Lois Lane may be the greatest journalist in the history of comic book fiction, which is why Lois Lane is one of the most prominent standout characters in Superman continuity and even the wider DC Universe, despite not having superhuman abilities, or even being a superhero at all. Lois Lane doesn’t fight crime in a costume, she stands on the front lines and challenges even the most powerful people who step out of line with her investigative reporting.
Sometimes Lois Lane finds herself in mortal danger as a result of pursuing a particularly risky story for the Daily Planet, while other times the stories she tackles are just that: stories – ones with the kind of insight that can only be written by a journalist of her caliber. Here are Lois Lane’s 10 greatest moments as an investigative journalist in DC.
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10 Lois Lane Proves Her Investigative Chops Next To DC’s Greatest Detectives
Event Leviathan by Brian Michael Bendis and Alex Maleev
It’s no secret that the likes of Batman and the Question are some of the greatest detectives in the DC Universe, and Event Leviathan definitively adds Lois Lane to that list as well. The storyline begins with a series of attacks that Batman deduces center around Lois Lane herself. So, they team up to get to the bottom of what’s happening, with Lois Lane’s investigative skills proving integral to solving this deadly mystery.
The best part of this storyline? Even with her life in danger, with some of the world’s greatest heroes sweating bullets beside her, Lois still manages to not only figure out who Leviathan really is, but push it as a breaking news story on the Daily Planet website. Lane wasn’t assigned this story, she was experiencing it, and she decided it was a piece that needed to be written.
9 Lois Lane Single-Handedly Challenges World Powers
Lois Lane: Enemy of the People by Greg Rucka and Mike Perkins
This story takes place directly before and after Event Leviathan, which both allows Enemy of the People to stand out as its own story while also adding important details to the previous one. In both cases, Enemy of the People is one of Lois Lane’s greatest investigative reporter storylines, as she is single-handedly challenging world powers after digging into something as seemingly innocuous as a colleague supposedly taking their own life.
Enemy of the People shows that sometimes superpowers aren’t the end-all-be-all when it comes to world-class threats, as it turns out that it’s up to Lois to save Superman for a change, instead of the other way around.
8 Lois Lane Deduces Barbara Gordon Is Birds of Prey’s Oracle
Birds of Prey #102 by Gail Simone and Nicola Scott
In this issue of Birds of Prey, Barbara Gordon is being interviewed by Lois Lane for a story about a mysterious hacker with ties to the most powerful and influential superheroes in the world – including and especially the Justice League. While Lois doesn’t have any hard proof that this ‘hacker’ is Barbara, she does have heaps of evidence that would suggest Barbara is Oracle. And with every carefully worded, expertly delivered sentence, Lois gets closer to finding out for sure if Barbara truly is who she thinks she is.
This story is a game of conversational chess over a pleasant dinner, and it’s an absolutely thrilling display of Lois Lane’s investigative skills.
7 Lois Lane Takes On Terrorists & Super-Villains While on Assignment
Superman: Unconventional Warfare by Greg Rucka and Matthew Clark
Unconventional Warfare is a storyline that highlights both Superman and Lois Lane in the coolest possible ways, but also completely separately. Superman’s arc delves into his Kryptonian past. Meanwhile, Lois Lane is on assignment in the Middle East, covering the U.S. invasion of Umec (which is DC’s ‘Unnamed Middle-Eastern Country’ acronym/fictional location). It’s there that Lois faces the likes of terrorists and eventually super-powered individuals, and she has to do so all on her own.
This storyline allows Lois Lane to shine as an investigative reporter, and is one of the first that really pushes the boundaries of her reach as a journalist in the wider DC world.
6 Lois Lane Conducts an In Depth, Tell All Interview with Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman #170 by Joe Kelly and Phil Jimenez
This article assignment wasn’t about exposing war crimes, challenging terrorists, or outing a secret identity, it was just a story about a superhero, one that shined a light on every facet of her life. Lois Lane’s spread on Wonder Woman held nothing back. It wasn’t a fluff piece or a criticism, it was simply Wonder Woman – yours in truth.
