https://readcomiconline.li/, search for superman #166 2001 March.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Couldn't find anything on your website even with advanced search so I just parsed the specific files from a giant DC torrent pack.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I found it in two seconds. Quit being bad.
3 months ago
Anonymous
it's by volume, you're looking for #166 of the 198 series https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Superman-1987/Issue-166?id=16613#1
3 months ago
Anonymous
*1987 series
gotta clean my keyboard
3 months ago
Anonymous
Cheers for the link. Honestly I'm not that familiar with how DC breaks down all their series, I just wanted to read the comics I read growing up at my local library. Your link will tide me over until the torrent completes.
3 months ago
Anonymous
I've been looking for this for years. Can we ever find it online?
Just read the issue, and I'm confused as to what changed with 'the truth' other than his dad wearing a different outfit.
Did love Lois in the White House press room though. Guess I'll read the following issues when I get home from work.
not perfect, but more good stuff than bad stuff. the decade of superman comics leading up to it were the most forgettable in his entire history. i'd say he saved supes
>And I'm a Legion fan, they're my favorite team, I have plenty of reason to hate it and Byrne.
My memory is shady but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic, until Brainiac tells everyone to stop because this isn't the Superman they are looking for (deducing it from the fact that they are legitimately hurting him), and then Superboy ambushes all of them with his freeze ray?
And the followup issue where Superboy sacrifices himself to save his world from Time Trapper (actually a pocket dimension created by the Trapper) was one of the greatest comic books I've ever read. It has everything from crazy superhero fight, plans, twists, betrayals, crazy superhero fights and saving people from endless natural disasters, the hero sacrificing his life to save all that he loves, and an emotional burial at the end.
Also it made Time Trapper incredibly scary, like something out of a horror movie, instead of just a dude in a robe.
the reason behind that LSH story (as well as retcons in the 5YL run) was the superman office fricking up the legion book behind the scenes. no superboy meant the legion writers had to come up with a fake one, then get rid of him too... in the end they replaced him with valor. such a mess. but yeah, time trapper got upgraded, as well as mordru.
>but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic
Yes. He also gets his ass handed to him by the Superboy created by Time Trapper.
>but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic
Yes. He also gets his ass handed to him by the Superboy created by Time Trapper.
Not really, Superman's not leading his people from slavery to a "promised land". Create a Space Pharaoh with a Space Pyramid for Superman to fight and then we'll talk.
Superman's a broad enough character with so many different adaptations that different people see different things in him. Some people see his being an alien as an 'immigrant success story', achieving the American Dream. Other people use Superman for Jesus allegories. Some people want to go back to the social vigilantism of early Superman, others want to use him as the superhero of the establishment. It's really only the superheroes who are close to a hundred years old like Superman and Batman who have so many drastically different takes on them.
I don't know whose idea it was, but post-crisis had a strict policy on there being no other Kryptonians beside Kal. So Krypto was a random dog saved by Bibbo and got his name because the dog tag guy couldn't fit the extra N on the end. Zod and his crew were from an alternate dimension. Supergirl was from that place too, and he was a shapeshifter blob created by a good Lex Luthor (which is why Supergirl then falls into love with Lex 2 who looked the same, admittedly he was also a really hot guy at the time). I'm not sure about Power Girl, she was still around, but I dunno what her origin was.
It's also why they made a new Superboy who was a clone of Superman.
The only single time they had an in-continuity Kryptonian show up, it was in an Aliens crossover.
[...]
He tucks them in his pants, I'm pretty sure there were a few panels showing it because I clearly remember it.
>I don't know whose idea it was, but post-crisis had a strict policy on there being no other Kryptonians beside Kal.
While that's all true, and it was rule DC editorial spent 20 years enforcing despite writers clearly wanting to at least bring back Supergirl and Zod, Superboy was a separate issue. Someone had the idea of Superman's powers not fully developing until adulthood, so he was never Superboy, which had the effect of Superboy never being part of the Legion.
Byrne's Superman was what got me to like Superman and changed my view of him as boring.
He's basically Chris Evans Captain America, a likeable all-American chad who can appeal to people who aren't usually interested in superheroes.
The hate I mostly see is from: hatred of Byrne for his views, other people in the comics industry that just don't like Byrne, removing Superman's immigrant background, or because the series "Marvelized" Superman by turning him into Peter Parker. No more wacky Silver Age adventures, everything was realistic now.
I later got interested in Silver Age Superman too, but MoS is a good introduction that doesn't feel as overwhelming.
There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s. And there was NONE in Superman. I think you're confusing the 90s for the 2000s.
It was a different kind of edge. 90s superhero comics were still very pulpy, just with more blood and violence, but still embraced their origins. 2000s comics was when they started being ashamed of being superhero related, tried to be more realistic, and rape/murder was considered the most "deep" kind of story.
Spider-Man: Chapter One was a 12 issue mini series by John Byrne which was a modern-day adaptation of some of Spidey's stories form the Lee-Ditko era. Purely meant to attract new readers it received complaints from regular fans for Byrne needlessly tampering the classic stories with updates. Examples include:
>Spider-Man's origin being tied to the accident that created Doctor Octopus as the same demonstration with Otto doing the experiment >Norman Osborn masterminding most of the minis events, backing up most of Spidey's rogues gallery >Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
This was a good self-contained retelling that got way too much hate. It was never a retcon, as some seemed to think. On the other hand, Bendis and Slott made trash comics that caused long-lasting damage to Spider-Man.
>This was a good self-contained retelling that got way too much hate. It was never a retcon, as some seemed to think.
No, it was intended as a retcon. They eventually rolled back a lot of it instantaneously though, so it didn't feel like it.
And I agree at this point Slott did more damage to Spider-Man than Byrne. Bendis, arguably (but I imagine editorial would've still gone with similar changes even if he wasn't there; they wanted "young" Spider-Man and they would've inevitably done legacy characters). I think the difference is that editorial back in the 90s still gave a shit what the audience thought but Marvel since Quesada still hopes to double down and gaslight people into liking something people hate, or quietly walk it back without admitting they did it because fans didn't like it
Man looking back it's hilarious how quick they were to roll back things even as early as the 90s when they weren't working out. Spider-ben was "fixed" almost immediately and yet now marvel won't stop pushing this verse shit down our necks.
They won't ever admit it but I think that's why readership declined severely
You look at the Clone Saga and it only lasted two years and people were pissed off about it
You look at something like Avengers Disassembled and it took what, eight years to attempt to fix Vision and Wanda and they still don't resolve stuff? Or OMD which is still in place in spite of their half-assed attempts (ie OMIT) to say the deal never happened?
It's not like I expect them to get on their knees and commit seppuku as an apology or anything but just quietly course correct. I promise if you just slowly phased miles out of comics nobody would ever notice if not for the social media screamos. And they don't buy comics.
The current crop of editorial are generally fans of the 70s/early 80s depictions of these characters and become obstinate when the series breaks from that mold barring runaway hits like Asian kung-fu Batgirl.
3 months ago
Anonymous
"The current crop of editorial" aren't fans at all. They openly admit to not reading comics.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Tom Brevoort has a blog where he talks about comics he’s reading like daily
3 months ago
Anonymous
Then why is he such a gay?
3 months ago
Anonymous
Because he works for Marvel
3 months ago
Anonymous
Brevoort is one of the few veteran editors left in the industry, he's been a Marvel editor since the early 90s. He's the exception, not the rule. And he consistently has the worst taste in things at Marvel he likes, and was one of the men behind the "make readers angry" business strategy, so him actually reading comics hardly matters.
3 months ago
Anonymous
He's also still salty he wasn't given the EiC job.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Can you imagine the shit show if he was. We need guys like Shooter back.
Clone Saga was it's own animal, basically it was a 30 month crossover between 5 Spider-Man ongoing titles, Good Guy Green Goblin book, New Warriors and countless specials and miniseries that would dart in and out.
so you are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-220ish comic books out released every week, one issue bleeding into the next and story never ending.
it's not like where every story is easily divided and collected in 6 issue chunks
3 months ago
Anonymous
I think they understood that. They seemed to be questioning the guy they were quoting's use of "only".
3 months ago
Anonymous
It was just so dense and heavy it felt longer
3 months ago
Anonymous
Yes. It felt longer because there were multiple books to read from. Maybe you could claim it was longer than two years by adding the months leading into it (where Ben was in the shadows) but that's still less than three. Hell, it's still less than three years even if you start with Lifetheft.
The worse thing about Avengers Disassembled is that Marvel had NUMEROUS opportunities to fix shit and even then, the only thing Bendis and Brevoort would do was bring Hawkeye back (and then get rid of him for another year and then only bring him back as Ronin) while at the same time letting Bendis run off Heinberg and kill the fledging Young Avengers franchise TWICE and in the case of Vision/YA Vision, NO ONE fricking knew what the hell was the status quo of the character, to the point that Brubaker's Captain America Reborn story hinges 100% on YA Vision being OG Vision.
>They won't ever admit it but I think that's why readership declined severely
This alone would make for a good thread.
The mid-90s drove a lot of people away mainly with the speculator bust, and quality went to shit across the board. The death of the Marvel Method of storytelling in favor of the "Wunderkind" artists like Liefield calling the shots rendered so many books of that era almost unreadable. The biggest casualty was plot.
Say what you will about Avengers Disassembled, but it really drew in new readers, and helped to save my friend's struggling comic shop. That particular era started drawing the fans back who'd left in the mid/late 90's. Bendis started off strong but quickly overextended himself to take every gig he could get his hands on. Now I can't bear to read most of his stuff, but at the time he was onto something.
The worse thing about Avengers Disassembled is that Marvel had NUMEROUS opportunities to fix shit and even then, the only thing Bendis and Brevoort would do was bring Hawkeye back (and then get rid of him for another year and then only bring him back as Ronin) while at the same time letting Bendis run off Heinberg and kill the fledging Young Avengers franchise TWICE and in the case of Vision/YA Vision, NO ONE fricking knew what the hell was the status quo of the character, to the point that Brubaker's Captain America Reborn story hinges 100% on YA Vision being OG Vision.
>letting Bendis run off Heinberg and kill the fledging Young Avengers franchise
What's the story here? I remember when YA started then disappeared. What did Bendis do?
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Say what you will about Avengers Disassembled, but it really drew in new readers
and drove away a lot more
3 months ago
Anonymous
Did it really though? No, it did not, you're just being hyperbolic.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>you're just being hyperbolic that Bendis could have done anything wrong to comics
3 months ago
Anonymous
How badly has Bendis ruined comics? Just in general.
3 months ago
Anonymous
It drove a lot of readers away. He just fricking said it.
>You look at something like Avengers Disassembled and it took what, eight years to attempt to fix Vision and Wanda
Well, they're alive again. What Byrne did to them in 1988-1989 is never going to get fixed, and what Bendis did to them ended up influencing what the MCU did.
It's not like I expect them to get on their knees and commit seppuku as an apology or anything but just quietly course correct. I promise if you just slowly phased miles out of comics nobody would ever notice if not for the social media screamos. And they don't buy comics.
>It's not like I expect them to get on their knees and commit seppuku as an apology or anything
To be fair you'd only need it to happen the once and nobody in the industry would dare wreck a character ever again.
