As I feared would happen with a bi-weekly mini-series, given my haphazard ability to pick up comics on a regular basis, I missed this issue when it first hit the stands, ultimately adding it to my collection some months later when, to my great delight, a comic book store opened up in Marquette and I was able to find it among the back issues. The Man of Steel, \u201cThe Story of the Century!\u201d I\u2019m not actually going to spend a whole lot of time recapping this particular issue, as there really isn\u2019t a whole lot that happens in it. At the end of the interview he reveals that he was perfectly well aware of the fact that Lois had deliberately driven her car off the pier in an effort to get his attention (and that she had scuba gear tucked away in the car just in case). Lois: (Thinking) She\u2019s very pretty. Is he in love with her? That\u2019s right; people who think that Lana is in any way shape or form a \u201crival\u201d to Lois can suck it. Some Thoughts:<\/strong>I pretty much covered what I wanted to cover, though to be honest, I could write a lot more about why Lois = teh awesome. The Art:<\/strong> Go here<\/a> for the Reread of Man of Steel<\/em> #1<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go here<\/a> for the Reread of Man of Steel<\/em> #3<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go here<\/a> for the Reread of Man of Steel<\/em> #4<\/p>\n\n\n\n Go here<\/a> for the Reread of Man of Steel<\/em> #5<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sure, it was 100 miles away, but we traveled there on a pretty regular basis, so I was like having a comic shop right in my backyard.
In any case, this particular issue, much like this Nostalgia Review, is focused almost entirely on Lois Lane<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/97\/2024\/10\/image-4.png?resize=400%2C623&ssl=1\")
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Written by John Byrne
Art and Cover by John Byrne and Dick Giordano
Edited by Andy Helfer<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s not to say it\u2019s not significant \u2013 it is \u2013 but there are other things to discuss beyond the \u201cand then this happened and then this happened and then\u2026\u201d aspect of the story.
So, to provide a brief recap, shortly after the events of the previous issue, Superman makes his official debut in Metropolis, flying around town stopping various crimes and rescuing people and doing all of the things that Superman typically does, and just generally making a name for himself.
Lois Lane, meanwhile, who actually provided said name for him in her story about his rescue of the experimental space plane, spends a lot of time trying \u2013 and failing \u2013 to track him down to get an interview.
Unwilling to acknowledge defeat, Lois catches a lucky break when her car spins out of control and ends up in the harbor and Superman flies along to rescue her.
Though she\u2019s initially a bit awestruck by the man, after he brings her to her apartment she gets him to stick around for an interview:<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.opendoor-comics.com\/unbagged\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/97\/2024\/10\/image-5.png?resize=640%2C574&ssl=1\")
Even so, Lois has her story, and she rushes back to The Daily Planet only to discover that some rookie reporter has beaten her to the punch, walking in off the street with an exclusive Superman interview in hand. Said rookie reporter is, of course, Clark Kent.
In terms of some of the important bits I glossed over, at one point when Lois is chasing after Superman she finds herself summoned by a man driving a car for a mysterious \u201cMister. L,\u201d whose employer is about to go out of town for an extended period of time and wishes to speak to Lois. Unfortunately, Lois has no time for \u201cMister L,\u201d who, though we don\u2019t get to see his entire face, is clearly none too pleased about being ignored. It\u2019s not exactly a spoiler to say \u201cMister L\u201d is Lex Luthor<\/strong>, given that Lois identifies him as such some time later in her internal monologue, deciding that he is a \u201csituation\u201d she must address, and even though he\u2019s the most powerful man in Metropolis \u2013 or maybe now it\u2019s was<\/em> the most powerful man in Metropolis \u2013 she\u2019s not particularly interested in what he has to offer.
During the interview sequence, Byrne lays on the whole \u201cYuppie\u201d thing pretty thick, having Lois and Superman discuss the relative merits of trendy cheeses.
Also, Lois sets aside a bit of her professional demeanor when commenting on the color of Superman\u2019s eyes.
As for the interview itself, Superman doesn\u2019t reveal much \u2013 after all, he doesn\u2019t even know that he\u2019s an alien himself at this point \u2013 but he tells her that he thinks of himself as an American and that he pinky swears that he\u2019s here to help.
So that\u2019s the basic story, which I actually spent more time talking about than I intended to, but oh well.
In any case, let\u2019s talk Lois.
I like Lois. She\u2019s one of my all-time favorite characters, and, if I\u2019m honest, Lois, or at least my personal conception of her, is sort of the model for my ideal woman. She\u2019s smart, tough, determined, independent, caring, brave \u2013 and also more than a little reckless \u2013 and beautiful. What\u2019s not to like?
For his part, in interviews John Byrne stated that he always thought that Lois had been presented as \u201ckind of a bitch,\u201d and it was his intention to change that characterization.
Honestly, while he had a pretty good handle on the core concept of the character, I don\u2019t think he pulled that off, as his version of Lois proved to be one of the bitchiest I\u2019ve ever seen, at least on the surface. Underneath that tough exterior, of course, beat the proverbial heart of gold, but on the surface? Yeah, she was kind of a bitch.
