Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Are there any plans to put this on the site Rao?

I would guess no.

http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1934&highlight=phantom+zone

Super Monkey guessed correctly.

:s:

If this is an editorial decision based on issues of content or some such, that's your call, Rao.  But if it's a question of simply not having the issues, I'll be glad to donate scans.  Might take a while, of course...

I joined this forum...when? Around July 2005? (Hey, that means it's been a year!)

And I can't believe I didn't notice this and let the besmirching of the honor of my lady fair, Steve Gerber, go unchallenged! Sir Julian rides to the rescue! HUZZAH, VARLETS!

Now, before I start, let me say I don't think the Phantom Zone was a perfect miniseries, to be sure (and I'm not even going to TALK about DC COMICS PRESENTS #97 - yecch). Why did the Phantom Zoners feel the need to get revenge on Earth? The supernatural "soul" aspect of the Phantom Zone was particularly unwarranted in what was essentially a science fiction concept.

However, there are some essential differences between the PHANTOM ZONE miniseries and the post-Byrne/Helfer era. Steve Gerber clearly knows his Silver Age/Bronze Age Superman when it comes to this miniseries: he even brings out that donut-shaped sun used in one of the Flash/Superman races, and every obscure Zoner ever. The guy did his homework. This is why the comparison to the Post-Crisis guys bugs me: Gerber didn't live in consciencious ignorance of what came before as they did.

Ask anyone that was reading comics in 1982 what they remember happened to Superman in that year, and they'll tell you "oh, that was the year the Phantom Zone criminals broke out, right?" This was a "big" story: not in the sense that something like a superhero crossover was "big," but in the sense that the stakes were high, plot elements were introduced, lots of things you expect in big-budget movies; it was doing the "Avengers epic" treatment for Superman: this was the "Thanos War," or 'Korvac Saga," or "Celestial Madonna."

As what I can only assume is what Rao means by this Gerber work being the foundation of Post-Crisis and him not "getting Superman," Rao means the violence, particularly in the last issue, right? Or the general acid-trippy horror tone of the entire miniseries?

First, let me point out one significant diffence between the violence in the PHANTOM ZONE miniseries and the violence Post-Crisis, which makes a comparison between the two unwarranted: in PHANTOM ZONE, only the thoroughly nasty Zoners are doing things like setting people on fire and causing destruction out of sheer wickedness. Superman keeps his hands clean, fights fair, uses his brain, and doesn't even throw so much as a kidney punch, to say nothing of a disembowelment. Compare that to say, the post-Crisis Jurgens stuff where Superman is with all sincerity when attacking the Cyborg Superman, shooting to kill.

I would argue that it isn't even the violence that makes a lot of the Jurgens stuff unpalatable: it is the fact that Superman demonstrated lethal intent, which is out of character. A friend of mine were having an argument about the Brubaker CAPTAIN AMERICA, where the Sentinel of Liberty was dashing across a train to stop terrorists from getting a bomb into the city. He argued that Cap knocking people off meant that they may certainly be killed or seriously wounded, something Cap wouldn't do. I countered that for Cap, the priority at the time was stopping the bomb; and that while Captain America was shield-slinging bad guys off, I suspect that if we had thought bubbles, Captain America would probably have timed his shield-throws so that the men can land safely. Steve Rogers was throwing his shield to stop a bomb from going off. There is a big difference between that, and Cap hurling his shield to decapitate someone.

Also - this was 1982 and villains were receiving updates to make them scarier. Yet why is the Cary Bates update of Luthor as Khan in a battlesuit driven by vengeance (and that involved Bates making Lexor blowing up) and the liquid metal Brainiac Wolfman created get a free pass when they aren't downright PRAISED, yet Gerber's reinvention of the Phantom Zoners as wild-eyed megalomaniacs (something that always was true of them, really; and it should be pointed out that this is presaged by sadistic man-killer Faora by Cary Bates) triggers a less desirable reaction?

I also contest the belief that the only stories that can be told using the Super-Mythos are peppy science fiction tales. The Superman mythos is big enough that it can support dark fantasy and outright horror takes on it in addition to other kinds of stories as long as it is a mood and theme not used exclusively (just as Batman can bounce from zany jewel capers under the Penguin to globetrotting/supernatural adventures with Ra's al-Ghul). In other words, Superman in an acid trip/horror/weird story can work, as long as it isn't an everyday thing, and the Phantom Zone is one way to do this, just as Mzysptlk and J. Wilbur Wolfingham are springboards to whimsical, humorous stories.

Frank Miller once said in the eighties that Suoerman is day to Batman's night, and this I don't agree with; Batman has a great deal of merry swashbucklery in him, and Superman is science fiiction, and science fiction can be Phillip K. Dick as well as Andre Norton.

Well, let me amend the previous statement: Superman never had an element of nihilism in his stories, as can be found in Dick's books. And there was no element of nihilism in the Gerber miniseries! Superman breaks out of the Aethyr and saves the day. Wonder Woman and Supergirl prevent the missiles from hitting and stop World War III. A lot of stories are centered on Superman and superheroes being impotent or having feet of clay; this is not seen here.

Well, your boyfriend also wrote that DC Comic presents issue as a sequel to his mini, who's only good point was the cover.