Chapter One was utterly unredeemabe dogshit intended to be the new lore of Spider-Man; to the point that Byrne explicitly referenced it as canon in his short ASM run and went as far as to have certain characters (Electro and Vulture) appear in their Chapter One costumes with the implication that those costumes were ALWAYS their costumes.
And the hate for Chapter One and the Byrne run was so great that it was the origin story for two of the most toxic Spider-Man fans online: Kirk Boxleitner and Jesse Baker; two of the biggest and most vocal critics of the Brand New Day era and removal of the Spider-Marriage.
As a kid when Chapter One came out, I remember my impression of it as being a very stodgy book. Which I guess was the point? I wasn't the intended audience. It was meant to lure back longtime fans turned off by the Clone Saga.
Their intended audience was the younger readership (it was why Byrne updated stuff with things that Peter's world might've had a decade ago), but it failed for a lot of reasons because the longtime fans turned off by the Clone Saga were mostly turned off by it and the new readers like yourself were repelled by it
There were some that did like it but it wasn't enough for Marvel to keep it in continuity.
Certain parts of it helped to modernise Superman and make him more relatable and remove the overpowered God from the silver age aspects. Other parts were dumb and Byrne being Byrne.
I don't think they should be completely taken out, I think STAS did it well where he has an adventure with the Legion but his memories are erased after. Making him aware of his legacy is cute as a prequel comic but starting from scratch it cheapens it.
Ultimately what Byrne set out to do was make a Superman comic for an audience that had watched the Reeve movies. Which were so influential even people who pine for Silver age superman forget the Kents weren't farmers and Smallville wasn't Kansas before the movies. People long for Reeve Superman and not surly middle aged dad Superman with a hair trigger temper and a condescending attitude.
The Kents found Clark first and gave him to the orphanage but went back and adopted him legally since they wanted a baby. They always had a farm but in the comics they ended up owning a general store too. They never seemed to do much farming anyways but the Kents still lived on a farm
It was a book that updates Superman for the modern era that being the 80s at the time. And cemented the view of the character for the next 20 or so years.
Unfortunately the moral paradigm that represented the 80s was drastically incompatible with the one in the 90s and to a less extent the 2000s and so Superman was culturally lost in the shuffle.
Am I?
Its basically that Bryne made a Conservative (by future readership standards) law abiding Superman which didn't mess around with the same silver age wackiness as much. And it worked so well that combined with how people already viewed the character as AMERICA the superhero.
And then got turbo fricked by the 90s shift into edge.
And even then there was still zero "edge" in Superman in the 2000s. They really never tried to do "edge" in Superman until Injustice.
Which is my point, Superman wasn't edgy when being edgy was In and so became viewed as boring.
Its a major crux of Kingdom Come.
And come off it with 90s comics not being edgy, int he era of even Dr Fate became a tough guy with a mullet and big knife. The era of roided out meatheads with guns .
Was it actually edgy? No but for comics that was a big departure from before and what came after and is vied as the edgy era.
>There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s.
90s edgy stuff is different from 00s edgy stuff. It’s about context. 90s edge is transferring from the more safe and kiddy friendly toned down storytelling to doing shit like Carnage the serial killer and him being allowed to amass massive body counts regularly, ramp up in brutal violence in general due to flirting with antihero stuff a la Azrael taking over as Batman, Spider-man having his brief mental breakdown phase where Peter is cocooning himself in a web and is more and more violent and angry, Magneto kills thousands of people by doing a global EMP strike, and so forth.
In 00s the edgyness moves to new avenues and changes to rape, brutal killing and dismemberment, more topical post 9/11 political commentary being a driving part of the plot, etc.
I don't think you've read many comics from before the 90s.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Comics were far more kids friendly outside of specifically intended for mature readers titles. Far less blood and visual violence, way more cerebral compared to the 90a. Specifically because of Reagan era censorship and “this is a kids medium” mentality even if certain titles pushed the envelope. Hence why 90s was far more violent and bloody as a response.
3 months ago
Anonymous
There’s a ton of shit from the 70s onward that would have never flown in kids animation of the time, or even now. Shit like Black Spider being a former heroin addict, Jason Todd’s parents being fed to crocodiles, Phoenix killing a planet, hell comic characters dying in general. Comics , relative to other kids media at the time, were more risque
3 months ago
Anonymous
>Reagan era censorship
That was not a thing.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Reagan gets too much of the blame but the sudden coming of the CCA really did a number on a lot of books. EC horror especially.
3 months ago
Anonymous
CCA came about 30 years prior to Reagan and mostly impacted crime and horror books.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>90s was far more violent and bloody
Outside of like Chaos Comics and a few other random titles, it really wasn't.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Dude, how many new characters with a blood-prefix did they create in the 90s? I rest my case.
>There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s.
Have you ever picked up a 90s comic?
No, I get what he's saying. 90's edge is just trying to look as cool and extreme as possible. But it has all the edge of Bart Simpson and Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of it is just silly in hindsight, campy even.
The 2000s is where things got REALLY edgy. Post-9/11 writers trying to handle mature topics and write biting political and social commentary, with mixed results at best. Rape and gore and anything else with shock value.
90s edge was just for fun, 00s edge was serious business.
And even then there was still zero "edge" in Superman in the 2000s. They really never tried to do "edge" in Superman until Injustice.
> And there was NONE in Superman.
This isn't true. Byrne's Superman had edge relative to 70s/early 80s Superman. Go back and reread the first year or so of Byrne's Superman, like the issue where Luthor tried to find Superman's identity, or the Bloodsport issue and compare to 70s Superman. Way more innocent people died in the Byrne era compared to to the pre-COIE Superman, who usually resolved a lot of things.
It's just that subsequent decades upped the edge more so that if your exposure is 00s/10s comics, where the body count is massive like in an Ellis or Millar or Hickman comic, it wouldn't feel like the Byrne era had edge.
Also don't forget Byrne shoehorning his fetishes into the comic, like Lex raping ten year old girls on an exam table.
Removed Superman's teenage adventures as Superboy, Superboy's Adventures with the Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl and Krypto, and also altered the history and culture of planet Kryton severely were their biggest gripes.
>altered the history and culture of planet Kryton severely were their biggest gripes.
What was the problem with that? I haven't read much pre-crisis crap but wasn't Krypton set up as basically the Jetsons at the time? Humans with weird shaped clothes and science that was closer to magic than science?
And iirc that part of Krypton still existed in post-crisis, but it was just an earlier period of their history after which they had a millennia of war and then became the sterile science wizards with the black bodysuit and green robes.
>wtf most of that you listing still pretty much canon rn,
Not at the time. DC were pretty strict about it for a decade and a half, so a lot of people back then assumed it would never be restored. Even the Superman animated series at the time had to adhere to some of the rules during the 90s.
Krypto didn't come back until the early 00s in Loeb's Superman run. Superboy and his connection to the Legion didn't come back until Infinite Crisis. Supergirl wasn't Kryptonian again until Loeb's Superman/Batman arc in the mid-00s.
Was that a case of Loeb being shit and DC not having any editors by then, or was it DC officially relaxing their stance?
3 months ago
Anonymous
I think that was in Next Men. Lex did have a young Lois strip-searched in Byrne's World of Metropolis, though.
>Was that a case of Loeb being shit and DC not having any editors by then, or was it DC officially relaxing their stance?
It was definitely them relaxing their stance because this was part of a multipart story that ran through all the titles. This version of Krypto came from a Krypton simulation created by Braniac that looked like pre-COIE Krypton, so it wasn't the original Krypto, but was still close enough. It might've been a trial run to see what reader reaction was like.
I think it was once Didio came on board and Johns got more control that there was more of a rollback to the pre-COIE stuff that got jettisoned
You seem to think that anything that isn't Silver Age cap is "edge". That's not how words work.
3 months ago
Anonymous
It's the truth though. The Byrne era had edge compared to Silver/Bronze Superman, which was part of the reason modern readers flocked to it at the time (the other reason was Byrne was extremely popular back then). You only don't think this because subsequent writers do way more edgier stuff than Byrne, but a lot of Byrne's stuff always had an edge to it.
>Superman was culturally lost in the shuffle.
TSMT with how much conflicts rn and the internet being massive so people know thing like cia coup état another third world banana republic, all superman discourse be like why dont superman stop 9/11 , why dont he stop israel-palestine conflict, why supes dont stop cia proxy war between katajaya and madripura
>Ma & Pa still alive and supportive >He is Clark Kent, the farmboy from America's heartland and not Kal-El of Krypton >His power levels are Bryne/bronze age tier, he can get tossed around in a fight. >likes milkshakes and bacon cheeseburgers
Spider-Man: Chapter One was a 12 issue mini series by John Byrne which was a modern-day adaptation of some of Spidey's stories form the Lee-Ditko era. Purely meant to attract new readers it received complaints from regular fans for Byrne needlessly tampering the classic stories with updates. Examples include:
>Spider-Man's origin being tied to the accident that created Doctor Octopus as the same demonstration with Otto doing the experiment >Norman Osborn masterminding most of the minis events, backing up most of Spidey's rogues gallery >Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
>Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
Byrne had past history for doing this, in the late 1970s he was the main force in pushing to retcon Quicksilver and Magneto into being related because they both had white hair. He tried the same fanfic nonsense again with Osborn and Sandman 20 years later but nobody was tolerating it anymore.
>the main force in pushing to retcon Quicksilver and Magneto into being related because they both had white hair
always thought that was the original premise from the get go before they mcu synergy retcon it again into not blood related
This is the problem, it's a retcon that's so old that a lot of people don't know or care that it was a retcon, but it was, and it was done for absolutely moronic reasons. Quicksilver and Magneto hadn't even met for almost 15 years when Byrne somehow convinced Marvel to do this.
If online fandom was a thing back then like it was when Byrne tried this again with Norman and Sandman, it would have been laughed out of canon just as quickly. Instead it took MCU synergy to finally undo it and fix things.
3 months ago
Anonymous
do you know which issue run where john bryne retcon quicksilver to be blood related with magneto?
3 months ago
Anonymous
Byrne wasn't the writer, he was the artist, but it was his idea. IIRC it's Uncanny X-Men #125 and Avengers #185-187
Getting back to Superman,
>And I'm a Legion fan, they're my favorite team, I have plenty of reason to hate it and Byrne.
My memory is shady but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic, until Brainiac tells everyone to stop because this isn't the Superman they are looking for (deducing it from the fact that they are legitimately hurting him), and then Superboy ambushes all of them with his freeze ray?
And the followup issue where Superboy sacrifices himself to save his world from Time Trapper (actually a pocket dimension created by the Trapper) was one of the greatest comic books I've ever read. It has everything from crazy superhero fight, plans, twists, betrayals, crazy superhero fights and saving people from endless natural disasters, the hero sacrificing his life to save all that he loves, and an emotional burial at the end.
Also it made Time Trapper incredibly scary, like something out of a horror movie, instead of just a dude in a robe.
wasn't Byrne one of the main guys behind retconning Superboy out of existence in Post-Crisis DC, which had a huge effect on the Legion?
3 months ago
Anonymous
thanks for the info anon
3 months ago
Anonymous
I don't know whose idea it was, but post-crisis had a strict policy on there being no other Kryptonians beside Kal. So Krypto was a random dog saved by Bibbo and got his name because the dog tag guy couldn't fit the extra N on the end. Zod and his crew were from an alternate dimension. Supergirl was from that place too, and he was a shapeshifter blob created by a good Lex Luthor (which is why Supergirl then falls into love with Lex 2 who looked the same, admittedly he was also a really hot guy at the time). I'm not sure about Power Girl, she was still around, but I dunno what her origin was.
