Superman in the post-Crisis era (reviews by shaxper)

[destro]

Three additional thoughts I had about Man of Steel upon further reflection this evening:

1. Just how old is Superman supposed to be? He's 18 when he decides to leave Smallville and use his powers to help others, and then an unspecified amount of time passes before he is exposed and takes on the identity of Superman. Meanwhile, Lois is at the top of her career in the field of journalism: a top reporter at a high profile paper, as made evident when her article about Superman is widely read and coins the "Superman" name for the media. One does not achieve this level of success in their late teens or early twenties. At youngest, I figure Lois is in her late 20s. So is Superman that much younger than her, or did ten whole years pass before anyone saw him using his powers to help others??? When you add in the fact that he was using his powers to their full extent to win football games without arousing suspicion in MoS #1, yet can move at super speed in MoS #2, it further supports the concept that Clark spent a long time working anonymously before being exposed and forced to take on the Superman persona. This might also help to explain why Martha and Jonathan look so old at the end of MoS #1. If they were in their late 30s when they found Clark, and in their mid 50s when he left for Metropolis (18 years later), add ten more years of his working anonymously before being discovered, and they're in their mid 60s by the end of MoS #1.

2. What the heck was Clark doing for money prior to joining the Daily Planet? He'd already been living in Metropolis for some time by this point.

3. Interesting that Man of Steel is written from outside points of view, almost like an early template for Marvels. Considering how quickly and artificially Clark arrived at the conclusion that he should use his powers to help others in MoS #1 (wasn't he still processing the whole "you're an alien" bit?), I wonder if Byrne is all that interested in exploring Clark's inner workings, instead more interested in the story of what such an icon means to others -- to Kal-El and Lara, Martha and Jonathan Kent, Lois Lane, and Lex Luthor.

I'm not quite sure where I heard this, but I believe he was supposed to have knocked about for around 10 years before coming to Metropolis. So yeah, late 20s.

On the money thing, I always assumed during his travels he was probably doing different sorts of odd jobs to get the experience. Perhaps he had a bit of cash saved from that. OR since he is Superman, he could have easily dug up a bit of gold or whatever else, though that might be a bit out of character.

[An Ear In The Fireplace]

Maybe like many of us when we were in our twenties, Clark was getting money from his parents.

[foxley]

A later story (I forget exactly when) established that Clark spent several years travelling around the world before settling in Metropolis. He would later use these experiences for one of his novels.

[shaxper]

A later story (I forget exactly when) established that Clark spent several years travelling around the world before settling in Metropolis. He would later use these experiences for one of his novels.

I was thinking this would make sense, giving Clark the whole "citizen of the world" dimension that Birthright felt the need to overhaul everything in order to put forward. Guess it was already there.

Still, Clark is established to be living in Metropolis sometime prior to being outed, and that's really where the career thing puzzles me. Clearly, he was doing something prior to walking in to the Daily Planet.

[shaxper]

I'm not quite sure where I heard this, but I believe he was supposed to have knocked about for around 10 years before coming to Metropolis. So yeah, late 20s.

Good to know I was on the right track. Thanks!

Still, I find it hard to believe he could spend ten years pulling off heroic rescues without ever having anyone suspect there was a person doing the rescuing. Eventually, someone would fall out of a window and require someone to actually do the catching.

Heck, wouldn't this be an important time in Clark's early career to chronicle -- watching him discover the full extent of his powers, wrestle with saving people quickly while maintaining his anonymity, and even facing his first failures? Byrne is missing all the opportunities that Miller is about to take advantage of to make Batman: Year One so memorable.


Of course, again, Byrne seems focused on avoiding placing any emphasis on Clark's internal development. MoS avoids this like the plague, I assume, in order to cultivate Superman more as an institution/mythos than an individual. Still, eventually the focus is going to have to zero in on Clark as a person in order to keep the ongoing titles interesting. At that point, why not do a mini that goes back and explores these early years as an aspiring hero?

