Yeah, but how many of those bombardiers stopped because they both 1)were successfully changing the world and 2)had superpowers which rendered them invincible to most forms of neutralization?
It doesn't matter that much, because that's only half of my point.
The other half being: Clark is a good human being by nature - or more accurately, by definition of the character.
No matter how powerful he becomes, he will never become corrupt or knowingly do evil. He's fundamentally different from you and me and those anti-war kids and the cops and everybody else.
I'm sorry -
that is implausible, and as far as I'm concerned isn't made one bit more plausible by the long-time, oft-repeated insistence that because he was "raised with good values by good parents" he therefore has been a model citizen ever since he completed his toilet training early.
If you accept that goodness as part of the implausible definition of an impossible character, nothing in what Clark's doing in this story challenges or makes unlikely his evolution into a responsible Superman. Without it, no version of the character works believably except mayber Liefield's original version of Supreme.
As I said, given the course he's on now there's no trick at all to inventing events that will bring about the character epiphanies needed to make him Superman. I'm real interested to see how Morrison's going to do it, though. That's what telling a story is.
What happens to Clark when one of his "direct actions" turns out to be just flat out wrong and hurts an innocent person?