Gloomsday

According to the February solicitations (and a post on the Source) the next big Superman event involves... Doomsday?

Forgive my bluntness, but hasn't Doomsday been, well, done to death? The character made a big splash (not surprisingly) during the Death and Return of Superman arc in which he was introduced. There, Doomsday served his purpose well: as a nigh unstoppable force of nature which only Superman could stop And only then at the cost of his own life. Doomsday was really more of a prop than anything else. A tool to set up the much more interesting "Return" part of the equation.

But rather than let the MacGuffin fade away DC kept bringing Doomsday back. Over and over again. Bits were added to his origin along with intelligence, drive, and any number of other things. And the result was a monster villain that became a muddled mess.

Each further appearance was less interesting that the one that came before. Eventually we got to Infinite Crisis (which I believe was Doomsday's last appearance up until now) and Doomsday was beaten by a pair of Supermen in something like two pages. Whatever power he had as a character was wiped out then and there.

Which brings me to this storyline (apparently called "Reign of Doomsday") where Doomsday shows his face for the first time in a number of years. Now it's true that I have a fondness for some of these characters (like Doomsday) that were created in the 90's. But unless the writers of this story can bring back that "force of nature" feeling to Doomsday while instilling the character with a new sense of menace (no easy feat) I'll probably end up passing the story by.