Who Took The Super Out Of Superman?

A very long, detailed, brilliant look into just what might be the problem with Superman's sales troubles in the comics:

http://rikdad.blogspot.com/2011/07/who-took-super-out-of-superman.html

An excerpt:

In my view, the greatest source of Superman's decline, though there are many to point to, has come from his relative decline in the DC Universe as a whole. His absolute power-down in the Eighties still left him more physically powerful than during the early years of the era of his uncontested dominance from 1938-1963. But as the post-Crisis era has gone on, Superman has encountered more and more situations where he is physically outclassed by recurring characters.

Consider Superman's first appearance in each JSA/JLA team series. In his only JSA adventure, he won an easy victory. In his first JLA action in 1960, he arrived at the end to mop up. In his first JLA action in 1997, he was immediately taken prisoner, and remained a captive while Batman began defeating the enemy.

Consider Superman's appearance in a 1977 issue of Flash. The speedster, running from a powerful energy fist, ran to Metropolis and led the fist into the back of Clark Kent's head, where it splattered apart. Superman's appearance in Flash Rebirth showed Barry Allen insulting Superman as he left the Man of Steel in his dust.

Consider Superman's easy dominance over his JLA teammates in 1963, and consider Captain Marvel decking him with a sucker punch in 1997.

Consider Superman's 1977 appearance in Batman, where his powers allowed him to laugh his way through a faked physical defeat while wearing the Batman costume with Superman's appearance in later Batman stories such as Hush and Frank Miller's Dark Knight stories where Batman manages to use his tools to beat up Superman.


Consider Superman mopping up a whole crew of White Martians in 1977's JLA #144 and his helpless captivity by White Martians in 2001's JLA #57 as well as the observation by J'onn J'onzz in 2006 that Superman is perhaps not even a rival to the Martian Manhunter.

Consider Elseworlds where Superman is tortured and killed by Gog, or left by Lois Lane for being pathetic and self-pitying when he loses his powers.

Heat flows from a warm body to a cold body. And DC writers, when they have another character's success to call their own, routinely use Superman as a punching bag to demonstrate that the other character is worthy of esteem. In many cases, as with Martian Manhunter, whatever is lost in Superman's stature is certainly not being made up for with the minor character's sales.

The saddest part of this guy's work, and FACTS, is that it would just be ignored at DC. If Dan Dildo, Jim "I hate Superman" Lee, Geoff "Singer-Lite" Johns or Grant "I've Lost My Fucking Mind" Morrison ain't saying it, it ain't true. How can so many people at DC be so fucking blind?

In the end, they just shift it right back to their new company mantra:

I think part of that could be attributed to most writers thinking Superman is too powerful and so they always have to find a way to take him out of the story so that they can still mine drama.

People suck Darwyn Cooke's balls for New Frontier, but that's possibly the most egregious example of the above in recent memory. And the hell of it is that the Fleischerish Superman he ran with looked awesome, was tough and ready to throw and just cooler than Superman had been in the comics for quite some time up to that point.

It doesn't help that New Frontier is a fucking snooze once the story kicks into high gear.

And guess who's fault it is for these writers even getting to write Superman? DC Comics. What kind of idiots stick a writer on a book KNOWING they are limiting themselves right out of the gate?

Oh, that's right. Dan Dildo does.