But, here is Steve Gerber himself on the Silver Age Superman:

Which came up on a question about Superman Elseworlds called Last Son of Earth:

The third book picks up the story eleven years after the end of the second and actually takes Clark back to Krypton and into the midst of a war between cultural factions there. Jor-El, his adoptive father, has begun to unearth the records of Krypton's ancient past, a period before the Clone Wars -- what you and I would call the "Silver Age" Krypton -- and wants to rebuild Kryptonian society on that model. He's opposed by the Council of Elders and even his own father, who are determined to protect Byrne's neo-Vulcan version of Kryptonian culture, even if it means civil war.

I'm having a lot of fun with the third book, because it's allowing me to play around with some of the wackier elements of the Silver Age Krypton -- the Scarlet Jungle, the weird animals, the Phantom Zone -- in completely new ways. There's even a new version of General Zod, a little riff on the multiple varieties of kryptonite, and a Luthor who's gone almost as loopy as the Joker.

It's interesting -- while I was researching the Weisinger-era Superman material for this book, I really came to appreciate how inventive it was. Much of it was silly, sure, and Weisinger clearly had no judgment as to when he'd crossed the line into too much of a good thing. But when you look just at the level of inventiveness, at all the concepts and characters he and his writers were originating on a regular basis, it's pretty darn astonishing.

You can make the same statement about the early Marvel era, as well, and about Jack's Fourth World books.

You asked me very early on why I didn't much care for comics today, and I think this may be the answer. Nobody is doing much imagining anymore. Think about it. How many new Batman villains have there been since, say, the early '70s? (Harley Quinn is the only one that comes to mind, and she wasn't even created by DC.) How many new characters has Marvel launched since the 1980s? How many new Spider-Man or Fantastic Four villains have we seen in that time? Where are the writers and artists who are willing to dive off the deep end, even within the established continuities, as I did with the darn duck? (And others did, too, with various other creations -- I wasn't a completely isolated phenomenon.)

Writers are willing to settle for regurgitating the stories and characters they read as kids, and readers are willing to -- well, let's not extend the metaphor any further.

You know, I'm not a big fan of Alan Moore's ABC books, but if there's a reason they've been so successful -- apart from the fact that Alan is a magnificent writer, I mean -- it's that he's had the courage to show people something they haven't seen before. He may be packaging it in familiar wrapping a lot of the time, too familiar for me, but at least it's new. At least it's the product of one writer with one very distinctive point of view.


link to full interview: http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/99261919770355.htm

Steve Gerber isn't all bad as you can all see :)

With all due respect to the great Steve Gerber, this line of thought never has held water with me, because it implies that world building is a neverending process; and while innovation never should stop, there comes a point where the framework for creation stops being built, and you have to get to the phase where you start filling in the gaps. To strain the metaphor a bit more: after a while you stop building a house, the time comes to live in it.

This is not to say that some comics, unfortunately have been in a state of creative arrested development for some time, but that writers cannot be faulted if, after a certain point, you get a sense of what this particular series is about. In fact, I would argue that the clear definition of a Rogue's Gallery and Supporting Cast and worldbuilding are not a sign of absent innovation, but it's just a part of what happens to any type of good serial fiction at a certain point in their development.

MIGHTY THOR is an example of what I'm talking about. The original JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY issues gave Thor a new supporting cast member just about every issue; or a new villain from the Gray Gargoyle, Absorbing Man, and so forth. The orginal JIM is exciting because we see everything for the first time  Some ideas have been a regular part of Thor's universe (e.g. the Enchantress, Bifrost, the Destroyer armor, Ego: the Living Planet, the High Evolutionary). All that has been established, and Stan and Jack did a great job. But there comes a point that, okay, now we know what Asgard is like and Thor can't just have a cousin of his or something pop up out of nowhere.

And eventually, niches start to form for villains. Let me go out on a limb here and say: does Superman REALLY need BOTH Brainiac AND Lex Luthor, for instance? The answer is yes, since Brainiac is different in many ways from Lex Luthor, however, the point is, in many ways they overlap, and this problem gets worse the more villains a hero gets. For instance, Walt Simonson when he wrote THOR, had to do gymnastics to show us why, in the story he was doing, the Enchantress's sister would make a better villain than the Enchantress herself.

More to the point, there comes a point where a writer can say, "why create a new guy, when Doctor Octopus would be PERFECT for this story?" And there is nothing wrong with that and here's why:

A villain, in their first appearance, nearly always, is only half an idea (with the exception of certain high-concept foes like Ultron, that were heavy-hitters from Day One). It takes later stories to establish who they are, exactly. In fact, villains only become a presence in the book the second time they pop up and a hero says "Oh, I thought you fell into your own destructatron last time!"

And after a certain point, villains become a legitimate part of the scenery of a book - they become supporting cast members, in a sense. That is, one reads DETECTIVE COMICS to see what the Joker and Penguin are up to as much as for Batman, and one reads AVENGERS for Ultron, Kang, Zemo and the rest. Using them is not an absence of the imagination; it can be, but often it is what the book is ABOUT.

Sticking to traditional villains is not a lack of innovation, but something inevitable (and, in fact, desirable) as comics get older, because the books get their own identity. This is not to say that infusions of new ideas aren't necessary, but there comes a time, creatively speaking, that you have to stop buying new toys and start playing with the old ones.

