It Did Have This Going For It

I mentioned in my most recent Nostalgia Review that the old Lois Lane comics were pretty much terrible.
Granted, a lot of that is the result of the changes in social mores the push for equality, and the outlandish notion, by early 1960s’ standards, of treating women like *GASP!* actual human beings, but I still maintain that even at the time they would have been correctly viewed as nonsensical at best.
That said, they do have one thing going for them, in the form of one of my favorite panels of all time, which comes from a story in Superman’s Girl Friend Lois Lane #19, an “imaginary story” in which we find Lois and Clark married with the clever title of “Mr. and Mrs. Clark (Superman) Kent.”
In terms of the set up of the story, Superman revealed his true identity to Lois, and the two were wed, but the rest of the world was unaware of the fact that Lois was actually married to Superman, and there was a somewhat pitying assumption that she had settled for marrying Clark because she couldn’t land the husband she really wanted.
During some sort of press event in which Superman was participating, and which Lois was attending, a beautiful young starlet impulsively throws her arms around Superman and kisses him passionately, which leads to this:

Art by Kurt Schaffenberger

The look on her face just kills me.  You can practically hear the vein throbbing in her forehead.
Beyond this single panel, which in itself almost justifies the existence of the Lois Lane comics, the “imaginary stories” featuring Mr. and Mrs. Clark (Superman) Kent are kind of interesting for a couple of reasons.
For one thing, while not exactly spectacular, they tended to be better than the “real” stories.
Certainly they had a little more depth and conflict, given the need for Lois to keep her husband’s secret, even though doing so came at great personal cost at least in terms of her pride.
And they weren’t required to return everything back to the status quo by the end, so there could be something more than just the illusion of progress.
The other interesting thing was that they were, by most accounts, overwhelmingly popular stories.  There was a clear demand for stories that focused on Lois and Superman as an actual married couple, with all of the narrative possibilities that such a pairing opened up.
And yet DC remained resistant to the idea of making them anything other than “imaginary stories,” steadfastly refusing to change the actual status quo.
Indeed, it took another 37 years before they took the step of having them actually get married, and all the while there was a strong internal push to undo the marriage, which finally did happen in 2011.
Instead, DC just pushed out the occasional “imaginary” sequel, all of which seemed to try – in vain, for the most part – to make it seem as though having Lois marry Superman was a lose-lose situation all around.
Eventually, prior to the marriage in the late 1990s, we did get some continuing stories about a married Lois and Clark that was actually canon, although this particular Lois and Clark were inhabitants of Earth 2.  Their stories appeared in Superman Family, a comic that incorporated the former solo titles of Lois, Jimmy Olsen, and Supergirl.
The “Mr. and Mrs. Superman” stories were actually one of my favorite features of that particular comic, and I remain convinced that having Lois and Superman together as a couple is the ideal situation, one which opens up more narrative possibilities than any other approach.

Save Us, Solomon!

I recently watched the Solomon Kane movie, based on the character created by Robert E. Howard.
The movie itself was just okay – certainly better than the recent movie based on Howard’s more famous character, Conan – and it’s been a while since I read any Solomon Kane stories, so with my spotty memory it was difficult to say how well it adhered to the source material. 
(I’m going to throw out a guess, however, and say “Not very well.”)
The particular merits of the movie, however, are not really the topic of this post.  Rather, I wanted to use a particular scene as a jumping-off point for something else.
That being said, I do need to provide some background on the movie, and the movie version of the character.
Solomon was a man who had led a wicked, violent life, but after a supernatural encounter, he puts his murderous ways behind him and vows to live a life of peace.  However, circumstances are such that he soon finds himself faced with a challenge that forces him to set that vow aside, when the family of Puritans who had taken him in after he was robbed and violently assaulted by a band of thieves, are themselves placed in mortal jeopardy.
As the bloodthirsty minions of a demonic warrior menace the family, the assorted members of the family call out to Solomon to renounce his peaceful ways and save them.
…
Here’s the thing.  The family knows, based on the few things that Solomon has told them about his past, that he was once a formidable warrior, but they’ve never actually seen him in action.  He is, it turns out, once he decides to go back to the old ways, more than a match for the half-a-dozen or so armed men holding the family captive, but the family had no way of knowing that.
And yet they fully expected this unarmed pacifist to singlehandedly clean the collective clocks of the armed men.
I’ll admit that, frightened and desperate, the family would naturally latch onto even the thinnest, most frayed strand of hope, but it still seems to me that it was an awful lot to expect of him. 
I mean, honestly, as you’re standing there with a sword to your throat, and every other member of your family is in the same predicament, what, exactly, is it that you’re expecting your unarmed savior to do?
(And it turns out that – spoiler alert – even though he did end up dispatching all of the goons, Solomon wasn’t really up to the task of actually saving the family.)
In any case, as I was watching the scene, I was reminded of my recent reading of some collections of old (Late ‘30s – early ‘40s) Superman dailies from the syndicated comic strip.
The stories they contained were at a point in the development of the character at which the phrase “mild-mannered,” in reference to his Clark Kent persona, meant just that.  He wasn’t presented as being particularly cowardly, or nerdy as he would be in later years.  He was just a regular guy.
And yet, from the perspective of Lois Lane, Clark was the most craven milquetoast the world had ever seen.
It struck me as unfair on her part.
I mean, what, exactly, was the standard she was judging him against?  What were her expectations of him?
Basically, her thinking seemed to be, “That Clark Kent is such a wimp!  Why, he didn’t even try to singlehandedly dispatch those seven dangerous felons aiming machine guns at his head!”
Apparently, from her perspective, anyone who wasn’t ready to engage in some act of suicidal recklessness was cringing coward.
Then again, this is Lois Lane we’re talking about, a woman who engages in a dozen acts of suicidal recklessness before breakfast, so I guess it makes sense that she would equate being even remotely sensible with being a pussy…