While the article on Wonder Woman may not have been the most exciting piece of journalism Lois Lane can produce, it wasn’t any less investigative. People don’t offer the worst of themselves freely, not even near-divine heroines like Wonder Woman. That’s why it takes a skilled journalist to get them to open up about everything, and to do so in a non-intrusive and respectful way. And Lois Lane did so in spades.
5 Lois Lane Never Takes Anything at Face Value, Not Even Superman’s Secret Identity
All-Star Superman #2 by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely
In this issue of All-Star Superman, Superman tries to tell Lois Lane that he and Clark Kent are the same person – and Lois just doesn’t believe him. It’s not that she can’t believe him – indeed, she’s suspected as much for years – she simply doesn’t believe him without the proper evidence. There are so many instances where Superman and Clark were seemingly in the same place at the same time, which Lois had seen and believed at the time, meaning it would take more than Superman simply saying, “I’m Clark” for her to think this wasn’t some kind of facade.
Rather than making up her mind one way or the other, Lois Lane decides to do what she does best: investigate. While inside the Fortress of Solitude, Lois does her due diligence to get to the bottom of what’s actually going on, as the only way she’ll believe Superman actually is Clark Kent is if she can prove it.
4 Lois Lane Applies Her Investigative Talents FIghting in the Flashpoint Resistance
Flashpoint: Lois Lane and the Resistance by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Eddie Nunez
In the alternate reality created by Barry Allen in Flashpoint, Lois Lane is still an ace reporter for the Daily Planet, only the stories she’s sent to cover are ironically less severe than those of her Prime Earth counterpart. That is, until the gala she’s reporting on gets decimated before her eyes, resulting in Jimmy Olsen’s death and her unwilling relocation to a Themysciran refugee camp.
When it became obvious that Lois Lane needed to do more than simply report the news, she got involved in the resistance fighting against these warring ‘gods’ without even blinking. Lois Lane’s unyielding tenacity is usually aimed towards digging up the truth, but this story proves that it could just as easily be honed into violent action.
3 Lois Lane Busts a Mob Operation Without Even Trying
Lois Lane: Girl Reporter #1 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster
While the title of this 1940s comic strip certainly hasn’t aged well, Lois Lane: Girl Reporter definitely did the character justice as far as her ace reporting goes. In this particular story, Lois is told to write a piece in the ‘Housewives Marketing’ column of the Daily Planet, but when she goes to interview someone for the piece, she stumbles upon a business that’s a front for the mob.
Instead of passing this news story off to someone else, Lois decides to drop the column piece and dive head-first into this newfound investigation. This is one of the earliest stories starring Lois Lane, and it perfectly set the stage for the kick-ass journalist she’d become in the more modern DC comic series.
2 Lois Lane was an Ace Journalist Before She was Even a Reporter
Girl Taking Over: A Lois Lane Story by Sarah Kuhn and Arielle Jovellanos
Girl Taking Over is a fun look at Lois Lane’s modern-day origin story, as she’s just started working as an intern at a large newspaper with aspirations of breaking into the journalism field. Before this storyline even really takes off, Lois Lane immediately starts impressing professional reporters by spitting hot pitches during a morning meeting while passing out coffees.
The stakes are low, and the energy is high in this bright and ambitious take on Lois Lane before she gets her big break as a journalist at the Daily Planet, proving that she was truly born with the heart of a journalist.
1 Lois Lane’s Earliest Solo Storyline is Also Her Heaviest
Lois Lane: When It Rains, God Is Crying by Mindy Newell and Gray Morrow
‘When It Rains, God Is Crying’ is the first story in Lois Lane’s debut solo series (not counting the aforementioned comic strip), and it’s easily one of her heaviest storylines to date. Not only is there hardly a mention of any DC heroes, including Superman – indeed, even Clark Kent barely made an appearance – but the plot was decidedly realistic and gritty. Lois Lane is working on a news story involving missing children, using her investigative skills to unravel the mystery alongside the police.
Given that Lois Lane doesn’t have superpowers, her solo outings are usually more realistic. Sometimes Lois fits into the more fantastical narratives of DC Comics, but other times it feels more like she’s in a world all her own, breaking stories only she could write. But, no matter the storyline or circumstances, Lois Lane is easily one of, if not the greatest investigative journalists in comic book fiction, and these 10 moments prove it.