The most common complaint on any team book is that a character is "underused." Red Tornado is "underused." Black Widow is "underused." Even places, like Limbo or Kosmos have been called "underused." This is why many people resent the introduction of a character like Wolverine onto the Avengers: if you want a pragmatic, results oriented character with an espionage background in the Avengers...there are a half-dozen characters with history with the team that can be used instead of importing Wolver-freakin-ine.

Alright, here's me making my pro-Gerber PHANTOM ZONE arguments bite-sized:

1) The miniseries was weird and dark fantasy, yes, but this type of story may not be entirely inappropriate for Superman, just as Superman sometimes explores atypical themes and moods in other stories (e.g. the comedy and whimsy in Mxyzptlk stories).

2) Elements in the mini, such as the Sun Ring and obscure Zone inmates, show that Gerber went out of his way to be respectful of Superman's history, and knew it well. The whole thing is one big love letter to Superman's Silver Age universe.

3) The violence in PHANTOM ZONE is different in character from the violence under writers like Jurgens because Superman keeps his hands clean, and doesn't demonstrate lethal intent.

4) Likewise, the idea of the Zoners having killer instincts was not an idea Gerber pulled from nowhere, and was presaged by Cary Bates's introduction of an inmate that was a sociopathic man-killer.

5) It's hypocritical to condemn Gerber for making the Phantom Zoners dramatic and terrible, while at the same time lionizing updates of other villains in a similar "let's make 'em hardcore" spirit that were happening around the same time.

6) While the story was moody, it never embraced the nihilism that is the opposite of Superman. The good guys won a total victory in the end. This story is consistent with Superman themes.

7) The story was just plain GOOD. The ending was astonishing - just when everything was getting End of the World bad, out comes a regular guy from the Phantom Zone named Charlie to save the day. It was BIG, in the best possible way: terrifying villains and high stakes.



Isn't "all" bad?

Isn't "all" bad?

ISN'T ALL BAD?

Gee, I'm glad you're able to spare such generous praise, which you've doubtlessly, assuredly reached through extensive reading of Gerber's work, right?

I mean, it would be totally out of character for you to talk about a writer you haven't actually READ, right?

Tell me, which subplot in Gerber's DEFENDERS did you find more interesting: Nighthawk discovering his wealth funds the Sons of the Serpent, or the Valkyrie going to prison?

How would you say Gerber's interpretation of the alienated loner hero, especially OMEGA THE UNKNOWN, was different or similar from other stories about characters of this type?

Do you think Frank Brunner or Gene Colan better captured the spirit of Gerber's MAN-THING? And why?

Of all the Russian villains that were introduced in DEFENDERS, who do you think was the most interesting?

Now, look, I'm not saying you're "wrong." I'm just saying that your opinions are based on total ignorance. Not unlike your excoriation of Geoff Johns; the part that REALLY cracks me up is your insistence he has contempt for DC history, the guy that writes stories featuring the Wizard of Ys for the first time since Gardner Fox, features lghtning monsters from TOMMY TOMORROW, the guy that brought Hawkman, Doctor Fate, the Ma Hunkel Red Tornado?

1st of all it was a joke, thus the smiley face, I guess you missed that part.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, you like a lot of stuff that no one else cares about and that's fine. I am sure there are lots of comics which I love that you hate, and it's all good. I never said I was a fan of those Marvel books, I am not even Marvel fan, unless you are talking about the Marvel Family :)

I agree 100% with Steve Gerber about the modern comics being boring and uncreative and he's right, but you took issue with that.
Can you name 10 Superheroes from DC or Marvel post-Bronze age that are just as good as what came before? What about 10 Villains?

No remakes or revisions, but only original characters.

Can anyone do it? It's been 20 LONG years, surely someone must had done something creative in that time? DC and Marvel made a lot of comics during that time, and yet why is it so hard to come up with a list?

Can anyone think of at least a few good things added to the Superman mythos Post-Crisis, besides bringing back old stuff.

In 20 years what do we have to show for it?

Well, off the top of my head, there's cult-favorite Sleepwalker, the Monica Rambeau Captain Marvel, the Tom Peyer Hourman, and the Baron/Messner-Loebs characterization of Wally West, that gave him a unique identity. There also was the Neil Gaiman Sandman. There was also the Busiek creations, Silverclaw and Triathlon, who were very much in the Avengers spirit, and the Thunderbolts (though they depend on whether you want to consider them "new," really). There's also the Cary Bates reinterpretation of Captain Atom, which is WILDLY different enough to qualify him as a totally different character.

And depending on when you consider the Bronze Age to "end," there's also Marv Wolfman's Nova (and villains like the Sphinx and the Corruptor).

As for villains, Abattoir provided a few good mysteries in the Bat-Books, and it was neat to see Batman rescue Ronald Reagan from the KGBeast. Maxima is a classy villainess that was very Silver/Bronze Age in scope.

And then (scraping the bottom of the barrel here) there are original creations that are nonetheless neither original nor really that great, such as Byrne's creation of Galactus-clone Terminus and Alpha Flight, or recently,  Gravity, or boring and pretentious Mark Waid Flash foes like Savitar or Cobalt Blue.

But overall, I'd say Gerber's right, there has been a slowdown in new and innovative concepts.  But I'm not sure if Gerber is looking at the whole picture here.  

