Honestly, Superman only worked for me in the movies. I didn't connect with anything Superman until Earth-2 Superman, in CRISIS. I'm not sure why, except E-2 Superman struck an emotional cord; he'd lost Lois, his wife, he was an anachronism, yet in the end the First, the Best.

I imagine that idea somehow in an alternate-world Wolfman/Perez JLA run, a Superman past his prime and popularity, and devoid of uniqueness. Not necessarily an "old" Superman, but a Superman who recognizes his usefulness to the world may not lie in saving Lois Lane from concrete shoes by thin-mustached gangsters. Perhaps Superman would have to rise to even bigger challenges, personal and galactic, within the comics of the 1980s

In fact, Roger Stern pulled off a lot of those kind of stories in his run. The difference is, superhero comics were already wounded and spiraling to their doom by that time. "JB's" Superman, the character Stern wrote, was killed off and never recovered. Instead of rediscovering what made Superman work, in theory, DC decided to tinker. And nothing is worse than tinkering--which is to say, losing the core meaning of while ostensibly improving.  

"Who is Donna Troy?" could have been "Who is Diana Prince?" DC creators are still screwing with Wonder Woman's origins; she's the most ill-defined "icon" I've ever seen. 

By the by, the Wolfman/Perez JLA are:

In a perfect world. 

Whaa? You want to take the Titan's stories and make them about the JLA? Perez's Titans are a large part of what drew me to comic books; fantastic art, good stories. People might not call the Titans real heroes, but with great art and storytelling, those issues became very compelling and often competed with what others were doing at the time. I don't think Titan stories make good JLA stories, just as I think the reverse wouldn't be true.

How hard is this to understand? We're speaking of what Might Have Been, had DC Comics gotten their head out of their arse and put the right kind of talent on their best books. 

http://www.marvwolfman.com/marv/ORIGIN_OF_THE_NEW_TEEN_TITAN S.html

From the above, the one thing you can glean is that Wolfman only pitched a new Titans book as a way of escaping team-up comics hell, and Perez definitely wanted to become the new JLA artist (post-death of Dick Dillin.) Why Wolfman was relegated to team-up books after having written Fantastic Four and TOMB OF DRACULA at Marvel, I have no idea; but Wolfman seems to have been drawn to a new Titans book simply to use a character (the original, Russian Starfire) that he'd created with Len Wein.

And purely by accident, the New Teen Titans was a sensation. All fine and good, and maybe even a relief for Wolfman/Perez, who were not interfered with on a property of little value. Like Frank Miller's DAREDEVIL, there must have been more creative freedom than if dealing with a JLA book.

And yet anyone knows that Wolfman/Perez would have produced quality stories for the JLA, and would have used similar concepts and villains. The only difference, and a large one, is that with the Titans, the characters were not assured of continued existence. Unlike Superman and Batman, none of the Titans characters were untouchable by cold death, and this lent a particular tension to their stories, as I remember them.

Still though, I'd argue that Wolfman/Perez would have simply shifted that tension to other characters within the JLA dynamic. Characters like Green Arrow, Black Canary, Red Tornado, or in my suggestion, Robotman, Raven and eventually (once the Charlton heroes were purchased by DC) the Question (or Wildcat, another top fave of mine.) 

Superman would not perish or change very much, but certainly the lesser JLA members (and new created members, like perhaps Starfire or Raven) would have. 

So everyone who is flabbergasted at my suggestion of turning Titans stories into JLA stories, and insisting the two are completely separate, once again miss the point: what SHOULD have happened in 1980 is that Wolfman/Perez took over JLA after Dillin's death. And they WOULD have charged that book with the same energy, concepts, and new characters (Cyborg, Raven, Starfire, Deathstroke, ect) as the book opened up to them. Perhaps none of those particular characters/concepts (Trigon, Brother Blood) would have appeared as they had in TITANS, but maybe even better ones.

And in the end, in this day and age, no Teen Titans, but a far better grade of overall superhero comics in 1980 and onward, perhaps even saving the DCU from the "need" for CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS. Because certainly in my view, CRISIS introduced me to the DCU as a whole as I had never experienced it, excited me, only to thoroughly destroy everything about the DCU I had just discovered for the first time. It was like seeing the love of your life while passing on escalators going in different directions, a moment only and gone.

And look at it this way: Cyborg's part of the JLA now, has always been a member in the NuDC continuity. Wolfman/Perez's NEW TEEN TITANS has been eradicated from DCU history. So there you have it, thirty-plus years later, only without a Wolfman/Perez JLA run to have saved/redefined DC Comics in the 1980s. Meanwhile, we're still stuck with the spawn of the Teen Titans, the results of DC trying to replicate that accidental success, in progressively worse and worse ways. 

Superman The Movie

Mr Byrne's run on the Superman titles

The Superboy TV Series

Okay, the Superboy TV series isn't, strictly speaking, Superman, but the two actors who played Superboy - John Haymes-Newton and Gerard Christopher - were around the same age (or older) as Christopher Reeve was when he played Superman. For instance, Gerard Christopher was in his early thirties when the Superboy series ended, whereas Christopher Reeve was in his late twenties when he played Superman for the first time.

My point, if I have one, is that whilst the show is about Superboy, it can be viewed as a Superman series in a certain sense and features super-heroics, altruism and comic-style stories.