Preachy, condescending and borderline racist, this might be one of the worst mainstream comics I’ve read since that last issue of Secret Invasion. I’m sure there are worse books on the shelves, but I usually try to avoid them. This one snuck through because I was foolishly hoping for a so-bad-it’s-good kind of experience.

I genuinely liked JMS’s run on Thor, and so far I’ve been digging his take on Wonder Woman, so maybe I was also holding out some hope he would turn this thing around. Unfortunately, Superman’s arrival in Detroit pretty much guarantees I won’t be around to find out even if he does. I had a bad feeling in my stomach from the opening seen, in which one of most stereotypical “poor black workers” of all time is too busy dozing on the porch and fighting with his wife to realize Superman’s walking down his street (not that anyone else on the street notices, either, but that’s nitpicking in a book this bad). Then we got to the basketball game. The less said there the better.

I know there are people out there who never understand why stuff like this is offensive to so many readers. It’s not that JMS is a racist. He’s just so damn condescending. Shame on him for this book.