Originally Posted by
Jim Kelly
That might be an irritant for you, but for anyone under the age of 35 that's ancient history and not something that would have been part of their contemporary Superman reading life. For them, for most of this period, Superman has been married to Lois Lane and Lois has known that he was Clark Kent--and even aiding him in keeping his identity secret.
So if the argument is that Lois is seen as ignorant by the readers and that explains why DC has downgraded her character, it doesn't make sense for the current era. It may be that contemporary readers look back at the comics that existed before they were born and see that Lois Lane as so stoopid--but that Lois was part of a time that is long gone. It wouldn't be unusual for these readers that Lois was so stoopid, because I find that a lot of contemporary readers think everything was so stoopid before they were born. Lois, Superman, Batman--it doesn't matter who, they just shake their heads and are at a loss to understand what was the attraction of those comics compared with what they know now.
So I return to my earlier observation that it's only in recent times that Lois Lane has become unpopular--at least in the comic books. She was always popular before that, so what happened to make the publisher and the readers turn against Lois?
You don't have to look in the deep dark past for that answer--it hardly seems likely that DC is trying to repair some damage from a previous continuity that most people never experienced firsthand. I suspect it's actually the marriage that created this pushback against Lois Lane.
In other media, where Lois has been a popular character, she is usually NOT married to Superman. If there is a marriage, it only comes at the end of the story (e.g. SMALLVILLE). And with LOIS AND CLARK, many feel they jumped the shark when those two kids jumped the broom and the series slid downhill after that. In the decade before this one, DC editors and writers were struggling with the marriage and reader interest in her character fell. Some just wanted Lois to die.
I see this as analogous to the pushback against Batman and Robin following the '60s TV show. Even though the Dynamic Duo had been highly popular, they were now toxic in the view of fickle comics fans. Something had to be done to distance Batman from "Camp." So most of the old costume villains were put on hold, but more importantly Dick Grayson left for university and the Dynamic Duo was split up. Lucky for Robin his character didn't suffer too much for this; however, that Dynamic Duo was gone for good.
My theory is DC wants to put some distance between Lois and Clark to remove the memory of the marriage, which they see as one of the problems of the old continuity. Unfortunately, Lois Lane has had to take a backseat when she used to be one of DC's most popular characters.