Originally Posted by
Dr. Ellingham
you can go back 50 years and find good storytelling - O'Neil/Adams, Englehart/Rogers, etc. The dialogue might be outdated / creaky from a craft standpoint, but the stories themselves hold up. So much so you can update them and they still work - as WB did with Batman 89, TAS, the Batman films by Nolan, etc. Whereas O'Neil's Green Lantern, his Superman, his JLA? Not as great, doesn't hold up nearly as well.
Superman? How far back can you go to find a Superman story that holds up today- that creators still revere, that we can point to as inspiration for a good adaptation? The most beloved is the Christopher Reeve film, which borrows the broad strokes from Siegel and Shuster, and invents the rest. And that was 40 years ago.
This is also why there are so few good Superman runs. He's hard to write, he demands both scale and heart, and for these and many other reasons few creators are up to the challenge. So stand-alone stories are the most revered - Alan Moore, All-Star Superman, Red Son, etc. In fact, on the animated All-Star DVD Bruce Timm told Grant Morrison he wished that story had existed before they made the 90s cartoon, because that was the story that really allowed Timm to "get" Superman. And Timm's a highly gifted storyteller and adapter of material, as well. Superman simply demands the very best of anyone who would dare write him.