Baltimore Comic-Con 2010: The Overview

First of all, as people start uploading them, there are bound to be better pictures from the Con than what I took showing up online on sites like Flickr, so I highly recommend checking them out. There were a lot of people I missed. Some I didn’t see at all, such as a Green Arrow/Black Canary couple, a Magneto, a Black Adam, and others I saw but didn’t get a chance to photograph, such as a young Mary Marvel.

Overall I had a very good time – as mentioned the AH! compliment alone made the trip worthwhile – and it was very cool to get stuff signed by some of my favorite artists, and to shake hands with Marv Wolfman (and get my copy of The Judas Contract signed by him).

Still, I couldn’t help but feel a bit awkward and out of place – it takes a special kind of talent to feel awkward when surrounded by thousands of nerds – and I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn’t been there completely by myself. Being alone made me something of an anomaly; most of the people there were couples, groups of friends, or families.

Even if I weren’t pretty much uniformly terrible at that sort of thing, it wasn’t an environment that was conducive to mingling. Everyone was moving around trying to get somewhere, or jockeying for position in lines at the booths or just to get a picture of a cosplayer.

On Saturday I was kind of hesitant to approach people to photograph them, so I took a few pictures stealthily while they weren’t looking, or by riding on the coattails of other people who were taking their pictures. Eventually, towards the end of the day, I got a bit bolder, but I still felt kind of weird about it.

I had only brought things to be signed by a few specific people – and one of them, Greg Horn, was only signing prints and books that he was selling there, so I didn’t get the books I brought signed, and didn’t want to buy any prints, seeing as how I’d just bought two volumes of his collected work a bit ago – but there were a lot of other people whose work I like who were there. I felt weird about approaching them, since I didn’t have anything of theirs to sign, and while I could have gone up to them and just said hi, the idea felt kind of weird.

(And initially I was too flustered to remember to, you know, actually give them my Heroic Portraits card. I got better about that on Sunday, for all the good it’s likely to do.)

Beyond that, I was just kind of overwhelmed by being in an unfamiliar place surrounded by thousands of people. While I’ve lived in larger cities for several years now, I spent most of my life practically living in the wilderness, so while I’m not exactly a slack-jawed yokel, I can get a little intimidated by cities, which makes me withdraw (even more than usual) into myself.

That’s where I think it would have come in handy to have someone there with me. (Note: Scott, don’t take this as me sniping at you or anything; I know you would have liked to have been there.) I wouldn’t have felt quite so, well, alone in a sea of people. While I spend most of my non-work time alone, I don’t often feel lonely, but there, in Baltimore, surrounded by “my people,” I felt lonelier than I have in a very long time, and my excitement was dampened by the fact that I didn’t have anyone to share the excitement with.

(Sleeping in a ginormous King-size bed didn’t help matters any either.)

While there were a lot of places to eat within walking distance, they were a bit of a hike, so in the morning on Saturday I just had a peanut bar I’d picked up in the hotel gift shop, so by the time I was standing at Amanda Conner’s booth and was getting out the money to pay her for the prints I’d bought, I noticed that my hands were shaking. I thought, “Hmm, I’m not that excited about meeting her. I suppose I should eat something.”

