5. Weaker Storylines/The Season Ended On A Cliffhanger
I'm not saying that all of the storylines in Season 11 were bad. In fact, Guardian (i.e. Issues #1-4) did a brilliant job of picking up where Season 10 left off, and reintroducing our main cast Lois Lane, Lex Luthor, the reinvented Tess Mercer, Oliver Queen and, of course, Chloe Sullivan. Otis Berg was even thrown in the mix, and ended up appearing in more issues than Ollie did!. Detective (Issues #5 through #8) provided a superb introduction to Batman in the Smallville mythos, including the raspy-voiced Batman and his hilarious sidekick (and one of my favourite characters in this comic), Nightwing, A.K.A. Barbara Gordon. Admittedly, the only problem with including Mr. Freeze in your comic book is the struggle that the reader goes through to NOT read his dialogue in an Arnold Schwarzenegger impression (thanks a lot, Batman And Robin). It's not like they didn't just abandon the characters, either. Both Bruce Wayne and Barbara Gordon made subsequent appearances in the season it was only one a piece, but it's still nice to see. They also carried on their story in the first of three "Specials", which were the aforementioned side-stories that took place on the fourth week of the confusing production schedule. This story, titled "Effigy", even brought back John Jones, everybody's favourite Martian Manhunter (some of the story was even brought back in Season 12, which we'll get too later). Haunted (Issues #9-12) side note: this is where I had to start checking the Wikia page was interesting and definitely good, although not to the standard of the first two stories. The arc actually brought back Bart Allen (called "Impulse" here), who is now faster than Superman because apparently his ability to fly detracted from his running prowess slightly. It's mainly for plot convenience and it doesn't really affect him in any way, so there's no point in dwelling on something that will most likely never be mentioned again. It also brought back Jay Garrick the original Flash. However, after this, things moved swiftly down hill. Suddenly, as Argo (#13-15) came around. Clark was sent to the future to do something entirely uninteresting and boring, and relied on the return of two or three characters to keep us buying the issues/segments of the issues. This was soon followed by the final main storyline Olympus, which introduced Wonder Woman, but with nowhere near the same amount of excitement as the Detective storyline. Again, the series was now only relying on introducing new characters we are familiar with and old characters we had become acquainted with to keep us buying the comic. The quality had sincerely dropped and it became a comic that felt more like a chore than a weekend treat.