Lois Lane #12 Discussion

[Vordan]

That’s a wrap. Ending was solid but I can’t shake off a feeling of disappointment. As a stand-alone Lois Lane book, this is not it. Bizarrely enough for Rucka this ended up being the furtherest thing from “grounded” I could imagine. The nun and Lois opening up a care center for people who get in touch with their alternate lives is very Astro City, and I think it’s cool, but it’s not at all what I expected when the book was first announced. As the next entry in Rucka’s DCU epic I quite like it. As a Lois Lane story? Meh, she really felt like a side character by the end.

[Robanker]

I may have missed it but Lois is never vindicated on the belief that she's cheating on her husband in this book, is she? I don't think they bring up once that the identity went public.

That's really going to make her look bad to the public when someone pulls this off the shelf as a trade. Man, it just feels like the biggest missed opportunity that Lois Lane got sidelined in her own book. Really disappointed in that, to be honest.

[seismic-2]

Although I normally wouldn't stop reading a series so close to its end, I never bought #11 because after saying "give it another chance" so many times, I decided that it was a lost cause, and buying the last 2 issues would be throwing good money after bad. Maybe I'll read them when they show up on DC Unlimited a year from now, but probably by then everyone (including me) will have completely forgotten that this book ever existed. I cannot imagine that anyone would ever want to go back and re-read it, and if someone stumbles across it in a collection years from now, they will rightly be bewildered about what it was supposed to be about. This is not a story that should be a part of the Lois Lane "canon". Let's treat it as a completely ignorable Elseworlds story about the Question in which Lois plays a largely irrelevant supporting role.

[Caivu]

I'm astounded that Rucka apparently didn't learn during his whole writing process that Renee wasn't currently single. No editor told him? He didn't bother to research her current status? That's the most generous explanation here. He doesn't even try to explain it away by saying Renee broke up. It's as if he thinks she's been in stasis since he last wrote her. Truly bizarre.

And now the result is a character who appeared only twice over a decade ago, a character Renee knew for little over a week, is apparently her cosmic soulmate or some crap. More than any other woman she's been with, more than the woman she was currently with. Ugh.

Harley Quinn #74 got some deserved flak for a similar thing today, but this issue was another example, if slightly different.

[Vordan]

I'm astounded that Rucka apparently didn't learn during his whole writing process that Renee wasn't currently single. No editor told him? He didn't bother to research her current status? That's the most generous explanation here. He doesn't even try to explain it away by saying Renee broke up. It's as if he thinks she's been in stasis since he last wrote her. Truly bizarre.

And now the result is a character who appeared only twice over a decade ago, a character Renee knew for little over a week, is apparently her cosmic soulmate or some crap. More than any other woman she's been with, more than the woman she was currently with. Ugh.

Harley Quinn #74 got some deserved flak for a similar thing today, but this issue was another example, if slightly different.

Rucka more or less only acknowledges his own work with the character and maybe O’Neil’s, similar to how Claremont treats the X-Men or how PAD treats Hulk. It’s unfortunate but not unexpected, as creators age they tend to become less willing to play ball with what other creators do to their babies.

[Caivu]

Rucka more or less only acknowledges his own work with the character and maybe O’Neil’s, similar to how Claremont treats the X-Men or how PAD treats Hulk. It’s unfortunate but not unexpected, as creators age they tend to become less willing to play ball with what other creators do to their babies.

Then they really have no business writing in a shared universe. Collaborating with what others do is part of the game.

[Robanker]

I'm astounded that Rucka apparently didn't learn during his whole writing process that Renee wasn't currently single. No editor told him? He didn't bother to research her current status? That's the most generous explanation here. He doesn't even try to explain it away by saying Renee broke up. It's as if he thinks she's been in stasis since he last wrote her. Truly bizarre.

And now the result is a character who appeared only twice over a decade ago, a character Renee knew for little over a week, is apparently her cosmic soulmate or some crap. More than any other woman she's been with, more than the woman she was currently with. Ugh.

Harley Quinn #74 got some deserved flak for a similar thing today, but this issue was another example, if slightly different.

I didn't even know she was with someone. Who and where did that happen? I can't recall the last time Renee showed up before this.

[Frontier]

Harley Quinn #74 got some deserved flak for a similar thing today, but this issue was another example, if slightly different.

What happened there, out of curiosity?

I didn't even know she was with someone. Who and where did that happen? I can't recall the last time Renee showed up before this.