Unfortunately, that was right before the DC Nation panel, so I put it off for and went to that. After that, I realized that I needed to skip the upcoming Mondo Marvel panel because I needed to eat something right now.

So I went to the food service place in the Convention Center and found that everything looked terrible, but ultimately decided on these overpriced cheese pizza bagels.

There seemed to be a significant portion of Con attendees who had showed up just because they were looking for a place to sit down – seriously, there were people who found a spot to sit, and then never moved all day – so I couldn’t find anywhere to sit to eat, so I just kind of paced around, and got to eating.

As mentioned, I was eating a bagel that had been made into a pizza. After a few bites I realized that it was, in fact, a cinnamon raisin bagel. They seriously just took whatever bagels they had lying around, sliced them, covered them with cheese and sauce, and heated them up, with no consideration of whether or not the kind of bagels they were would mix well with cheese and sauce.

It was nasty, but, again, need food now, so I channeled Bear Grylls and forced it down, and chased it with a $3 bottle of water (the somewhat cheaper vending machines, conveniently, weren’t working).

There was some enterprising woman selling water for $1 outside the Convention Center, but I couldn’t bring myself to buy anything from her. Why?

Because for hours on end – it’s still burned into my brain from all the times I heard it whenever I went out for a smoke – she loudly “sang,” in this monotone voice that, I think, was intended to sound robotic (presumably to appeal to the nerds):

I got that ice cold water. And it’s only one dollar. I got that ice cold water. And it’s only one dollar.

Over and over again without pausing, from around noon until the Con ended for the day at 6 PM.

Sometimes she would mix it up a little:

I got that ice cold water. And they only one dollar. I got that ice cold water. And they only one dollar. I got that ice ice. Cold cold. I got that ice cold water…

(On Sunday, it was a guy, who simply repeated “Cold, cold, cold.” for hours on end.)

I’d hoped to meet up with my friend Eric after the Con, but he wasn’t able to make it to Baltimore, so I was on my own for the evening.

I decided to walk over to the Hooters across the street to get some dinner, but the line there was almost as long as the line had been to get into the Con, so I opted instead for a sandwich from Subway.

And then…well, what was I going to do? I know there were lots of things that it was possible for me to do, the sort of things that other people would do, but what was I going to do? It needs to be understood that a lot of things that would appeal to other people are of no interest to me, particularly because, not to keep harping on this, I was alone. Honestly, how many of you go out and do interesting and exciting things completely by yourself? No friends, no spouses or significant others, no family? I had already stepped pretty goddamn far outside of my comfort zone just by being there in the first place.

As mentioned in the Comments on a previous post, at a couple of points in the evening I lurked outside the hotel looking for an opportunity to insert myself into a conversation with Adam Hughes, Amanda Conner, Jimmy Palmiotti, and a bunch of other comics pros who were gathered there, but A. I suck at that kind of thing to the extent that I wouldn’t even have the first clue how to go about doing it and B. I was just some nobody, pissant fan.

I walked over to the Inner Harbor for a while, but, again, I just felt alone in a sea of people, so I went back to my room, downloaded Friday night’s episode of Eureka, watched it, and turned in for the night, feeling a weird combination of excitement, anxiety, sadness, and self-loathing.

Well, really, the only thing that makes that combination of feelings different from any other night is the inclusion of “excitement.”

Sunday came around and I was up bright and early. I walked over to a Panera Bread and got a breakfast sandwich, then walked back to the hotel and started packing. I transferred a few things out to the car, ultimately deciding not to take my laptop with me in order to spare myself the extra weight, since it didn’t seem likely that I was ever going to actually engage anyone to need it for showing off my artwork.

I took my time packing, and once it was close to the time for the Con to start up again, I hauled everything out to the car and checked out.

The line wasn’t quite as long to get in this time around, but I still spent about 15 minutes standing in the blazing sun.

Once inside I wandered around for a while before taking in my first panel of the day (I’ll write a separate post about the panels I attended), and then went back to walking the floor.

At 1 PM it was time for the costume contest. Most of the cosplayers had gathered in the lobby, so I went there and took a few pictures and handed out a few cards. The costume contest was supposed to be in one conference room, but it proved to be far more popular than anticipated, and the Con staff had to work out the logistics of getting more space and cramming in all of the people who were planning to attend, so it started about an hour late.