And I don\u2019t say that in a \u201cWhen a man does it\u2026\u201d kind of way. The whole speaking her mind and not backing down thing wasn\u2019t what made Byrne\u2019s Lois bitchy. That was always one of the things I really liked about her. No, her bitchiness<\/em> made her come across as bitchy.
Of course, to be fair, most of that bitchiness was directed at Clark, and deservedly so. After all, he was just some bumpkin who wandered in off the street with her story in hand after all the trouble she went through, including risking her life, to get it. One can hardly blame her for holding a bit of a grudge.
And while she didn\u2019t know it, she was even more<\/em> entitled to hold a grudge, given the way that Clark managed to get the \u201cinterview.\u201d
The dynamic of her relationship with Clark over the course of Byrne\u2019s run, and in the post-Byrne run, would largely be defined by that rocky start. For his part, Byrne was a fan of TV\u2019s \u201cMoonlighting,\u201d and structured the relationship to be similar to that of the show\u2019s main characters.
The thing I liked most about Byrne\u2019s Lois, though, was that she felt an undeniable attraction to Superman, it wasn\u2019t really a defining characteristic. I\u2019ve been reading a lot of 1960s\u2019 Lois Lane comics, and in addition to just being kind of ridiculous and generally offensive, the monomaniacal obsession with one day becoming Mrs. Superman just gets really old really fast.
That particular characterization of Lois, by the way, is rather at odds with how she was originally presented. In the earliest Superman stories, she was much more like the version Byrne presents, although her bitchiness towards Clark was based less on a resentful grudge and more on general disgust for how weak-willed and cowardly he was. And while she did frequently need to be rescued by Superman, she was at least a little more capable than she would later be presented as being.
For my part, I grew up reading a more modern version of Lois that, while most likely kind of quaint in its attempts at presenting her as one of those \u201cWomen\u2019s Lib\u201d types, at least presented her as being something other than a perpetual damsel in distress waiting for her Prince Charming, which is probably why this version of Lois was acceptable to me.
And while it\u2019s jumping ahead a bit, there\u2019s a story later in Byrne\u2019s run in which he demonstrates that he understood exactly where Lois ranked in the \u201cLL Hierarchy.\u201d The context would take too long to explain, but there comes a moment in which Lois walks around a corner and sees Superman having just finished embracing that other LL \u2013 Lana Lang, not <\/em>Lex Luthor; sorry CLex \u2018shippers \u2013 and this happens:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lana: (Thinking) She\u2019s beautiful. No wonder he\u2019s in love with her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Speaking of rivals, in the current status quo, Superman is in a relationship with Wonder Woman, which is, many people think, the most obvious and sensible pairing. Early in his run, Byrne even played around with that idea, though it was never taken so far as to make it an official relationship.
I suppose that, on some level, it does make sense. The Superman\/Wonder Woman \u2018shippers could argue that there\u2019s nothing that Lois, a mere mortal, could really offer Superman.
Those people, however, are wrong, and they have it completely backwards.
It isn\u2019t that Lois is the right woman for Superman, it\u2019s that Superman is the only man who\u2019s good enough for Lois<\/em>.
Up next: The World\u2019s Finest!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That said, I\u2019ve never been terribly thrilled with the portrayal, or the casting, of Lois in other media, and that includes Amy Adams in the upcoming movie. Just\u2026no.
The exceptions to this disappointment are Erica Durance<\/strong>, who played Lois on \u201cSmallville,\u201d and was awesome, and Dana Delany<\/strong>, who provided her voice on the Animated Series.
On the topic of Lana Lang, so far we haven\u2019t seen her at all apart from a brief appearance in the last issue after Clark wins the football game, which is fine by me.
As for the other LL, Lex, though we didn\u2019t see much of him, it\u2019s immediately apparent that this version of him is quite different from the Lex we used to know. We\u2019ll learn more about him in upcoming issues, but the version that Byrne presents is based, in part, on a pitch by Marv Wolfman<\/strong>.
When the monthly titles relaunched after this mini-series ended, there were three Superman-related books.
One was a brand-new Superman<\/em> series, which started with #1, and was written and drawn by Byrne. The other was Action<\/em>, which picked up with the existing numbering, and was also written and drawn by Byrne. The third was The Adventures of Superman<\/em>, which inherited the numbering of the old Superman<\/em> series, and was written by Marv Wolfman, with art by Jerry Ordway<\/strong>.
In any case, the idea that Wolfman pitched was for a Lex Luthor who was a billionaire businessman who lived just outside of Metropolis with his girlfriend\u2026Lois Lane. The idea was that Lois was drawn to power, and that she bailed on Lex as soon as Superman showed up.
Byrne didn\u2019t like the starfucker aspect of Lois, but he did use at least some of the concepts, as we\u2019ll see.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s done by multiple award-winning comic book superstar John Byrne, so\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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