Worst Superman Stories?

[Gary]

Lissen up, son, because I'm only going to say it once: ARTISTS CAN'T WRITE. Well, not exactly true:  there's Jack Kirby, Eisner, and Jim Starlin and...oh yeah...NOBODY ELSE.

I think that's way too sweeping a generalization. There are plenty more artists who turned to writing and did at least a decent job at it. Just off the top of my head:

* Karl Kesel (Post-crisis, but still one of the best writers to work on Superman, IMO);

* George Perez;

* Frank Miller (I understand that people have problems with the kind of stuff he writes, and disagree with his usage of established characters, but I don't see how you can deny his ability);

Even Jurgens and Ordway aren't bad writers, IMO -- though the former isn't as good as he seems to think he is.

I think the real lesson here is that artists should not be automatically presumed to make good writers. They should have to prove themselves to the fans (and to the editors), just like anybody else.

[nightwing]

Dave Gibbons isn't bad at writing, either.  And I liked Walt Simonson better writing and drawing Thor than I did when he just drew other writers' stories (except maybe Archie Goodwin's Manhunter).

Getting back to What If? for a second, my big problem with so many of those stories was that they all turned out so negative.  

What if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four?  
They'd all die, that's what!

 What if the Avengers went to...
They'd all die!

Well then what if the X-Men...
Dead, dead, dead!

After awhile it seemed the bigger message of the series was, "Look, if anything happened at all different from the way we told you it did, you'd be really sorry, so stop asking already!"

For my taste, far too many Elseworlds take the same path.  The attraction for writers and artists seems to be that it's a way to do things with established characters that they couldn't do otherwise.  Which more often than not means, kill them.  Comics creators are a bloodthirsty bunch.

That said, I always liked What if #4 (I think), about Steve Rogers' life had he NOT been frozen in ice at the end of World War II.[/i]

[ShinDangaioh]

Osamu Tezkua is an extreme example that disproves the idea that artists can't write.  One does not have a museum put up in one's honor for being mediocre.  

There was a Superman story that really irked me that John Byrne wrote.  It was in Action Comics Weekly.  He said that the Metal Men were plastic and that they did not have the rights that humans did(Byrne seems to have a hatred for the mechanical heroes), despite they got citizenship in the world in their last comic.  Superman told them: You are nothing more than machines.

[Captain Kal]

ShinDangaioh, that's just more of Byrne's personal POV that he dragged over from his Marvel days re: the Metal Men.  Despite decades of great work from writers far superior to Byrne that firmly established the worth, humanity, and rights of artificial lifeforms at both DC and Marvel, Byrne resolutely treated those characters as toasters.

Recall the abominations he visited upon the Vision at Marvel.

What he pulled with the Metal Men is pretty tame in comparison.  I don't think it was Action Comics Weekly yet when he wrote that Metal Men team-up.  He referred to some kind of polymer not specifically plastic for the basis of the Metal Men.  This was contradicted by what he actually showed in that very story: Gold/Mr. Ayou gave a 5 lb bar of himself as payment to Luthor's scientist to fix Tin.  It remained in gold form when it should have turned into the liquid polymer if separated from the controlling responsometer.  Moreover, that would have been pretty unethical to pay with something that really wasn't gold as it would be a form of counterfeiting. (OTOH, in my mind, the metal-emulating polymer should be far more valuable than gold or platinum, but that then raises the issue of the security of Magnus' technological secrets ... )

BTW, since it came up, it is noteworthy that he made his stand on androids not being truly alive as early as his MOS miniseries where his Superman has no qualms about destroying his Bizarro-duplicate citing it's just an android a step above a robot.

[Captain Kal]

IMHO, two of the worst Superman stories were Byrne's Superman and the Spectre team-up in Action Comics (which makes absolutely no sense if you think it through), and his farewell storyline about the new Supergirl (which also has so many plotholes you could drive an aircraft carrier through it).

[DoctorZero]

Getting back to What If? for a second, my big problem with so many of those stories was that they all turned out so negative.  

What if Spider-Man had joined the Fantastic Four?  
They'd all die, that's what!

 What if the Avengers went to...
They'd all die!

Well then what if the X-Men...
Dead, dead, dead!

After awhile it seemed the bigger message of the series was, "Look, if anything happened at all different from the way we told you it did, you'd be really sorry, so stop asking already!"

For my taste, far too many Elseworlds take the same path.  The attraction for writers and artists seems to be that it's a way to do things with established characters that they couldn't do otherwise.  Which more often than not means, kill them.  Comics creators are a bloodthirsty bunch.

That said, I always liked What if #4 (I think), about Steve Rogers' life had he NOT been frozen in ice at the end of World War II.[/i]

That was the basic premise of What If.  No matter what, it would have ended in disaster for the heroes in question.
I too liked What If #4.  It was one of the few in which it actually explored an interesting concept and saw it through.  
The Elseworld's stories has little interest in me.  Nowdays so many heroes undergo so many changes what's the point?  What is Superman and Lois got divorced?  Possibly they will (but more likely DC will reboot Superman again just to get him out of the marriage).

[Captain Kal]

Details on the Spectre story ...

The Spectre arrives in Smallville to find its residents apparently dead due to the resident Manhunter's (Whitney's) machinations.  The Spectre emphasizes that his mission is now restricted to avenging the unjustly deceased instead of evil in general.  The Spectre senses something strange about these apparent deaths and finds the souls are in some limbo-dimension before being well and truly dead.  It's still possible to retrieve the souls and save them.  He sends Superman there and remains undetectable to everyone else sensing something is amiss.  It turns out this is a trap for Superman as Whitney appears in the fake death dimensional plane and tries to kill Superman there.  The Spectre appears and visits his vengeance upon the hapless Manhunter.

Problems:

(1) How was Superman supposed to fall into this 'trap' in the first place?  He has no mystical senses to perceive it, nor does he have the ability to travel there even if he could sense it.  Clearly, Whitney did not plan on the luck of the Spectre arriving esp. since he was evidently surprised by the Spectre's attack.  The story only works if the Spectre happens to come to Smallville, but then it doesn't work because the Spectre wasn't part of Whitney's 'plan' to kill Superman.

(2) If the Spectre now has such a limited mission, he should have left there pronto the instant he realized that the people really hadn't died.  No actual unjust murders = no friggin' reason for our Spirit of Vengeance to even be in Smallville.  He really had no reason to destroy the Manhunter nor be involved at all at that point.

[Super Monkey]

Nearly everything I have read post-reboot was pretty much garbage, IMHO. Thankfully, for my sanity, I haven't read all that much and sold all the ones I did read on e-bay.  

All the Byrne issues were the worst and Dan Jurgens who tried very hard to out crap him.