LunarKnight

Because he's the villain now. Johns captures the heroic ideals of the Silver Age in the way he portrays his heroes. Often, this is with over the top villains, which is another common silver age trait.

The paradise dimension didn't kill her at all. She was simply dying, likely of natural causes. Alex told Superman she was dying because of the paradise dimension to drive him to restore Earth-2, but Lois still died, because the her location had nothing to do with her condition.

Honestly, I really enjoy Johns work primarily because he really seems to be the ONLY writer out there these days (among the big 2) who writes stories that, at the end of the day, have the heroes stepping up to the plate and being bright shiny paragons of truth and justice. Sure, he wrote the Blackest of nights and all that, but heroes of the story aren't dark; Barry is essentially the cheerleader of the story; fighting for the sake of buying Hal time to find an answer, which in the end, isn't in killing the big bad, but in forcing him to live. What I really enjoy in his work is that for the most part, he has his heroes fight the darkness, rather than be consumed by it.

Sometimes its tough to separate the intents of writers across big events. I find it interesting that your criticisms of Infinite Crisis all trace back to wanting the very things I got out of it. Part of this, I assume is that I didn't read Identity Crisis first (different author, for those keeping score). Identity Crisis is the defacto template of making heroes "realistic" by giving them unrealistic and contrived problems, and making them do bad things for the sake of being edgy.

I've long felt Infinite Crisis was and cry for sanity among the darkity dark madness. While I'm doing "for the record" note that the whole punching reality bit wasn't really portrayed that strongly in IC itself. Most of the garbage from it comes from DC using it as a blanket excuse to fix the plot holes of hack stories (Jason Todd) at which point, OTHER hack writers started using it as a shield for their own sloppy retcons. Back to IC proper though, I never dwell much on Superboy and Luthor, but you make some interesting points about darkening them. Personally I sort of felt they were mostly scapegoat villains to get the point of the story across without darkening Kal-L.

To me, the story of Infinite Crisis is essentially your post. It's the silver age screaming at modern comics to stop the darkity dark nonsense and get back to being heroes again. For the most part, by the end of that series, that's exactly where we're left off. Batman realizes he needs to stop being the cranky recluse and reconnect with his family again, Superman realizes that his greatest power is serving as a symbol of incorruptible good, and Wonder Woman remembers that being the ambassador is more important than being the warrior. Despite where the book begins (which I believe I referred to as the defacto template for "realistic" heroes) the series ends on perhaps the brightest moment since hair bands walked the earth.

So what happened? Most of the rest of DC's authors didn't agree and used the One Year Later bit to set things back the way they wanted. Morrison put Batman in a cave for year where he neglected his kids and went all kinds of crazy, Superman did ok under Johns until DC went nuts with New Krypton, and Wonder Woman wound up killing a whole bunch of her people as they leveled Washington, DC. I still think Johns writes pretty bright stories overall, often as loving tributes and reimaginings of Silver Age concepts, but that can only go so far when you've got high profile authors turning Speedy into a mecha-armed heroin junkie and writing entire arcs worthy of the Super-[censored]ery archive.

As for, Superboy Prime? Honestly, IDK. I sort of assume that Johns originally used him because he assumed no one cared. I do generally find him an interesting concept, and I suppose I find him largely inconsequential. Personally, I appreciate him as a reality check. That if he strikes close enough home to offend me, I should probably rethink how seriously I'm taking comics in the first place. I suppose if I had a great reverence for the character I might have a different view, but personally I honestly just don't care enough to, well... care.

IDK, I can see getting that impression out of Scott from the videogame, but he's pretty darn whiny and uncertain in the comic. He only has flashes of determination here and there, but for the most part, "scared lil manchild" is exactly how I'd describe the guy. Most of the book beyond the first chapter involves Scott failing at something (usually a fight with an Ex) and then giving up and moping until one of his friends (usually Wallace) gives him the kick in the pants he needs to win the day. Particularly in the last 2 chapters he spends a LOT of time escaping his problems instead of facing them.

As far as I'm concerned, the only great failing of the movie was the ending. There's a couple big failings that mostly revolve around the idea that Ramona and Scott don't come together in a very conclusive or convincing way. I've never been a fan of the twins, but it really does need to be clear at that point that she turned them against each other and 2 timed them. Likewise, Ramona REALLY needed to help take down Gideon, as her asserting control was pretty pivotal in solidifying their relationship. Other than that, I really don't get why Nega-Scott gets tossed in the end there. He would have been the perfect had he been fought while Scott was dead before using the 1-up, and would have carried a lot more meaning that way.

I pretty much have as well. Still reading Invincible Iron Man and X-Factor, but that's a huge drop from what I was reading not so long ago.

I really need to shift away from supers for a little while. Marvel seems pretty devoid of quality these days, leaving DC to pick up all the slack. Fables has always been one of those things that I want to start at the beginning on, which is why I never start it at all.

By "wishlist" I meant "currently sitting in the closet waiting for Christmas".

Picked up Small World for the family over Thanksgiving on a Black Friday sale. Fantastic little game of territory control with outstanding personality and artwork. I'd highly recommend the race expansions, as they add a lot more player interaction, and at least 1 guaranteed use of "they're after me lucky charms!"

Luckily it DOES end with "The Venture Bros Will Return".

Absolutely fantastic finale though. No big gotcha like the previous three, but far more plot threads to work with and a ton of great references, cameos and just great moments.

"Don't tell Secret President"

FWIW, Peter's new girlfriend dressed up as Black Cat for Halloween in the last issue.

While New Coke wasn't actually designed to manipulate customers into caring about Coca-Cola Classic again, most companies learned it was an effective tactic.

Given everything else going on in comics in the 90's and the general vibe of the 90's, the Cyborg Superman wasn't THAT hard to consider plausible.

Also, the author of this list completely misses the point of Ozy's alien squid...

He's not. He's faking a year long recovery because Vicki Vale had made the connection between him and Red Robin.