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Okay, I ultimately decided not to continue the search for the most ’90s comic for the moment, as picking up from where I left off there was…well, weird. But I do have more 1990s comics content in the works, so check back next week for that.
But, speaking of the 1990s…here’s DC Comics with a big ol’ announcement regarding the forthcoming variant-laden first issue of Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s “Hush 2” storyline:
So here’s what Batman #158 entails.
Cover A – the main cover.
Covers B, C, D, E, F, G – cardstock cover artist variants
Cover H – the blank sketch cover
Cover I – foil cover by Jim Lee and Scott Williams
Cover J – a connecting fold-out cover by Jim Lee
Cover K – wraparound foil cover by Sean Gordon Murphy
Cover L – the 1 in 25 ratio variant
Cover M – the 1 in 50 ratio variant
Cover N – the 1 in 100 ratio variant
Cover O – the 1 in 250 Jim Lee pencils “virgin” cover
Cover P – the 1 in 608 (get it?) black and white variant signed by Jim Lee
Cover Q – the 1 in 608 black and white variant signed by Jeph Loeb
Cover R – the 1 in 1000 signed by Lee and Loeb
Then there are the Giant Size (probably Treasury Size) editions, with a regular cover edition and a foil one, as well as the Glow-in-the-Dark foil “Launch Party” variant. And this doesn’t count stuff like a special bundle of ashcans for sale/giveaway, or whatever retailer-specific variants there may be for this comic.
Obviously that 400,000+ copies are divided up amongst all these variants, and I wonder what the print run per comic would be…probably 125,000 or so for the main cover, and the balance spread out over the rest of the covers.
Now, it seems unlikely that Batman is suddenly going to quintuple in sales for this comic, and dumping 400,000+ into the current state of the direct market does seem like quite a lot. Retailer orders does not always equal sales (no matter how much the Rob may brag about the order numbers on X-Force #1 back in the 1990s, a solid chunk of those went directly into stores’ back rooms), but I suspect this particuilar Batman comic will do reasonably well. It really depends on how many different covers any one customer may end up buying.
In its favor, there have been a couple of decades’ worth of sales of the original “Hush” story in trade paperback building up an audience for it. (Never read it myself, beyond flipping through an issue or two, but people seem to really like it.) Can DC get people who read this as a trade initially to come back to pick up a comic book series for six consecutive months, or will that specific audience just wait for the eventual hardcover/paperback release?
Will customers already buying single issues in the direct market suddenly flock to “Hush 2” pushing the already (relatively-speaking for today’s market) high numbers on Batman even higher? Maybe for a while, and orders may be up there for the first couple of issues, but I imagine we’ll see a huge correction in orders by part 3.
Another point in its favor is the artist, Jim Lee. He’s been a popular artist for decades, but the extra push of “THE PRESIDENT AND PUBLISHER OF DC COMICS IS DOING A RARE ART JOB” will probably grab eyes. “Hush” has always been a Jim Lee art showcase, the story being relatively superfluous beyond “Batman fights all his villains,” and the prospect of new Lee art is a big sales pitch. Whether it’s 400,000+ copies big, we’ll find out soon enough.
So I done dood it…I got myself a copy of the nigh-legendary Time Beavers graphic novel by Tim Truman, published by First Comics in 1985. Now I haven’t had the time to read it yet, but read it I shall, oh yes. I’m just a tiny bit miffed with myself in that copies of this were just all over the place at my previous place of employment. I mean, I could have bought one of these from there on the day of release, but alas, I thumbed my nose at Time Beavers and headed straight to the rack to grab Green Lantern #188 with its Alan Moore/Dave Gibbons back-up instead. Thus, I have to resort to the eBays and other nefarious means instead.
Anyhoo, there were plenty of comics I had easy access to back then, but didn’t think about acquiring until, oh, say, ten-something years after I stopped working there and three years after that shop closed. Ah, well, What Can You Do™? I’ve got my Time Beavers now, so my decades-old oversight has been corrected. I’ll get it read soon and let you Dingbats of ProgRuin Street know what I think.
