no, it's the nostalgic navel gazing attempts to recreate the era in favor of actually doing new things ala Loeb's "Return to Krypton" arc, Waid's "Silver Age" event, Morrison's Superman and so on.
I don't mind elements of the Silver Age as long as their mixed with new ideas and concepts ala Moore's Supreme, Morrison's Doom Patrol, New Frontier, etc.
take the old things and do something new as opposed to just re-telling old stories.
IMO, when something is ingrained in the public consciousness, trying something new for it's own sake is inevitably going to be doomed to failure. (see Azbats).
Azbats was never meant to succeed. it's well documented that it was intentional on the creator's parts to make the fans hate him. they succeeded beyond even their own expectations.
with such iconic characters as Superman, doing a self consciously obvious attempt to "modernize" the character was always doomed to failure because what they were doing was essentially ripping off silver age elements of the mythos and just adding stupid over analyzed explanations so the could feel good about including them in the new Superman's mythos (see Supergirl Titano etc.)
actually the only thing wrong with the Superman revamp were the attempts to add back in all the old stuff. it was half-assed on DC's part as was the post-Crisis reboot as a whole. they had no unified plan and no idea what should've stayed and what should've gone. the problems here were numerous and could involve their own thread.
the basic stories themselves and the humanity that Byrne brought back to the character were well done. had they just kept with the basic Superman idea and not immediately attempted to start throwing back in all the shit they'd just gotten rid of, it would've been better (and less confusing).
as far as the public conciousness, the general public doesn't even read comics. so attempting to appeal to them is the only thing "doomed to failure." the comics should be the comics and not worry about aping the film and tv incarnations (again, that's another rant. . .)
