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I wouldn't call their past relationship exactly healthier (not for them, not for whoever was telling it and for whoever was consuming them). They had some sweet bits and some surprisingly “feminist” parts from the really low expectations I had when set out to read a few of the oldies. But they had tons of pure *rubs eyes* moments. One of the things I really liked in Morrison’s treatment since issue #1 (until #3) was the reversal and gags on the women-fearing motifs and subtexts of the Superman mythos (and superhero comics overall, really). Lois had many Delilah-like qualities and moments that screamed "a man (with issues) wrote this!". So it’s great the way the iffy misogyny undertones and elements are invoked (and one of its other faces, a Wolverine-sort of tragic-gloomy distance/ lack of unifying culmination) so they’re being poked fun in a ‘remix’ manner for screwed up zany screwball comedy effect on the most f&#%ed-up relationship ever ("hmm, it tickles"): Superdickery, comics' boys-club homosociality, Bluebeard, Eros & Psyche, Sharezade, Samson & Delilah, The Shining (really, how many times was he killing LL in those silver age covers?!)... their rugs all pulled out under their feet.
I remember a few of the first Lois Lane comic strips, and all were the same joke over and over: the Daily Planet crew saying something (sometimes immensely assholeish) and finishing with them storming out of a "raving mad" "emotional" "over-sensitive" “girly” furious Lois Lane's office (I even thought Krull's splash* was a gag on that “women: monsters succubus!” combined with Action Comics 1's cover with a scared twisted version of Grant Morrison on Krull's side).
*btw, does anyone know if that effect is used again anywhere in the series? Or in any other place? I really like that mock-transition thing, the comical play-suggestion of something going on that's not really happening but that actually speaks loads on a subject. The only places I can remember seeing something similar is a few bits in Arrested Development, and that Lord Of The Rings scene where Sam asks Gandalf not to turn him into a ghastly beast, and the next shot is Gandalf and Frodo with a supposedly Sam-turned-into-a-horse and Sam appears afterwards as if "no, no, I kid!" (I didn't realize there was anything there – I had read the first book at the time so I remembered what happened - but when my friend saw it she went "what an asshole, he turned him into a horse so Frodo can ride him!?"). I thought Jimmy's first panel in #4 was on that same narrative tool, as well as the resemblance of a flower in that one panel before-the-last in #8. I wish I knew the name of that effect or narrative tool or see it in other places...
PS: is it possible the last panel in #3 is framed in order to make his “S” into a mild suggestion of an “L”?
(jesus I can run my mouth off in this thread…) |
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