It's also why they made a new Superboy who was a clone of Superman.
The only single time they had an in-continuity Kryptonian show up, it was in an Aliens crossover.
>Superman was culturally lost in the shuffle.
TSMT with how much conflicts rn and the internet being massive so people know thing like cia coup état another third world banana republic, all superman discourse be like why dont superman stop 9/11 , why dont he stop israel-palestine conflict, why supes dont stop cia proxy war between katajaya and madripura
He tucks them in his pants, I'm pretty sure there were a few panels showing it because I clearly remember it.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>I'm not sure about Power Girl, she was still around, but I dunno what her origin was.
>Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
Byrne had past history for doing this, in the late 1970s he was the main force in pushing to retcon Quicksilver and Magneto into being related because they both had white hair. He tried the same fanfic nonsense again with Osborn and Sandman 20 years later but nobody was tolerating it anymore.
Wouldn't that logic make every black person related to each other?
This was done by editorial mandate. The Clone Saga had caused the readership on all 4 Spider-Man books to drop by 50%, so it was decided that Spider-Man needed to be rebooted. John Byrne was probably called in due to his past success with handling another editorial mandated reboot (namely Superman). After it got negative backlash they decided to ignore it instead and didn't reboot. This is why they did Ultimate Spider-Man instead.
Thats kind of interesting with Spider-Man origin being tied to Dr. octopus origin. That was actually done in the novella by Stan Lee in one of the Spider-Man pros anthologies back in the 90s. So I wonder if this comic was actually an adaptation of that.
That's actually bullshit as shortly after MoS came out, DC licensed out a Superman cartoon (forget the company's name that made the show, Ruby Spears IIRC?) that ran on CBS in 1988 that used the Silver Age status quo.
One of the chief reasons Byrne quit Superman was that he found out about it and the eternal evil israelite Mike Gold (a DNC operative ala Sana Amanant, who bought his way into the comic industry and who was actively and openly sabotaging DC from within due to him DESPISING Crisis and the abandoning of Silver Age lore) decided to be a c**t to Byrne's face saying "damn straight we are using the Silver Age Superman for all licensing shit because we deep down hate your version of Superman!". Even though Byrne's reboot had made Superman a top selling book for the first time in ages.
It wasn't until Lois and Clark that DC explicitly started mandating that all media versions of Superman had to use the Byrne version.
They had a live action Superboy show a few years AFTER Byrne removed the character from existence
I doubt they ever really cared about matching comics up with other media.
The superboy show was really just superboy in name only. Most of the show had Clark living on his own and being a young adult. The movies
9not that they’re tight continuity) has Superman at 30, the show was Clark at 20
>It wasn't until Lois and Clark that DC explicitly started mandating that all media versions of Superman had to use the Byrne version.
So Byrne DID ruin Superman! The Ruby-Spears cartoon is actually good
It had nothing to do with movie synergy per se, it was about keeping characters on brand and on model, and making sure a Superman story or a Spider-Man story provided a fairly consistent experience across different media. Imagine these companies having their shit together enough to do that today.
>Imagine these companies having their shit together enough to do that today.
They had editors. They all got fired to cut costs, no one could keep up with continuities anyway, and you had superstars like Bendis and I think Kirkman claiming that continuity is just baggage holding back "good writers".
I liked it a lot. It actually made Supes more human instead of a magical invincible demigod. And I'm not talking about him not being able to juggle planets, but crap like how his cape regularly got torn up or that he kept getting stubbles if he skipped a day shaving (which itself involved using a piece of Kryptonian metal to reflect his heat vision). He was also struggling often when fighting enemies who matched him strength wise. I can't agree with every change they made to every character, but they made the most out of everything (Matrix Supergirl, clone Superboy) and when something didn't work out they mixed it up to be closer to the original versions (Brainiac started as a carnival psychic, but they changed it so it was Vril Dox mind hopping). Kingpin Lex was truly sadistic, and Lex II was fricking fabulous and I wish they kept him longer.
But yeah making him unable to do crap like juggling planets also helped - and made for a fun contrast when for example he met Superboy who still had pre-crisis bullshit powers and wiped the floor with him easily.
And then the 90s and 00s pissed it away with crap like pic related.
There were lots of villains that gave Superman trouble in the Silver Age comics. In fact there were even issues where he straight up lost fights like in pic related. Decades later and Microwave Man is still 1-0 against Kal.
Zod, Faora, Jax-Ur, Parasite, Vartox, Bizarro, Mongul, Darkseid, Ultraman, Metallo, and The Ultra-Humanite had all physically matched or overpowered Kal before Byrne's run. And those were just the well-known examples.
Most of those were cosmic superheroes/despots or superman clones who all were Superman's equal or a version of him from another planet, or in Parasite's case, he could drain Kals power. Byrnes run had shit like Rampage, a random hulk expy chick, beating him black and green until he realized he could suck out the radiation out of her parasite style (it was solar radiation). There was a "mummy robot" from 15000 years ago left behind by aliens who colonized humans, who beat Superman easily. Lex built robots who actually threatened him.There was a (truly horrifying) vampire chick who almost killed him (okay, you can say it was Magic in this case but still). Oh and the fact that he was actually beaten to the point of having scars and black eyes and such. Basically Kal was super strong compared to normal humans only, against other super powered creatures he wasn't a big shot.
Or there was the race with Flash, which he lost, and that was just "runs at mach 3 at most and has to eat at McDonalds 6 times a day" Flash. Not "outrace Death or instantaneous teleporting" Flash.
You honestly make some great points. I'll admit that Byrne's run and the CCA loosening up helped overall better convey his physical struggles. With mixed results if you ask me; though it was a refreshing change of pace. If there had to be an established "middle-ground" for his powers I'd pick that run first for sure. Not too ridiculous like sneezing a whole solar system away, but not so nerfed he gets his ass kicked like TAS Superman.
I don't mind Superman being a planet juggler at all. The problem is power creeping. That's Pre-Crisis era's problem. You had random characters destroying galaxies, causing big bang level explosions, surpassing infinity itself in speed. It came to a point where it was hard to scale things down in order to tell different stories.
In fact, it is the same problem Dragon Ball now faces. It started out with small scale adventures, then you started having characters being able to destroy the moon, then entire planets, then the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, so on and forth.
What they should have done with Superman is, scale things back a bit and remain consistent regarding what he can or can not do. Because even in the early post crisis era you still had Superman surviving nukes, exploding moons, novas and supernovas.
A lot of the
‘Pushing the envelope” was stuff you could still see in 70’s/80’s comics. Carnage wasn’t actually doing anything gory in most mainline comics, at worst you’d see some blood.
The other day I was reading(pre-Frank Miller) Batman and there’s a story about strippers being murdered. This was a newsstand issue a kid could pick up.
Removed Superman's teenage adventures as Superboy, Superboy's Adventures with the Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl and Krypto, and also altered the history and culture of planet Kryton severely were their biggest gripes.
>wtf most of that you listing still pretty much canon rn,
Not at the time. DC were pretty strict about it for a decade and a half, so a lot of people back then assumed it would never be restored. Even the Superman animated series at the time had to adhere to some of the rules during the 90s.
Krypto didn't come back until the early 00s in Loeb's Superman run. Superboy and his connection to the Legion didn't come back until Infinite Crisis. Supergirl wasn't Kryptonian again until Loeb's Superman/Batman arc in the mid-00s.
He reinvented Krypton and Superman's relationship to it. Choosing to have Clark more identify with Earth over his Kryptonian heritage.
Byrne created the Lois and Clark personalites you know today, he essentially created Ma and Pa Kent who existed pre crisis but were not characters
He brought Clark back to the Daily Planet, at the end Pre Crisis he was a TV anchorman, and fleshed out and created additional employees to the Planet like Cat Grant
Byrne continued the shift started in DKR between Batman and Superman, it can't be understated how much of a shift this was, Bruce and Clark prior shared a comic with each other for 50 years and in the span of 5 comic books they're mortal enemies and didn't interact with each other regularly until Morrison's Big 7 JLA twelve years later
It also destroyed Superman relationship with Dick Grayson who as much Batman's sidekick as he was Superman's pre-crisis.
Dick named himself Nightwing after a superhero on Krypton Superman would tell him about it periodically.
They're goofy nerds who should stay the hell away from Superman. They spoil his humble, quiet farmboy origins and journey of self discovery and belonging by whisking him off to the future as a child and telling him he's the greatest hero ever. They're a mistake that has been corrected.
They are more important to Superman comics than Darkseid and the new gods that (former marvel) writers insist on shoehorning into Superman stories because Jack Kirby created them. They use the thin premise of “well of course darkseid is a Superman villain …he showed up in an issue of Jimmy Olsen”
Darkseid being wasted on Superman doens't mean the LOSH being hammered into the mythos are any better, especially given that a lot of Legion stories don't rely on the superman ties
The Legion can exist , but even thought they have the angle of being inspired by Superman they don't need to be tie at the hip.
yeah. Darkseid showing up in a jimmy Olsen comic is the only reason he's considered a Superman villain.
And Kirby took over Jimmy Olsen comics because it didn't currently have a writer/artist assigned to it and he didn't want anyone to lose a job because of him
I thought the story was DC wanted Kirby to take over Superman or Batman, but he asked for their worst selling monthly instead.
3 months ago
Anonymous
there are like two different stories :1) Jack said he would take the lowest selling comic and make it a hit or 2) Jack said he wanted a book that didn't have a team on it because he didn't want anyone kicked off the book
I think its ( 2) since Jimmy Olsen comic actually sold well at the time.
I actually like the premise of the New Gods and Superman sharing similarities and Superman longing for the company of fellow Kryptonians so the realm of New Genesis would be up his alley.
The Byrne comics were the definition of mid. Everything modern Cinemaphile whines about with writers injecting their politics into comic books is PRECISELY what Byrne did with Superman, gradually shifting him into a stodgy supporter of the establishment. The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
Everything fantastic and weird about Superman was watered down and pared away. All his enemies got worse re-imaginings (Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst.) And for the most part it was just plain boring.
>Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst.
I like most of what Bryne did for Superman but his version of Brainiac was so fricking underwhleming and all because Bryne HATED the name 'Brainiac'...which kinda sums up Bryne's sensibilities.
Died in his first appearance for contrived plot point of curing Lucy Lane's contrived blindness in a story that seemed to exist solely so Byrne could say Bizarro did exist post-Crisis but died so he wouldn't have to touch the general moronation of the character and Bizarro World.
Hell, it wasn't until the JOSS run that they tried to do a second Bizarro story with a new Bizarrow and even then, the character got fridged again and it wasn't until Joker magically created a new Bizarro from scratch in Emperor Joker, that DC fully restored the character to the DC Universe.
>t. The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
Byrne's superman happened after DKR.
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman,
Only in the sense that it was going against a general view of Superman that people had. It wasn't an explicit damanation of Byrne's take--Because Byrne in an interview said he was going to do Superman and Batman's first meeting in Man of Steel and hint at the future antagonism shown in DKR! (He says this in an issue of Amazing Heroes that I don't remember the issue number right now).
