A Superman What If?

[lonewolf23k]

What if, after the Crisis, Byrne was never brought on to "Relaunch" Superman? What if, instead, DC just kept up the original adventures of Superman to this day, following the events of Crisis (such as Kara's death)?

[Bat-Mite]

You mean Alan Moore's What happened to the man of tomorrow?

[Rik]

They had to do SOMETHING.

I remember a conversation with the owner of my local comic book shop back in the early Eighties. He told me they ordered approximately 800 copies of X-Men every month. And only ten copies of Superman.
Whether you like the Byrne revamp or not (and I mostly do, even though I'm primarily a fan of the Silver Age Superman that I grew up with), it's undeniable that a change was definitely necessary.

It is interesting to speculate, though, what might have happened had Alan Moore been elected to do the revamp. I seriously think he could've done it without starting from scratch, and made the character exciting and fresh again. Moore is obviously a fan of the Silver Age as well, and could undoubtedly have brought back that sense of wonder while leaving the continuity intact.

[Lorendiac]

They had to do SOMETHING.

I remember a conversation with the owner of my local comic book shop back in the early Eighties. He told me they ordered approximately 800 copies of X-Men every month. And only ten copies of Superman.
Whether you like the Byrne revamp or not (and I mostly do, even though I'm primarily a fan of the Silver Age Superman that I grew up with), it's undeniable that a change was definitely necessary.

It is interesting to speculate, though, what might have happened had Alan Moore been elected to do the revamp. I seriously think he could've done it without starting from scratch, and made the character exciting and fresh again. Moore is obviously a fan of the Silver Age as well, and could undoubtedly have brought back that sense of wonder while leaving the continuity intact.

Well, we could make a darn good argument that if you want to know how Alan Moore would have handled a serious revamp of Superman, that nonetheless still "respected" his Silver Age continuity and drew upon it for inspiration . . . then you just have to read his "Supreme" stories and change the names around in your head as you go along :)

[JulianPerez]

They had to do SOMETHING.

I remember a conversation with the owner of my local comic book shop back in the early Eighties. He told me they ordered approximately 800 copies of X-Men every month. And only ten copies of Superman.
Whether you like the Byrne revamp or not (and I mostly do, even though I'm primarily a fan of the Silver Age Superman that I grew up with), it's undeniable that a change was definitely necessary.

I respectfully disagree. Superman was never better than when he was being written in the 1980s. He had Elliot S! Maggin and Cary Bates (both geniuses who clearly are in love with the character), Mark Waid at the start of his career, and his original Silver Age artist, the wonderful and unequaled Curt Swan. AMAZING stories were told, from the introduction of Superwoman to the 10th Planet containing dinosaurs, to those stories involving Earth-Prime Superboy (as well as Ultraa), that city of bird-riding Vikings, and the tales involving New Krypton, Rokyn, containing the enlarged denizens of the bottled city of Kandor.

It is interesting to speculate, though, what might have happened had Alan Moore been elected to do the revamp. I seriously think he could've done it without starting from scratch, and made the character exciting and fresh again. Moore is obviously a fan of the Silver Age as well, and could undoubtedly have brought back that sense of wonder while leaving the continuity intact.

It might be interesting to speculate what might have happened had they gone with Cary Bates's Superman proposal instead of Byrne and Wolfman's. For instance, we would have seen a lot more of the Interstellar Zoo, which had been restored using shrinking rays as a tiny "game preserve" with boxes that reproduce the creature's natural habitat. We further would have seen more of the Lana/Superman relationship that was developing at the time.

Alan Moore gave a truly royal diss to John Byrne. He was invited to do SUPERMAN PLUS, a team up book, and he was told he could only write if he worked over Byrne's plots. Alan Moore said that he would only do it if Byrne would ink over his pencils. :D WHOA! You GO, Alan Moore!

[jaguarshark]

Alan Moore gave a truly royal diss to John Byrne. He was invited to do SUPERMAN PLUS, a team up book, and he was told he could only write if he worked over Byrne's plots. Alan Moore said that he would only do it if Byrne would ink over his pencils. WHOA! You GO, Alan Moore!

If that's true, that's AWESOME. Can't wait for the Alan Moore DCU trade.

[PatrickG]

Most of it would work.

Really.

Luthor goes straight and is embraced by the people much to Superman's dismay. Lois gets a haircut. Lana moves back to Smallville. Clark discovers the Kents alive. (There's a loophole in their death that would have been easy to exploit.) Clark starts dating Cat Grant and goes back to news writing.

Superman and Batman have a major falling out.

The Bizarro World blows up.

Roger Corben dies. John Corben comes back as a full cyborg.

They could have just had Zod massacre the surviving Kryptonians on Rokyn which would have prompted Superman's decision to kill from a whole different angle. He'd be doing it by pre-Phantom Zone, pre-Cryogenics Kryptonian law, even though it goes against his own code... Prompting him to emotionally reject his Kryptonian heritage and identify more with his Clark Kent identity.

The Eradicator, Booster Gold, Waverider, The Linear Men, Doomsday, The Cyborg, Steel, Superboy, etc. could all still work.

Superman discovers Krypto alive inside the Phantom Zone. And while later Kara, resurrected, mysteriously crashes to earth rejuvenated and amnesiac. She stays on Paradise Island after being manipulated by Darkseid.

This is probably how I would revamp Superman continuity if I had my way.

Forget the multiple earths and the reboots. Try to fit as many stories as possible from the last 70 years into continuity. My goal would be a continuity where an issue can have footnotes referencing the major stories from every decade as though the entire publishing history was always a single continuity.