3PM Superman renounces American citizenship?

I’m normally a wait-and-see sort of guy, so I’m cautious about this, but in Action Comics #900 (out now), Superman apparently becomes fed up with having his own personal actions confused with official US policy and finds his nationality too confining for his cosmopolitan support of all of humanity. After siding with Middle Eastern protesters, he announces his intention to go to the United Nations and renounce his citizenship so as to become more of a global hero. The authors deny he actually does so in the issue and assert that the end of the storyline may surprise people, but the idea certainly raised my eyebrows given the strong historic identification between Superman and Americanism and American ideals. I guess I can see how this sort of idea could work out. But there’s just something profoundly distasteful about the most American DC hero even threatening to do this. (Marvel’s Captain America did go incognito during Watergate in the 1970’s.) One of the beautiful thing about Superman was that he fit America and our ideals so well, making them seem strong by his association. And if comic books are a historically pro-American form of propaganda read by young boys, well, what’s wrong with that? And having the Man of Steel give up his US citizenship is a meaningful (and negative) symbolic action. And if he’s anything, Superman is certainly a symbol.