Superman going after Brainiac is a metaphor for imperialism and retaliatory terrorist attacks on the west.
Superman 19 is one of the worst representations of a Superman book I’ve ever read. I don’t know why DC keeps putting Lobdell on books with young characters. He’s completely out of touch with the youth of today and technology as a whole. His run on Red Hood and the Outlaws was good, because they were rebooted characters that he had a lot of leniency with, but Superman is the most iconic character on Earth. He stands for truth, justice and the American way. He would not ask Supergirl if she was retard (oxygen deprived as a baby) (See H’el on earth). I get that DC wants to de-age the Justice League characters, but that does not mean to make them half retarded. Jimmy Olsen has more sense than to ask fucking Wonder Woman “Can I have your babies?”
Aside from Lobdell’s fundamental undertanding of how people actually talk and how these characters should act, why does he need to explain the plot through dialogue. though bubbles were phased out long ago, but Lobdell is trying to revert back to some Silver Age rediculousness and use them. Fine. Use them fucking right. If you read a lot of early Silver Age and Golden Age books there are caption boxes in panels that explain things directly to the reader via prose. Why not use those? I know Clark was hallucinating in that issue and the characters were acting out of character in Clarks mind, YOU DON’T NEED TO TELL ME THAT LOIS LANE ASKING TO MAKE OUT WITH CLARK IS STRANGE!!!
Fuck.