"Everyone’s in agreement that the marriage and the emphasis on soap opera no longer seems to be working as well in the current market as it once did," the proposal stated.
Busiek said the marriage also makes dramatic stories a little harder to accomplish when writing Superman. "It's harder for Clark to be in a bind at work if he's got someone there covering for him. And of course, it's harder to do stories where he explores the idea of romance, or of finding a place to belong that isn't necessarily with Lois. It makes him feel less like an outsider, more like a homebody," he said. "Which is nice for those of us who like those things in our own lives, but it's not as dramatic. And while there's drama in marriage, it's not always easy to bring that kind of drama to the kind of sweeping action-adventure story that's usually Superman's wheelhouse.
"None of this is to say those challenges are insurmountable," Busiek added. "I wrote a married Superman and had very little difficulty with it. But the one pre-marriage story I wrote felt even sharper, livelier in the Clark/Lois relationship. It can definitely work either way, but I think there's more immediate juice in having their relationship unresolved, more competitive and subject to change."