Believe it or not, I’d actually plunk good money down for a Lois Lane series. I have a thing for stories about hard nosed female reporters, which I think has stemmed from my April O’Neil infatuation since I was a kid. Naturally, I was looking forward to this fill in issue, since it was seemingly going to fill the niche for my love of stories for strong women who search for the truth, whether it be about the stories they’re covering or about their own personal lives, and DON’T take no for an answer. However, I couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Yes, this was an issue of Superman that featured Lois Lane as the main character. But do you know what else it was? A rushed tie in issue that is apart of an already lame storyline. So besides a few possible exceptions, this issue was doomed to be a failure from the get go, no matter who penned it.

So while Superman is walking the country and condescends a city’s population one by one, Lois decides to wait for The Man Of Steel in her old hometown which he will soon pass through. While scoping out the town and its people, Lois starts to become introspective and second guesses the way that her life has unfolded. That I can buy. Thinking of the “what ifs” in life is something that I’m sure everyone can relate to. The road not taken, and if our lives can possibly be better if we made a different decision at a crucial point. So where does this issue falter? Simple: Lois and her statements are way out of character.

Lois’ thought process seems to be a bit backwards in this issue. She is considering that her life MAY be better in a typical suburban environment, as opposed to being the pretty reporter that gets the scoop on Superman. What?? This doesn’t make any sense. It’s assuming that if Superman wasn’t a part of her life, Lois would be living a normal life in a suburban home, stereotyped and classified (Descendants rule! :)). It’s almost as if the author wasn’t aware that Lois was living a not-so typical life prior to getting the Superman scoop, and and assumed that she wouldn’t be the tenacious and infamous reporter without said scoop. That’s just incorrect It made the entire issue a puzzling read. I wouldn’t harp on this if it was a throwaway topic, but this was the basis of the entire issue. If perhaps Lois was questioning her choice to move to Metropolis and become the firebrand reporter that she is famous for now, that would make a little more sense. Hell, I would even be OK if the “Lois is just Superman’s arm candy” was a point of view solely from the college gawkers that mentioned this in the beginning, because let’s face it, there are some pretty idiotic people out there who aren’t in touch with what is going on in the world. But Lois was mentioning this about herself. This is just a case of someone being written completely out of character.

I don’t blame G. Willow Wilson solely for this failure, however. Yeah, she wrote it, but consider the circumstances: JMS is writing an already toxic story with the “Grounded” storyline, and since he needed an extra month between issues, DC hired a writer to not only whip up a quickie script, but one that would also tie into and have the same tone as the other issues as “Grounded”. It’s the Cry For Justice/Rise Of Arsenal situation with James Robinson and JT Krul all over again. People call Rise Of Arsenal a complete failure and joke of a story, in which they’re absolutely right. But is it fair to say that Krul is a poor writer because of this? No! He’s expanding upon poorly thought out events from a previous terrible story while trying to emulate the tone of it as well. If you try and make a souffle with dirt, and it’ll taste like dirt regardless. Here, Wilson was hired to write a story that will blend into “Grounded”, and succeeded in that respect in that it’s drenched in condescending attitude and eye rolling melodrama. And because it was so rushed, Wilson couldn’t even do any decent research concerning Lois’ character. I get that she wrote her grossly out of character, but if the most experienced writer were to write a character that they weren’t familiar under these circumstances, the end result would be the exact same. So congrats JMS…you didn’t even put pen to paper in this case and you’re majorly responsible for an excrement of an issue that could have been an interesting character study if it didn’t have to tie into your crappy story. Just go away.