Grounded (and I'm not referring to the storyline)
Much like the interminable For Tomorrow storyline, DC stunt-casts with J. Michael Straczynski as the new writer of Superman to take what already feels like a departure from standard Superman story telling to allow an "auteur" writer to do whatever the hell he wants. Is this necessarily a bad thing? No, but JMS is already proving that bringing an big name in to "revitalize" one of the classic characters often results in the same old thing.
Attempting to "bring Superman back to his roots" (for seemingly the 10th time in about 8 years), the story revolves around Superman walking around America. He meets typical people, helps out along the way and learns more about the human condition all while the audience is falling asleep. The story is written well enough, but it fails to make an impact. Maybe this reviewer is a little bit jaded, but we've seen this all before. The so-called "Super-team" of the nineties (a time when there was a new Superman book every week and they were all carefully edited to flow into one another, creating a very realistic and consistent if not always interesting Superman universe) would often take an issue here or there to have Superman get back in touch with the hoi polloi (the semi-yearly Metropolis Mailbag stories come to mind). They were the dullest Superman stories, but with 4-5 books a month, they were usually a single issue every 50 or so. Now we have at least 6 or so coming our way.
I'll give JMS the benefit of the doubt to see if anything of interest comes up in future issues, but if the tone of this issue continues, Superman fans will be going into a coma until Christmas or so.
