Gerry no write ARAK. Roy write ARAK.
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The one I'm thinking of is ARAK, SON OF THUNDER #7, which was written by Conway over a Thomas plot. Arak said -
with a totally straight face here - "By Thunder, I'll ne'er understand you civilized men."
Arak was this way under Thomas, too, but under Thomas at least there was a personality about him that kept him from being a Sword & Sorcery cliche.
Ok...
You know, Johns claims that he is a big fan of the Silver Age, but all he ever does it take some odd character from the 60's and write them completely out of character the kills them or makes them into a killer.
Earth-2 Superman and Lois Lane were created as tributes to the original Golden Age versions. They were two of the characters from the greatest comic book universe ever created: The Pre-Crisis DC Universe. The big bad wolfman, saved them for a reason, just in case anyone wanted to bring them back. Johns did.. just to kill them off!
Superboy-Prime was created a tribute to the Silver Age Superboy and was one of the final characters created by Elliot S! Maggin. The wolfman saved him, just in case someone wanted to use him again, and boy did Johns ever use him, by writing him completely out of character and making him into a gore crazed serial killer!!!
Finally, there was A Luthor of Earth-3, who's father was a Superhero and Mother was Lois Lane, on Earth-3 ALL Luthors were pure good and all Earth-2 hero counterparts were evil, that's Earth-3 in a nutshell. Johns, I guess, never read a Earth-3 story in his life, and figured, hey he is a Luthor so I guess he must be a bad guy, and missed the whole point of the character and wrote him completely out of character and of course got him killed!!!
You know for a guy who is such a big pre-crisis fan he sure went out of his way to kill off all the remaining pre-crisis characters, well expect for the one he turn into a gore-craze killer. Speaking of which, Johns answer for why DC has sucked for the past 20 years was because they sucked on Purpose!!! You see it was all part of the big plan, you see Superboy-Prime was punching some invisible wall, that explains it. That has to be up there with the worst ideas ever in the history of comics.
My question wasn't really answered, was it?
Though I do agree with you that in the last two issues the series tried to do too much in too little, and the send-off for Earth-2 Superman could have been better.