YES, comics have in many ways been taken over by a great many non-talented people that just don't have it in them to come up with NEW things. However, that's forgetting two things:

1) Since the Bronze Age there's been a fundamentally different approach to how comics are published. If a writer really likes an idea, they have the option of taking them over to minor presses where they can own the rights. If Marv Wolfman and Steve Gerber wrote today, they probably wouldn't have given away to Marvel Nova or Howard the Duck, characters they obviously loved and fought to keep.

2) As I stated a few posts back, the slowdown in innovation in published worlds with thousands of characters and places,  is not necessarily a sign of lack of innovation, it's something inevitable that happens to a shared universe as it gets more established. After a while, you stop building a house and start living in it.

The question ought to be, are good stories being told with the supporting cast and villains that already exist?

Superman being a living solar battery.

Kal-El as a descendent of Rao.

Expanded supporting cast of Metropolis.

The Eradicator.

Keelix, the robot butler.

Kon-El.

Steel.

Linda Danvers.

Superman One Million.

Kismet

Villains:

Riot

Maxima

Gog

Bloodsport

Hank Henshaw

Solaris

Massacre

Remember No remakes or revisions, but only original characters.



oh yeah, he is selling tons of books, I barely remember him.



btw where is she now?



Remake, based on Hourman



Remake of the Flash



ok, that's one. Though, I don't know if I would call him a superhero per-say.



How many people actually know who they are?



I don't.



so is Bryne's Man of Steel, and like it (only a million times better), still a remake.



It ends in 1986, with the death of the most classic comic book universe of them all. So Nova doesn't count.



ok, complete unknown besides Maxima, so that's one so far.



heavyhitters I am sure ;)

Seriously, so far we one The Sandman, who is actually famous but debatable if he's a superhero and Maxima.



Not true, those Image fellows were giving away a crapload of characters to Marvel, including Venom who I think is very boring besides the way he looks, talk about a one trick pony!, but at least he is famous enough that people who don't read Spiderman know who he is. People have been giving away TONS of characters but very few of them other than a handful in the past 20 years, are worth mentioning in the same breath as the pre-crisis ones. Just look at all those countless totally forgetable Mutants, Marvel seem hellbent to find another cashcow, but they never did.



If they have nothing new to say, why should I and other readers care? Perhaps it's just time to move on.



Recurring villains and heroes are fine and all, but if that's all you have the same old ones over and over and over and over again it's going to get really boring... really quick, unless you have some incredible writers and artists on board to keep things interesting.

Well, since nothing in comics qualifies as high literature, philosophy, or science...it all comes down to preference to me...

One thing I do think is that a freshness needs to come in, whether I like it or not...I'm often amazed that people don't see the differences between the Silver and Bronze Age, but then, I figure I'm just older and read more comics from one era...actually, a ten year window seems about right, it keeps new kids coming in and prevents the diminishing audiences of aging fans from dictating results.  Nods to continuity may make old fans smile, but I'm not sure its always good storytelling...just on this site, if you read the two Super Teacher from Krypton stories, yikes, they are different...the Super Teacher is sort of the same old lame idealogue, but Superboy himself is very different.  It seems clear as day to me that the Silver and Bronze Age Superman and Superboy are very different, but that may just because I lived through the contrast as a comic buying kid.

Why not? The Tom Peyer Hourman, for instance, is different enough in character and with so many other little innovations that the only similarities to the Earth-2 character is that he's made of Miraclo.



Since WHEN does a character being well known qualify them for "good character" status? Sleepwalker and Omega the Unknown are better characters than other, more famous ones that have emerged in recent times. And speaking of Gerber, DEFENDERS was really boring under the household names (Dr. Strange, Hulk, Sillver Surfer) and vastly more interesting under characters like Valkyrie and Nighthawk.

Actually, some (myself included) will argue that the John Broome stories of Captain Comet in STRANGE ADVENTURES were the greatest DC Silver Age book, and poor Comet's never had so much as a 7-11 cup.



Because Batman vs. the Joker, and the Avengers battling Ultron, are the comic book equivalents of the Rolling Stones playing "Satisfaction."

And just because new elements are not used does not necessarily indicate new stories cannot be told. Walt Simonson for instance, told stories about Thor that built on the framework that the Lee/Kirby JOURNEY INTO MYSTERY provided. the stories about the deadly dragon Fafnir for instance. Simonson even found a new role for trickster Loki. If a new character was introduced that did the same job, it wouldn't have worked as well.

The thing is, history and previous events give stories POWER, because it can be used to alter characterization. If Kurt Busiek had used a new villain other than Ultron for his masterstroke, "Ultron Unleashed," the story wouldn't have worked as well, because of how much these past stories influenced everybody's characterization, making everything more desperate and intriguing.



CRISIS is as good a place to end the Bronze Age as any, but there's as much debate about the end of the Bronze Age as there is about the Silver Age and Golden Age. Actually, at DC, I'd define the end of Bronze Age being several years earlier, when it seemed that Gerry Conway and Marv Wolfman were writing EVERYTHING, a period that had some highlights but overall made Crisis a mercy-killing. And if there's any man that could end an era, it would be Gerry-freakin'-Conway, who was EIC of Marvel for - I'm not making this up here - TWO WEEKS, and in that time arguably the two greatest writers in comics history, Englehart and Gerber, left the company.