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
senpai, Dark Knight Returns literally predated John Byrne’s take.
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman,
Only in the sense that it was going against a general view of Superman that people had. It wasn't an explicit damanation of Byrne's take--Because Byrne in an interview said he was going to do Superman and Batman's first meeting in Man of Steel and hint at the future antagonism shown in DKR! (He says this in an issue of Amazing Heroes that I don't remember the issue number right now).
See:
>t. The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
Byrne's superman happened after DKR.
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
senpai, Dark Knight Returns literally predated John Byrne’s take.
>Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst
Brainiac being turned into a psychic villain wasn’t that bad considering all the limitations that were in place:
>you couldn’t do bottle city of Kandor because Superman was strictly meant to be the only Kryptonian, nixing his most iconic story element. >Superman couldn’t go to space without an exterior breathing apparatus during this period so any space travel shit was out by default >Brainiac just being random dude shrinking shit for no real purpose would be lame >Brainiac just being a robot baddie was redundant because Metallo already served that purpose >Psychic powers against Superman’s physical strength is a good dynamic
The real issue with Byrneboot Brainiac was the serial killer debut which wasn’t interesting (Brainiac’s mind posessing a human was a neat idea), his awful fricking pink costume, him looking fat, etc. An issue of execution, not the concept revamp being horrible.
I've been liking it. Good place to start reading Supes. But what are some other noteworthy runs. Runs that aren't "off canon" minis like All Star, All Seasons, etc. Everyone always points to those. I heard Tomasi was good.
You can start with the Triangle Era for Post-Crisis.
Secret Origins and Birthright for his origin story.
You’ll only appreciate All Star Superman entirely once you become a fan. All-Star Superman has a lot of easter eggs to old Superman shit you won’t get unless you’re already a fan.
Horseshit. The triangle era is when it goes downhill. The Loeb/Kelly/Casey/Schultz era was better.
Not really. The Triangle era everything counted and mattered and you had the JOSS team (Jurgens, Ordway, Simonson, and Stern) working in perfect unison with their elaborate plots and stories.
Loeb and Kelly only cared about each other and Casey was too fricking high to be trusted in doing anything, so he was told to just write stand-alone shit in between crossovers and somehow got better reviews because Loeb/Kelly openly admitted they wanted Silver Age Superman back and were dead set on bringing back as much Silver Age shit as they could sneak past fans before editorial told them to shut up (or in the case of their infamous Krypton retcon, be told to produce a story that retconned the retcon as a mindfrick Brainiac pulled on Clark). And no one cared about Schultz or Seagle.
I don't have a particular problem with the format of the triangle era, except jurgen's run is filled with bad story arcs that last weeks or months uninterrupted with no safe haven book to at least provide some entertainment separate from it. I much prefer the format in Byrne's era, where it was mostly self contained, less decompressed stories, and with a difference in style where Superman was his solo book and Action Comics had a guest character (and Adventures is the shit book you want to skip, but at least doesnt really affect the others), very cool arrangement
Adventures of Superman was the lore book. IIRC it was where Wolfman basically set up the backstories and lore for the supporting cast, including Jimmy, Perry, Lois, and Lex.
3 months ago
Anonymous
He wanted it to be the human interest book, with more personal stories, yeah. Interesting in concept, fulfilling the difference in styles i mentioned between superman and AC, too bad the book was bad. I'll never forget all the time spent trying to make me feel sympathy for Cat Grant for not having custody of her son when she was a drunk prostitute and bad mom
3 months ago
Anonymous
>I'll never forget all the time spent trying to make me feel sympathy for Cat Grant for not having custody of her son when she was a drunk prostitute and bad mom
This. Absolutely "Lois & Clark" bored housewife cheap budget storytelling. As a '79 movie fan of the era and a kid at the time, Superman was the Super Powers, Super Friends, comic Brave & The Bold colorful characters with colorful outfits having crazy adventures. Byrne turned him into a cheap soap opera vehicle for cheapskate TV producers
3 months ago
Anonymous
The thing is, that soap opera stuff sold. It was a combination of the spectator boom and the marriage that made late 90s Superman comics especially tedious. I still remember all those issues with the newsboy legion and that blue orc guy & his blind girlfriend hogging the spotlight. I mean--fricking Superman, King of the World with what's his name as the baddie! Awful stuff. I do have a soft spot in my heart for Electric Superman.
Once Lois and Clark got married, there wasn't any driving force for the soap opera stuff anymore. That's why the comics dabbled with breaking up their marriage for a while, until the line found its footing with the zany early 2000s stuff like Emperor Joker.
It took the New 52 frickup to do the obvious thing: give em a kid. And then DC fricked that up by aging him prematurely.
3 months ago
Anonymous
>It was a combination of the spectator boom
Byrne's run predates the speculator craze entirely.
3 months ago
Anonymous
Wasn't that the book where it is revealed that Lex cucked Perry by knocking up his wife and making him raise Lex's bastard? Who promptly ends up killed off after he tries to become a super-hero?
3 months ago
Anonymous
I'm pretty sure Perry's son died when ordway was heading the main superman book, and i think that's when the cucking was revealed when luthor comes to visit them in the hospital. He didnt try to become a superhero in that story though, at most he got shot while trying to help someone else but its been a while so i dont quite recall
You can start with the Triangle Era for Post-Crisis.
Secret Origins and Birthright for his origin story.
You’ll only appreciate All Star Superman entirely once you become a fan. All-Star Superman has a lot of easter eggs to old Superman shit you won’t get unless you’re already a fan.
hardcore nerds will cry that every little detail is missed. You really don't need them. Superman 79 got it right. Only 60+ broke dick boomers cry there's no legion or superboy.
it was a 2+ hour movie
Superman (and family) had a comic a week many of which had more than one story per issue. You're going to add more stuff to the mythos after awhile
>no krypto >lame brainiac >no bottle city of Kandor >no cube world of Htrae full of Bizarros >no legion of super pets >no Lois/Lana cat fights >no obnoxious jimmy Olsen turning into weird shit >no Lois marriage schemes >no Flash Gordon Krypton >no time travel >no super boy >no legion of superheroes >no clark/superman personality split >no jerky Superman pulling pranks on his friends
Byrne Superman was fairly boring to me. Though the issues themselves were well done. Rich jerk Lex was fun but easily could have been done with mad scientist super criminal Lex anyways
>Rich jerk Lex was fun but easily could have been done with mad scientist super criminal Lex anyways
The rich tech CEO mad scientist Lex we got is the perfect hybrid of the pre-Crisis and Byrne versions and he even foreshadowed real life tech tycoon billionaire supervillains (though I guess they’ve always existed, see Edison).
That reminds me; who was the butthole who made evil CEO Lex a secret softie who was willing to work with Superman when really bad shit happened, was willing to do the right thing when push came to shove, and who showed signs that he could be reformed if he just got over his petty jealousy issues?
In the Byrne reboot? No. The entire society of Krypton was specifically made to be cold and sterile, full of people who barely interacted with others physically to a point a computer iirc just matched different genetic data to make new people. It was meant to emphasise how being raised as Clark made him human and Earth is where his character comes from. That’s why one of the early short what if stories involves Jor-El and rest of Krypton migrating to Earth, taking over and running the world like alien despots or something like that.
They didn’t. Bodily contact was considered insane in Krypton, and Jor-El was basically like a weirdo because he was actually sort of interested in finding out more about Lara personally after their genes were chosen to be used to make Kal-El.
Byrne’s revamp is very sexist (and typical of the genre where dads are more important than their mothers) in this approach because he deeply emphasised how Jor-El was more open minded and human compared to the rest of Kryptonians and while Lara wasn’t made to be a totally evil cold hearted b***h her role as a mother was kept minimal and she wasn’t highly interested of breaking away from Kryptonian customs of her own free will, it was more like oh well I guess the kid will have a chance if we send him to live among primitives and there’s very brief show of her slightly getting away from being totally frigid just before the end, iirc. A later story when Superman goes in time and meets his parents even shows her being kinda disgusted when she sees her adult son who is the polar opposite of Kryptonian ways.
It is sexist in the greater context of how superhero fiction is so obsessed with father relationships as mentioned, and there is no good reason why Lara had to specifically be written that way when you had carte blanche to rewrite the entire origin. She could have easily been written as similarly rebellious to Kryptonian social norms, since Byrne clearly had to go out of his way to make Jor-El be the odd one out who actually has and embraces human traits and doesn’t have prejudice about “primitive” life forms.
I was rereading some of the Death and Return trades recently and I forgot just how many events were being piled at the time. You had the set up for Emerald Twilight and AzBats running around.
Byrne absolutely saved the character, the shedding of krypton ties alone (emphasizing his human heritage rather than the kryptonian one, symbolized by the costume being made by his mom with a normal S rather than a stupid house of El symbol, while also showing he doesnt really care about krypton aside from its knowledge being "mementos of a life that could've been") is the single most important fix to superman that has been sadly somewhat lost since then, though thankfully not to the point it was in the silver age. Having just finished Jurgens run a few days ago, being up to Superman 150 (vol 2) and the other super books I can safely say Byrne is by far the best run the character has had from 1987 to 2000. Most of his issues are okay, yeah, but he didnt really have any awful ones like his successors (looking at you especially, Jurgens), and his cross-title arcs were some of the best post-crisis superman has ever had (the Legends tie-in, the Superboy Saga and the Supergirl Saga)
Plus the Man of Steel mini is the best telling of superman's origin before or since. It's the story that made me shed the preconceived notion that superman is a boring character
>but Byrne didnt really have any awful issues like his successors
like the one where superman does porn? or when lois thinks clark and superman were raised together as brothers?
Neither. Superman is bigger than any single interpretation, he can’t really be ruined or saved by a single one. What works stays with the character and what doesn’t fades away. It’s like mythos Darwinism.
Dull, but inconsequential.
20 year old zoomer here
I have the entire Man Of Steel mini, should I scan it?
Nah, there's tons of scans already out there.
https://getcomics.org/
yeah but the more the better
I've been looking for this for years. Can we ever find it online?
It is online. At all the usual places.
Then I must be a moron. It's not called "The Real Truth About Krypton" as it says in the picture, is it?
https://readcomiconline.li/, search for superman #166 2001 March.
Couldn't find anything on your website even with advanced search so I just parsed the specific files from a giant DC torrent pack.
I found it in two seconds. Quit being bad.
it's by volume, you're looking for #166 of the 198 series
https://readcomiconline.li/Comic/Superman-1987/Issue-166?id=16613#1
*1987 series
gotta clean my keyboard
Cheers for the link. Honestly I'm not that familiar with how DC breaks down all their series, I just wanted to read the comics I read growing up at my local library. Your link will tide me over until the torrent completes.
Just read the issue, and I'm confused as to what changed with 'the truth' other than his dad wearing a different outfit.
Did love Lois in the White House press room though. Guess I'll read the following issues when I get home from work.
it's just a blurb, it's actually "return to krypton"
I miss McGuinness artstyle so much
he's still working though
I love it, especially his women. I want a Superman cartoon with that artstyle
There was a movie.
It's been scanned many times.
not perfect, but more good stuff than bad stuff. the decade of superman comics leading up to it were the most forgettable in his entire history. i'd say he saved supes
Zoomers really fricking hate it apparently and some outright blame it for the "Superman is boring" stigma
I've noticed this one twitter and I don't get it. And I'm a Legion fan, they're my favorite team, I have plenty of reason to hate it and Byrne.
