Let me make a prediction right here: in 20 years, nobody will remember Morrison's ALL-STAR SUPERMAN at all, but people will
still be talking about Johns's ACTION and Busiek's SUPERMAN.
This is what you're saying:
He's prolly gonna have Bizzaro's eating people.
This, on the other hand, is all I'm hearing:
"Think Dawn of the Dead meets Roger Rabbit on a square planet"
Now here's one place where we agree. MUST Geoff Johns use the Bizarro World, easily the most annoying and unfunny element of the Pre-Crisis mythos? It was cute to see a square earth as an easter egg in INFINITE CRISIS, but this is going too far.
I have faith, however, because of Johns's mindblowing talent, that he can turn it around and do something really cockeyed and strange. If anybody can do it, Johns can. I mean, this is the guy that in the pages of JSA took Ma Hunkel and played her straight, making her a wise, matronly character that the other JSA females confide in as a mother figure, a cross between Mrs. Cleaver and Guinan from TNG.
I just got finished rereading Geoff Johns's General Zod story arc, and I was impressed at how well he was able to build his story up with gradual revalations. There was always something strange every few pages. One thing I can say is that Johns is not predictable; the revalation on the last page of General Zod took me totally off guard, and he's great at posing questions that make you jumpy to know the answer to.
The thing I found most interesting about Johns's ACTION COMICS so far is how he alternates between Superman as a person with very human paternal instincts and a desire for companionship, and a heroic, can-do classic Superman. In other words, Johns toggles between Superman as a very lonely person, and Superman as an action hero like the Lone Ranger or Tarzan.
I just got around to reading the first issue of Johns's return to JSA from a couple months ago, and my God, does it ever start out strong. As great as I found Paul Levitz's JSA story arc with the Earth-2 heroes vs. the Gentleman Ghost, the traditional JSA characters and long-term story arcs you read the book for were absent. It didn't "feel" like JSA, strangely enough. I read the book for Sand's problems, the turmoil of Atom-Smasher, Black Adam's gradual heroic turn, and the incredible, doesn't-take-crap Wildcat, who took out the entire Injustice Gang by himself on a motorcycle (wow!). The "caper" tales of Levitz were fun, but I want to know what the gang's up to.
In his JSA, Johns delivers. In ONE PAGE, we know everything we need to know about who Ma Hunkel's grand-daughter is, which is a great act of characterization, even down to the "Defying Gravity" lyrics she was humming. It takes a lot of skill to make something as ordinary in superhero comics as flying feel extraordinary, but that moment when she was pushed off and flew instead of fell was triumphant. If it was a movie theater, people would have cheered.
To say nothing of the cliffhanger ending. BAM! Mr. America falls in through a glass window. If that wasn't enough, there were the weird little panel snippets at the end to make me crazy to know what's going on.