• • •
Some interesting news from DC Comics over at the 2025 Comicspro event, such as:
- Krypto: The Last Dog of Krypton by Ryan North and artist Mike Norton, which sounds amazing. No thought balloons here, North promises, but if you’ve ever seen Norton’s artwork, I suspect there’ll be expression enough from the Dog of Steel.
- Supergirl written and drawn by Sophie Campbell…good, there should always be a solid and accessible Supergirl title on the stands.
- Action Comics, which isn’t a new ongoing, obviously, but the new regular team of Mark Waid and Skylar Patridge will be effectively making it into a new Superboy series with a young Clark Kent. After years and years of DC either not having “Superboy” in Clark’s history after the Byrne reboot, and then kinda sorta waffling about it over the last decade of in-flux continuity, it’ll be interesting to see a modern take on the “Adventures of Superman When He Was a Boy.”
- Batman by Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez – YAY! Restarting the main Batman series with a new #1 – BOO! I saw a news site state that “this is only the fourth time the Batman series has been renumbered,” and c’mon, that’s like five times too many. Batman will sell just fine without renumbering. Yes, we’ll get a boost in sales for the first few issues, which is the reason they do this, but then it’ll be back to its normal sales level soon enough. …I mean, the comic sounds good, I’ll definitely be reading it, I’ll just sigh heavily every time I look at the issue number.
I didn’t see any new Swamp Thing comic news, so all this Super/Bat stuff will have to do.
So I find myself in the position of gathering up and doing some research for a future post, and leaving myself with little time to write an actual post for today. As such, let me go ahead and look at some of your recent comments now, and I’ll return to your questions and having content soon!
Thom H asks
“I never read the Ostrander/Mandrake Martian Manhunter series. Is it good? From what I saw of it, it seemed kind of heavy and depressing. I don’t need my MM to love Oreos, but he can get kind of melancholy for my tastes.”
One of the reasons I want to reread Martian Manhunter is that it’s been a while since I’ve read it, and as such I don’t remember a whole lot of specifics about the run. I do recall enjoying it (I mean, it’s Ostrander and Mandrake, it’s gonna be good), but yes, as per Chris V’s noting of the tragic circumstances behind the scenes. It can be, as you say Thom, melancholy, but this superhero book embedded with emotional gravitas is well worth checking out, I think.
It’s not all like that…Ostrander has his silly side, and we get an issue about J’onn’s addiction to “Chocos” (the legally-distinct name of cream-filled cookies that are somewhat like Oreos).
The thing about J’onn J’onzz, the Martian Manhunter, is that he’s kind of a blank slate. I mean, we know the basics…trapped Earth by accident, his family is gone, has a weakness to fire, disguised himself as a human detective. Outside of his appearances in Justice League of America, maybe, Ostrander likely wrote the longest and most in-depth examination of the character, fleshing out his personality, his backstory, his rogues gallery, and so on.
Yes, it can be a downer at times, but based on what memories I have, I still think it’s worth a read. And I’m looking forward to tackling that when I’m done with Spectre.
Plus, J’emm, Son of Saturn, pops up in it. That’s gotta sell you on it!
• • •
Oliver says
“Mandrake’s style was a bad fit for the post-Crisis Shazam reboot but looked much better on Batman and the Spectre.”
Back in 2010, I did a post about a short sequence from the Shazam! A New Beginning mini-series by Roy Thomas and Mandrake. Some comments to that post agree with you, Oliver, that Mandrake’s style was a poor match for Captain Marvel.
Now…okay, I’m not trying to be contrary, I do agree with this sentiment, but in an odd way Mandrake’s art did fit this very specific version of the character. This was a darker, 1980s-post-Dark-Knight-gritty reinterpretation, requiring dark, gritty, moody art. The problem was that the entire series was entirely misguided, changing the tone of Captain Marvel too far. If DC has to squeeze the Shazam franchise into their larger shared universe, there are ways to do it, and it has been done (most successfully, I think, by Jerry Ordway’s Power of Shazam! series).
