People argue and bicker constantly over “worst of” lists. Whenever I (or any other internet writer) talk about a story being "terrible", at least one person will come out of the woodwork, yelling about how we're wrong and that the story is actually great. Somehow, I don't think that'll happen this time. The J. Michael Straczynski-written Superman story entitled Grounded may not be the worst comic book of all time, but it’s sure as hell the worst Superman comic book.
Grounded shows a misunderstanding of Superman so fundamental and categorical that it wasn't allowed to finish. Straczynski mysteriously stopped scripting the story halfway through, and was replaced by the immensely talented G. Willow Wilson and, later, Chris Roberson. Why is it so bad? Well, let’s look at ten terrible moments from the four Straczynski-scripted issues.
Superman #700 (Comicboxcommentary.com)
10. Slap Fight
So let's start with the inciting incident and go from there. After Superman has been off-planet fighting alien threats for a little while, he meets with the press to brief them on the situation. A sobbing woman approaches Superman and slaps him right in the face. Superman asks her what the problem is. Her answer was that, while Superman was off-world trying to save AN ENTIRE PLANET, this woman's husband died of cancer.
Now, while this is sad, you may recognize it as being NOT SUPERMAN'S FAULT. The woman claims that if Superman were on earth, she could have easily reached him (not true), after which he could have used his heat vision to burn out the brain tumor and save the husband's life (very not true).
There actually aren't words for how dumb that is. It somehow manages to out-dumb the scene from Civil War that this story rips off. And out-dumb-ing Civil War? That's hard to do.


