Lois Lane: Fallout

Anybody read these novels about Lois Lane by Gwenda Bond? I've gotten through the first one, and I liked it quite a bit, despite being about as far from the target market as you can be.

Fallout starts with Lois, sixteen years old, arriving for her first day of school in Metropolis. Since her father's a general, she's moved around a lot up to this point. She feels a lot of pressure in this new situation since she wants to fit in, but she can't help being herself--someone who does her thing regardless of consequences because her thing is what she believes is right. Now that's an awkward sentence, but being sixteen is an awkward time.

Lois gets into trouble almost immediately upon entering her new school. She finds someone who needs help and helps her, thereby putting herself and a few others in all sorts of danger. This book had the odd effect of making me worried about the characters on every page, even when that page lacked impending danger. Sure, the stakes were high in the plot, but that almost wasn't the point. The point, I guess, is that Lois is figuring out how to become the character we all know and love, the kind of woman whom gods would fall in love with.

One of the reasons I picked up this book is because of the Mark Waid/Leinil Yu version in Brithright. See, one of the challenges of Superman is for a writer to convince us that Superman and Lois Lane would fall in love. Perhaps the biggest flaw in All-Star Superman is the way Grant Morrison dodged this question. Why Lois? Well, according to Morrison, Superman just can't help it. Not a lot of substance there. Waid, on the other hand, shows us a Lois whose personality dominates the panel, the page, the whole twelve issue series. Her words and demeanor elicit a "Wow" from Clark Kent the first time he sees her.

Gwenda Bond's Lois Lane is everything you'd want her to be.