I agree there is a break, particularly where Superman is concerned, though I'd argue overall, if there is such a thing as a "Bronze Age" it would have been marked by talent coming and going, not necessarily by theme and the "character" of the stories; note how different, for instance, late fifties stories are under Otto Binder, from late sixties stories with guys like Jim Shooter in LEGION, and Denny O'Neil in JLA and HAWKMAN AND THE ATOM. To be fair and accurate as possible, the DC Silver Age ought to be broken into two parts, and even then, their books were totally different from what was going on next door at the House that Stan Built at the same time.

I would argue the reason there's overlap between the sixties, and seventies-to-late-eighties is that the second period is all about keeping the past alive. If I wanted to read about the early issues of Spider-Man or the Avengers, there were reprint books like MARVEL TRIPLE ACTION and MARVEL TALES, and if I wanted to read some classic DC stuff, there were the 100-page DC Super-Spectaculars.



Some of these are good ideas, but most of these are not. Maxima and Riot, for instance, I will give you are extraordinary and worthy villains, created by Roger Stern and Louise Simonson, respectively. Hank Henshaw was an ugly, insincere character with a murky origin and murky motivation and personality, associated with the absolute nadir of Superman's existence. Nothing is less cool than someone desperately trying to be cool.

Conner Kent was ONLY interesting when Geoff Johns got ahold of him in TEEN TITANS and made him grow up and behave in a mature fashoin, as well as streamlined his entire concept.

Steel has a big fat nothing of a personality, and his gizmos aren't even that interesting, either. A dull, derivative character that adds nothing to the Superman Mythos.

Though I'm not a Morrison fan, I have to begrudgingly give him props for the over the top grandeur of Solaris, however.

Kal-El as a descendant of Rao is a totally inappropriate concept, because the Superman stories have always been science fiction with his Krypton a 1930s style technocratic and atheistic society, and this grounds it in mysticism (one can argue the PHANTOM ZONE mini did the same, but it was nonetheless in a science fiction context, and one can argue the zone has such liminality that weird elements are certainly possible in it that aren't elsewhere).

Every single one of the Metropolis supporting cast was an annoying, one-dimensional cardboard bore: Ron Troupe, Bibbo (a ridiculous, Giffen-esque caricature meant for "comedy" but like Giffen's work, lacks charm or even the very comedy), Cat Grant, Perry White's drug addict son. Mostly they were used for superhumanly dull, page-killing human interest stories that made Superman's stories earthbound, and Superman into an inferior Spider-Man.

LOL, well, we are spinning out of Last Days of the Phantom Zone here..but, my argument about the Bronze Age difference focuses on this, an emphasis on Superman fitting in in a contemporary context...move him to TV, give him an ex-jock pain in the butt, focus on his private life and his apartment, try to fit him into what the Guardians believe...alll that is fine but it WAS different...in the Silver Age it just wasn't a point to care about whether the Daily Planet's circulation was up or not, Clark Kent's apartment life was more centered around whether Batman broke in to place a brain recording that would fool Superman in a game of Super Identities, and honestly, Superman wouldn't give a hoot about what the Guardians had to say...

Its weird, but I do agree with you about the Crisis being a mercy killing, but maybe for different reasons, and like the fact that I don't like Maggin and Bates as much as most people here (but I don't revile them or disrespect them), I think its just a demonstration that we all have very particular tastes.

Great song but at least they still create new records! They are still a band, if they ONLY played old songs, it would be kind of sad really, but since they are still creating new music it is cool that they are still out there rocking.

Anyway, not to get off track too much, but hey too late for that. It's not just comics, but movies as well. Maybe it's just me but why is it that nearly every movie that is release is a remake, based on a TV show, Video game, Comic or novel. I mean whatever happen to original ideas? Besides SNAKES on a PLANE, what other film this year was original?

Our culture seems to be in deep trouble.




nah, what gives you that idea? :P


Also the format changed, it went from a few short stories an issue, to longer stories that took up an whole issue! No more chapters, and the artwork changed as well, becoming bolder, with less panels and splasher.
Curt Swan had to completely change his art-style becoming more "modern" aka Marvel-like  :roll:

Oh and there was Uncle Morty retiring, if that doesn't end the Sliver Age for Superman then nothing does!!!

It is much easlier to track the change in Superman's comics than it is in comics as a whole. It did not happen all at once! For Marvel, for me anyway, once Steve Ditko and Jack kirby left, that was all she wrote for Marvel's Silver Age.  It was a slow process, but the mood, look, and feel of the comics as a whole was very different during the Bronze Age than the Silver Age.

I love the concept of the character and when handled right, it makes for a very interesting read.



Johns turned Kon-El into a typical brooding and angsty teenager, retreaded plot points made in his solo series and YJ, and then killed him off. Johns handling of the character was only marginly better than Didio's.

I'll take Karl Kessel's, Ron Marz's, Joe Kelly's, Peter David's, and Abnett n' Lanning's take on the character overs John's anyday.



In the Post-Crisis era, he acted more like Superman than Kal-El did.



I like it, it adds more mythical background to a character that has been seen as a modern-day Hercules.



The only problem that I had with the supporting cast was that their storylines would completly take over the books at times.

I can't believe I went this far talking about the PHANTOM ZONE mini, and I didn't have a few nice words to say about Gene Colan's art!