I was really only interested in the “Over 13, Female” categories (as was most of the audience), so I left after that was done, wandered around a bit more, took some more pictures, pointlessly handed out a few more cards, left cards lying around on various tables, and decided that I was ready to head home.

The drive home was uneventful, except for a few times when I had to take some detours to get back on the planned route, as there were a couple of times when the signs seemed to contradict the Nav system but actually didn’t, and one time in which the Nav system was just plain wrong, because it didn’t know about a new exit (it wanted me to make a “sharp left,” but there was a handy exit onto the road I needed to get on to the right).

Once I started getting closer to home, I realized that I was absolutely starving. As I got even closer to Leesburg, I thought about how I was in an area that I almost never get to, so I should try to be like a normal person and find some quaint little local eatery, but I didn’t really notice anything along the way, so I decided I’d just stop somewhere in Leesburg.

I was craving either a steak or ribs, so I opted for Ruby Tuesday. There were a bunch of cute waitresses, there, and only one guy, so guess who I got as a server?

“Hi, I’m Max,” he said, “and I’ll be your server this evening.” And I thought, “Of course you will.”

I opted for ribs, and found that I was so hungry that I was tempted to start crunching on the bones. I sucked my meal down with the efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner.

And then I was home.

Again, while the trip was expensive, and engendered some unpleasant feelings about myself, The Universe, and my place in it, it was worthwhile, and I honestly did have a good time. The misgivings and angst are just part and parcel of being Jon, and serve as a reminder that “No matter where you go, there you are.”

My “take” for the Con:

An Absolute Edition of V for Vendetta, purchased for 50% off from the booth being run by my local comic shop (which was the only place where I saw people I knew/recognized, including the cute girl who works at the comic shop, who saw me, waved excitedly, and then wandered off with someone I’m assuming was her boyfriend).

Three signed Amanda Conner prints, two of Power Girl, one of Catwoman, and her signature, and Jimmy Palmiotti’s, on my copy of Power Girl #12 (their last issue on the series) and my copy of The Pro.

A signed AH! sketchbook (not an actual sketchbook, but a printed pamphlet of sketches), a sketch of Power Girl, and his signature in my copy of Cover Run, a collection of his DC Comics covers.

Two signed Frank Cho prints, one of which is of Playboy Playmate Tiffany Taylor, who’s actually originally from Leesburg, his signature in my copy of Apes & Babes – a collection of some of his work – and a signed copy of a Washington Post magazine insert that did a feature on Cho (which ran yesterday; he had advance copies to give out at the Con). (I don’t want to unroll the prints just to photograph them; I’m going to get them custom-framed and will take pictures of them then).

Marv Wolfman’s signature on my trade paperback copy of The Judas Contract.

I didn’t dive too deeply into the bins that the retailers had, as, apart from things that I’d never be able to afford, there weren’t really any particular back issues I was looking for. I did keep an eye out for issues of Superman Family, as I feel really nostalgic about that series and would like to have a complete run. I’ve been buying the Showcase Presents collections of that, but at the rate new volumes come out, it will probably be at least five years before they get past reprinting the individual issues of Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane and get to the point at which the actual Superman Family title started getting published (taking over Jimmy Olsen’s numbering).

I found a handful of issues, but many of them were in pretty rough shape, so I decided to pass.

I did think about buying some Jimmy Olsens and Lois Lanes, but I didn’t see any particular issues that I’d like to have.

It’s a pretty good haul, I think. I wish I’d been more gregarious and had chatted some more cosplayers up, but, again, awkward, and when I did manage to corner them they were in a hurry to move on to the next photo opportunity.

But, again, and especially for me, I really did have a good time.

Deductive Reasoning....The Silver Age Way!

One of my favorite aspects of stories from the Silver Age of Comics is the way people - especially Superman - make these weird, non-sequitur intuitive leaps based on the most tenuous reasoning.
For example, the cover of Superman's Girl Friend Lois Lane #14:


(Image courtesy of the Grand Comics Database)

Well, duh, Superman; what else could it possibly mean?
Of course, in the modern era of comics, Lois dressing up as Batwoman would lead to the assumption that she's decided to play for the other team, and her "secret romance" would probably be with Lana Lang.
(Hey, you didn't really think that Superman was at the heart of their "rivalry," did you? That much passion can only have one source.)

