fempop:

Flipping brilliant look at the Superman mythos wrapped up in a Superman: Earth One review.

Let’s start with Lois. Lois is actually the most important part of the Superman canon. Like the straight man in a comedy duo, she’s what makes the routinework. Think about it. We all know Superman’s pathos is that he wishes for a normal life. He’s a god who wants to be a man. What would he do if he were normal? He’d spend time with Lois Lane, right? He’d quit the mild-mannered act necessitated by his secret identity and win her over.

For that to work, Lois has to be the most eligible bachelorette. She has to be the womanSuperman has a crush on.And this is Superman we’re talking about. He can have any woman he wants. So how great is it that he doesn’t go for the prettiest or the most elegant or the ‘purest,’ but the woman who’s the smartest and toughest and awesomest? He’s the wisest man in the DCU, of course he’d want a partner like Lois. It’s a pairing that elevates both their characters. So Lois has got to be portrayed as the smartest and the toughest and the awesomest.

InMan of Steel, we see that she’s desired by Lex Luthor, but is so wise to his act that she shoots him down and throws the dress he gave her in his face (while wearing it). Clark is there, he can’t believe it, he’s trying to cover her up even as she makes a badass exit. InBirthright, she’s introduced standing up to her own employer as he verbally abuses Jimmy Olsen, then flying a helicopter to get a scoop during a terrorist attack. Jimmy’s with her; by contrast, we see him going “This is insane, this is crazy!” We also find out that of all the reporters, of all the human beings on the planet, Lois is the only one who’s clued in on Superman’s existence and is courting the derision of her colleagues to get the story.

The message is clear: Lois is amazing. In a traditionally male line of work, the men can barely keep up with her. So, how are we introduced to Lois Lane, lynchpin of the Superman franchise, in Earth One?

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Sometimes I reblog my own things when someone else posts them. SORRY FOR PARTY ROCKING.

So that Superman: Earth One write-up I talked about has been published: “Olsen is Superman’s bromantic superfriend and Lois wanks in from the sidelines.” (Fun fact: I actually do not come up with the titles.) I’m just really disappointed here, since in writing Spider-Man JMS did a lot of work in elevating the Peter/MJ relationship marriage. Here, all that creative energy goes into fucking Jimmy Olsen. 

I might’ve gone a little crazy with the scans, but it’s important to get across that that’s pretty much the sum total of Lois’s involvement in the story. There’s a difference between saying that Lois is a background character in a Jimmy Olsen story and showing that most of her dialogue is “What’re we gonna do, Jim Olsen?” But here’s one insanely writerly scan I left out. From a not-at-all-cliche public sampling of opinions on Superman…

I love that. “How do I show people are nervous about Superman? I know, I’ll have someone point out that Nazis also called themselves supermen! JMS, you’ve done it again!”

And this is more of an inside baseball criticism, but if you’re going to have someone responsible for destroying Krypton, shouldn’t it be Darkseid? Since he’s unofficially a member of Superman’s rogue’s gallery, you might as well give the two a reason for not liking each other besides “He’s the most powerful superhero, he’s the most powerful supervillain, fight!” By that rationale, in the Marvel universe, Hulk and Thanos should be arch-enemies.