Mandrake’s work reminds me in a way of Gene Colan’s, suited for dark and moody tales while still adaptable to appropriate superhero books. As Oliver notes above, Batman and Spectre are solid fits for Mandrake, and for the stories Ostrander was telling, a good fit with Martian Manhunter as well. I’d like to see him do more Swamp Thing, which he’s done a handful of times in the past.
In fact, I’d love to see both Ostrander and Mandrake on a Swamp Thing series, doing what they did on Spectre and Martian Manhunter: a darker, edgier book that’s still on the outskirts of the regular DC Universe. Pulling together all the disparate strands of the character into some kind of cohesive, recognizable whole.
• • •
Anyway, thanks for putting up with this “fill-in” ppst, and for all your great comments. I appreciate all the feedback!
Hi pals! Thanks for all your responses to the recent “Question Time” posts…I will get back to those with some responses and reactions in the near-ish future. Unfortunately, I’m short on blogging time this evening so it’ll have to wait ’til next week, maybe.
In the meantime, let me tell you that I’ve read Absolute Wonder Woman #1, and it’s an enjoyable new take on the character. Yes, it’s a darker, edgier version of our favorite Amazon, as per the entire Absolute Universe milieu, but it’s well-told and has me looking forward to more.
Also, despite the fact that I’m still catching up on actual physical copies of things I have here in my home, I’m also trying to justify my subscription to the DC Universe Infinite digital comics service by reading stuff there too. Or, in this case, re-reading, as I’ve been revisiting the 1990s John Ostrander/Tom Mandrake Spectre series, which just keeps me burning through issue after issue. The art is amazing, dark and moody and filling just every square inch on the page. The writing, exploring the nature of justice vs. evil and the Spectre’s role in doling out vengeance.
It’s very much of its time — does Bill Clinton show up? You bet he does. Is there an O.J. Simpson stand-in (“B.J. Harrison”) who is caught trying to escape the scene of his murder of his ex-wife and her boyfriend in his white Bronco, and the Spectre takes care of him good? Yup again.
But it addresses some tough issues, despite giving some easy passes here and there (like Superman not going after the Spectre for literally wiping out an entire country). It remains a good read overall, and I’ll likely reread this creative team’s Martain Manhunter series afterwards.
Okay, gotta wrap it up here. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next week.
So I came across this flyer sent out to retailers in 1995: DC Comics describing the new paper stocks and formats for their books:
(You can click that to make it larger, if you so desire.)
I remember a time when I was really into the whole “paper stock”/price levels thing, particularly back when I was fan prior to ascending into Comics Retail Heaven. “Sure, the standard DC Comics are now 75 cents, but look at this nice white Mando paper on these Atari Forces!” And of course there was Baxter paper for DC’s $1.50 (or occasionally more) books, but that extra expense was well worth it for the thicker paper and better, clearer printing and bright coloring (which took ’em a bit to figure out so that it wasn’t too bright.) (And let us not speak about Flexographic printing.)
Now by the time we got to the mid-1990s, I wasn’t paying that much attention to paper stock names and such, aside from missing the good ol’ days of just plain ol’ Baxter and Mando paper. A couple of these paper/format types I either forgot or just didn’t know in the first place. But “Miraweb” is a name I already knew:
…though I associated that with Frank Miller’s Ronin from a decade earlier, but I might be remembering that incorrectly. But I do recall these comics, particularly the Superman books, suddenly getting printed on really shiny paper (and priced at $1.95). It was an attractive package, with clear and colorful printing and felt like it was worth the price.
Okay, I didn’t remember the name “Fracote” gettin’ thrown around:
…but I honestly can’t recall any significant difference to the texture or printing of these titles. Granted, I wasn’t reading a lot of these specific books at he time (I did have those Babylon 5 books), but I don’t recall ever thinking “wow, look at this paper stock!” or anything.
“Rebax” feels new to me too:
…and I don’t believe I thought anything about the paper stock here either. I mean, aside it was nice and presented the art well, but at some time between being a fan in the mid-1980s and working behind the counter in the mid-1990s my concern with what these things were being printed on dissipated beyond “is this readable and colored well?”