Apparently they're massive pre-crisis fans and think post-crisis was a mistake
Huh, maybe there's hope for zoomers after all
>And I'm a Legion fan, they're my favorite team, I have plenty of reason to hate it and Byrne.
My memory is shady but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic, until Brainiac tells everyone to stop because this isn't the Superman they are looking for (deducing it from the fact that they are legitimately hurting him), and then Superboy ambushes all of them with his freeze ray?
And the followup issue where Superboy sacrifices himself to save his world from Time Trapper (actually a pocket dimension created by the Trapper) was one of the greatest comic books I've ever read. It has everything from crazy superhero fight, plans, twists, betrayals, crazy superhero fights and saving people from endless natural disasters, the hero sacrificing his life to save all that he loves, and an emotional burial at the end.
Also it made Time Trapper incredibly scary, like something out of a horror movie, instead of just a dude in a robe.
the reason behind that LSH story (as well as retcons in the 5YL run) was the superman office fricking up the legion book behind the scenes. no superboy meant the legion writers had to come up with a fake one, then get rid of him too... in the end they replaced him with valor. such a mess. but yeah, time trapper got upgraded, as well as mordru.
>but doesn't Superman gets the crap beaten out of him by only the 4 legion members shown on the pic
Yes. He also gets his ass handed to him by the Superboy created by Time Trapper.
those are fantastic four, right?
Nice cover
Superman was never "an allegory for immigration". Anyone who says that is delusional.
He was Moses, that's his whole thing is he's space Moses.
Not really, Superman's not leading his people from slavery to a "promised land". Create a Space Pharaoh with a Space Pyramid for Superman to fight and then we'll talk.
Superman's a broad enough character with so many different adaptations that different people see different things in him. Some people see his being an alien as an 'immigrant success story', achieving the American Dream. Other people use Superman for Jesus allegories. Some people want to go back to the social vigilantism of early Superman, others want to use him as the superhero of the establishment. It's really only the superheroes who are close to a hundred years old like Superman and Batman who have so many drastically different takes on them.
>I don't know whose idea it was, but post-crisis had a strict policy on there being no other Kryptonians beside Kal.
While that's all true, and it was rule DC editorial spent 20 years enforcing despite writers clearly wanting to at least bring back Supergirl and Zod, Superboy was a separate issue. Someone had the idea of Superman's powers not fully developing until adulthood, so he was never Superboy, which had the effect of Superboy never being part of the Legion.
>space pharaoh
>space pyramid
Didn't that happen in the Ruby Spears cartoon?
No, no he wasn't.
He didn't start as one but he sure as shit became one. fricking Garth Ennis of all people pointed this out too.
No he didn't.
Sure he is. Just, like, white people immigration.
>Jews
>White
This is like saying “Superman is NEVER a Jesus allegory”
Like yes, yes he is. Just because he didn’t start off as a Jesus allegory doesn’t mean he didn’t become one
“He’s israeli. Moses and Samson!” Guess what. Jesus was israeli too. Superman literally came back from the dead.
>Superman literally came back from the dead.
So didn't fricking [Insert super hero here].
You're reading stuff into it that isn't there.
A good third of Superman's Silver Age stories are about how much he misses Krypton and how lonely he feels on Earth
That has literally nothing to do with immigration.
>Missing your old home
>Nothing to do with immigration
You're seeing what you want to see.
>a great 3 part novel
Had no clue the "graphic novel" business went back that far. Always figured that was an invention of the 80s.
No, here they just call it a "3-part novel" referring to the three parts of the story. They weren't thinking of "graphic novel" in this case.
A lot of what you'll read online aren't from experts or educated people, it's from weirdos
Byrne's Superman was what got me to like Superman and changed my view of him as boring.
He's basically Chris Evans Captain America, a likeable all-American chad who can appeal to people who aren't usually interested in superheroes.
The hate I mostly see is from: hatred of Byrne for his views, other people in the comics industry that just don't like Byrne, removing Superman's immigrant background, or because the series "Marvelized" Superman by turning him into Peter Parker. No more wacky Silver Age adventures, everything was realistic now.
I later got interested in Silver Age Superman too, but MoS is a good introduction that doesn't feel as overwhelming.
It was a different kind of edge. 90s superhero comics were still very pulpy, just with more blood and violence, but still embraced their origins. 2000s comics was when they started being ashamed of being superhero related, tried to be more realistic, and rape/murder was considered the most "deep" kind of story.
This was a good self-contained retelling that got way too much hate. It was never a retcon, as some seemed to think. On the other hand, Bendis and Slott made trash comics that caused long-lasting damage to Spider-Man.
>This was a good self-contained retelling that got way too much hate. It was never a retcon, as some seemed to think.
No, it was intended as a retcon. They eventually rolled back a lot of it instantaneously though, so it didn't feel like it.
And I agree at this point Slott did more damage to Spider-Man than Byrne. Bendis, arguably (but I imagine editorial would've still gone with similar changes even if he wasn't there; they wanted "young" Spider-Man and they would've inevitably done legacy characters). I think the difference is that editorial back in the 90s still gave a shit what the audience thought but Marvel since Quesada still hopes to double down and gaslight people into liking something people hate, or quietly walk it back without admitting they did it because fans didn't like it
Man looking back it's hilarious how quick they were to roll back things even as early as the 90s when they weren't working out. Spider-ben was "fixed" almost immediately and yet now marvel won't stop pushing this verse shit down our necks.
They won't ever admit it but I think that's why readership declined severely
You look at the Clone Saga and it only lasted two years and people were pissed off about it
You look at something like Avengers Disassembled and it took what, eight years to attempt to fix Vision and Wanda and they still don't resolve stuff? Or OMD which is still in place in spite of their half-assed attempts (ie OMIT) to say the deal never happened?
It's not like I expect them to get on their knees and commit seppuku as an apology or anything but just quietly course correct. I promise if you just slowly phased miles out of comics nobody would ever notice if not for the social media screamos. And they don't buy comics.
The current crop of editorial are generally fans of the 70s/early 80s depictions of these characters and become obstinate when the series breaks from that mold barring runaway hits like Asian kung-fu Batgirl.
"The current crop of editorial" aren't fans at all. They openly admit to not reading comics.
Tom Brevoort has a blog where he talks about comics he’s reading like daily
Then why is he such a gay?
Because he works for Marvel
Brevoort is one of the few veteran editors left in the industry, he's been a Marvel editor since the early 90s. He's the exception, not the rule. And he consistently has the worst taste in things at Marvel he likes, and was one of the men behind the "make readers angry" business strategy, so him actually reading comics hardly matters.
He's also still salty he wasn't given the EiC job.
Can you imagine the shit show if he was. We need guys like Shooter back.
>the Clone Saga and it only lasted two years
ONLY two years!? Are you fricking kidding me!?
Clone Saga was it's own animal, basically it was a 30 month crossover between 5 Spider-Man ongoing titles, Good Guy Green Goblin book, New Warriors and countless specials and miniseries that would dart in and out.
so you are looking at somewhere in the neighborhood of 200-220ish comic books out released every week, one issue bleeding into the next and story never ending.
it's not like where every story is easily divided and collected in 6 issue chunks
I think they understood that. They seemed to be questioning the guy they were quoting's use of "only".
It was just so dense and heavy it felt longer
Yes. It felt longer because there were multiple books to read from. Maybe you could claim it was longer than two years by adding the months leading into it (where Ben was in the shadows) but that's still less than three. Hell, it's still less than three years even if you start with Lifetheft.
The worse thing about Avengers Disassembled is that Marvel had NUMEROUS opportunities to fix shit and even then, the only thing Bendis and Brevoort would do was bring Hawkeye back (and then get rid of him for another year and then only bring him back as Ronin) while at the same time letting Bendis run off Heinberg and kill the fledging Young Avengers franchise TWICE and in the case of Vision/YA Vision, NO ONE fricking knew what the hell was the status quo of the character, to the point that Brubaker's Captain America Reborn story hinges 100% on YA Vision being OG Vision.
>They won't ever admit it but I think that's why readership declined severely
This alone would make for a good thread.
The mid-90s drove a lot of people away mainly with the speculator bust, and quality went to shit across the board. The death of the Marvel Method of storytelling in favor of the "Wunderkind" artists like Liefield calling the shots rendered so many books of that era almost unreadable. The biggest casualty was plot.
Say what you will about Avengers Disassembled, but it really drew in new readers, and helped to save my friend's struggling comic shop. That particular era started drawing the fans back who'd left in the mid/late 90's. Bendis started off strong but quickly overextended himself to take every gig he could get his hands on. Now I can't bear to read most of his stuff, but at the time he was onto something.
>letting Bendis run off Heinberg and kill the fledging Young Avengers franchise
What's the story here? I remember when YA started then disappeared. What did Bendis do?
>Say what you will about Avengers Disassembled, but it really drew in new readers
and drove away a lot more
Did it really though? No, it did not, you're just being hyperbolic.
>you're just being hyperbolic that Bendis could have done anything wrong to comics
How badly has Bendis ruined comics? Just in general.
It drove a lot of readers away. He just fricking said it.
>You look at something like Avengers Disassembled and it took what, eight years to attempt to fix Vision and Wanda
Well, they're alive again. What Byrne did to them in 1988-1989 is never going to get fixed, and what Bendis did to them ended up influencing what the MCU did.
>It's not like I expect them to get on their knees and commit seppuku as an apology or anything
To be fair you'd only need it to happen the once and nobody in the industry would dare wreck a character ever again.
>removing Superman's immigrant background
You can't remove something that never existed in the first place.
Chapter One was utterly unredeemabe dogshit intended to be the new lore of Spider-Man; to the point that Byrne explicitly referenced it as canon in his short ASM run and went as far as to have certain characters (Electro and Vulture) appear in their Chapter One costumes with the implication that those costumes were ALWAYS their costumes.
And the hate for Chapter One and the Byrne run was so great that it was the origin story for two of the most toxic Spider-Man fans online: Kirk Boxleitner and Jesse Baker; two of the biggest and most vocal critics of the Brand New Day era and removal of the Spider-Marriage.
Plus Byrne actively ignoring Untold Tales which was the better expansion of Lee-Ditko era.
Sadly, everyone ignored Untold Tales of Spider-Man, probably the last good Spider-Man book, and every issue was $1
As a kid when Chapter One came out, I remember my impression of it as being a very stodgy book. Which I guess was the point? I wasn't the intended audience. It was meant to lure back longtime fans turned off by the Clone Saga.
Not that it accomplished that goal.
Their intended audience was the younger readership (it was why Byrne updated stuff with things that Peter's world might've had a decade ago), but it failed for a lot of reasons because the longtime fans turned off by the Clone Saga were mostly turned off by it and the new readers like yourself were repelled by it
There were some that did like it but it wasn't enough for Marvel to keep it in continuity.
Really?
saved
Certain parts of it helped to modernise Superman and make him more relatable and remove the overpowered God from the silver age aspects. Other parts were dumb and Byrne being Byrne.
Didn't Byrne himself regret writing it?
Why would it?
I meant "Why would HE?" obviously.
>Byrne
>it
I think you got it right the first time.
He regrets writing Superboy and the Legion out of Superman's backstory.