[Captain Jim]

Here's what I don't understand: Superman's post-Crisis relaunch was a very big deal to DC, intended to be the foundation of relaunching an entire universe, and yet they didn't throw their big guns at the project. Marv Wolfman, one of DC's top writers at the time, and the guy who'd been entrusted to write the actual Crisis on Infinite Earths, picks up one Superman title and doesn't stay with it very long. Otherwise, they throw the project to editor Andy Helfer (who, from what I can tell, was still pretty new to comics), and John Byrne, who (I don't think) had successfully written anything on his own at this point (and people still debate how much of the success of the X-men was attributable to him). It seems like DC was gambling on untested young talent rather than putting their top people on their top character.

You have to remember what a big star John Byrne was at this time. DC was lucky to have him and if he wanted to be a writer, they were willing to let him do that. Putting Byrne on two Superman books was putting the biggest gun in the industry on two Superman books. And they hoped to reap the reward from doing so.

Ummm...I'm going to guess you're not a Marvel fan at all. John Byrne, beyond having been the artist and co-plotter of X-Men, which became the best selling superhero comic during his run, was coming off his run as writer/artist on Fantastic Four. That run revitalized a comic that had been in the doldrums for a decade and is very frequently considered second only to the Lee/Kirby run. There probably wasn't a bigger single creator in 1986 than Byrne.

As others have said, he was the #1 superstar artist and writer/artist in comics at the time in terms of fan popularity. He eclipsed all the other talent you mentioned that you would have gone with instead in terms of fan popularity and sales, and bringing him to DC was a coup.

The above responses are all right on. I was working at a comic shop at the time. Prior to Byrne's revamp, the Superman titles were a joke. Stores would order maybe 2 copies of each issue, and one would stay on the shelf. I specifically remember going to a trade show where one retailer said he'd managed to sell a few copies of Superman by racking it with the "kiddie" titles instead of the super-hero books.

I'm sure it's hard for younger readers to imagine, given Byrne's relative unpopularity today, but in the 1980's he was the hottest creator in comics, bar none. For DC to "steal" him from Marvel and put him on the world's most famous super-hero (but one who didn't sell), was indeed a coup. It arguably created more excitement in the comics world than anything else that happened the entire decade. Truly there was no one else active in the field at the time who could have created equal excitement.

[shaxper]

The above responses are all right on. I was working at a comic shop at the time. Prior to Byrne's revamp, the Superman titles were a joke. Stores would order maybe 2 copies of each issue, and one would stay on the shelf. I specifically remember going to a trade show where one retailer said he'd managed to sell a few copies of Superman by racking it with the "kiddie" titles instead of the super-hero books.

I'm sure it's hard for younger readers to imagine, given Byrne's relative unpopularity today, but in the 1980's he was the hottest creator in comics, bar none. For DC to "steal" him from Marvel and put him on the world's most famous super-hero (but one who didn't sell), was indeed a coup. It arguably created more excitement in the comics world than anything else that happened the entire decade. Truly there was no one else active in the field at the time who could have created equal excitement.

I believe it; I just don't understand it.

Was his FF run truly THAT remarkable? Enough so that people then looked back and decided he must have been the reason X-Men had been such a success and, subsequently, that he was some kind of comic book rock star?

If so, how come I've never heard of his FF run until now?? It doesn't seem to get a whole lot of mention around here.

[Scott Harris]

I believe it; I just don't understand it.

Was his FF run truly THAT remarkable? Enough so that people then looked back and decided he must have been the reason X-Men had been such a success and, subsequently, that he was some kind of comic book rock star?

If so, how come I've never heard of his FF run until now?? It doesn't seem to get a whole lot of mention around here.

I have a feeling tolworthy is preparing a multi-page essay to answer this question

But since I'm here first, I'll say that as a kid, I loved the Byrne run. Byrne was writing and drawing FF when I began reading the title (#280, no comments please) and when he left, the life was sucked out of the book for me. At the time it was coming out, his FF run was a big deal and considered by many to be the high point for the FF since Kirby left.