Right now, I couldn’t tell you the paper stock of any comic book being currently published, unless something is just obviously printed on newsprint. I do wonder occasionally, like that recent G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero omnibus is massively thick but incredibly light. That paper has no weight to it, and yet seems sturdy and presents the artwork quite well.
What I notice more nowadays is the paper being used for covers. The real nadir of this was Gladstone using “self-covered” comics, where the cover was the exact same stock as the story pages inside. Like torn covers? This is for you!
And a number of comics today, particularly from the Big Two, have cover stock that is…not the most durable. I mean, sure, DC will ding you an extra buck for the cardstock variants, but for most comic covers the quality can vary. Sometimes the paper is slick, sometimes it’s barely slicker, sometimes it feels like it should be interior page stock (though still a little thicker, but not much more so, than the pages inside the specific comic)…it’s just all over the map.
This is an interesting artifact of the time, one you don’t see today, of retailers ballyhooing their printing quality. Comics look quite nice now, certainly much improved over what our caveman ancestors had to tolerate. But I kind of like not knowing stuff like the specific manufacturer name of the paper used. Just make it legible and somewhat durable, that’s all I ask.
And by the way;
…no, comic retailers are never satisfied. It’s just our nature.
So, alas, I’ve been going through the collection of a late customer of mine…a longtime customer, in fact, going back to the early days of my toil at the previous place of employment. Probably about 30 years or so…when I opened up my shop, he followed me over, which I always appreciated.
He passed away last year, and his brother brought me most of his collection then, but this week brought me several more boxes. I took a first pass through them and pulled out some items of interest…and he was a huge Lobo fan, so he had lots of Lobo ‘n’ related comics, including one I haven’t seen in decades. I thought I’d present a few of them here today.
From the “Lobo-related” category, here are a couple of parodies, starting with Spoof Comics Presents #9, featuring “Hobo: Patricide.”
The title is a parody of the 1992 DC Comics mini Lobo: Infanticide, a title I still can’t believe actually made it to the stands. Anyway, like many parody comics of the period, part of the joke was gender-flipping the characters, so we get a Lady Lobo here. This Is A Fetish for Someone™, as a very wise and stunningly handsome person once said.
Speaking of which, there was a later one-shot by the same company titled Wolverbroad Vs. Hobo…Wolverbroad being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, the old Legion of Super-Heroes character Timber Wolf I think.
In the non-gender-flipped category of parody was this comic, somewhat surprisingly from Eclipse Comics in 1992. It’s Loco Vs. Pulverine #1:
…Pulverine, of course, being a parody of, oh, I don’t know, Puck from Alpha Flight I think. This comic had an amusing wraparound cover, inspired by the similar cameo-filled cover on the famous Superman Vs. Muhammad Ali treasury.
Here’s the back cover:
…where you can see such luminaries as Hagar the Horrible:
…and here is celebrity power couple Krazy and Ignatz from the classic Krazy Kat strip.
Plus, here’s a special note from creator Gary Yap:
Last but not least is the comic I was shocked to see in this collection…well, okay, not shocked that in was in this collection, given the preponderance of Lobo stuff, just shocked that I’ve finally seen it again after all this time. It’s the infamous The Wisdom of Lobo one-shot from 1992:
I last wrote about this on my site in 2011 in these two posts, in which I noted I hadn’t seen it in forever even back then.
To recap, this came in a slipcased set, with the slipcase featuring an image of Lobo’s face. The books inside were Lobo’s Greatest Hits (a compilation of early Lobo appearances from Omega MenLobo mini-series, and this Wisdom of Lobo thing. We sold a lot of these sets, and demand for Lobo was high enough that we even broke up some of these sets and sold the components individually.
I mentioned in one of my earlier posts that the Grand Comics Database included a note on the Wisdom book that retailers were annoyed by the gimmick (in that the 64 pages inside were blank, you see), but that note seems to be gone now. But as I said then, it didn’t really annoy us, and when pricing out the components of the slipcased set vis-à-vis its retail price, the Wisdom book was essentially free.
