I think the problem with that perception is that the character has appeared SO many times in comics and has been represented by so many different artists and writers. When you're depicted that often and in that many varieties, it's easy to point to all of the stories you didn't like as "proof" that the character is now written poorly.
Speaking only for myself here but I've read so many superman comics (in both english and arabic) ranging from the golden to silver to bronze and finally post crisis eras and I comfortably concluded that good superman stories are sadly rare while great ones are an exception to the rule.
Some people I talk to , surprisingly, to me, prefer the old ways, meaning, that they wanted a repeat of the past in tone and presentation. They also prefer the Roger Moore 007 over Craig... which tells you something. Moore's Bond was "fun" for the times but wouldn't fly now, IMO.
I see no reason to rehash exactly what came before and I for one am glad they chose this new path to explore.
I don't want you guys to get me wrong here, I like the bronze age stories in a
"it's so silly it's actually fun" sort of way but no way in hell would I want that kind of story telling now because it simply does NOT work.
With saying that however I do miss some aspects of that era's superman namely his great intellect, I miss that more than anything!
Superman to me has always been a thinker, somebody who gets around almost impossible situations because of his great mind, not just his superpowers but when Byrne revamped the character he took away that aspect of the character and I always resented his take because of it.
One of the reasons why I liked the STAS take so much was because supes was remarkably smart in that show, possibly due to the fact that he was so depowered that he had to rely on his brain more often.
The STAS superman was so smart infact that he showed up Batman in the world's finest and in the demon reborn episode batman begrudgingly admitted that superman's quick thinking surprised even him.
Intellect is in my opinion the most attractive quality about a character and it's one of the major reasons why Batman is so appealing to so many people, because while the audience know he'll pull through and win everytime they'll still stuck around to find out just how he'll do it.
It's for that reason that I love Shelock Holmes so much and why I loved superman as a kid when I read those old bronze age issues.
Now however superman doesn't use to his mind because the writers don't use theirs; a continent made of krpytonite? no prob! Superman just powers up alittle bit and comes down and LIFTS the whole thing, kryptonite and all!
An antigravity beam pinning him to the ground while being weakened by krptonian atmosphere? Again no biggie, superman will just shout like a viking and torpedo the thing with abit of an effort, and it's because of that the audiences leave the theater thinking superman is boring and I can't blame them for it one bit.
^ Exactly.
I recently tried rereading John Bryne's run. I ended up becoming so bored with it, that I moved on to something else. This run is one of, if not the definitive runs for modern Superman, not just some bad story
Byrne's run was interesting for the time (due to the novelty of the whole thing) but it's almost unreadable now.
Even though there are a few great modern Superman stories, I still think much of modern Superman is inferior, especially on a conceptual level.
Totally agree!