That was a good thing, though. He shouldn't regret what became the default. That hokey shlock makes the character less interesting.
I don't think they should be completely taken out, I think STAS did it well where he has an adventure with the Legion but his memories are erased after. Making him aware of his legacy is cute as a prequel comic but starting from scratch it cheapens it.
Ultimately what Byrne set out to do was make a Superman comic for an audience that had watched the Reeve movies. Which were so influential even people who pine for Silver age superman forget the Kents weren't farmers and Smallville wasn't Kansas before the movies. People long for Reeve Superman and not surly middle aged dad Superman with a hair trigger temper and a condescending attitude.
Exactly. The Kents owned a department store and adopted Clark from an orphanage.
The Kents found Clark first and gave him to the orphanage but went back and adopted him legally since they wanted a baby. They always had a farm but in the comics they ended up owning a general store too. They never seemed to do much farming anyways but the Kents still lived on a farm
Sales were fricking crazy high. All 3 books were top 20 and the 2 that Byrne drew were top 10. Anyone who says it ruined Superman is delusional.
It was a book that updates Superman for the modern era that being the 80s at the time. And cemented the view of the character for the next 20 or so years.
Unfortunately the moral paradigm that represented the 80s was drastically incompatible with the one in the 90s and to a less extent the 2000s and so Superman was culturally lost in the shuffle.
You're overthinking it.
Am I?
Its basically that Bryne made a Conservative (by future readership standards) law abiding Superman which didn't mess around with the same silver age wackiness as much. And it worked so well that combined with how people already viewed the character as AMERICA the superhero.
And then got turbo fricked by the 90s shift into edge.
There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s. And there was NONE in Superman. I think you're confusing the 90s for the 2000s.
And even then there was still zero "edge" in Superman in the 2000s. They really never tried to do "edge" in Superman until Injustice.
Which is my point, Superman wasn't edgy when being edgy was In and so became viewed as boring.
Its a major crux of Kingdom Come.
And come off it with 90s comics not being edgy, int he era of even Dr Fate became a tough guy with a mullet and big knife. The era of roided out meatheads with guns .
Was it actually edgy? No but for comics that was a big departure from before and what came after and is vied as the edgy era.
Nah, the 90s was WAY goofier than the 80s. Early Image is SO fricking campy.
>There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s.
90s edgy stuff is different from 00s edgy stuff. It’s about context. 90s edge is transferring from the more safe and kiddy friendly toned down storytelling to doing shit like Carnage the serial killer and him being allowed to amass massive body counts regularly, ramp up in brutal violence in general due to flirting with antihero stuff a la Azrael taking over as Batman, Spider-man having his brief mental breakdown phase where Peter is cocooning himself in a web and is more and more violent and angry, Magneto kills thousands of people by doing a global EMP strike, and so forth.
In 00s the edgyness moves to new avenues and changes to rape, brutal killing and dismemberment, more topical post 9/11 political commentary being a driving part of the plot, etc.
I don't think you've read many comics from before the 90s.
Comics were far more kids friendly outside of specifically intended for mature readers titles. Far less blood and visual violence, way more cerebral compared to the 90a. Specifically because of Reagan era censorship and “this is a kids medium” mentality even if certain titles pushed the envelope. Hence why 90s was far more violent and bloody as a response.
There’s a ton of shit from the 70s onward that would have never flown in kids animation of the time, or even now. Shit like Black Spider being a former heroin addict, Jason Todd’s parents being fed to crocodiles, Phoenix killing a planet, hell comic characters dying in general. Comics , relative to other kids media at the time, were more risque
>Reagan era censorship
That was not a thing.
Reagan gets too much of the blame but the sudden coming of the CCA really did a number on a lot of books. EC horror especially.
CCA came about 30 years prior to Reagan and mostly impacted crime and horror books.
>90s was far more violent and bloody
Outside of like Chaos Comics and a few other random titles, it really wasn't.
Dude, how many new characters with a blood-prefix did they create in the 90s? I rest my case.
I'm reading fantastic four right now and can confidently say you're moronic. Defalco run is embarrassingly edgy
>There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s
This is bait
No, I get what he's saying. 90's edge is just trying to look as cool and extreme as possible. But it has all the edge of Bart Simpson and Sonic the Hedgehog. A lot of it is just silly in hindsight, campy even.
The 2000s is where things got REALLY edgy. Post-9/11 writers trying to handle mature topics and write biting political and social commentary, with mixed results at best. Rape and gore and anything else with shock value.
90s edge was just for fun, 00s edge was serious business.
>There wasn't much "edge" in superhero comics in the 90s.
Have you ever picked up a 90s comic?
#
#
None of it compares to Doctor Light raping Sue Dibney or any given panel of Superboy Prime
>Shinzo Abe's assasination.jpg
Your own picture is so absurd that it's comical. Way to disprove your own argument.
> And there was NONE in Superman.
This isn't true. Byrne's Superman had edge relative to 70s/early 80s Superman. Go back and reread the first year or so of Byrne's Superman, like the issue where Luthor tried to find Superman's identity, or the Bloodsport issue and compare to 70s Superman. Way more innocent people died in the Byrne era compared to to the pre-COIE Superman, who usually resolved a lot of things.
It's just that subsequent decades upped the edge more so that if your exposure is 00s/10s comics, where the body count is massive like in an Ellis or Millar or Hickman comic, it wouldn't feel like the Byrne era had edge.
Also don't forget Byrne shoehorning his fetishes into the comic, like Lex raping ten year old girls on an exam table.
>altered the history and culture of planet Kryton severely were their biggest gripes.
What was the problem with that? I haven't read much pre-crisis crap but wasn't Krypton set up as basically the Jetsons at the time? Humans with weird shaped clothes and science that was closer to magic than science?
And iirc that part of Krypton still existed in post-crisis, but it was just an earlier period of their history after which they had a millennia of war and then became the sterile science wizards with the black bodysuit and green robes.
Was that a case of Loeb being shit and DC not having any editors by then, or was it DC officially relaxing their stance?
I think that was in Next Men. Lex did have a young Lois strip-searched in Byrne's World of Metropolis, though.
>Was that a case of Loeb being shit and DC not having any editors by then, or was it DC officially relaxing their stance?
It was definitely them relaxing their stance because this was part of a multipart story that ran through all the titles. This version of Krypto came from a Krypton simulation created by Braniac that looked like pre-COIE Krypton, so it wasn't the original Krypto, but was still close enough. It might've been a trial run to see what reader reaction was like.
I think it was once Didio came on board and Johns got more control that there was more of a rollback to the pre-COIE stuff that got jettisoned
what
You seem to think that anything that isn't Silver Age cap is "edge". That's not how words work.
It's the truth though. The Byrne era had edge compared to Silver/Bronze Superman, which was part of the reason modern readers flocked to it at the time (the other reason was Byrne was extremely popular back then). You only don't think this because subsequent writers do way more edgier stuff than Byrne, but a lot of Byrne's stuff always had an edge to it.
That's nonsense.
You didn't read any of the comics and it shows
What the frick does body count have to do with "edge". So any fictional story where anyone is killed at all is "edge"?
Don't try to move the goalposts.
you're the one who fricking said it
>Superman was culturally lost in the shuffle.
TSMT with how much conflicts rn and the internet being massive so people know thing like cia coup état another third world banana republic, all superman discourse be like why dont superman stop 9/11 , why dont he stop israel-palestine conflict, why supes dont stop cia proxy war between katajaya and madripura
I'm reading it now and I love it
How much did John Byrne Superman influence DCAU?
A lot. Like a lot a lot.
Spoonfeed me
Honestly just the whole vibe. Read the book.
>Ma & Pa still alive and supportive
>He is Clark Kent, the farmboy from America's heartland and not Kal-El of Krypton
>His power levels are Bryne/bronze age tier, he can get tossed around in a fight.
>likes milkshakes and bacon cheeseburgers
More influential then when Marvel asked him to do the same thing with Spider-Man.
What'd he do?
Spider-Man Chapter One
Spider-Man: Chapter One was a 12 issue mini series by John Byrne which was a modern-day adaptation of some of Spidey's stories form the Lee-Ditko era. Purely meant to attract new readers it received complaints from regular fans for Byrne needlessly tampering the classic stories with updates. Examples include:
>Spider-Man's origin being tied to the accident that created Doctor Octopus as the same demonstration with Otto doing the experiment
>Norman Osborn masterminding most of the minis events, backing up most of Spidey's rogues gallery
>Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
>Trying to retcon Sandman into a cousin of Norman Osborn due to them having similar hair.
Byrne had past history for doing this, in the late 1970s he was the main force in pushing to retcon Quicksilver and Magneto into being related because they both had white hair. He tried the same fanfic nonsense again with Osborn and Sandman 20 years later but nobody was tolerating it anymore.
>the main force in pushing to retcon Quicksilver and Magneto into being related because they both had white hair
always thought that was the original premise from the get go before they mcu synergy retcon it again into not blood related
This is the problem, it's a retcon that's so old that a lot of people don't know or care that it was a retcon, but it was, and it was done for absolutely moronic reasons. Quicksilver and Magneto hadn't even met for almost 15 years when Byrne somehow convinced Marvel to do this.
If online fandom was a thing back then like it was when Byrne tried this again with Norman and Sandman, it would have been laughed out of canon just as quickly. Instead it took MCU synergy to finally undo it and fix things.
do you know which issue run where john bryne retcon quicksilver to be blood related with magneto?
Byrne wasn't the writer, he was the artist, but it was his idea. IIRC it's Uncanny X-Men #125 and Avengers #185-187
Getting back to Superman,
wasn't Byrne one of the main guys behind retconning Superboy out of existence in Post-Crisis DC, which had a huge effect on the Legion?
thanks for the info anon
I don't know whose idea it was, but post-crisis had a strict policy on there being no other Kryptonians beside Kal. So Krypto was a random dog saved by Bibbo and got his name because the dog tag guy couldn't fit the extra N on the end. Zod and his crew were from an alternate dimension. Supergirl was from that place too, and he was a shapeshifter blob created by a good Lex Luthor (which is why Supergirl then falls into love with Lex 2 who looked the same, admittedly he was also a really hot guy at the time). I'm not sure about Power Girl, she was still around, but I dunno what her origin was.
It's also why they made a new Superboy who was a clone of Superman.
The only single time they had an in-continuity Kryptonian show up, it was in an Aliens crossover.
He tucks them in his pants, I'm pretty sure there were a few panels showing it because I clearly remember it.
>I'm not sure about Power Girl, she was still around, but I dunno what her origin was.
Anon...that's a rabbit hole deeper than Hawkman's
Wouldn't that logic make every black person related to each other?
But they are.
This was done by editorial mandate. The Clone Saga had caused the readership on all 4 Spider-Man books to drop by 50%, so it was decided that Spider-Man needed to be rebooted. John Byrne was probably called in due to his past success with handling another editorial mandated reboot (namely Superman). After it got negative backlash they decided to ignore it instead and didn't reboot. This is why they did Ultimate Spider-Man instead.
Thats kind of interesting with Spider-Man origin being tied to Dr. octopus origin. That was actually done in the novella by Stan Lee in one of the Spider-Man pros anthologies back in the 90s. So I wonder if this comic was actually an adaptation of that.
Wasnt this comics plot also used as the basis tor the James Cameron Spiderman movie?