However, I don't think history has been so kind to the Byrne FF run. In retrospect, a lot of what Byrne did hasn't been looked at kindly because he was aggressively attempting in many ways to return the FF to the Lee/Kirby era at the expense of dumping all the growth that had occurred in the intervening 15 years. For him, the Lee/Kirby FF was the only real FF. His FF run is one of the first instances of this kind of creator retro-continuity, where the creator is specifically trying to recreate the "ideal" era of his own reading days. It's something Byrne has been guilty of throughout his career, but beginning with the FF; his incredibly damaging and retrograde run on Avengers West Coast was just an extension of what he started in FF. Byrne basically had specific ideas of what worked and didn't from the Lee/Kirby era, and what he thought worked he returned to that status quo and what he didn't like, he pulled down with a jackhammer to "fix" things to the way he thought they should have been.

In short, whereas his X-Men run was both tempered and enhanced by the fact that he and Claremont were clashing on ideas and thereby creating checks and balances, with FF his ego was able to run amok in a way that seemed fun at the time but which is not nearly so fun now.

He wrote and drew some really excellent stuff for FF, but as a whole, it's not a run I feel like revisiting at any point because it represents the beginning of a way of thinking that has in my opinion has stunted and damaged the industry as a whole: nostalgia driven revisionism. See: Brand New Day.

He does get props for having Sue change her name to the Invisible Woman from the Invisible Girl after 25 years, though.

[shaxper]

I have a feeling tolworthy is preparing a multi-page essay to answer this question

But since I'm here first, I'll say that as a kid, I loved the Byrne run. Byrne was writing and drawing FF when I began reading the title (#280, no comments please) and when he left, the life was sucked out of the book for me. At the time it was coming out, his FF run was a big deal and considered by many to be the high point for the FF since Kirby left.

However, I don't think history has been so kind to the Byrne FF run. In retrospect, a lot of what Byrne did hasn't been looked at kindly because he was aggressively attempting in many ways to return the FF to the Lee/Kirby era at the expense of dumping all the growth that had occurred in the intervening 15 years. For him, the Lee/Kirby FF was the only real FF. His FF run is one of the first instances of this kind of creator retro-continuity, where the creator is specifically trying to recreate the "ideal" era of his own reading days. It's something Byrne has been guilty of throughout his career, but beginning with the FF; his incredibly damaging and retrograde run on Avengers West Coast was just an extension of what he started in FF. Byrne basically had specific ideas of what worked and didn't from the Lee/Kirby era, and what he thought worked he returned to that status quo and what he didn't like, he pulled down with a jackhammer to "fix" things to the way he thought they should have been.

In short, whereas his X-Men run was both tempered and enhanced by the fact that he and Claremont were clashing on ideas and thereby creating checks and balances, with FF his ego was able to run amok in a way that seemed fun at the time but which is not nearly so fun now.

He wrote and drew some really excellent stuff for FF, but as a whole, it's not a run I feel like revisiting at any point because it represents the beginning of a way of thinking that has in my opinion has stunted and damaged the industry as a whole: nostalgia driven revisionism. See: Brand New Day.

He does get props for having Sue change her name to the Invisible Woman from the Invisible Girl after 25 years, though.

Thanks much for this incisive summary and critique!

[destro]

I believe it; I just don't understand it.

Was his FF run truly THAT remarkable? Enough so that people then looked back and decided he must have been the reason X-Men had been such a success and, subsequently, that he was some kind of comic book rock star?

If so, how come I've never heard of his FF run until now?? It doesn't seem to get a whole lot of mention around here.

I'm not as big of a fan of his FF run as some, but I'm really surprised that you haven't heard of it. It really is considered by most to be 2nd only to the Lee/Kirby run (I don't happen to agree but that's another story). I do suggest that you check them out for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Perhaps another review thread idea?