Granted, Colan wasn't as definitive as Curt Swan or even the extraordinary Garcia-Lopez, but he did bring very unique things to the table that benefitted Superman and the miniseries:

The best was the sense of POWER. The only other artist that brought this much dynamism to Superman was Ross Andru when he returned from Marvel. The Phantom Zoners destructive spree worked because buildings and mountains were shattered; there was one panel through the end where Superman goes through a wall (something he often does) but strangely, it was so powerful it felt like it was the first time we had ever seen Superman do it before!

Contrast this with Gil Kane's Superman Specials (which I've argued at times were the worst stories ever done in Superman's Pre-Crisis existence), which was barely even a year later. Gil Kane, as undoubtedly great as he is, at least here was slacking off: Superman stops tidal waves, and comets, but all of it done with Kane asleep at the wheel. If you've seen Superman stop one comet, you've seen him stop them all.

I've always felt guilty disagreeing with Great Rao about something. I feel like a surly drunk trying to start a barfight with Mister Rogers.

Colan was surprisingly good in his portrayals of Superman. One of the best Superman drawings ever made is from JEMM, SON OF SATURN, the bit at the end of the first issue where Superman appears in the White House and says something to the effect of "He can't be from Saturn. I should know... I've been there."

Under David and others, Conner was an irritating parody of what a 40-50 year old man thinks a teenager in the 1990s is like: pizza-eating, horny, inarticulate, a television-watching slacker. In the wake of this, Johns remaking Superboy as a mature and sober-minded figure forced to grow up by some pretty astonishing revelations comes off as "character doctoring."

Conner Kent, pre-Johns, just didn't WORK. His origin was as murky as the Scottish Moors in the wee hours of the morn. Compare this to his tight Johns origin: a clone of both Superman, AND Lex Luthor, which is a strong, unique idea that implies a conflict.

Now, the haircut didn't make Superboy a bad character. Lots of great characters have had terrible, terrible outfits (Black Goliath comes to mind, as do most members of the Legion of Super-Heroes, including the "Rocky Horror" Cosmic Boy duds, or the "Femullet" that John Byrne gave to Sue Storm). But the haircut is totally typical of just what went wrong with the character: the way Conner was made too hip for words, to the point where it came off as really insincere, and looking back, is tragically dated. I mean...a LEATHER JACKET?

(http://www.adamwade.com/humor/coffee/fonz.jpg)
'EYYYYYY!

One issue of SUPERMAN captures the spirit of the Peter David YOUNG JUSTICE perfectly:

The members of YJ show up in that crrrrraaaaazy cycle they borrowed from the Forever People, zooming in to help Superman save the day. Superman asks their mentor, Red Tornado, why they showed up so quickly. Reddy's response? "They're teenagers. Inevitably, they watch television." Auggggh!

Deliver us, O Lord, from middle-aged men writing hip teenage stereotypes! In a sense, YOUNG JUSTICE and Superboy is typical of an entire odious nineties mentality, acting like a Bizarro World version of ENDER'S GAME: instead of kids being smarter than we take them granted for as was done in Orson Scott Card's book, instead, YJ, GENERATION X, MAJOR BUMMER, YOUNG HEROES IN LOVE, and most odiously and excreably of all, GEN-13, showed us teens are much, much dumber.

As for Johns killing him off...

Well, here's the thing: he didn't die like a dog, the way Earth-1 Supergirl did. If you take Supergirl's (rather nauseating) death out of the original CRISIS, the story would have worked just fine, and the death was an unwelcome non-sequitur. Compare this to Superboy's death in INFINITE CRISIS: it is the pivotal, turning point of not just Superboy's own story arc (where he has a choice between heroism and villainy and here, he chooses heroism in a pretty phenomenal, and final, way), not just the stories of Superman, Earth-2 Superman, Wonder Woman, and Batman (everybody gets their collective s**t together after this). Conner Kent's death is the pivotal moment of IC, and the DC Universe for the next year: everything that is happening in 52 and One Year Later is a direct result of what Superboy did in IC #6.

If I was a superhero, that's how I would want to go.



Maybe, but Pre-Crisis Superman was never boring.



But Superman isn't mythological in nature. A Krypton with active, Greek-style gods that have descendants is totally incompatible with the Hugo Gernsback-style, 1930s art deco, vaguely atheist utopia of Krypton.

While Superman has many superficial similarities to Hercules, that doesn't mean that elements of Hercules's story should be placed in Superman's story, just as space pirates and supercomputers would be unwelcome in Hercules's story.

Well, without commenting on IC, why is it a perception that Supergirl "died like a dog" in COIE?  It wasn't a slugfest with her beaten to a pulp, she saved Kal and I suppose it was an important mark of a plan to show this was supposed to be a big idea...

Just taking that story as a story, it didn't come across as meaningless to me, and not nearly the slap in the face as the later idea that "she never existed" or could ever be spoken of again.

Under the others, Kon was a happy, free-going character who didn't spend all of his time brooding over his origins.



Kon's origin wasn't murky before Johns, it was quite simple: he was a geneticly-engineered human and the closest that human scientists could get to cloning a Kryptonian without making another Bizarro.

Johns origin does nothing more than upgrade the status of his genetic donor and retread plot lines dealt with in Kon's solo series. In his solo series, Kon had actually got over the fact that his donor was evil and had moved on.



At least he had an actual costume.



And please deliver us from the perpetual angst, whining, and depression that has encompassed many of the books now. Nope, can't have any books with a lighter tone.



