A Superman who cares about what he "means" more than saving people's lives. A Lois Lane who cares about getting her byline as soon as possible, at the expense of an entire town becoming instantly unemployed. And once again Superman, this time a Superman who doesn't care much about the environment. A Superman who doesn't fix anything, who doesn't clean anything up, but who rationalizes why nothing should change.

There are a lot of things that are "off" about this comic, and I don't just mean Superman's characterization. JMS seems to be intentionally writing Supes as if he was a bit confused, possibly due to a villain's mental influence. He isn't being outright mind-controlled, but it's obvious that something's wrong with Supes' noggin. That said, all of the logistical and moral problems featured in Superman 707 are certainly not intentional on JMS's part. And even to the extent that some of them may be an intentional effort to portray Supes as confused, everything is handled so ham-fistedly, poorly and predictably. Things aren't just shocking in this comic--they're offensive. Offensive morally and intellectually. And these problems aren't just limited to Superman's confusion.

The issue opens with a montage of Superman saving people's lives. And then Superman asks the question: "But what do I STAND for?" How on earth can such a question bother Superman at that moment? I don't doubt the validity of Superman asking that question, but the juxtaposition JMS establishes here is too ridiculous to be believed. I get the impression that JMS didn't even think the juxtaposition was as jarring as it actually is. YOU JUST SAVED PEOPLE'S LIVES, SUPERMAN! YOU SHOULD NOT BE WORRYING ABOUT YOUR PERSONAL "SYMBOLISM" AFTER THAT! Because right after saving people's lives, Superman's value is obviously self-evident. And Superman himself empathizes with people enough not to ask such a question so soon after being in contact with them. "What do I STAND for?"--Sure, I could see Superman asking that question on a quiet day, or while pacing the Fortress of Solitude after fighting a super-villain. But he just saved people's lives from everyday disasters. There's always been a moment of bonding between Superman and the people he saves AS he saves them. That emotion isn't going to wear off so soon afterwards. What's more, JMS has Supes tell us that the everyday people around him have indeed been affecting his disposition. In other words, he's been receiving emotional vibes from them. So...if he's in touch with those around him AND he just saved some grateful people, then why would he choose that moment to worry about something so selfish and beside-the-point as "What do I STAND for?" Juxtaposing that question with evidence of the real good that Superman does in the world is amazingly tone-deaf on JMS's part. Again, I LIKE and have always LIKED the IDEA of what JMS has tried to do in this run. I like the concept. I like the question. But the execution is as flawed as it gets.

Secondly, can I say how dismaying it is to see Lois Lane looking like a total bimbo? Seriously, look at the way she's dressed in this comic. Look at the way the colorist carefully outlines her protruding boob-flesh. I hear a lot about how sexist female comic characters were portrayed 40-50 years ago, and there's much truth in those criticisms. But is the Lois Lane in this 2010 comic not an outrageous sexual caricature? Isn't she supposed to be a prestigious journalist, someone with self-respect, and oh yeah someone's wife? Isn't she supposed to be self-actualized and admirable? Well, she looks like a fashion victim. She looks nearly as bad as any '90s comic "bad girl". She looks like a total bimbo here. Excuse me, maybe she's only 80% bimbo, 10% goth and 10% wannabe hippie. What's with the pale skin color and the New Age necklace? Why is an investigative reporter in Middle America dressed like she should be in a sweltering 110-degree jungle? That's not Lois Lane. Or, at least it's not a very good version of her.

