No argument there. And I understand eliciting some level of understanding and sympathy for him, as well. I just think it's excessively optomistic to assume there's any likelihood this guy is going to get better. Like you said, that requires effort, and someone lazy and cowardly enough to take out all their frustrations on their spouse doesn't strike me as the kind of person willing to work hard to change that.

A very powerful storyline indeed.  

I don't have much to add since I think you've covered things extremely well here, but a few points which stand out at me:


"While I personally would have handed it to anyone other than this office's weakest writing and penciling team, Weezy and Boggy manage to do a great job with it, anyway."

I think that Bogdanove's Superman with his ballooned up physique made him the best artist to set-up the "I was going to save the world, right all wrongs" approach outlined in part one before Jurgens with his more down to Earth rendering came in with the second half to deflate that guy.  Plus, seeing as how Bogdanove has been injecting little Wayne Boring/Al Plastino flourishes into his work since day one, it would have been odd to have passed the squinty-eyed Superman flashback to Action Comics #1 assignment on to someone else.  


Speaking of that flashback...

There's a part of me that bristles at the revelation that the wifebeater Superman kicks around in that flashback later murdered his wife.  There's a much larger part of me that agrees with Jurgens taking this direction since it underscores the fact that good intentions can only accomplish so much, but still, I'm not so sure that the homage was necessary.  "Wow, Dan - that was an incredibly affecting story you just told.  I gotta say - seeing Superman screw up like that so badly early in his career hit me like a ton of bricks."  "Hey don't blame me for that - blame Siegel and Shuster!"

On the other hand, it does finally merge the spirit of the original Superman with his Post-Crisis incarnation if only to make an argument for why that guy can't stick around.  A Superman who'll grab the Mayor by the scruff of his neck, take him to the morgue, and force him to stare into the faces of people killed by drunk drivers allowed to act with impunity is going to be hunted by the police day and night and not starring in the stories this team wants to tell, but it's nice to get confirmation that that guy is still inside him somewhere.


"Just checked: six issues 'til Doomsday..."

With The Death of Superman leading into Funeral for a Friend leading into a brief hiatus leading into Reign of the Superman...  I'm worried that Andrea Johnson is going to be forgotten about.  Not that I expect a sequel to happen, but will the team remember that Clark and Lois should be checking up on her from time to time or does that get swept under the rug what with the distraction those major events will have upon this little two-parter six weeks away from Doomsday?

This, along with Clark's raw emotional reactions to injustice and failure, are why "Crisis at Hand" is my absolute favourite Superman storyline. As I've gotten older, the typical superhero formula has staled a lot for me; I prefer more grounded stories which emphasize human interest over fisticuffs and cosmic bruhaha. And with creators like Grant Morrison on one end of the spectrum and creators like Zack Snyder on the other, I find depictions of Superman which capture the genuine essence of the character very hard and exceedingly rare to come by (according to my own idiosyncratic tastes, admittedly). So this just strikes all the right chords for me.

Cosmic stuff and fisticuffs can work but there needs to be a purpose. The first three phases of the MCU, for all their flaws, told a complete story with a beginning a middle and an end. As such the final battle with Thanos felt like something earned, and it really felt like nothing would ever be the same again.

I've actually been following a fan story called the Golden Age of Heroes (which is basically a reimagining of the golden age of heroes with a combination of goofiness and grounded storytelling). One of the plot points is that Superman blatantly intervenes in a case modelled after George Stinney en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Stinney. At one point Superman does act like his Golden Age self (strong arming the actual killer into confessing his crimes to save the innocent kid from being executed) but in the context of the story it works because a.) the situation is charged enough that Superman has no time for bullshit (he's found the killer's lair and the trophies he's taken from other victims beforehand, and this is AFTER he's seen the misery the 14 year old kid endured while hiding on the Kent farm) and b.) it's implied that it WILL have consequences later on (a lot of southern politicians are furious that he dared intervene and expose the ugliness and hypocrisy, and this gives people in the government who hate Superman more room to push for funding to their projects. General Lane gets more funding for his work as a result).

Moreover, the actual Stinney case was one of those cases so utterly fucked up that it would have been entirely justified for Golden Age Superman to do his thing (even by the standards of racial injustice in the south it was pretty bad)

This inadvertently reminds me that it was only a few months earlier when Clark explained to Lois that To Kill A Mockingbird was the book that shaped him most. So righting injustice has always been central to who he is, but Atticus Finch isn't able to strong arm; he was to work within the system and accept that system even when it fails to bring justice by the close.

Thanks for the information about this alternate take. I may need to check it out.

Actually, I suspect that our opinions on his work are pretty much identical though I might sound a little more appreciative of his style here in 1992 than perhaps you feel is warranted due to my knowing how much cleaner what we're getting now is compared with what we'll be getting once the 90's are in full grotesque swing (think "EXXXTREME TO THE MAXXX, DAWG, YO, YO, YO!").  I'm sorry to say it, but once this thread hits The Mullet Era, Bogdanove's comparatively toned-down renderings at this point are going to throw you for a loop.  Yes - what we're getting now is about as restrained as Bogdanove's work will get for quite a while.    

I'm reminded of an exchange from Frasier:

Niles:  Remember, Frasier that sometimes "less is more".
Frasier:  Ah yes, but if "less is more", think of how much "more" more is.

It bugs me because I think a lot of Bogdanove's faults (and some strengths) stem from an overenthusiasm for his work - this is a guy who clearly LOVES Superman and wouldn't think to deign the character by drawing him less than eleven heads tall and thirty balloons wide.  Why it carries over to his other characters, I have no idea, but there's something about his style which makes it very obvious to me that this is a labour of love for him.  A very sloppy love best kept behind closed doors perhaps, but love nonetheless.

I'll also admit that his occasional touches of Al Plastino, Max Fleischer, Wayne Boring earn a lot of points with me.  Here's a team which can find only very limited work for Curt Swan and yet here's Bogdanove sneaking Al Plastino profiles and Max Fleischer layouts in the backdoor whenever he can - that I appreciate.

I guess that's a lot of backhanded compliments on my part - he does have his moments, generally during slugfests - but yeah, I don't know if I'd consider myself a defender so much as a guy who appreciates the earnestness, love, and effort going into his work which isn't really translating well to the page.

No problem at all, my friend.  You'd do the same for me.