Please, the entire death scene is ludicrous. Kon dies by flying SB Prime (another character that Johns royally screwed up) into a giant tower and is killed by the resulting explosion and debris. An explosion which Nightwing, Wonder Girl, and others walked away from unscathed.

Am I supposed to suddenly forget that NW is completly human and that Kon is a half-Kryptonian that has survived a nuclear explosion in the past? Or how about the fact that Power Girl and the Martian Manhunter were in the same area and could have easily took out the tower without any damage done to them?




All in the eyes of the beholder really. I've never found Steel to be boring.



Only if you have a rigid view of things. I like the premise and believe that it adds to the Superman mythology.



It's a comic book universe. Plus, space pirates and supercomputers might make a pretty good Thor story.

Others may see it differently, but to me, so called "light and comedic" stories (e.g. Giffen) are ultimately a thousand times more harmful to characters than so-called angsty ones, because if you do a dark themed tale, at least you have to play it straight and take the characters seriously.

Which is worse: taking things too seriously, or not enough?

For what it's worth, I'll have to agree with Alan Moore that the official moment the Golden Age ended for the superheroes was the Kurtzman MAD magazine parodies. Unlike Giffen and David and the rest, the MAD comics were truly, hilariously funny, yes, but the parody officially ended whatever vague relevance to pop culture superheroes may have had, and they have never entirely recovered their dignity.

There's such a thing as a parody that is just so TRUE, that it makes what it parodies ultimately irrelevant. It's no wonder that the film version of RENT bombed; how could anybody ever look at it the same way again after "Everybody Has AIDS" from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE?

It wasn't just that MAD Magazine parodied the superheroes. It was the fact that the parodies reflected a real general shift in sentiment: deprived of the direct good and evil of the Second World War, superheroes, who require good vs. evil and symbolism, no longer functioned in the anxious world of the fifties. Superheroes became a joke. Remember, this was the era where Batman and Robin are gay gags started to be everywhere, and there were a thousand bright blue jokes about Wonder Woman and her lesbian island.

To be fair, there are real differences between the MAD magazine parodies and Giffen, David and the so-called "humorous" take on characters; for one thing, MAD was actually FUNNY. But here's my essential point:

Superheroes didn't die in the fifties because the problems and anxities of the time were beyond them, or because the times were too weird for them. Superheroes died in the 1950s because people laughed at them.



Well, that's what I mean: if Conner Kent's origin was as the clone of some random guy, who really cares? What's so "Super" about him? Previously, it was thought he was a clone of Superman, but they did plenty of gymnastics around that. Another gutless concession to the Post-Crisis "No Kryptonians" rule.



Conner Kent, pre-Johns, wore a leather jacket and had a comb in his pocket so his hair was never out of place.

Now, the fact he was vain doesn't make him a bad character, but under the people that wrote him, he was something of a cartoon, a character right out of High School movies; I doubt under Peter David that Conner could be capable of such really honest moments of the kind Johns gave him, such as for instance, when he and Wonder Girl shared a private moment in that barn during the TEEN TITANS ANNUAL.

(Incidentally, both Geoff Johns and Peter David have two first names.)



To be fair, Kon-El was at Ground Zero for that particular collision and the others were not, and with a being as powerful as Superboy-Prime, it's really hard to say ANYONE would walk away from a fight with him without a scratch. If Power Girl or John Jones had distracted him, it would have been just as much of a sacrifice play as if Conner had.

I think you're missing my point, though. I agree that the Death Scene wasn't perfect by any means. What I'm saying though, is that it wasn't some random non-sequitur or shock value death; he didn't die like Pantha or Wildebeest did earlier, as afterthoughts. His death is pretty much the central focus of the story arc of five major characters, as well as the direction of the DCU post-IC. In other words, his death MATTERED. It can't be said that he was just "thrown away."



True, but the example doesn't work because the big secret behind Marvel's Mighty Thor is that he isn't "mythological." In fact, with Thor, the further in the stories get away from Norse myth, the better they are. The more interesting Thor elements are not the ones lifted from myth, but things like the Destroyer, the Enchantress, the Rigellians, the High Evolutionary, Ego: the Living Planet, and so forth.

It's like when people say that Indiana Jones is based on the 1930s-1940s movie serials. The serials were merely the bare blueprints for something that had so many other influences that it was ultimately unique.

At some level, this sort of non-mythological science fiction stuff is a part of what Mighty Thor is all about; the same can't be said of Superman and the Kryptonese mythology. Truth be told, in nearly fifty years, the only thing about these gods that we really KNOW is that Yuda was the moon goddess and Kara was the Kryptonian goddess of beauty. They're a barely peripheral part of worldbuilding instead of active, real, and significant forces, cute factoids for Krypton fans to throw around like the fact the main building material on Krypton is a plastic called Grahu, or the Kryptoniad.



The reasoning behind the "died like a dog" statement (and certainly, a character as historically important as Kara deserved better) was that ultimately, her death wasn't important to the CRISIS story. By contrast, Ferro Lad's death under Jim Shooter and Curt Swan was the vital climax and resolution of the Sun-Eater story, for instance.

Not only that, but the scene was hardly touching, the way the death of the Swordsman was in GIANT-SIZED AVENGERS #2 (possibly the greatest death scene in comics history). Marv Wolfman, whenever he wants to express powerful emotion, instead of letting the scenes speak for themselves, he lapses into a sort of baby-talk. An example of this is in one issue of NEW TEEN TITANS where the intelligent, educated Dick Grayson says that Cyborg is the "best hero I know of...most anyone!" What, was Shirley Temple talking now?