Silver Age Bat-Shittery (Plus: Nude Pictures! Or At Least A Pointless Anecdote About Them)

Yesterday Scott came over for “Riff Trax Night.” As I felt the need to make him share my pain, we first watched the Star Wars Holiday Special. I had told him – correctly – that, like Mortal Kombat, nothing could prepare him.
After that we watched Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, which, featuring riffs by Neil Patrick Harris, I found to be just as funny the second time around.
I’ve actually found that several movies that would otherwise be unbearable and unwatchable – such as Batman and Robin and House of Wax (which does at least offer the pleasure of seeing Paris Hilton get brutally murdered, though that follows the pain of seeing her running around in skimpy underwear) – are a joy to watch with the Riff Trax commentary. Hell, thanks to Riff Trax I even enjoyed watching Over the Top.
New comics were delayed by the holiday, so I stopped by the comic shop on the way home today. I actually remembered to bring the gift card I got from Jamie and Casey for my birthday with me this morning when I left. It only took me almost five months to actually use it. I put it to use by supplementing my regular purchases with Showcase Presents The Legion of Super Heroes, volumes 1 and 2. So that gives me some Silver Age bat-shit craziness to look forward to, particularly given that they’ll feature stories written by a teenaged Jim Shooter.
Speaking of Silver Age bat-shittery, I’ve been reading Showcase Presents Superman Family volume 2, which features reprints of old Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane comics.
I have to say that I find the stories absolutely bewildering, and I can’t help but wonder how the comic book industry has managed to last as long as it has. I mean…they’re just…wow.
Favorite scene so far: Perry White scampering in fear to the top of a desk like a woman on a 50’s sit-com who’s seen a mouse, while Lois bravely charges in with a broom in hand, as Jimmy Olsen, whose brain has been swapped with a gorilla’s, shows up for work.
Then again, there’s the story of Jimmy’s “Lucky Turban,” which protects him from harm and gives him the ability to make amazingly accurate predictions, in which we see that Jimmy’s prediction for the next day’s weather is a huge front page headline in The Daily Planet.
Because, you know, why wouldn’t a weather forecast – based entirely on a guess – be front page news?
And this is the stuff that so many current writers are mining for new ideas: it’s the Silver Age – with a modern twist! ™
Anyway, there’s no need to pursue that particular rant, even though, honestly, I don’t actually have much of anything else to write about.

Sometimes You Get Lucky Department:
I get a lot of traffic from people looking for nude pictures of [insert celebrity name here], and I often say that just because someone is famous/semi-famous/infamous or in some way connected to show business, it doesn’t automatically follow that there are nude pictures of that person available for public consumption.
I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but I find myself irritated by the belief that “she’s famous, therefore there must be nude pictures of her available.”
And honestly, the fact that this belief is not true is often a good thing – Phyllis Diller, anyone?
Setting that disturbing thought aside, though, it’s often difficult to find any pictures – nude or otherwise – of some people, and not every person on TV gets stalked by the paparazzi, or has legions of fans that will scan in pictures from magazines, or capture frames from video files. They just don’t have a big enough or obsessive enough following.
(And besides that, there’s no reason to assume they’ve ever appeared in front of a camera sans clothes.)
In any case, the other night, lacking anything better to do, I was watching last season’s finale of House. I watch the show every so often, but I’m not really a big fan. Mostly I watch it so that the episode reviews on Polite Dissent will make more sense to me.
As an aside, the titular House, played by British actor Hugh Laurie, is an obnoxious, arrogant, heartless dick who says whatever he thinks with no consideration for the feelings of others. There have been people who watch the show who have expressed dismay at the fact that I don’t watch the show regularly, saying, “You of all people should like it.” What’s up with that?
Anyway, there was an actress on it who had been a semi-regular character for most of the season, and while I always thought she was attractive, she looked especially good in some scenes of that episode, so I thought, “I should see if there are any pictures of her.”
Now, I wasn’t expecting to find any nude pictures, though I will admit to not being averse to the prospect. Still, in my defense, when I did an image search, I did not use any variation on the words “nude,” “naked,” or “topless.”
Even so, ironically enough, bam! Very first result was a screen capture of her topless in a movie.
So okay, sometimes you get lucky, but still, that doesn’t prove anything, and my contention about making assumptions about nude pictures remains valid.
Apart from the irony, though, what makes it notable was that when I looked at the capture I thought, “Wait a minute…I’ve seen that. In fact, I have a video clip of that scene, and have had it for a long time. I saw her topless before I ever saw her on House.”
Apparently, per IMDb, I had also seen her – fully-clothed – on Big Love before she started on House. I guess she just never registered in my consciousness before.
Anyway, the point of all of this is that I had to think of something to fill out this blog post, and that’s probably – sadly and pathetically – the most interesting thing to happen so far this week.

