Rob, you said pretty much everything I wanted to say.
As for OWAW:
It was the combined efforts of Casey and Kelly that completely fucked up that crossover. Loeb knew what he wanted, and Shultz wrote what was needed. Between the two of them, but mostly Shultz, it felt like a war. Casey and Kelly had ablsolutely no clue, and are not even close to the same league in writing. Shultz should have stayed on Superman. They wanted to cancell his title, fine. He should have moved onto Casey's title.
The other thing that killed OWAW was the art. McGuinis is good, but, his style cannot be used to tell a war story. Every time Loeb succeded with his writing in getting across the aspect of war, McGuinis killed it with his manga art. And Shultz didn't have a good enough artist either. I won't mention the other titles. The reason I am not giving names is b/c the artists weren't good enough for me to remember them.
Had OWAW been written entirely by Loeb (who, like Rob pointed out, is really good at showing us that Superman still has that childlike innosence at heart) and Shultz (who really showed us how the war effected the world, and the people), and was drawn buy artists who have a realistic style to them, this would have been a great story.
In the end, OWAW is nothing more than a joke. Very sad.
