>>101700701its an attempt to take the character 'seriously,' changing him to address certain criticisms lobbied against him by non-fans. He's less strong so its easier to write fight scenes, his mythos is less bloated and bizzare, the clark/superman dichotomy doesn't exist on any meaningful level anymore, and it has a clear, self contained start so you don't have to take into account half a centuries worth of literature to understand whats going on. If you think those are valid criticisms, you'd probably like the series. And to its credit the stories are actually decent, byrne's a great artist and a competent writer.
Of course, faggots who defend this version fail to realize that it was these changes that castrated the character creatively for decades. Seriously, read any list of the best superman stories of all time, theres a fucking black hole from the man of steel mini series until waid managed to fix things up with birthright. Byrne superman is a wonderbread nice guy with literally nothing compelling about him, his supporting cast is a ghost of what it once was, and he managed to fundamentally ruin krypton so badly that later comics said that literally everything byrne had ever said about it was an elaborate hoax, just so they could get away from his interpretation. In trying to make him more relatable, they made superman less super. This run is the reason superman has been a non-entity in the main stream for decades.
