Well. I certainly wasn't expecting an official DC title a few months ago where Superman, exposed as an immigrant, is told by a police officer that he isn't a 'real' member of the community like them good old boys who are so
tired of being mistrusted and not
worshiped like this damn lying
outsider masquerading as
normal, just because they use their power to keep the oppressed down and force them back in line the very moment no one's paying attention or there to defend them, and that they're going to force a confrontation illegally just to prove once and for all that they're unstoppable. No tricks, no mind control, no 'few bad seeds'. I was going to try and come up with a worst-case scenario for how simultaneously watered-down and mind bogglingly insensitive this could have been, but then I realized one of us just needs to email JMS and ask him how he would have done it.
I don't know that this is my favorite of Pak's stuff thus far, but it's certainly the most important, and the Superman story of everything in the New 52 thus far other than some of Morrison's stuff most likely to be remembered as a crucial work. And that it's a Superman story it's taking place in is all the more important, not just because of the immigrant angle, but because it's Metropolis that Pak and Kuder are doing a story about systemic police brutality in. Gotham, sure things are awful there, because
everything's awful there. But when it's a problem in the City of Tomorrow, there's no writing it off. And the whole "I can't fight, but I can stand with them" landed just on the right side of meta given the context.
In any case, if there's any justice, this (more specifically the actual moment in the book, through I couldn't find that) will wind up an iconic image on par with, if not holding the flag aloft or breaking the Kryptonite chains, at least "Try again, Doc!" and "It tickles!"