I didn’t remember then what we sold the Wisdom comic for on its own, but the copy from this collection still had the old shop’s price tag. For a mere $1.50, you could have had this Lobo-branded sketch book for your very own.
To continue repeating myself from those older posts, I’m surprised that I haven’t seen more of these over the decades. I know we sold a ton of those slipcased sets, I figured eventually some would make their way back to me. It took 32 years, and the unfortunate passing one of my favorite customers, but here it is, filling in that little gap in my remembrances of comics retail past.
Thanks, Dale, for the opportunity to see these weird Lobo things again. I’ll find good homes for them.
Okay pals, I had both my flu shot and my COVID booster this morning, and while I felt well most of the day, I’m kinda feeling it now. Soooooo…I’m taking it easy right now as I type this Thursday evening.
In the last post, a couple of folks mentioned that they would have liked DC’s ’80s Doctor Fate comics in a snazzy reprint. And when I was originally pondering the question “what unreprinted DC comics would you like reprinted?” it was Doctor Fate that crossed my mind.
As noted, there is a Doctor Fate book coming next year, under the title Doctor Fate by JM DeMatteis and seemingly reprinting the series DeMatteis wrote and was illustrated by Keith Giffen:
Given the title, I am hoping more volumes will come along, reprinting the ongoing series that DeMatteis and artist Shawn McManus did, picking up right from that mini:
However, also given the name, we’re probably not getting reprints of the early ’80s Doctor Fate back-ups in Flash by Marty Pasko, Steve Gerber and Giffen, which started in this issue:
Nor are we getting this wild Dr. F story from First Issue Special #9 (1975) by Pasko and Walt Simonson:
But luckily that story, along with all those Flash back-ups, were reprinted in this deluxe three issue mini-series released in 1985, just as Fate-mania was about to sweep the nation:
…so you can find those relatively easily should the Taste of Fate from this upcoming trade paperback release send you looking for more.
More specifics about the actual content of the 1980s Superman reboot will come in future posts (yes, it’s continuing into next week). You can find the previous posts under the newly-created “byrne reboot” tag, so I don’t have to keep adding a large list of links to past posts at the top of each entry.
Today, I wanted to post up something else I found in that long preview articles from Amazing Heroes #96 (1986). Now, I’d read this ‘zine when it originally came out, and I know I absorbed every column inch of this article in anticipation of the Byrne reign of Superman. It’d been several…well, decades (egads) since I’ve read it, and peeking back at it as reference for this series of posts have reitroduced me to some interesting bits of information.
Specifically, this plan for a Superman team-up comic (like the defunct DC Comics Presents) as part of the reboot, written by…well, take a look:
When I spotted this, I immediately popped it up on Bluesky and it generated some discussion.
Bully the Little Fanzine Bull noted that this magazine “was pretty infamous for just letting creatives run at the mouth and printing that as news, though,” which, you know, fair enough. That is the foundation for many a ‘zine, prozine and fanzine alike, and while this article does appear to be informed by primary sources, I’m sure some of the noted plans weren’t firmed up yet, or no more than floated ideas.
Like, this Alan Moore thing sounds like it was no more than “can you do it?” “strewth, I don’t have the bloody time, mate” “oh okay thanks” and that was that. At that point in Moore’s career, I’m sure he got lots of job offers like this. “Can you write West Coast Avengers for us?” “Flippin’ ‘eck!”
Adam Knave had the probably very correct response in saying “I’m sorry we never got it and glad he didn’t do it at the same time.” I mean, yeah, Watchmen (or The Watchmen) would end up being an ugly mess re: merchandise royalties and creator ownership, not to mention being plundered by lesser talents for knockoffs. Probably best that there’s not also a one or two year run of Superman team-up stories by Moore to provide content to be clumsily reinterpreted later by writers whose names might rhyme with Reff Rohns.
But on the other hand, would we have read a run of Alan Moore-written Superman team-up comics? Oh, you bet your sweet bippy we would. Imagine, like, 24 or 36 issues of comics on par, or even better, than this one. That would be an absolute treasure, Moore just traipsing through the DC Universe.