Oh, I know, I know, I'm forgetting: She's supposedly doing hard-nosed journalism, so I shouldn't point out what a total bimbo she's drawn as. The problem is, the journalism JMS shows her doing is paper-thin and stereotyped. Furthermore, I'm supposed to believe that Lois Lane would be totally insensitive to people's jobs? Sure, she'd insist on writing the expose, but Lois is enough of a sensitive person and enough of a thinker to want to work with the locals on pointing toward something of a solution beforehand. She'd offer to hold back on the story maybe a DAY or two until Superman (or someone else) could figure out SOME degree of solution, so that an entire town didn't become totally unemployed instantly. But the Lois we see here would apparently want to run the story as soon as possible almost IN ORDER to cost people jobs. The Lois we see here seems to care more about getting a story out for its own sake, rather than doing good in the world. In closing on this point, I want to make it clear that I'm not saying women shouldn't dress however they want to dress. Especially if they're young and single. If the drawing of "Lois Lane" in this comic was said to belong to a 20-something-year-old researcher doing fieldwork in the rainforest, then I'd have little-to-no problem with it. But when I see a fictitious image of Lois Lane portrayed this way, it deserves to be called out. And JMS's idea of paper-thin investigative journalism also gets a thumbs-down.

Superman's "solution" in this comic also left a lot to be desired. JMS seems to be pointing BOTH toward Supes not being QUITE in his right mind... AND toward Supes being "fair and balanced" after weighing all the options. We certainly are treated to enough hemming and hawing on Superman's part. We hear him listen to both sides of the issue and then make a "compromise". There are a few specific problems with what happens.

First of all, I think it's worth considering how limited and bland JMS's worldview is here. His considerations are terribly few and terribly shallow: on the one hand there're jobs that could be lost, on the other hand there's the environment. This zero-sum-game is a terribly simplistic view, but unfortunately it's one that mimics how many other writers of fiction portray the current economic situation. We hear about jobs going overseas. We hear that a big corporation is to blame (in this case, LexCorp--how creative). What's missing from this equation is any sort of consideration to the role of government (beyond the EPA foot-soldiers) or the people themselves, and how the government and the people themselves might have a fairly direct role (and sometimes even culpability) in regards to the problematic situation. The people and their government can help or hurt themselves; they aren't always the total prey of outside corporations. In this comic we hear the talking-point about "jobs going overseas", and of course it's blamed on big bad corporations. Well, I don't like big bad corporations, but what about all the government incentives that helped those companies leave? Just to be clear, I'm not even saying that I think comics should always talk about things like this, but the problem is that whenever they TRY to, they always seem to have glaring blindspots. It's like there's a how-to guide consisting of just a few way too easy steps: "Eh, say it's TOTALLY the corporations' fault. Write the people as if they're poor subjects who have no agency of their own and need to look to some outside hero to solve their problems. It's ALL about greed. There are no creative solutions."

JMS gives us an unbelievable fable about how everyone in the town MUST work at this one plant. Are the people in JMS's America so thoughtless that no one in an entire town can come up with another business idea? There are no entrepreneurs in this entire town? I understand that times are tough, but to portray the entire populace as totally unambitious blobs who "have" to work for one company is ridiculous. Were there no other businesses here before the economic down-turn? There must have been. So even if this one plant was the biggest employer in town, there would have been other businesses that would have cropped up around it. It's inconceivable for a town to only have ONE employer (unless maybe this power plant had a Wal-Mart, a car dealership, and a gas station inside it?). And even if somehow this situation were possible, then there are a ton of incentives (government aid, bank loans, etc.) to start certain other businesses. Do you mean to tell me that not ONE worker at the plant would even TRY to go out on his own and TRY to start a business on a loan? Inconceivable. No group of people are that totally unambitious that not even ONE would TRY.

The America that JMS has shown us in "Superman" is indeed hopeless. If there's no understanding of how government and citizen actions (and inactions) can cause and maintain a recession, then it won't ever dawn on them that government and citizenry can also take actions to try to prosper again. Instead, these people are literally "waiting for Superman". How on earth can something so unrealistic as JMS's "Superman" tell us anything meaningful? And isn't telling us (and Superman) something meaningful about America supposed to be the whole point of this exercise?

