Looking back, pre-JB SUPERMAN really needed to be 'blown up', and those last few issues were very unmemorable. I grew up reading Cary Bates' take on Superman, but a lot of that era is dull to revisit now. The '70s-80s stories by Gerry Conway, Len Wein, and especially Martin Pasko, hold up better.

And some of them literally have nothing to do with CRISIS, but have red skies and comments about 'weird weather' thrown in as an afterthought.

For me, Lana Lang's Barbara Walters-esque 'spoiled brat' characterization was one of the more 'dubious' ideas that happened on Pasko's watch, although I don't know how much of it was his idea.

Pasko tried harder to write stories that were somewhat more 'of their time'(70s), with layers of characterization, and action and pacing that were not too far off the typical 'action' TV shows and movies of that era. 

Revisiting his SUPERMAN run recently, there were some complaints from readers that he liked to insert overly-long recaps of the previous issue, a few pages into the current issue, and others felt that he had too many subplots 'percolating' at once. Yes, his stories just had more of a sense of urgency than Cary Bates and his typical plot of 'a weird looking alien with a lot of random letters in his name visits Earth, messes with stuff, and Superman needs almost all 17 pages to fix it, using some 'gimmick' that could have come in handy on page 3'.

And, for the most part, Superman's 'Rogue's Gallery' of the '70s was pretty lame: Luthor in his 'purple battle suit'(the one that preceded the even worse 'armor' of 1983), the cheesiness of Terra-Man(a guy who almost certainly couldn't distinguish between the pronunciations of 'the' ;-) ), and Vartox(ripped off from Sean Connery's Zardoz). 

Pasko was able to make something of that mishmash of villains, and also came up with some strong ones of his own, Atomic Skull, and the 'new' Metallo. He even made Bizarro into an actual villain, not just 'backwards' comic relief.

If Pasko had one failing, it might be that quickly-discarded 'Master Mesmerizer of Metropolis' story, which claimed that Superman unknowingly mass-hypnotized people(using Clark's glasses), which accounts for why the disguise manages to fool everybody.(But then, Pasko wrote that story based on an idea submitted by longtime reader Al Schroder III).

I haven't even mentioned Elliot Maggin's time as a Super-writer in the '70s. Too many lofty ideals, and too much emphasis on Krypton, and Superman's 'alien-ness'. Pasko's approach was more 'back to basics' superhero action.

One other drawback was that many stories of that era had to be interrupted so that 'Clark Kent could put in some time at work'. A good writer can find a way to get Clark out of the way indefinitely,so that he isn't holding up the action.

It wasn't negotiable. As I understand it, you had to include these elements. These provided younger readers with a sense of familiarity as well as filling everyone in on the supporting cast every issue. 

For me, the Pasko stories were a golden era and the idea that Lana grew up into the character she was shown to be in those comics was fine with me. There had to be a reason Superman chose Lois over the girl who was just like her back in Smallville. Pasko did an excellent job of delineating the differences, big and small, that existed between the two women in Superman's life.

There's one issue where Lana throws herself at Superman because she can see that his romance with Lois is maturing and the couple is becoming closer. Superman tells her flat out that he can see that she's only out for the prestige and glamour of dating a celebrity. He angrily calls her a magpie, fixated on the bright and shiny, lacking Lois' genuine warmth and love of who he is as a person. It's a characterization a good distance away from Moore's "I would never hurt Lana," but it still stands as fair comment, I believe.

Of course, Lana is stung bitterly by this and disappears for a time. She comes back set upon making her own way and goes on to date Vartox and later, Clark Kent.

Vartox owes his visual to Zardoz, but nothing else, just as Terra-Man began as a Clint Eastwood/Burt Reynolds take and became something else entirely, mainly an ongoing jumble of Cary Bates' style gimmicks.