YA Weekend: Lois Lane: Cloudy With a Chance of Destruction (Novella) by Gwenda Bond
Lois Lane: Cloudy With a Chance of Destruction by Gwenda Bond
Genre: Young Adult, Leading Ladies
Series: Lois Lane
Publisher: Capstone (April 6, 2015)
Author’s Information: Twitter
Tiara’s Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Lois Lane: Cloudy With a Chance of Destruction is a short story tying in with Gwenda Bond’s novel Lois Lane: Fallout, which was released May 1st. This story takes place right before Lois, who is an Army brat, and her family moves to Metropolis where she’ll set root to become the Lois Lane that you love and/or hate. In a high school chemistry class, Lois finds herself in the middle of a turbulent love affair of two of her teen classmates, Mike and Sophie. What love affair at that age isn’t turbulent?
Sophie has decided that she’s had enough of Mike and his stupidity and dumps him during their lab project, and Mike tries to cajole Sophie into taking him back because their grade counts based on group effort (and Sophie is apparently something of an honor student), which he’s not willing to make if she’s not willing to take him back. In an effort to win Sophie back, Mike decides to bring an “awe-inspiring” experiment to school the next day to impress Sophie. Lois’ current residence is full of scientists, including Mike’s dad, and she has a bad feeling about what he’s carrying around in the bag.
I know Young Adult books are all the rage right now, but I’m not fond of them at this age (used to love them when I was younger) and I’m very particular about the ones that I read. I’ll be the first to admit that I can be harsher on them than I should be. That’s not to say that I haven’t read Young Adult books that I absolutely adore, but they are few and far in between. However, this was a cute story. I loved the burgeoning attitudes of the Lois that I’ve come to love in the comics. However, this still wasn’t really for me, and that’s because of two words: Clark Kent.
He’s not called out by name, and Lois only knows him from message boards they both frequent. I’m not the biggest Superman fan in general for various reasons, but my personal reasons for not caring for the character are not the reasons why I disliked his place in this short story. I wanted to read a story where Clark doesn’t factor into Lois’ life. True, I love Lois and Clark as a couple in DC Universe when they become adults, but what made me excited about reading a story about a young Lois was seeing her develop outside of Clark. Even in this story, Clark is her go-to texting buddy about all things science instead of allowing her be the little investigative reporter that lives in her.
Clark has been allowed to live his life before and even after Lois. Sure, she eventually shows up in many of his stories, too. However, he’s been still allowed to shape himself without Lois while in this story Lois immediately runs to him for help. That turned me off to this short story and has made me decide that I’ll pass on the novel as well. I don’t want a story where Clark is her secret internet buddy that gives her the answers she needs. I want a story about Lois showing her true skill and wit without having to send texts to Clark for science help.
Despite that, I do recommend this for fans of Lois Lane who want a spin on her story and how she became the biggest force The Daily Planet has ever encountered. I found this highly imaginative, and I loved seeing Lois Lane snarking and being “in-your-face” when it came to Mike’s craziness and gross behavior. She also showed that she’s fearless and can come up with solutions on the fly. I’d probably be more excited for reading the novel if it wasn’t for that one annoyance.
This short story was provided to me by Capstone through Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions expressed are my own.
The BiblioSanctum 
Ok so I get why he is there, they think it will sell better or whatever, but he should NOT be there
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I was thinking the same thing. They felt they had to add him to help the book sell and possibly because they need that “love interest” that so many YA books depend on, and nothing makes more sense than having Lois and Clark together. But he really doesn’t warrant a place in a young Lois’s story. I’m so disappointed.
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I’m very surprised to hear Clark is part of the story. For some reason, I was under the impression the Lois Lane:Fallout was about the time BEFORE she met Clark. I was anxious to read it, but now maybe not so much. And I totally agree with you, I am having trouble lately with YA feeling more on the “young” side than the “adult” side.
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I was under the same impression. As I said, they never specifically call him out by name and she’s only internet/texting buddies with him. She doesn’t even know his name, but with a screen name that’s something like Smallville1 who lives in Smallville, KS, it’s not hard to figure out who he most likely is for the readers. LOL. Fallout could possibly have her lose contact with Clark, but if I’m just going by this prelude to Fallout, I don’t think so. I’m not impressed with the idea of her texting “some guy” all the way in Kansas to help with her problems. Hey, he could even turn out to be Lex, but given some of the telling chats they had, it’s Clark. Disappointing. But it does at least sound like Clark might be a tinfoil hat conspiracy type. LOL.
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I’ve read like one YA book by Gwenda Bond and had no idea she did “comic-y” stuff like this, that’s pretty neat! And the whole Clark thing for some reason reminds me of those Mary Jane comics a while ago that were aimed at teenage girls. Since it’s MJ in high school, they really could have done anything they wanted with it, but in the end decided to tie it back to Peter Parker/Spidey (who really shouldn’t have been there either based on 616) because I think that’s what “everyone would have expected”. I suspect a similar marketing decision happened here.
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This is the very first thing I’ve read by her, and I may check out some of her other books because I enjoyed her writing style well enough. It just won’t be the Lois book.
The other site that Wendy writes for had an interview with here, and I don’t remember her mentioning Clark being part of the story:
http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2015/04/23/a-chat-with-lois-lane-fallouts-gwenda-bond/
However, even as just a chat buddy who may never show his face it’s dubious to me at best, and I’m sure it absolutely was done from a marketing standpoint. At the same time, it’s like your aim is girls and you still think girls only want to read the story if you have their male counterparts in there as well. How do you expect to break this expectation that these men just HAVE to be part of these stories for anyone male or female to be interested in the book? To me, it kind of sends out a mixed messages. LOIS IS GREAT. GIRLS ARE AWESOME… but we still need some Clark in there. Just as you stated, they could do ANYTHING in the world with the story and they fall back on Clark, even if he hasn’t had any face time. And I’m not really interested to see if he does or doesn’t factor into the main novel after this.
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