I don't mean to turn this into a treatise on real-life America. I don't have all the answers; I don't even THINK I have many of them. But I know that the America JMS is portraying is hopelessly economically simplistic. It's so simplistic that it's insulting.

Lastly, Superman's rationalization about environmental pollution was the icing on the cake. Really, Superman? Basically, your solution is just to let it go on? You're not even going to try to clean up some of the environment with your superpowers somehow? At the very least, you could have done that, sucked the pollution out of the soil with a combination of your breath and a magnet or something. Is JMS putting us on? Will Superman be regretting this decision? Was Superman TOTALLY under mind-control? I'd like to excuse JMS for this, but I really can't, because he went out of his way to show Superman thinking the problem over and rationalizing it from various angles. It's all laughably bad.

That's not to mention how uncreative the environmental concern is in the first place. "Leaking from a power plant"--does it get any more cookie-cutter? If you want to show an environmental disaster, there are a ton of more interesting, more relevant ones to portray. In the story we hear complaints about how the power plant is outdated and broken down. It's fifty years old. Well, so is JMS's cliche environmental disaster itself. It's as simplistic as they come. What about how certain water in the U.S. (drinking water and otherwise) has recently been found to contain uranium? Why not do a story on something more interesting like that? Or, to take a different approach, JMS could have shown how EPA regulations or "carbon taxes" or something like that are themselves putting a strain on the business. Wouldn't that have been a more interesting problem for Superman to be faced with? Instead we get the fable of how the EPA is bribed? How convenient and lazy on JMS's part, and how totally unrealistic. (The EPA is not often bribed, folks. It's a good thing it's not, of course. But the idea that the EPA can be bribed is maybe the most unrealistic part of this entire comic.) Or we could have had the environmental disaster related to fossil fuels. Even an oil spill would have been more relevant than a leaky power plant. There are a ton of ways to add environmental concerns into a story. JMS told the most simplistic one possible.

In the end we're left with a bizarre ending and a bunch of unanswered questions. Well, they're not really even questions. They're just uneasy feelings that don't fit together. True, there is supposed to be something of a mystery going on behind the scenes, influencing events. But mostly things don't fit because of JMS's poorly thought-out story. As readers, we have no idea what to think. We have no idea even what JMS WANTED us to think. Superman and Lois are upset at each other, but both were portrayed as being right...or at least "not wrong". More exactly, there was no real critical examination of either side! JMS showed Superman examining the issue and then coming up with a (ridiculous) solution that was ostensibly a compromise--and JMS was very heavy-handed in showing this. But on the other hand it's not like driven, single-minded Lois was shown as being incorrect. We have no sense of right or wrong with which to judge this comic on its own terms, and that's because JMS handed both characterizations so poorly that we don't even know what this comics "own terms" or moral compass are supposed to be.

Instead we have bunch of paradoxes that don't even fit together, much less work off each other in any interesting way. We have a Superman a) who is supposedly more in touch with The People than he's ever been, b) who is perhaps being slightly somehow influenced by some villainous force, yet c) he is shown as methodically thinking every side of the issue through and arriving at a compromise. That's what JMS wants us to think, because apparently he thinks believes three aspects of his story fit together. They don't, not even in an interestingly problematic sort of way. But now add an element JMS evidently didn't intend to portray, but which his poor writing gave us: d) a Superman whose solution to the problem of the story is out-of-character, uncreative, and shallow. None of this fits together. Then add in a Lois Lane who a) dresses like a stripper channeling Jungle Girl Lara Croft (in Iowa!) and b) is strangely cold and uncaring in that she's only concerned about getting her story THAT DAY, before any escape plan for the workers can be found. Yet JMS portrays Lois as perfectly righteous as well.

The most you can learn from this comic isn't anything about America, or Superman, or Lois Lane. The most you can do is try to examine it as an example of how writers fall into very predictable patterns, especially when telling these kinds of "moralizing" stories. Excuse this long review. I found the problems of the story worth examining in depth to this length.