On the other other hand, this was the period when Moore was at his deconstructive height, pulling apart the very idea of superhero comics and looking at their components in a new light. I don’t know if DC, in their fragile “we’re not sure entirely what’s going on here” post-Crisis phrase, trying to rebuild continuity after the structural damage inflicted by Crisis on Infinite Earths, would want Moore going through its new direction upending things even more.
Just picture the aftereffects on Adam Strange, after his brief 1987 appearance in Moore’s Swamp Thing run, and how his reinterpretation there still affects Adam Strange stories to this day. Now picture that with dozens more characters in addition to the ones he’d already touched with his wizardy powers. It really would be Alan Moore’s DC Universe now.
But even if the Moore thing had been a done deal, as blogging brother Andrew said on Bluesky, “the question then would be ‘how long until Byrne and Moore got on each other’s nerves and one/both quit'” and he ain’t wrong. I feel like the two would not play very well together. All it would take is Byrne saying “hey what you’re doing here with Superman isn’t in line with my vision,” and Moore would be all “blimey, you’re a barmy bloke, I’m gutted” and he’d be in the wind.
Anyway, thought that was an interesting bit of forgotten trivia involving this particular time in funnybook history. I don’t know how close this actually came to happening (like I said above, probably not too close), but it’s still quite the thing to think about.
So last time I talked a bit about the first issue of John Byrne’s Superman revamp, and how it felt to encounter it as it was happening, after having read Superman comics prior to this and witnessing the changes to the franchise in real time. I pointed out a number of those changes that happened just in that one comic, but a few of you beat me to the punch and started bringing up other alterations later in the Man of Steel mini-series.
Right out of the gate in the comments, David slings the following at me
“I always felt like the biggest change in Man of Steel was the change to Lex Luthor. His pre-Crisis persona was genius supervillain. Man of Steel established him as a genius businessman, who hated Superman, which moved him to villainy.”
Luthor went through several changes in the character’s history (a number of which I listed in this long-ago post which may amuse). The “mad scientist who hates Superman” remained fairly consistent from Luthor’s inception up through this point in the 1980s, cosmetic costume/hairstyle overhauls aside. The biggest alteration to the character was the adding the idea of Luthor having grown up in Smallville, concurrently with Clark/Superboy, and establishing the origin of his hatred (i.e. blaming the Boy of Steel for the loss of his hair).
But with the reboot comes A New Take (not to mention the loss of Superboy — more on that in a future post — effectively removing Smallville from Luthor’s backstory) and apparently Marv Wolfman had the idea for Big Businessman Luthor some time before Byrne came along. Here’s a bit from an article in Amazing Heroes #96 (1986), previewing the reboot:
Now the new idea as to why Luthor hated Superman had to do with him being the most powerful man in Metropolis…until the Man of Tomorrow showed up.
Hair still comes into play, as Superman’s first post-reboot encounter with Luthor in Man of Steel #4 ends with Lois hairline-shaming him:
Yes, I borrowed these scans from a two-year-old post where I go into a little more detail about the changes in Luthor’s motivations over the years. I’ll repeat here what I said there, in that there were some comments at the time that New Luthor bore some resemblance to Marvel’s “respected businessman” villain Wilson Fisk, AKA the Kingpin. Interestingly, both characters have had their evil shenanigans become increasingly more public knowledge as time has gone on, though still being able to hold high political offices (Luthor as President, Fisk as Mayor of New York).
Speaking of which, Byrne/Wolfman Luthor had that veneer of legitimacy crack a bit in that very “first” appearance, where Luthor was arrested. And as the years have continued, and DC continued its trend of backpedaling on the sweeping changes from both Byrne and Crisis on Infinite Earths, Luthor slowly became more and more like his pre-Crisis incarnation, to wearing versions of his early 1980s superarmor, to regularly being shown in prison. The “businessman” era still exists in current continuity, but now has more or less merged with previous versions.
