I believe in love. Love is something so vast and complex; it is simplistic to even claim we know what it feels like for someone else. We know how it might feel personally and for many of us, we do love more than once in our lifetime. I believe love and the person we love gives us what we need at that particular time in our life. I also believe love and life choices are dictated by circumstance. Love and relationships can be unhealthy and or uplifting. The best loves are those that help us evolve into better, stronger individuals.
I for one believe if Lois is not around, Superman can still exist and be a hero and he has always been one full of optimism and hope and full of vigor...if things get tough...Superman will, at some point, pick himself up, dust himself off and live his life. That to me is the gift of his humanity and what he would have learned from us-resilience. Or simply, good writing can make it so.
With the relaunch of the new 52 in 2011, and reboot of Superman as single, came the end of the married Superman's story. Many fans of the marriage strangely argued that DC could not do this and doing this was disrespecting evidence that Superman was always supposed to marry/be married to Lois. We know there was always some kind of Lois and Clark dynamic for decades, and Superman did not always end up with Lois in other stories. He romanced other women and ended up falling in love and even marrying them.
One fellow Superman fan, C.J. Charles,a well read and knowledgeable gentleman and published writer, decided to go on a journey of exploration and investigation. He is also known as SuperCharles and on tumblr as countryboylife. He decided to pick up Superman from the 1980ties. The genesis that led ( according to some) to Lois as the one true love and wife. His findings were very interesting and it seems that the eighties were distinctively flavored with Clark and Diana while there were even other women in Clark's life.
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| "Into the missions of what might be" |
SuperCharles begins,
"I have to confess that I haven’t sat down and read Superman during the 80’s for a long time, and certainly not comprehensively ie issue by issue in chronological order.
However that’s exactly what I’m doing.
One of the things I’m told by certain folks is that Clark and Lois relationship was changed after the reboot. That it’s fair to dismiss the pre 86 status quo & fifty years of canon unrequited love / doomed relationship on the basis of 3-4 years of books following 1986 reboot.
So I approached the read through with the expectation to see some foreshadowing of the engagement/marriage. However the results are really surprising.
Apart from this first panel from the Man of Steel mini series in 1986 - there isn’t any romance. No steady build up - no real foreshadowing."
SuperCharles article continues here.
Lois and Clark's romance pre-engagement and marriage
His conclusion was this:
"Simply in a few months November 89 to February 90 Lois has gone from not paying much attention to Clark and taking him for granted all this time to seeing through the glasses. As Batman might say. Pass the Jumping Shark repellent spray."
Much food for thought I would say and for many Superman readers ( who are not all Kal/Diana shippers, by the way) this reboot is another chapter in the book of Superman's life. Unabashedly we would love for Clark and Diana to find each other.We understand they are young in the current DCU and their iterations are slightly different. But this chemistry they share has been so evident for so long, it's about time DC really explore it this time around and no jumping the shark for us. We'd like it done organically please.