>Did John Byrne's Superman saved or ruined the character?
ESL.
Not only did it frick over Superman, it fricked over comics in general by making "movie synergy" something to actually strive for.
There was ZERO "movie synergy" in John Byrne's Superman.
That's actually bullshit as shortly after MoS came out, DC licensed out a Superman cartoon (forget the company's name that made the show, Ruby Spears IIRC?) that ran on CBS in 1988 that used the Silver Age status quo.
One of the chief reasons Byrne quit Superman was that he found out about it and the eternal evil israelite Mike Gold (a DNC operative ala Sana Amanant, who bought his way into the comic industry and who was actively and openly sabotaging DC from within due to him DESPISING Crisis and the abandoning of Silver Age lore) decided to be a c**t to Byrne's face saying "damn straight we are using the Silver Age Superman for all licensing shit because we deep down hate your version of Superman!". Even though Byrne's reboot had made Superman a top selling book for the first time in ages.
It wasn't until Lois and Clark that DC explicitly started mandating that all media versions of Superman had to use the Byrne version.
They had a live action Superboy show a few years AFTER Byrne removed the character from existence
I doubt they ever really cared about matching comics up with other media.
The superboy show was really just superboy in name only. Most of the show had Clark living on his own and being a young adult. The movies
9not that they’re tight continuity) has Superman at 30, the show was Clark at 20
>It wasn't until Lois and Clark that DC explicitly started mandating that all media versions of Superman had to use the Byrne version.
So Byrne DID ruin Superman! The Ruby-Spears cartoon is actually good
It had nothing to do with movie synergy per se, it was about keeping characters on brand and on model, and making sure a Superman story or a Spider-Man story provided a fairly consistent experience across different media. Imagine these companies having their shit together enough to do that today.
>Imagine these companies having their shit together enough to do that today.
They had editors. They all got fired to cut costs, no one could keep up with continuities anyway, and you had superstars like Bendis and I think Kirkman claiming that continuity is just baggage holding back "good writers".
Superman was selling extremely poorly at the time, so yeah, he did save it
I liked it a lot. It actually made Supes more human instead of a magical invincible demigod. And I'm not talking about him not being able to juggle planets, but crap like how his cape regularly got torn up or that he kept getting stubbles if he skipped a day shaving (which itself involved using a piece of Kryptonian metal to reflect his heat vision). He was also struggling often when fighting enemies who matched him strength wise. I can't agree with every change they made to every character, but they made the most out of everything (Matrix Supergirl, clone Superboy) and when something didn't work out they mixed it up to be closer to the original versions (Brainiac started as a carnival psychic, but they changed it so it was Vril Dox mind hopping). Kingpin Lex was truly sadistic, and Lex II was fricking fabulous and I wish they kept him longer.
But yeah making him unable to do crap like juggling planets also helped - and made for a fun contrast when for example he met Superboy who still had pre-crisis bullshit powers and wiped the floor with him easily.
And then the 90s and 00s pissed it away with crap like pic related.
There were lots of villains that gave Superman trouble in the Silver Age comics. In fact there were even issues where he straight up lost fights like in pic related. Decades later and Microwave Man is still 1-0 against Kal.
Yeah but they were just magically impervious to Kals shenanigans, while in Byrne's run, villains could straight up physically overpower him.
Zod, Faora, Jax-Ur, Parasite, Vartox, Bizarro, Mongul, Darkseid, Ultraman, Metallo, and The Ultra-Humanite had all physically matched or overpowered Kal before Byrne's run. And those were just the well-known examples.
Amazo too. Can't believe I forgot him.
Most of those were cosmic superheroes/despots or superman clones who all were Superman's equal or a version of him from another planet, or in Parasite's case, he could drain Kals power. Byrnes run had shit like Rampage, a random hulk expy chick, beating him black and green until he realized he could suck out the radiation out of her parasite style (it was solar radiation). There was a "mummy robot" from 15000 years ago left behind by aliens who colonized humans, who beat Superman easily. Lex built robots who actually threatened him.There was a (truly horrifying) vampire chick who almost killed him (okay, you can say it was Magic in this case but still). Oh and the fact that he was actually beaten to the point of having scars and black eyes and such. Basically Kal was super strong compared to normal humans only, against other super powered creatures he wasn't a big shot.
Or there was the race with Flash, which he lost, and that was just "runs at mach 3 at most and has to eat at McDonalds 6 times a day" Flash. Not "outrace Death or instantaneous teleporting" Flash.
You honestly make some great points. I'll admit that Byrne's run and the CCA loosening up helped overall better convey his physical struggles. With mixed results if you ask me; though it was a refreshing change of pace. If there had to be an established "middle-ground" for his powers I'd pick that run first for sure. Not too ridiculous like sneezing a whole solar system away, but not so nerfed he gets his ass kicked like TAS Superman.
that's not silver age, it's bronze
>microwave man
shouldnt he have MM not MW on his chest
>Decades later and Microwave Man is still 1-0 against Kal.
Based Comics Historian!
>shouldnt he have MM not MW on his chest
Micro Wave. Maybe he didn't want a trademark infringement suit from Martian Manhunter
I don't mind Superman being a planet juggler at all. The problem is power creeping. That's Pre-Crisis era's problem. You had random characters destroying galaxies, causing big bang level explosions, surpassing infinity itself in speed. It came to a point where it was hard to scale things down in order to tell different stories.
In fact, it is the same problem Dragon Ball now faces. It started out with small scale adventures, then you started having characters being able to destroy the moon, then entire planets, then the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, so on and forth.
What they should have done with Superman is, scale things back a bit and remain consistent regarding what he can or can not do. Because even in the early post crisis era you still had Superman surviving nukes, exploding moons, novas and supernovas.
they had the opposite problem early on. he fought thugs and bullies and bad landlords lol, so it got old and fast.
it was okay.
I liked a lot of the pre-crisis stuff more though
Does Superman tuck his cape into his pants, or does he just let it bunch up in the back of his shirt?
It FRICKED LoSH, which was better in every way.
No shit sherlock. You don't go 0 to 100 in an instant. But its a tard take to say comics weren't trying to push their envelope.
Any Lobo issue, Deadpool, or New and Improved Fantastic Four can show that.
A lot of the
‘Pushing the envelope” was stuff you could still see in 70’s/80’s comics. Carnage wasn’t actually doing anything gory in most mainline comics, at worst you’d see some blood.
The other day I was reading(pre-Frank Miller) Batman and there’s a story about strippers being murdered. This was a newsstand issue a kid could pick up.
Oldgay here
It saved Superman in the way chemotherapy can save a cancer victim. It was rough and a lot of people thought it wasn't worth it but it was needed.
Go look up fanzines though at the time, old neckbeards absolutely lost their shit over it.
>old neckbeards absolutely lost their shit over it.
why whats part of superman canon lore bryne change that made old nerd hates it?
Removed Superman's teenage adventures as Superboy, Superboy's Adventures with the Legion of Superheroes, Supergirl and Krypto, and also altered the history and culture of planet Kryton severely were their biggest gripes.
wtf most of that you listing still pretty much canon rn, lmao kek so the staple superman run that normalgay knew were just another elseworld story
>wtf most of that you listing still pretty much canon rn,
Not at the time. DC were pretty strict about it for a decade and a half, so a lot of people back then assumed it would never be restored. Even the Superman animated series at the time had to adhere to some of the rules during the 90s.
Krypto didn't come back until the early 00s in Loeb's Superman run. Superboy and his connection to the Legion didn't come back until Infinite Crisis. Supergirl wasn't Kryptonian again until Loeb's Superman/Batman arc in the mid-00s.
He reinvented Krypton and Superman's relationship to it. Choosing to have Clark more identify with Earth over his Kryptonian heritage.
Byrne created the Lois and Clark personalites you know today, he essentially created Ma and Pa Kent who existed pre crisis but were not characters
He brought Clark back to the Daily Planet, at the end Pre Crisis he was a TV anchorman, and fleshed out and created additional employees to the Planet like Cat Grant
Byrne continued the shift started in DKR between Batman and Superman, it can't be understated how much of a shift this was, Bruce and Clark prior shared a comic with each other for 50 years and in the span of 5 comic books they're mortal enemies and didn't interact with each other regularly until Morrison's Big 7 JLA twelve years later
It also destroyed Superman relationship with Dick Grayson who as much Batman's sidekick as he was Superman's pre-crisis.
Dick named himself Nightwing after a superhero on Krypton Superman would tell him about it periodically.
>he essentially created Ma and Pa Kent who existed pre crisis but were not characters
C'mon.
I thought it was disliked for changing Luthor's character, not Superman's
>Luthor being a corporate bigwig is just a ripoff of Kingpin!
>Somehow mad scientist Lex from the Silver Age isn't a ripoff of Ultra Humanite.
that wasnt byrne, i think it was wolfman
Maggin made Lex Corp, Wolfman got the idea of Lex being a corporate fat cat, and Byrne actually materialized it
Everything you like about Superman but the powers he created
The first Superman comics I read were by Byrne, very boring and some of them seemed quite fetishistic.
Killed losh and supergirl
For no goddam reason
The LOSH is completely pointless. They're a cute bonus but not really necessary for Superman.
Frick off it should be the xmen of dc
They're goofy nerds who should stay the hell away from Superman. They spoil his humble, quiet farmboy origins and journey of self discovery and belonging by whisking him off to the future as a child and telling him he's the greatest hero ever. They're a mistake that has been corrected.
Frick no
They are more important to Superman comics than Darkseid and the new gods that (former marvel) writers insist on shoehorning into Superman stories because Jack Kirby created them. They use the thin premise of “well of course darkseid is a Superman villain …he showed up in an issue of Jimmy Olsen”
Darkseid being wasted on Superman doens't mean the LOSH being hammered into the mythos are any better, especially given that a lot of Legion stories don't rely on the superman ties
The Legion can exist , but even thought they have the angle of being inspired by Superman they don't need to be tie at the hip.
Batman doesn't need a bunch of weirdo costume criminals either. He can just fight mobsters in double breasted suits
Really?
yeah. Darkseid showing up in a jimmy Olsen comic is the only reason he's considered a Superman villain.
And Kirby took over Jimmy Olsen comics because it didn't currently have a writer/artist assigned to it and he didn't want anyone to lose a job because of him
I thought the story was DC wanted Kirby to take over Superman or Batman, but he asked for their worst selling monthly instead.
there are like two different stories :1) Jack said he would take the lowest selling comic and make it a hit or 2) Jack said he wanted a book that didn't have a team on it because he didn't want anyone kicked off the book
I think its ( 2) since Jimmy Olsen comic actually sold well at the time.
I recently picked up that box set of Kirby Fourth World omnis and it's a very interesting and weird kind of experience.
I actually like the premise of the New Gods and Superman sharing similarities and Superman longing for the company of fellow Kryptonians so the realm of New Genesis would be up his alley.
they (and the titans) were outselling superman
This
LOSH sucks balls.
The Byrne comics were the definition of mid. Everything modern Cinemaphile whines about with writers injecting their politics into comic books is PRECISELY what Byrne did with Superman, gradually shifting him into a stodgy supporter of the establishment. The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
Everything fantastic and weird about Superman was watered down and pared away. All his enemies got worse re-imaginings (Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst.) And for the most part it was just plain boring.
>Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst.