Yet more reboot fiddling had initially made Luthor a much older man than previously portrayed. As you saw above, Lex and Clark were contemporaries in Smallville. In the reboot, he was at least a couple of decades older…he had to be old enough to believably have a son in his 20s, per a storyline a few years later. In Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography (1989), he’s shown as a child, and friends with a young Perry White:
However, Luthor has gradually become younger, both with an in-story explanation of his brain being transplanted into a youthful clone body, and with a no-explanation “he’s just younger now” pushing him back to around Clark/Lois’s ages. In fact, he’s now back to having have lived in Smallville and hangin’ with Teen Clark. I think this return-to-form was first evident in the continuity-or-not mini Birthright, discussed here (where the series’ writer himself chimes in).
So this new version of Luthor was indeed a significant modification to the Superman saga. But like many of DC’s changes from the period, the inertial effect of previous portrayals force at least some reversals of those decisions. If DC can make (multiple) attempts at bringing back the multiverse concept done away with in Crisis on Infinite Earths, it shouldn’t be surprising that Luthor has traded his business suit back in for his prison greys (or oranges).
I know I’ve talked about this before, but bear with me for a moment. I will hear modern day criticisms of Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC’s continuity-changing mini-series from 1985, where it is essentially summed up as being “a bad story.” Beautifully drawn, there’s no argument about that. But the actual plot and script itself are held up as flawed.
And, I mean, fair enough. I once posted on Bluesky “thou shalt not read Crisis for its prose,” as just reading it for the story is only part of the experience. And the part of the experience that is arguably most significant is one that simply can’t be captured decades later, by people who weren’t there for it in 1985 as it debuted. It especially can’t be captured after the onslaught of universe-changing events and crossovers and reboots and rejiggerings that have been churned out since Crisis.
It was the excitement at the time that fed into the Crisis experience. Yes, maybe the storyline was, to be kind, slightly nonsensical. But DC Comics promised BIG CHANGES in their series, at a time when readers weren’t quite so jaded to assurances like these, and right from the get-go we were getting those changes in this series. As you picked up each succeeding issue, you were left wondering “what happens next? What worlds will live, what worlds will die, what will never remain the same?” Things were happening in this series, seemingly irrevocable things, and readers were left in suspense month to month as to what was next.
Well, that was then, this is now, DC has spent nearly 40 years trying to undo Crisis, and after seeing, like I said, reboot after relaunch after reboot, the primary oomph that moved the series along has faded away, leaving a nicely-drawn comic with a story that no longer has the energy it once did. It’s like reading about a roller coaster that had been torn down long ago and you can no longer ride. Meanwhile, old farts like me are all “you just don’t get it, that roller coaster was awesome back in the day.”
Which brings me to Man of Steel #1 from 1986.
Crisis wasn’t the only engine of change over there at mid-1980s DC Comics. Superstar comic book artist/writer John Byrne moved from Marvel to their rivals to take command of a “reboot” of the Superman line of comics.
The previous five decades’ worth of Superman comics would be brought to an end, the two main titles (Action and Superman) would be put on a brief hold, while Byrne’s six-issue mini-series The Man of Steel would be issues on a biweekly basis. That series would essentially restart the Superman line from scratch, with a new canonical origin, redesigns of old establishing elements, and a shaking up of Everyhing We Know about the character.
Right from the first page we’re presented a new vision of Krypton:
Inspired in part its depiction in 1979’s Superman: The Movie, this new version of Krypton does away with the sci-fi pulp style cities we’d previously seen. We now have a cold and sterile environment, where the inhabitants shun contact with each other, where babies (like Kal-El) are created in a “birth matrix” without all the fuss and mush of mixed genetic material the old-fashioned way.
As I recall, Byrne’s intent was to create a Krypton that wasn’t a high-tech fantasyland, a wonderful and magical place, but rather a loveless world that was already dying even withoiut the whole “about to explode” thing. A place that a young Kal-El was lucky to escape from.
There were other changes in this first issue, too, such as establishing that Clark’s powers didn’t really come in full ’til he was older, thus doing away with the Superboy (and Superbaby!) era of the character. That only one piece of Kryptonite made it to Earth. That there was some sort of “aura” around Superman’s body, a thin one just above the surface of his skin, that would prevent damage to, say, a skin-tight superhero uniform made out of ordinary Earth materials. (As opposed to resewing super-strong Kryptonian blankets in which he was swaddled as a baby.) That Superman wouldn’t let on that he even had a secret identity, letting folks think he was just Superman all day, every day.
