>>107537309Pre-Crisis, there were two characters who used the name Superwoman. One was the evil version of Wonder Woman from Earth-3, and the other was Lois Lane who used the name during a time when Superman created an outfit that would temporarily give her the same powers he has.
Grant Morrison really loves that old story. He's referenced it twice in his works, once in All-Star Superman, and also when he created the Post-Crisis/Pre-Flashpoint Crime Syndicate.
Morrison didn't want the Crime Syndicate to just be evil versions of the Justice League. He wanted each of them to have a twist on their origin, usually a reference to some previous comic book story. So Ultraman is a human astronaut who was abducted by Kryptonians and genetically re-engineered. Owlman was actually Bruce's older brother Thomas (a reference to a Pre-Crisis character named The Boomerang Killer). Flash got his super speed from a drug (a reference to Mike Baron's Flash run in the 80's). And Power Ring's power ring was actually the crystalized soul of a an evil monk.
And because he loved that old Lois Lane story so much, he decided to make Superwoman an evil version of Lois who gets her powers from the outfit Ultraman made for her. This is why that version of Superwoman had some powers Wonder Woman doesn't, such as heat vision.
There was a lot of confusion at the time about why Superwoman was an evil version of Lois and not Diana. If you didn't know about the obscure silver age comic he was referencing, it just came off as Morrison being weird for no reason.
Post-Flashpoint Superwoman has been said to be both an Amazon and Lois Lane, though no one has ever explained exactly how that works.
