Chuk Austen's character assassination of Lana Lang

Chuck was a passable, sometimes enjoyable pornographer but his characters had deep-seated emotional immaturity I assumed was there to move the story along.

Why did he ever think he needed to move into cape books and why did both Marvel and DC ignore his previous work

>>86691632
Not only ignore his work but immediately give him some of their biggest books.

It's not like he cut his teeth on Alpha Flight and Doom Patrol or something.

He wrote Uncanny X-Men and Action Comics.

>>86691632
>Why did he ever think he needed to move into cape books and why did both Marvel and DC ignore his previous work

He came back to cape books because of Bendis.

She was in (I think?) Busiek's run with some Insect Queen stuff and was mostly fine there as far as I can remember.

I don't believe she and Pete ever really got back together though.

Lana/Pete's break-up was resolved in the other Superman books (Adventures of Superman IIRC); they went the Hobgoblin route of revealing that one of Superman's closests allies (Professor Hamilton) had gone evil and basically was brainwashing Pete, causing him to turn evil and lash out at Lana and basically prepping him to be his fall guy in the event that Hamilton ever got caught trying to kill Superman in his new villain alter-ego "Ruin".

The writers of Adventures of Superman had Lana and Pete reconcile at the end of the story but after Infinite Crisis, they were once again divorced: Lana was running LexCorp and still an asshole, though they heavily implied that Gorilla Grodd was mind controlling her before it got jossed in the pages of Superman/Batman.

Lana was still a black sheep of the Superman family, pissing off Supergirl by not telling her that she had been infected with a bug creature that turned her into Insect Queen and nearly killed a bunch of people. Kara eventually forgave Lana and Lana herself got fired from LexCorp right before the Action Comics Lex Luthor arc, when Lex revealed that there was a clause in the CEO contract Lana signed when she stole LexCorp from him, saying that anyone caught helping Superman in any shape or fashion without Lex's expressed permission, is to be fired.

>>86691680
He got work in the 00s and on big properties because of two reasons:

1. His wife was a big time executive (I think with Disney; IIRC she was one of the producers on Power Rangers during the first couple of Disney seasons) and she was friends with Bill Jemas, so she got Chuck work at Marvel

2. Chuck could churn out scripts ASAP, which Marvel needed in the early 00s because the early Jemas/Quesada years needed their books to come out on time, to stave off the angry fanboys who were already pissed off at some of their earlier nerd baiting.

With UXM in particular, he got the job because they had to fire Joe Casey for being a worthless drug addict who killed sales on Uncanny X-Men and they were already dealing with people hating Claremont's X-Treme X-Men and forcing Morrison to use fill-in artists for his super-lazy main artist and fill-in artists, since Marvel couldn't give Morrison the same leisurely "release the issue when the artist felt like doing it" pace Whedon later had. They needed a warm body and they gave him the Avengers because, for all of his character derailment, he managed to restore UXM to it's normal sales level after Casey killed the title.

Of course, with the Avengers he pissed everyone off and then some and that killed the sales on that book, but still... as fucked up as his hate boner was, his pitched version of Avengers Disassembled would have at least made more sense continuity-wise than Bendis's version did.

The sad thing about Austen's Action Comics run, is that if you cut out the character derailment of Lana and his interviews where he went full retard and attacked Lois/the Lois/Clark marriage (seriously, DC should have it as boilerplate, that anyone writing Superman CAN'T BADMOUTH the Lois/Clark marriage since it only brings bad sales to writers that trash talk it), his Action Comics run is passable and readable and not ENTIRELY horrible.

Remove all of the Lana shit and you'd probably have a run looked upon like the Simone run or the Casey run of the era; perfectly acceptable Superman that isn't terrible but not groundbreaking.

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>>86692288

To be honest, Chuck Austen wasn't the only shitting on the Superman/Lois Lane relationship.

Remember the OUR WORLDS AT WAR and the whole sub-plot where Superman sees what appears to be Wonder Woman, fall after her battle with Imperiex, and he follows her down to Earth to rescue her while ignoring Lois Lane cries for help, only to find out that it was Hipollyta donning the Wonder Woman mantle and that Imperiex forces had attacked the White House killing Sam Lane, Lois' father, when he was busy, which made Lois hate Superman for condemning her father by prioritizing to save Diana's mom, because she thought that meant he loved Diana and not her. That little subplot was milked for ages.

>>86691574
>that she "settled" for Pete
Sounds accurate.

There's just no other way of looking at it, you were Superman's girl, any following boyfriend is going to be a downgrade. Furthermore, marrying the other male childhood friend is really stupid and corny, creates a shitty love triangle and kind of reinforces the stupid notion that a man and a woman can't just be friends, they have to also date at some point.

