- Broken Base: Depending on who you ask, the story is either a perfect encapsulation of Superman's ideals and enduring relevancy, or a strawman argument making an insecure jab at competion.
- Misaimed Fandom: In the introduction to the JLA Elite collection, Joe Kelly notes the story wasn't meant as a Take That! to Darker and Edgier comics or morally ambiguous anti-heroes like The Authority as some fans have posited, noting that he appreciates both and has written some fairly dark stories himself, but rather a response to the tendency of such comics to treat Lighter and Softer superhero material with contempt and act like their cynicism is somehow more realistic.
- Moral Event Horizon: The Elite cross this in their first battle when they carelessly cause the deaths of thousands of civilians. It was to stop a giant Killer Gorilla, but it proves them to be Hypocrites who don't care about causing collateral damage if it means throwing their ideology around.
- Nightmare Fuel:
- The premise behind the Elite. They are superpowered mass murderers who will fight against villains but have absolutely no concern for the normal people that they crush underfoot. Manchester Black at one point wants to kill the families of several villains that they stopped. Even their ship suffers at their hand — it didn't like what they were doing, so Manchester Black had it lobotomized. No negotiations, no trying to reason with it, just chop out part of its brain.
- Even if he's faking it, it doesn't make Superman pretending to throw away his morality any less scary. This is added to by the harsh, ugly shot of Superman looming over Black, making him look more like a monster than the Man of Steel. And that's the point — Superman is showing what it would look like if he weren't the moral correcting influence on the DCU.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Ymmv/WhatsSoFunnyAboutTruthJusticeAndTheAmericanWay
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