit. Every time you punch someone in the face it's going to hurt, so maybe she just didn't register it that much.

[Nanda Lane]

She hit him in Hydro too.

[Drakaun]

If Clark accelerates his body to the exact velocity of Lois's punch, which is easy when you can move pretty fast, it would end up to being the equivalent of me taking my fist and touching your face with it. That is how stunt fighting works for the most part. Have you ever seen when a Tennis player catches the tennis ball in his racket without having it bounce off the strings. It is the same premise. You move the racket in such a way that it equals the balls falling velocity and thus it ends with the ball perfectly resting on the strings of the racket as opposed to bouncing off of it.

One can imagine Clark could move in such a way that it doesn't quite equal Lois's velocity but it is enough to make her feel like she punched a regular guy in the face as opposed to a wall. Much like he did back in high school when he played football. The only time someone actually got hurt was in Jinx and that was against his will.