The Show With The Highest Per Capita Hotness

First of all, happy birthday to Kevin (and, if he’s reading this, which he probably isn’t, to his cousin Joel).
Today has been, of course, largely uneventful. I went grocery shopping and picked up some things for tomorrow night’s housewarming party.
Then I came home and did a little bit of cleaning/de-cluttering.
It’s a non-stop thrill ride, I tell you.
No movement on the job-hunting front, apart from getting an e-mail from the friend of the ex-AOLer whom I’d been referred to asking if I ever heard anything from the people that he’d given my résumé to. I told him that yes, I had heard from someone, but that what I heard was that they weren’t interested in me. He wrote back saying that not hiring me doesn’t make any sense, so he’s going do some digging on my behalf, which is cool.
Lately I’ve been watching the show Shark on Sunday nights. It’s an okay show – I like James Woods – but the main thing it has going for it is the amount of hotness it has per capita compared to other shows.
Sure, most TV shows have a lot of hot chicks on them, but Shark wins out because of the quality and intensity of the hotness.
First up is Jeri Ryan, who is still smoking hot, and while she’s not wearing the so-tight-she-often-passed-out-on-the-set bodysuit she wore as Seven of Nine on Voyager, she usually wears outfits that follow her curves pretty closely.
If you watch House – which I’ve also been watching lately, if only because doing so gives me the opportunity to look forward to reading the episode reviews at Polite Dissent – you can compare her outfits to the outfits that Cuddy (Lisa Edelstein) wears: lots of cleavage and curve-hugging skirts.
At the center of the hotness, though, is Danielle Panabaker, who plays Woods’ daughter (and whose IMDb photos do not do her justice). She is just unbearably cute. That’s pretty much the only way to describe her.
Plus her character goes to a private school, so most episodes feature scenes of her in a school uniform, short plaid skirt and all.
Sophia Brown is not quite on par with the others, but is still a very attractive woman and adds to the overall hotness.
Rounding out the hotness is Sarah Carter, who all-too briefly played a non-Lana Lang love interest for Clark on Smallville.
Of course, because Smallville has to be all about Lana all the time – the primary reason I gave up watching it – the powers that be pretty much immediately killed her and had Clark basically forget that she ever existed. In a season and a half following the episode in which she died, he never once made even a passing a reference to his brutally-murdered girlfriend. It was basically, “Oh, she’s dead. Welp, back to pining over Lana.”
Prior to Smallville, I didn’t actually hate the Lana Lang character, I just thought that she was pointless.
(Smallville made me hate her by making her even more bland and uninteresting than the version in the comics and then insisting on centering pretty much every episode around her.)
After all, she was retroactively shoe-horned into Superman’s history to serve as a cheap rip-off of Lois Lane in his retroactively added youth, and later to serve as Lois’ rival for his affections in his adult life.
And that’s really all she ever was and all she ever could be. Lois was there from the start, and she was always the only woman for him, not Lana.
When John Byrne revamped Superman’s history, he clearly understood the role of Lana Lang. It was pretty well summed up in the thoughts that went through the heads of Lois and Lana upon meeting for the first time in the newly-established history:

Lois: She’s very pretty. Is he in love with her?
Lana: She’s beautiful. No wonder he’s in love with her.

Of course, since that time Byrne’s vision of Superman has fallen out of favor (and so have thought balloons, for that matter) as current creative teams scramble to put things back to the way they way they used to be (With a modern twist!), which is a subject for another rant entirely.
Speaking of JB, of late I’ve been re-reading his early 90s creator-owned series John Byrne’s Next Men. You may recall, but probably don’t, that JBNM was one of the books that I dropped a bunch of money on back issues to replace the issues I was missing.
For his many strengths as a writer and artist, Byrne also has many weaknesses, and both are clearly on display in JBNM, but overall I’m enjoying it as much now as I did then.
Of course, my enjoyment of it now is hampered by knowing that when I get to the end of the series it won’t actually be the end, and now, unlike then, I know that it’s unlikely that it will ever be finished properly, despite the promise of that very last image which showed what was supposed to lie ahead for the series.
My modern sensibilities also lead me to be inclined to believe that the series would have been better if written by Warren Ellis, as it’s exactly the kind of thing that he writes well.
And for the record, it was re-reading JBNM that actually sparked lat week’s memories about Jen – along with many other memories – as it was one of the main titles I was reading during that period in my life.
In any case, I started writing this hours ago, so I suppose I should just post it now and be done with it.