The single worst Superman story ever written. (Yes, worse than Returns.)
Superman decides to walk around the US haranguing aliens, spouting broken aesops and cheating at basketball…because a woman approached him - just after the whole massacre of New Krypton - and got in his face for not x-raying her husband and spotting his cancerous tumour when they met him the year before. [edit - OK so this is mostly for other people’s benefits, not Skald’s, at this point.]
See, I’m torn about this story. On the one hand the way it’s written is silly. It ignores the smartest element of the post-Crisis reboot: the admission that Superman is not a god, that there are plenty of things he cannot do. He’s had to watch impotently while someone else fought to save Lois from a gunshot wound, because he didn’t know what the fuck to do; and at the same time he not only didn’t respond to wounded onlookers (they were soldiers in an Iraq-analogue) begging him to heal them, but he showed no evidence that he even heard them – because, hey, his wife was possibly dying and he was helpless to do anything. That was pretty much on-target.
On the other hand … as some character or other has observed, what’s really happening is that he’s in the midst of a huge amount of grief, for his father and for his fellow Kryptonians. And though I didn’t care for the idea of there being a community of other Kryptonians (Byrne had it right that he should be absolutely the last one), I think the notion that he’d have a near-nervous breakdown and need a sabbatical from demigodhood is on target.
I agree that it’s poorly written, though. JMS’s Wonder Woman run is much better.
ETA: But the single worst Supes story ever written has to be something by Chuck Austen. My cite is the name Chuck Austen.
I’ve never understood why so many people have a problem with this. Superman’s powers are fueled by the sun. Right before that scene, he flies through the clouds and soaks up as much power as possible. He pretty much came back down as Super-Superman, and even then he winced a bit while lifting the island.
Moments earlier he’d been close to death. He was in the sunlight for only a few seconds; it’s hard to believe that he soaked up so much that he was mightier than he was before he arrived on the island in the first place. And the ENTIRE ISLAND WAS MADE OF KRYPTONITE. When he got there the first time, exposure to it was enough to turn him into a mortal inside of a minute. (And, oddly, he didn’t notice till Lex smacked him, when always before he’s shown physical pain by being in proximity to kryptonite.)
It’s unneccesary for the island to be made of kryptonite in the first place. It would be easy for Lex to have only had a shard of the glowing rocks in the first place and to have used the crystal to make a kryptonian (but not kryptonite) city with it – something akin to to the fortress. Making the island kryptonite invites problems for no reason.
So you’re saying a movie about a super-strong alien who can breed with humans, that was made in Hollywood, has some logistical inconsistancies.
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.
As an aside, I’ve heard that in some continuities Superman (under that persona, not as Clark Kent) has studied medicine and earned an MD, so as to be better at saving lives.
And he skipped out of the hospital without even a thank you note.