There were other little changes, plus plenty more in the rest of this mini-series, but the big change, the BIGGEST change:
…is Ma and Pa Kent still being alive.
This was the wild one, the choice that really struck me out of all the other decisions made for this new version of Superman. For years, one of the big emotional elements of the character was ultimately how alone he was…I mean, despite his cousin Supergirl and a whole freakin’ Bottle City of Kandor in his Fortress of Solitude. This was long before Lois new the secret, of course, which was still a reboot away. And I suppose he had his super-pals in the Justice League.
But when it just came to Superman in his own books, he was pretty much just on his own. No confidantes, no family (unless Supergirl was guest-starring), just him and his thoughts. Most notably there’s those scenes when he goes back to Ma and Pa’s now empty Smallville home (which he still owns, of course), and putters around there for whatever reason, sadly recalling his younger days. It’s especially evident when you compare this to, say, DC’s former line-up of superhero TV shows, where every hero has a support team, either back at the home office or out in the field, who all know his secret, who all fight beside him.
The other change this makes to the mythos is that we lose out on the lesson Superman learns, that there are just some things even a Superman can’t do.
That’s from DC Comics Presents #50, where Supes and Clark are split into two beings…long story. But the important element is there…”with all my power, I couldn’t save them.” Now the “save them from what specifically” isn’t important. In some comics it’s just old age, in others it’s a deadly virus picked up during a time travel vacation to piratey days (because Superman comics), but the result is the same. It’s an important lesson, one that even makes it into the ’79 flick.
Despite that, it is kind of fun to have them around, to have a home that Superman can go to and have actual parents around, versus ghosts and memories haunting him pre-Crisis. They add a little emotional depth to the proceedings. In recent years it was a little unclear what their status was…George Pérez had famously stated he couldn’t get an answer as to whether they were alive or dead for the New 52 relaunch. But Pa Kent died during a storyline prior to that, and post-New 52/Rebirth they had both apparently died in a car wreck, but [SPOILER] revived due to universal shenanigans in Doomsday Clock. So I guess they’re still around now, which is nice.
Now the Man of Steel mini itself, even at the time, took a little critical drubbing from reviewers and fans. Part of it was, I think, just out of spite. Folks thought a certain way about Byrne and they were always looking for a way to knock him down a peg. Plus Superman, despite having low-selling comics for quite a while prior to the reboot, was still an object of “well, this is the way it should be” backlash from some quarters, objecting to the alterations. And on top of all that…yeah, the series was a little clunky in parts. Byrne was trying to rush through several years’ worth of continuity and world-building in these six issues, catching Superman up to the “present day” of the DC Universe.
Like Crisis (remember Crisis from way back at the beginning of this?) this is a book that also suffers a bit in retrospect. I think it may be a little easier for readers new to it to understand that this book was a Big Deal at the time, given it was tackling the Biggest Hero in Comics and giving him a fresh start. And that, when all is said and done, this is the Superman that is still around today, despite whatever fiddling was done with continuity, despite the asides we got with the absolutely-distinct-from-the-post-Crisis-version New 52 Supes. Our current Superman is the John Byrne Reboot Superman. You can still draw a line directly from Man of Steel #1 to the latest issues of Action and Superman.
But that said…I feel like any readers not old enough to have read Man of Steel back in the mid-1980s may be in a similar position as those new to Crisis. They weren’t there, in real time, watching the pre-Crisis Superman getting wrapped up and put away, while this new series came along to reintroduce the hero. The excitement of change was there, as we wondered what this Byrne fella had in store for us as Man of Steel wrapped up and the new Superman titles launched and/or relaunched. It’s a particular frisson that’s missed when coming to the stories now, especially after all the retoolings both Superman and the DCU at large have undergone since then.
Special thanks to Sam Hurwitt for reminding me of that DC Comics Presents sequence.
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