Superman Through the Ages! Forum

http://comics.ign.com/articles/763/763340p1.html

I'm really torn. Those pages are just fantastic! They look great!  ..but this is also mainline DCU.  :-\

Plus it is Mark Waid who can talk better than he can write.

What exactly is your problem with Waid? Other than the Kingdom Come sequel, I can't think of anything he's written that I haven't liked.

Flash, Legion, Kingdom, to name a few.

*shruggs* I'll give you the Kingdom, but I liked his run on the Flash, his current run on the Legion (especially since Kara and Mon joined), Valor, the issues he co-wrote of the previous Legion, and other than a few odds and ends I like Birthright.

I think his best work is yet to come since several screwball story restrictions have been lifted in the wake of the recent Superman revival.

I have a difficult time when I try to figure out whether or not I like Mark Waid's stories.

I thought his early pre-Crisis Superman back-up pieces were well intended but poorly executed.

He did a great job as editor, working on stories like the unpublished Secret Origin of the Legion Clubhouse and Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot.  I enjoyed them all very much.

I loved reading Flash.  I thought it was completely brilliant and it was the only thing that kept me involved with comic books during a pretty bad time in the industry.  It captured that "can't wait until the next issue!" excitement.

Kingdom Come was an absolute mindblower.  Probably the best and most exciting comic I had ever read up to that time.

Silver Age and Kingdom were very disappointing and I felt that they contained a lot of spite and vindictive anger.  I did not enjoy them at all.

The four-part Identity Crisis arc was a mixed bag - it had a lot in common with Kingdom and with his pre-Crisis Superman work.  In fact, Identity Crisis (where Superman's mind is trapped in the body of a powerless young kid) used a very similar theme from an earlier Action Comics back-up feature that he wrote where Superman and the alien hero "Vaalor" switch minds.  Waid also kept re-using this idea of an impressionable young Superman fan working with (or against) Superman; which was in at least one of his Bronze Age tales, Kingdom, and Identity Crisis.  Strikes me as a possible Mary Sue.

But everything Superman-related since then has been fantastic: His portions of the Superman 2000 proposal, Birthright, and the Young Luthor in Smallville story.

And although I really like what I've read of his work on Legion of Super-Heroes, for some reason I'm not regularly buying it.

The Brave and the Bold looks like it'll be pretty good - especially with Pérez on board. 

The event Silver Age was not very good, but the special "Dial H for Hero" was awesome. And don't you forget his run on JLA, JLA: Year One, Impulse and The Flash and Green lantern: The Brave and The Bold miniseries. And his article on Superheroes and Philosophy book. Empire is for mature readers, but very well done. And his stories have the sense of optimism, creative ideas and heroic ideals that we all love. Geoff Johns should learn from him...