Could have Geoff Johns have saved the pre-Flashpoint Superman?

[superduperman]

Speaking for myself, I certainly dont see him as being bland and boring during the entire 25-ish years of post-Crisis. I think that began sometime after Our Worlds At War, early 00's or so.

The issues I take with post-Crisis as a whole have more to do with direction and concept. For example, I think that the idea that "Clark is who I am, Superman is what I can do" is not only weaker from a storytelling perspective, but its also ridiculous when you really consider who we're talking about, where he's from, and how his biology would function. But those are things that I can overlook for good writing, such as we saw during the 90's Triangle Era. Its a matter of foundation; post-Crisis had some great stories and easily had the best supporting cast in the character's history, there's a lot of good stuff there, but the foundation was built on sand and that made it much easier for the whole thing to sink when lesser writers came on.

One of the points I've always made about the post-Crisis Superman is that I feel they stripped away too much and took away some of their own playground. Krypton was a wasteland that no one was interested in flashing back to. His childhood was normal and therefore boring. The idea of him being a jock in high school just feels wrong on a number of levels. Not the least of which being the fact that it feels like an abuse of his powers and he was cheating. I've pointed this out before but by the mid-nineties, they kept trying to find ways of sneaking some of the SA stuff back in. You don't give Superman electrical powers if you have a lot of other ideas lined up. Or have Brainiac from the future turn the city into the cartoon version. Or retroactively make Krypton like the SA version. These are the actions of people who don't know what else to do. I get that after Crisis they wanted to run as far from the SA as possible but there is such a thing as going too far in the other direction. Don't get me wrong, I liked some of the ideas that came out of the Byrne reboot: His parents still being alive, Lex as a corrupt billionaire, even him getting married seems like a mature route for the books to go in. But when you take away half his history, you have to replace it with something else and they didn't do that.

[Cipher]

these people won't like superman anyway.

I am one of those people. I like Superman now.

[Dataweaver]

What does "story over continuity" really mean??

I take it for granted that if using a new continuity then writer is free, indeed expected to, come up with good stories that are not consistent with old continuity.

But can story be really, really good if it just contradicts known facts in present continuity without any coherent explanation??

I don't think it can. If a story is so good that it must be told...but is inconsistent with a particular character or setting...then tell it in another setting using a different character.

Deep down think "story over continuity" sounds great...but is actually yet another excuse for lazy writing.

Pre-Crisis Superman had his Imaginary Tales; post-Crisis had its Elseworlds. There has always been an outlet allowing the writers to tell stories without being bound to continuity.

That said, the more continuity you have, the more stifling it becomes. There’s a reason why, when I laid out my proposal of what Superman’s backstory should look like, I selected a few key events in his life and left large swaths of “stuff happened” between them without going into detail about just what that stuff was. “Story over continuity” doesn’t mean “no continuity”; only that if the story is good enough, and the only things standing in its way are a couple of nitpicky details in an all-but-forgotten story that was published more than a decade ago, you should go ahead and publish the story anyway.

Conversely, if a writer wants to reference a nitpicky detail from a decades-old story that few people remember today, it’s incumbant on him to provide a recap; he should not just assume that the readers will know what he’s talking about.

[Loose Threads]

Conversely, if a writer wants to reference a nitpicky detail from a decades-old story that few people remember today, it’s incumbant on him to provide a recap; he should not just assume that the readers will know what he’s talking about.

I would prefer gatefold spreads in the closing pavges of the comic which would inform you of past continuity stories and just not bother with it in the dialogue.

[TheBatman]

To answer the question: No.

At the time, I enjoyed just about all of Johns' run. As a matter of fact, I still enjoy it, but for the most part, it wasn't strong enough to save Pre FP Supes.

The best things he did were his takes on Zod and Brainiac. After a few forgettable incarnations of Zod, Johns just gave us the simple, iconic version. And he made Brainiac badass again.

Other than that , I don't think he had a strong grasp on Superman's character, and very much relied on iconography from the Donner films. His Secret Origins arc was nice, but unremarkable and didn't bring anything fresh.

Honestly, I think Post Crisis/Pre Flashpoint Supes was tainted from the start, for reasons others have stated, and only got worse as time went on. Superman benefited greatly from The New 52 Reboot. Morrison made his character interesting again, apart from the Peter Parker-esque take on Clark.