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Let's get this party started. First with a bit of prologue...

>>86693513
>Clarks face when a single mom from Kansas tells him he also settled by being married to a drop dead gorgeous , award winning journalist from a prestigious family.

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The meta-human couple plot is meant to reflect Superman and Lois Lane relationship, since in Lana's opinion Lois is never there for Superman when he is down in the dumps and needing her.

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So there you have it. That was Pre-52 Lana Lang, given to us by Chuck Austen.

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>>86691574
Is he the same Chuck Austen who worked on Steven Universe?

His Superman and X-Men comics were so godawful I was surprised to see his name again.

>>86693071
>dat domestic Lana
Unf

>>86691574
>she "settled" for Pete (who was fucking Vice President/President of the United States!!!)

Compared to Superman? Settling.

>>86692143
>>Austen's Avengers Disassemled.

Please anon, tell me more.

>>86692993
Oh dat ass. Man, Wondie was always the DC's offcial cheesecake, right?

>>86692794

That was Joe Kelly, if i'm not mistaken. He was the one that also wrote that story where Superman and Wonder Woman are stranded for a thousand years inside the Norse Gods' pocket dimension where they're going through a constant Ragnarok cycle and over the years Wonder Woman tried to jump on Superman's bones.

Then there's also Jeph Loeb's run when Lois Lane started to act as a major bitch towards Superman and had sex with Lex Luthor, which in the end proved to be the Parasite disguised as Lois trying to make Superman's domestic life into hell by making him believe that his wife hated his guts and fucked Lex on the side.

>>86693932

That's Ivan Reis right there, so it's less WW being cheesecake and more she's being drawn by DC's Brazilian artists.

>>86693766
Holy shit. It is.

>>86692993

I like how that single page is in every tumblr, Youtube video, CBR thread regarding the SM/WW ship despite the later page completely wrecking any romantic inclination.

>>86693934
>Then there's also Jeph Loeb's run when Lois Lane started to act as a major bitch towards Superman and had sex with Lex Luthor, which in the end proved to be the Parasite disguised as Lois trying to make Superman's domestic life into hell by making him believe that his wife hated his guts and fucked Lex on the side.

That's one of those beautifully convoluted DC things where the only thing you end up processing is some fucking stupid plotpoint. In this case; Parasite fucked Lex Luthor!?

>>86694197

>Parasite fucked Lex Luthor!?

And he totally did. In the end Parasite dies and when Lex's people retrieve his body they find Lex's DNA inside it, which wasn't really necessary but it is still nice to be stated.

>>86694272
Son of a bitch, that made me spit out my drink!

>>86693884
Yeah, nothing showed up on google

Austen fucked over Hank Pym in his Avengers tenure too.

>>86693934
> IT'S REALLY ME, SMALLVILLE

This was when I realized Loeb was losing his fucking mind. His later tenure at Marvel just proved my suspicions.

>>86693934
>He was the one that also wrote that story where Superman and Wonder Woman are stranded for a thousand years inside the Norse Gods' pocket dimension where they're going through a constant Ragnarok cycle and over the years Wonder Woman tried to jump on Superman's bones.
I actually liked that, because Clark was cucking WW literally for thousands of years waiting for Lois. Issue ends with him hugging her and saying you have no idea how much i missed or something cheesy like that.

>>86697664

It was still shitty, for both Lois and, specially, WW. The fact that this shit was dragged up by other writers doesn't help.

>>86697664
I think you can do that love across millennia thing without dragging WW into it. I don't really like the temptation plot for Superman though. Seems trashy.

>>86693223
>>86693192
I remember these two. I thought they were interesting. Did they only appear in this comic?

>>86692993
wew

>>86693724

Seems like Lana had a legitimate reason to take issue with Lois.

For all she invested in Clark, she DOES deserve hm more than Lois. Even entitled.

>>86694272
Holy SHIT. With unnecessary details like that, you'd think THAT was written by Chuck Austen too.

>>86702886
>For all she invested in Clark, she DOES deserve hm more than Lois. Even entitled.

That's not how love works anon .

>>86692794
That's why I always hated the Superman/Lois marriage. It brought nothing but Marvel like melodrama in superbooks. It wasn't solved until Johns/ Busiek era where they ignored melodrama and didn't do anything stupid with their relationship.

I liked the Lana/Lois bitchfests from the silver age but otherwise the character is pretty useless.

Her insect queen persona had some fun Body Horror aspects about it though.

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>>86691574
UNHAND HIM, LEX LUTHOR!

>>86691852
>there was a clause in the CEO contract Lana signed when she stole LexCorp from him, saying that anyone caught helping Superman in any shape or fashion without Lex's expressed permission, is to be fired.
Hah, vintage Lex.