A Lois Lane proposal that, alas, never saw the light of day

[icon_uk]

In the past I've posted some work by Dean Trippe, creator of Butterfly, and one of the hosts of the always fun "Project Rooftop" site (and occasional poster here too).

Here, from his Tumblr account is an outline for a pitch he made to DC some time back...

A LITTLE BACKSTORY

Growing up with two younger sisters, I’ve often found myself attracted to cool female leads whose stories I could share with them (Nancy Drew, Veronica Mars, etc.), but while the superhero industry has always done good by me in providing excellent male heroes (chief among them, Batman and Superman), its treatment of their similarly iconic female heroes like Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Batgirl has always been mixed at best. Too often these spandex-clad heroines have been marketed towards post-adolescent men rather than to their own gender. There’s room for this in the spectrum of superhero fiction, of course, but without a positive female role model for me to share with my sisters, that they could see themselves in, they both grew up with only a portion of my comics fandom. (Don’t get me wrong, they both still dig Batman!)

But then I found a secret window into the DCU that I don’t think anyone else knows about: Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Lois Lane…at eleven years old.

THE PREMISE
Lois Lane, Girl Reporter follows the adventures of young Lois Lane. At eleven years old, Lois has discovered her calling: investigative journalism. She sets out to right wrongs and help out her friends. This series explores Lois’s character, reveals her surprising early influence on the future Man of Steel, and introduces fun new elements into this enduring character’s back story.

In each book, Lois will tackle a problem or mystery affecting the members of the community she finds herself in as she travels around the country. The investigations in this series will not be mystical or supernatural (though some characters may suspect such sources), but real world problems that Lois works to set right.

LOIS LANE is the bright, driven, daughter of Sam and Ellen Lane. Lois has dark, straight hair, pale violet eyes, and wears green when she has a choice. Lois carries a small messenger bag containing a tape recorder, a flashlight, a reporter-style notepad, and the military’s experimental S-Phone. Lois often refers to her friends by their last names and hometowns. Age: 11.

CLARK KENT is a farmboy and science-fiction fan growing up in Smallville, Kansas. Clark is kinda skinny and has black hair and the brightest blue eyes. He often wears blue ringer tees, blue jeans, and red tennis shoes. Clark doesn’t yet know of his alien heritage, but he is already developing quite a few of his super-abilities. Age: 12.
BOOK ONE
Lois has just been pulled out of her private school outside Metropolis (where her mother and sister, Lucy, still reside) for exposing, but not defeating, some long held corruptions in the administrative offices by including an incriminating article about them in the school paper. Lois goes to live on base with her father, Lt. Colonel Sam Lane. The series opens on their military convoy moving soldiers and equipment to a new base outside Kansas, rolling down an old route road that runs past a familiar farm, giving us a glimpse of the Kent family sitting on the porch as they roll by. Clark senses his parents’ heartrates jump. They’re afraid their fear of the government coming to take Clark away has finally, inevitably come true. But the convoy just rolls past.
In Dry Pond, Lois befriends Jane Jarrett, a tough girl from the base, and Mattie Connelly, a cute boy with asthma, whose slight cold takes a very sudden turn for the worse. Visiting her new friend in the local hospital a few days later, Lois picks up on a great deal of information, much of it troubling. Lois starts investigating.
Using various resources, and with a few false leads, Lois uncovers the truth. A respected pharmaceuticals representative, Brian Brisson, had cheated on his company’s safety tests in order to get a promotion and a raise. Because of Brisson’s actions, hundreds of doses of untested, unsafe asthma inhalers were released into Midwest markets.
With the help of her father, Lois is able to get this new information to Mattie’s doctors, and her story about the tainted medicine runs in the local paper. Her story is then picked up by the Associated Press, saving forty kids’ lives across the Midwest. Lois’s story is reprinted across the country, earning her the lifelong nickname, “Lois Lane, Girl Reporter.” (All previous instances of its use now rendered callbacks rather than sexist. BONUS.)
The story ends by another appearance by twelve year old Clark Kent, who helps the people of Smallville in secret, but never openly, due to his parents’ fears of his being discovered. But Clark reads Lois’s article reprinted in the Smallville Star, laying on his stomach on the living room rug. He looks over his shoulder, smiling at Martha and says, “Golly, that’s some girl, huh, Ma?” Here’s this girl fighting for Truth, Justice, and the American Way with no superpowers and no secret identity. Clark enrolls in his school’s journalism class the next day. That’s why Clark Kent is a reporter. Lois Lane is his hero.
[Throughout the rest of the series, we’d have seen that whenever Lois encounters power, it has corrupted its wielder. The government, corporations, the military (poor Gen. Lane), they’re abusing their power. Until she meets the most powerful being on Earth. And he’s incorruptible. Superman’s therefore the most attractive man she’s ever met. Someone she can believe in, who fights her same fight with flights and tights.]

For more details, you can read it at his Tumblr site but frankly, this sounds like it could have been more than a little bit awesome!

For legality

Comments

[hivemindcomics]

Holy shiznay that sounds awesome. Real big shame at least this first book wasn't made.
LOVE the idea of Clark being a reporter because Lois was his hero, a genius touch.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

thanks. :)

[silicondream]

It's a great explanation for their initial relationship in the newsroom, too. Clark isn't just bashful and awkward and submissive to Lois because, ho ho, he's pretending to be mild-mannered to fool the simple human. He's that way because he's working with one of his childhood idols.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

thanks. yeah, it would've been the reason clark wanted to work at the daily planet in the first place. :)

[greenmask]

Oh my goodness, I love it.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

thanks. :)

[greenmask]

It's yours? I will you ALL THE LUCK in future projects!