It's Kate/Batwoman. They got back together at the end of the last Batwoman series.

[Caivu]

I didn't even know she was with someone. Who and where did that happen? I can't recall the last time Renee showed up before this.

Renee and Kate have been back together since Batwoman #18 in August 2018. They made appearances as a couple in RHatO #29 and Black Mask #1, both times going strong.

What happened there, out of curiosity?

Harley and Booster are now a thing. That interrupts Harley and Ivy's relationship with a crack pairing pretty much no one wanted, just like this issue interrupted Kate and Renee with someone even fewer people wanted, if any at all.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

I really liked that the big news story Lois Lane breaks to the world is that time in the DCU is completely &%$#ed and everyone knows it. I think that's a lovely new wrinkle to introduce to a family that is wall to wall time shenanigans.

Her son was conceived in an alternate timeline bottle city, got rebooted, and is currently a 17 year old living in the future.

That's a great way of mixing the DCU with real journalism.

As for the rest, it's a very mixed bag. If you really dig Rucka, this might work for you better than it did me.

[Frontier]

Harley and Booster are now a thing. That interrupts Harley and Ivy's relationship with a crack pairing pretty much no one wanted, just like this issue interrupted Kate and Renee with someone even fewer people wanted, if any at all.

...Booster deserves better.

[Ishmael]

Although I normally wouldn't stop reading a series so close to its end, I never bought #11 because after saying "give it another chance" so many times, I decided that it was a lost cause, and buying the last 2 issues would be throwing good money after bad. Maybe I'll read them when they show up on DC Unlimited a year from now, but probably by then everyone (including me) will have completely forgotten that this book ever existed. I cannot imagine that anyone would ever want to go back and re-read it, and if someone stumbles across it in a collection years from now, they will rightly be bewildered about what it was supposed to be about. This is not a story that should be a part of the Lois Lane "canon". Let's treat it as a completely ignorable Elseworlds story about the Question in which Lois plays a largely irrelevant supporting role.

Same. I was incredibly disappointed with this.

[Powertool]

Would you ever believe that I originally picked up this title because I thought there was a chance it could have helped me get a different perspective on the world of journalism?[*] Needless to say, nothing in this unfocused mess / ego trip by a Greg Rucka who, after his imho horrifying return on the pages of Wonder Woman, has by now clearly shown that he has completely lost his mind or at least every ounce of the talent he possessed, has ever come close to make me reassess my position on journalism. How could it, when the titular character's "moment of glory" in the very first issues of the maxi-series (the one with the press secretary of the White House) fell completely flat because Rucka has un-learnt how to write confrontations where victory doesn't fall in the lap of the protagonists only because the script says so? And that's only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the reasons why Lois Lane doesn't work as a comic on nearly every level.

But let's focus on this final issue and what is probably the worst sequence of the whole maxi-series: Montoya and her new/old girlfriend in Chechnya. THAT is what I hoped American comic writers would have had the decency to stop including in their books after 2006, at the latest: two Americans going in guns a-blazing in a foreign country mowing down masses of people minding their own business we don't know anything about but who are the bad guys for sure since they were born in a nation with a cacophonic, very much not Anglo-Saxon name. The fact that in this case the two "liberators" are a lesbian couple doesn't make it better, quite the contrary. It's a minor thing, but I was literally appalled by this throwback to that mercifully short era when Yankee comic writers welcomed international terrorism as the second coming of the WW2 Nazis (you know, the kind of villains you don't need to give any complexity, making your job considerably easier).


[*] I mean, it's not that I think that being a journalist automatically qualifies you as the scum of the Earth, just that in the real world that 99% of damnable parasites ruins the reputation of the 1% of journalists who actually try doing their job.

[Vordan]

Rucka is a weird mix of being a left-wing writer who is utterly obsessed with the military and cops. I can’t think of a single work of his that doesn’t feature either of those to some degree, and his protagonists are usually members of one of the two organizations. I think he mentioned in a recent interview about the Old Guard that he grew up near a military base, and that’s why those themes and organizations keep showing up in his work.

[Robanker]

Having reflected on the book, I gotta say that now more than ever, I really am bummed out that Lois Lane turned into the continuity book featuring The Question and tying up Rucka's loose ends. Not mad, just incredibly disappointed because Jimmy Olsen stuck the landing so hard and never once felt like it was a vehicle for the creator's other works or to explain continuity. Jimmy ended up being the stronger book of the two which hurts when Lois Lane is one of your all-time favorite characters in fiction.