I like most of what Bryne did for Superman but his version of Brainiac was so fricking underwhleming and all because Bryne HATED the name 'Brainiac'...which kinda sums up Bryne's sensibilities.
Brainiac started out dumb but they eventually changed him to be proper Vril Dox.
shit like him getting a Doomsday body for himself was when things got full moronic but that wasn't Byrne.
I liked that brainiac
What was wrong with Byrne's Bizarro?
there was no bizarro
Died in his first appearance for contrived plot point of curing Lucy Lane's contrived blindness in a story that seemed to exist solely so Byrne could say Bizarro did exist post-Crisis but died so he wouldn't have to touch the general moronation of the character and Bizarro World.
Hell, it wasn't until the JOSS run that they tried to do a second Bizarro story with a new Bizarrow and even then, the character got fridged again and it wasn't until Joker magically created a new Bizarro from scratch in Emperor Joker, that DC fully restored the character to the DC Universe.
>t. The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
Byrne's superman happened after DKR.
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman,
Only in the sense that it was going against a general view of Superman that people had. It wasn't an explicit damanation of Byrne's take--Because Byrne in an interview said he was going to do Superman and Batman's first meeting in Man of Steel and hint at the future antagonism shown in DKR! (He says this in an issue of Amazing Heroes that I don't remember the issue number right now).
>The Dark Knight Returns' take on Superman was an explicit damnation of THIS take on Superman, not the character as a whole.
senpai, Dark Knight Returns literally predated John Byrne’s take.
You are beyond delusional.
See:
>Brainiac and Bizarro being some of the very worst
Brainiac being turned into a psychic villain wasn’t that bad considering all the limitations that were in place:
>you couldn’t do bottle city of Kandor because Superman was strictly meant to be the only Kryptonian, nixing his most iconic story element.
>Superman couldn’t go to space without an exterior breathing apparatus during this period so any space travel shit was out by default
>Brainiac just being random dude shrinking shit for no real purpose would be lame
>Brainiac just being a robot baddie was redundant because Metallo already served that purpose
>Psychic powers against Superman’s physical strength is a good dynamic
The real issue with Byrneboot Brainiac was the serial killer debut which wasn’t interesting (Brainiac’s mind posessing a human was a neat idea), his awful fricking pink costume, him looking fat, etc. An issue of execution, not the concept revamp being horrible.
It was a mixed bag. Some good things, some bad things.
that was my introduction as a kid and I liked it
I've been liking it. Good place to start reading Supes. But what are some other noteworthy runs. Runs that aren't "off canon" minis like All Star, All Seasons, etc. Everyone always points to those. I heard Tomasi was good.
you could just read all of Post-crisus Superman and get a decent story. The triangle era in particular is considered hitting it's stride
Horseshit. The triangle era is when it goes downhill. The Loeb/Kelly/Casey/Schultz era was better.
haha what
Not really. The Triangle era everything counted and mattered and you had the JOSS team (Jurgens, Ordway, Simonson, and Stern) working in perfect unison with their elaborate plots and stories.
Loeb and Kelly only cared about each other and Casey was too fricking high to be trusted in doing anything, so he was told to just write stand-alone shit in between crossovers and somehow got better reviews because Loeb/Kelly openly admitted they wanted Silver Age Superman back and were dead set on bringing back as much Silver Age shit as they could sneak past fans before editorial told them to shut up (or in the case of their infamous Krypton retcon, be told to produce a story that retconned the retcon as a mindfrick Brainiac pulled on Clark). And no one cared about Schultz or Seagle.
I don't have a particular problem with the format of the triangle era, except jurgen's run is filled with bad story arcs that last weeks or months uninterrupted with no safe haven book to at least provide some entertainment separate from it. I much prefer the format in Byrne's era, where it was mostly self contained, less decompressed stories, and with a difference in style where Superman was his solo book and Action Comics had a guest character (and Adventures is the shit book you want to skip, but at least doesnt really affect the others), very cool arrangement
Adventures of Superman was the lore book. IIRC it was where Wolfman basically set up the backstories and lore for the supporting cast, including Jimmy, Perry, Lois, and Lex.
He wanted it to be the human interest book, with more personal stories, yeah. Interesting in concept, fulfilling the difference in styles i mentioned between superman and AC, too bad the book was bad. I'll never forget all the time spent trying to make me feel sympathy for Cat Grant for not having custody of her son when she was a drunk prostitute and bad mom
>I'll never forget all the time spent trying to make me feel sympathy for Cat Grant for not having custody of her son when she was a drunk prostitute and bad mom
This. Absolutely "Lois & Clark" bored housewife cheap budget storytelling. As a '79 movie fan of the era and a kid at the time, Superman was the Super Powers, Super Friends, comic Brave & The Bold colorful characters with colorful outfits having crazy adventures. Byrne turned him into a cheap soap opera vehicle for cheapskate TV producers
The thing is, that soap opera stuff sold. It was a combination of the spectator boom and the marriage that made late 90s Superman comics especially tedious. I still remember all those issues with the newsboy legion and that blue orc guy & his blind girlfriend hogging the spotlight. I mean--fricking Superman, King of the World with what's his name as the baddie! Awful stuff. I do have a soft spot in my heart for Electric Superman.
Once Lois and Clark got married, there wasn't any driving force for the soap opera stuff anymore. That's why the comics dabbled with breaking up their marriage for a while, until the line found its footing with the zany early 2000s stuff like Emperor Joker.
It took the New 52 frickup to do the obvious thing: give em a kid. And then DC fricked that up by aging him prematurely.
>It was a combination of the spectator boom
Byrne's run predates the speculator craze entirely.
Wasn't that the book where it is revealed that Lex cucked Perry by knocking up his wife and making him raise Lex's bastard? Who promptly ends up killed off after he tries to become a super-hero?
I'm pretty sure Perry's son died when ordway was heading the main superman book, and i think that's when the cucking was revealed when luthor comes to visit them in the hospital. He didnt try to become a superhero in that story though, at most he got shot while trying to help someone else but its been a while so i dont quite recall
You can start with the Triangle Era for Post-Crisis.
Secret Origins and Birthright for his origin story.
You’ll only appreciate All Star Superman entirely once you become a fan. All-Star Superman has a lot of easter eggs to old Superman shit you won’t get unless you’re already a fan.
hardcore nerds will cry that every little detail is missed. You really don't need them. Superman 79 got it right. Only 60+ broke dick boomers cry there's no legion or superboy.
it was a 2+ hour movie
Superman (and family) had a comic a week many of which had more than one story per issue. You're going to add more stuff to the mythos after awhile
the superboy stuff only exists to fill a slot when the superman books were selling insanely well. It wasn't crucial decades later.
You can simply cancel the book doesn't mean you have to cancel the existence of the character.
>no krypto
>lame brainiac
>no bottle city of Kandor
>no cube world of Htrae full of Bizarros
>no legion of super pets
>no Lois/Lana cat fights
>no obnoxious jimmy Olsen turning into weird shit
>no Lois marriage schemes
>no Flash Gordon Krypton
>no time travel
>no super boy
>no legion of superheroes
>no clark/superman personality split
>no jerky Superman pulling pranks on his friends
Byrne Superman was fairly boring to me. Though the issues themselves were well done. Rich jerk Lex was fun but easily could have been done with mad scientist super criminal Lex anyways
>Rich jerk Lex was fun but easily could have been done with mad scientist super criminal Lex anyways
The rich tech CEO mad scientist Lex we got is the perfect hybrid of the pre-Crisis and Byrne versions and he even foreshadowed real life tech tycoon billionaire supervillains (though I guess they’ve always existed, see Edison).
Edison was a dick irl
T. Topsy
That reminds me; who was the butthole who made evil CEO Lex a secret softie who was willing to work with Superman when really bad shit happened, was willing to do the right thing when push came to shove, and who showed signs that he could be reformed if he just got over his petty jealousy issues?
Lex was always a softie
>Byrne's Superman
SOUL
So how do Kryptonians birthing matrixes work?
Do Kryptonians just don't have sex period?
In the Byrne reboot? No. The entire society of Krypton was specifically made to be cold and sterile, full of people who barely interacted with others physically to a point a computer iirc just matched different genetic data to make new people. It was meant to emphasise how being raised as Clark made him human and Earth is where his character comes from. That’s why one of the early short what if stories involves Jor-El and rest of Krypton migrating to Earth, taking over and running the world like alien despots or something like that.
I think Jor El and Lara still did the horizontal huddle though.
They didn’t. Bodily contact was considered insane in Krypton, and Jor-El was basically like a weirdo because he was actually sort of interested in finding out more about Lara personally after their genes were chosen to be used to make Kal-El.
Byrne’s revamp is very sexist (and typical of the genre where dads are more important than their mothers) in this approach because he deeply emphasised how Jor-El was more open minded and human compared to the rest of Kryptonians and while Lara wasn’t made to be a totally evil cold hearted b***h her role as a mother was kept minimal and she wasn’t highly interested of breaking away from Kryptonian customs of her own free will, it was more like oh well I guess the kid will have a chance if we send him to live among primitives and there’s very brief show of her slightly getting away from being totally frigid just before the end, iirc. A later story when Superman goes in time and meets his parents even shows her being kinda disgusted when she sees her adult son who is the polar opposite of Kryptonian ways.
>~~**~~
You got something you need to get off your chest their, buddy?
>Byrne’s revamp is very sexist
Anon showing a female character in an unfavorable light isn't sexist.
It is sexist in the greater context of how superhero fiction is so obsessed with father relationships as mentioned, and there is no good reason why Lara had to specifically be written that way when you had carte blanche to rewrite the entire origin. She could have easily been written as similarly rebellious to Kryptonian social norms, since Byrne clearly had to go out of his way to make Jor-El be the odd one out who actually has and embraces human traits and doesn’t have prejudice about “primitive” life forms.
I was rereading some of the Death and Return trades recently and I forgot just how many events were being piled at the time. You had the set up for Emerald Twilight and AzBats running around.
It did enough
It was good for him at the time and overall a good run as I recall.
I miss triangle era Superman
Nowadays it's all too decompressed
Byrne absolutely saved the character, the shedding of krypton ties alone (emphasizing his human heritage rather than the kryptonian one, symbolized by the costume being made by his mom with a normal S rather than a stupid house of El symbol, while also showing he doesnt really care about krypton aside from its knowledge being "mementos of a life that could've been") is the single most important fix to superman that has been sadly somewhat lost since then, though thankfully not to the point it was in the silver age. Having just finished Jurgens run a few days ago, being up to Superman 150 (vol 2) and the other super books I can safely say Byrne is by far the best run the character has had from 1987 to 2000. Most of his issues are okay, yeah, but he didnt really have any awful ones like his successors (looking at you especially, Jurgens), and his cross-title arcs were some of the best post-crisis superman has ever had (the Legends tie-in, the Superboy Saga and the Supergirl Saga)
Plus the Man of Steel mini is the best telling of superman's origin before or since. It's the story that made me shed the preconceived notion that superman is a boring character
>but Byrne didnt really have any awful issues like his successors
like the one where superman does porn? or when lois thinks clark and superman were raised together as brothers?
Neither
Neither. Superman is bigger than any single interpretation, he can’t really be ruined or saved by a single one. What works stays with the character and what doesn’t fades away. It’s like mythos Darwinism.
bump
bump
Mucho texto.
Get literate