This coulda been good (oh so good), coulda been fine (oh so fine), isn't it madness (MADNESS) it won't be mine?

Sigh.

[benicio127]

I wish this would have been made into a series. I've mentioned this a few times here and there, but Lois is one of my inspirations, particularly wrt my career as a journalist.

[jeyl]

"That’s why Clark Kent is a reporter. Lois Lane is his hero."

Well, there's the element that caused the "Sorry, but we're not interested" reaction to their pitch. If you have an iconic male super hero look up to a female character as a source of inspiration to one of his iconic traits, you might as well burn every thing you've done and not even bother to mention you had the idea at all. Unless the female characters are just the supporting and loving people who are only tagged on as emotional baggage, there's not much you can do with them that will meet with any sort of approval from the higher ups.

Now, if you have an iconic female super hero look up to a male character for inspiration, they'll green light that in a heart beat. You'll even get extra bratty points if you have this moment occur in his story and not hers.

And don't forget. You can't have female super heros working with male super heros unless they are ogled at by the male characters. Young Justice saw to this by having that be Miss Martian's grand introduction. To make matters worse, the fools in the writing room thought that having her ogle Superboy would balance things out. Freaking amateurs.

[fifthie]

Lois inspiring Clark is wonderfully, well, inspired, and per Jeyl above, just sort of way, way too excellent for DC to ever allow it to happen.

[ravenous_raven]

Hm, I'm not really excited by this idea. If we take out the bits with Superman and replace "Lois Lane" and her family with any other character and her family, it would be a rather generic "spunky girl detective" story. However, I would be much more interested if the series later went into her reporting in college or as a newly-hired reporter at another newspaper before she got to the "Daily Planet" and did get into the supernatural/superhero stories. It would also be a good way to get new readers into comics and introduce them to the D.C.-verse.


But alas...

[darkknightjrk]

I'm kind-of with you on that. The only time I've really enjoyed "spunky girl detective" stories were Veronica Mars (which was more adult and more noir in tone) and when Kate Beacon pokes fun at Nancy Drew covers. That's it.

I think it would have been an interesting book that DC could have used to get more young girl readers, but it feels like it's more for that--young girl readers, and I'm sure as hell not that demographic.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. This series would've covered seven years of Lois's life, leading up to her (wildly successful) internship at the Daily Planet.

[ravenous_raven]

Yes, the later part of the series would be much more interesting to me. Too bad the series never came to fruition!

[hivemindcomics]

Stop saying these things! WHY WASN'T IT MADE!

I can see it having the same appeal Runaways, Spider-Man Loves Mary-Jane and New York Four have where they are great for a specific younger reader but equally as great for the older readers.

Gold star sir.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

thanks. :)

[starwolf_oakley]

Interesting, and we all "know" Clark Kent and Lois Lane are destined to meet each other, but it isn't too hard to think that Clark and Lois wanted to become reporters on their own, neither getting "inspired" by the other.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

totally fair. i just thought it'd be cool to give a male superhero a female inspiration, and kinda explain why they dig each other so much. besides, lois's reporterness is well established, but clark's reasoning for becoming a reporter makes less sense as his super-senses expanded.

[proteus_lives]

Odd art.

[schmevil]

Really? I think it'd be great for an all ages book.

[proteus_lives]

Meh, I just I would go with a look like from Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane.

You're right about it being a great pitch though.

[schmevil]

Fair enough. The art from that series was pretty great too. I like that Dean Trippe's stuff is a bit different.

[schmevil]

Why isn't this an ongoing? I love this art. I love this pitch. OMG.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

thanks so much. :)

[blackruzsa]

The art interests me.
The idea sells like a stepping point for young (probably mostly female) fans to enter the DCU and then slowly settle into the main.

[dejadrew]

I would've read the everloving hell outta this.

Someday, if I get to heaven, there will be a library full of all the best books never written. And I will plunk myself in a corner with a copy of this and the complete run of Tintin Pantoja's Diana: Princess of Paradise. And I will be content.

[icon_uk]

You shouldn't need to wait that long, next time you're in the Dreaming, pop by Lucien's Library, and they have shelves devoted to the same notion.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this, Icon_UK. Really glad you dug it. You have my undying appreciation, as always. :)

[icon_uk]

No problem, just remember me fondly when you get around to those commissions! :)

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

will do, dude. will do. :)

[schala_kid]

I'll at least give Marvel props for doing Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane and the teen Mary Jane books to get girls interested in comics. Seriously DC just release this book when Man of Steel comes out or something! But just do it!

Not surprised though, with the horrible Wonder Woman show on the horizon and DC's shitty treatment of female characters, no wonder this wasn't green-lighted.

[darkblade]

I like the idea of a girl detective Lois but I'm really not too crazy about the idea of everything in the DCU interconnecting like this. I really prefer to think that Clark and Lois first met at the Daily Planet.

[icon_uk]

The solicit suggests that that was the original intent, but that Clark would have heard of her before he worked there.

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

yeah, i would've had them meet officially at the daily planet. clark would've said, "oh, i've read your work." trying to play it cool. ;)

[benicio127]

Saw this on Tumblr and was bummed this isn't a series. Just like the Ben Caldwell Wondy pitch. *sigh*

[icon_uk]

Can you link to that?

[benicio127]

Yep! Here you go!

[dryponder.livejournal.com]

love that so much.