If it doesn't get as much mention around here it's likely because the majority on the Classics board seem to tend towards being fans of 70s and earlier comics.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Yeah as everyone has posted... Byrne's run on FF was considered a definitive run on a series. It ranks as one the titles best .

Several points to understand here from what John Byrne has revealed over the years in interviews.


1.) - Byrne claims he was told to get rid of all the Pre-Crisis stuff like Super-Horse and crap like that. He wanted to save Superboy and tried to . But DC was pretty clear...they wanted Clark not to be Superboy as a kid . So he listened. This of course would impact the Legion of Superheroes.

2.) As the run went Byrne would watch DC undermine the character and do things to advertise the Pre-Crisis version . Byrne would ask why DC was doing this at a time they should be throwing support behind the current Superman. As Byrne claims an editor told him , "You have to understand , we have 2 Supermen now. The classic one we have had all these years...and yours." Byrne was like , that is some horrible fucking support isn't it ?

3.) One of his favorite things that stuck (and did for 25 years) was keeping Jon and Martha Kent alive . Byrne had wanted to do that and keep them as a sounding board for Superman to talk to . He pulled for that and it was one of the things he considered a nice victory.

[Jon Clark]

Yeah as everyone has posted... Byrne's run on FF was considered a definitive run on a series. It ranks as one the titles best .

Several points to understand here from what John Byrne has revealed over the years in interviews.


1.) - Byrne claims he was told to get rid of all the Pre-Crisis stuff like Super-Horse and crap like that. He wanted to save Superboy and tried to . But DC was pretty clear...they wanted Clark not to be Superboy as a kid . So he listened. This of course would impact the Legion of Superheroes.

I've also seen him say that he had originally thought his Superman would be similar to what Perez actually did with Wonder Woman, that Superman #1 would star a new Superman just starting his career. So all the Year One/Superboy stuff of discovering the powers and such would still be wide open. Instead Man of Steel wound up covering years of Superman's career. Superman #1 picked up with Superman having had some of his Pre-Crisis adventures (including the Crisis itself).

[Ramage]

I believe that Business Lex was actually Marv's major contribution to the reboot. Correct me if I am wrong.

--I remember being excited about the Superman reboot circa age 15. My family was doing a cross country car trip (meh...good times) and I picked up three of the weekly Man of Steel issues and just being very pleased with them. Thought I was reading something important. Reboots weren't what they are now. It was kind of special.

However, as the regular series started, I kept hoping things would pick up. I thought the Wolfman Ordway issues were good and really starting digging Ordway art. I don't really think the reboot picked up steam until Byrne left and you had that great Gangbuster/Leaving earth stories. That was Stern, I believe. And the real heyday to me was the Jurgens-Stern and later Simonson rotation. I think Perez even wrote and drew the return of Action to a monthly comic featuring SUperman after the disastrous weekly story.

[shaxper]

... Superman #1 would star a new Superman just starting his career. So all the Year One/Superboy stuff of discovering the powers and such would still be wide open. Instead Man of Steel wound up covering years of Superman's career. Superman #1 picked up with Superman having had some of his Pre-Crisis adventures (including the Crisis itself).

Interesting. So MoS was written after the fact???

I believe that Business Lex was actually Marv's major contribution to the reboot. Correct me if I am wrong.

I truly wouldn't know. I'll gladly take your word over mine on this one.

[Captain Jim]

I believe it; I just don't understand it.

It helps to understand that fandom at that time was much more artist-driven than writer-driven. People followed artists from books to books, rarely writers. (I'm proud to say I was an exception to that rule.)

Was his FF run truly THAT remarkable?

My recollection is that it was really good.

I do suggest that you check them out for yourself and draw your own conclusions. Perhaps another review thread idea?

I was about to suggest the same thing myself. You could certainly do worse. After you check out Master of Kung Fu, of course.

So MoS was written after the fact???

Not sure what you mean by that. MOS was certainly published prior to Superman #1.