Was the New 52 an objective mistake in regards to Superman?

[Kuwagaton]

. Other than that pretty much every aspect of him fit some form of a pre-Crisis element, so rather being completely different he was just different to a couple generations who weren't around for the way he used to be to see the similarities.

He grew up on a farm and thought of himself as Clark. The latter is a significant departure, isn't it?

I also think a lot of these changes are retroactively justified by tying it into some aspect of Pre-Crisis when in fact they were done haphazardly to generate outrage and media attention. When New 52 was announced, the lack of the marriage was a main point in the mainstream news media. That was the hook they used to get the story out. Same with the Wonder Woman relationship. Now not only is Superman not married, but Lois Lane is out, Wonder Woman is in.

Agreed. It wasn't your dad's Superman because five years later, he was still butting heads with authority. When was Superman a rebel and well known superhero simultaneously? Why would he be? Why have him brood about Lois dating someone else instead of being in love with superheroics or in a love triangle for two?

Now Morrison I can believe was going for a Golden Age Pre-War take. But if you are going to try to convince me that Scott Lodbell was purposefully trying to call back to pre-Crisis, I really will need to see some receipts for that claim.

On one hand following Morrison and mimicking the flavor is vintage Lobdell. But his "gonzo" approach was quite similar to what Bates and Maggin were doing after O'Neil.

The pre-Crisis parallels in the New52 are pretty plain to see if one cares to look, but let's not forget that the Super-line had been moving back in that direction for a good decade before the reboot hit. It started with the return of Silver Age Krypton, Krypto, and Kara Zor-El under Loeb in the very late 90's or early 00's (I forget when exactly), then spread to include Clark's time with the Legion, his powers manifesting at a young age, the death of a Kent (which seemed like trying to split the difference), and so forth under Johns. We saw post-Crisis Clark's power levels slowly rise across the 00's until he was, perhaps not at crazy Silver Age levels, but far beyond where he had started in 86.

I think it really startwd with Schultz directly having Superman come to see himself as Kal El just before Loeb started, but that's nitpicking if only to slight Berganza and his leadership. Same with Clark and the reboot Legion. The power creep, well, his powers always manifested at a young age and expanded after his death but DC clearly wanted the New Superman to hit the ground running so while he wasn't all powerful from the jump, he was nearer to pre crisis much sooner.

The rebel thing I can give Johns for... although his fellow pre crisis foremost fan Waid did do the xenophobia earlier in his own origin. But I think Johns is why it stuck more than any general attempt to go retro, as I guess I said above.