Summer Lane

Summer Lane is a female character in the series Daria. She appears only once on-screen, a speaking appearance during the episode Lane Miserables.

Summer is in her early-to-mid 30s, according to Eichler, which means she was at school (maybe not the same year) at the same time as Kevin's mother and father.

Overview and Family
Summer is daughter of Vincent and Amanda Lane and the oldest sibling of Wind Lane, Penny Lane, Trent Lane and Jane Lane. She's shown contempt for Penny.

As a child, she was allowed to eat nothing but Pez for a whole year. (Lane Miserables) As a teenager, she attended Lawndale High and was loathed as a slacker by Ms. Morris. (See Jane Run)

Summer does not live in Lawndale now, but when Jane was younger Summer lived at home with some of her children - Jane used to help manage them until "they became old enough to run away" (Pinch Sitter). She has four children (The Teachings of Don Jake), though only two of them, Adrian and Courtney, are shown in the series or the books. Her children run away from home periodically and she has to get private detectives to find them. Why they run away is unknown, though in "The Daria Diaries" she abruptly dropped her other two children at the family home (when nobody was in!) while tracking Adrian and Courtney.

We don't know if she's married still, but a comment by Penny Lane refers to Summer having "experience" at failed marriages.

She referred to the family home as "the last place on Earth I want to be".

Glenn Eichler said Summer was the "Rita [Barksdale]" of the Lanes, meaning someone "losing their footing a bit, whether that meant dropping out of school, becoming a huge druggie, getting into a bunch of bad "all you need is love" relationships, or having any number of other experiences that their parents considered scandalous" (though without the "considered scandalous" part, knowing the Lanes).

Children of the Worn web business
On the old MTV website LaneBay, we find out Summer runs a web business called Children of the Worn (Summer Lane's Resale Shop)":

"A selection of toys and clothes from innocent times past -- before you lost control of your kids and they became cross-country runaways and you had to quit your job to chase them all the way to Amarillo, Texas where you found them at a truck stop fighting over a 72-ounce steak. So buy a squeak toy or something, won't you? My Visa balance is killing me."

In Fanfiction
Summer is often portrayed as a uncaring or negligent mother, thus her children running away.

In Nine-Eleven and Counting, by TAG, she is described as also having been neglected during childhood (along with her siblings) and that she has had children but failed to raise them.

She appears or is referenced in the works:


 * Nine-Eleven and Counting, by TAG;
 * The Fate that Summer Lane Deserved, by Shiva

Summer Lane in Fan art and comics

 * Summer has been depicted by Lilliane Grenier in several artworks found on Outpost Daria most notably "The Lane Sisters" and "The Lane family Portrait"
 * Summer and Penny appear in page 4 of Wouter Jaegers' Dariarotica comic Growing pains where the two of them refused the hand-me-down clothing offered by their mother on different occasions.