Huh, I don't know, Kara's death seemd fairly important, she moved Kal out of danger in the weird anti matter universe, and a sacrifice for her cousin seemed enough...not being that experienced or enthusiastic about comics "death" and reading the tributes from Batgirl, etc, afterwards, as well as Superman's...it seemed enough for me...but then that's just an opinion of a Silver Ager...

As to the end of super heroes in the 50s...I think you need a little more evidence to shore up the premise that they were laughed at...this is still 30 years before the grown-up fan of comics (i.e not War G.I.s but fanboys)...I think that the turn to movie stars and funny animals had a lot more to do with where the media was turning in the cold war era...and did comics buying kids really care that Wertham intimated that Batman and Robin were gay lovers?

Comics are made this way to make them supposedly more realistic. Problem is, life isn't full of doom and gloom. Otherwise, more folks would take the option of swallowing a bullet.

You have to take in all of the good with all of the bad. For every goofy moment that YJ and Superboy title had, you also had moments like the death of Tana Moon, the retirement of Arrowette, Slobo's end, the OWAW issue of SB, and the last arc with Secret. These characters laughed and cried together in those titles.

I mean, my God, just look what DC has done to Raph Dibny and Robin over the past couple of years.



Am I supposed to blame the previous writers for DC editorial decisions of that time? They did the best they could with what they had. And the funny thing is, those stories were still better than what Johns came up with.



Because Young Justice was meant to be for readers younger than those currently reading Teen Titans. Without that restriction, I have full faith that PAD could have done much of the same. Heck, I give props to the man for making the blob of goo Supergirl into a readable character.

Incidently, Johns wasn't alone in writing the Titans Annual. He had Wolfman to help him.



Except, I feel that they only killed him off because of the on-going lawsuit with the Seigal's and because they didn't have the gall to kill off Nightwing.

Heck, only the Titans and Supergirl have really shown any emotion over his death. His mentor doesn't even seem to really care.



Neither are many of the other mythological beings when they appear in comics. Because, it's a comic book universe. Mythology and science-fiction have been working in tandem for years.



We learned more about the Kryptonian gods in Walt Simonson's Last God of Krypton, Neil Gaeman's Sandman, and Mark Shutz's run on Man of Steel.

Once you get past the civiliazation, the planet itself was full of mythological wonders. Besides, it's not like Rao came down and impregnated Lara. He only started the 'El line.

The combining of mythological and science-fiction elements is even more apparent in 52 when you have a group of humans practicing a Kryptonian ressurection ritual.

This is a great thread --so much so that I have no idea where to jump in.

On topic: although I liked Gerber alot (HTD #16 is one of my top 10 Bronze Age mainstream books and Omega/Manthing/Defenders were fun and still stand up as inventive, above-average superhero comics), I still theink that Phantom Zone miniseries is problematic.  Miniseries are hard to begin with, and (re-)introducing many new characters in a few short issues means character development is at a premium.  I really thought it was too much, too soon in terms of concepts.  The Superman mythos is one of gradual acretion (or at least new concpets are generally confined to separate stories --even if those stories are only 8 pages long) and the mini had tons, including a "fantasy-world" PZ that I still don't buy --it would make a great video game, though.  Gene Colan was a great artist as well but the subject matter still made me resentful.

I also agree that the Iron Age has a dearth of memorable new characters (although I'm sure there is some good writing going on somewhere).  I would maintain that the main reason for this in Marvel and DC books is the issue of copyright and creators' rights in general, despite vast improvements, royalties, co-publishing deals, etc., writers and artists are still better off retaining full ownership and direction over the characters and concepts they create.  I think of the fan fave books from people like Alan Moore, Kurt Busiek, Mike Mignola (not to mention the Image phenom) published over the last 20 years and there is no comparison with the output of the Big Two --the good stuff in coming from the "minors".  With the exception of Neil Gaiman, I can't think of one creator from the post-1986 generation who hasn't had more creative success outside the traditional kids comics framework.  And Gaiman is now arguably more famous for his novels.

And the parody thing: the end of your total embrace of superheroes comes when you encounter the first half-way decent parody of that subject.  MAD might have marked the end of the historic Golden Age but in the sense that everyone has a different Golden Age dating from their discovery of comics/superheroes, parody marks the end of that.  Comics full of self-parody or gentle humour don't count as "Age-enders" though.

>>
There's such a thing as a parody that is just so TRUE, that it makes what it parodies ultimately irrelevant. It's no wonder that the film version of RENT bombed; how could anybody ever look at it the same way again after "Everybody Has AIDS" from TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE? <<

Doubt "Rent" flopped because of a parody in "Team America" (which I don't recall doing stellar box office either; IMDB.com suggests "America" barely broke even)...  probably the subject matter/the "art house" aspects/comparisons to the original (and still-running) play/the film's actual quality has more to do with it failing. I admit I haven't seen either film, though.

Just because something's parodied accurately doesn't automatically kill the original item---otherwise superheroes wouldn't still be around after those "Mad" parodies of the 50's (or any subsequent parodies/take offs on the genre)...

-B.

IMO, "super" isn't about powers or Kryptonian heritage. It's about trying to do the right thing.

John Henry Irons exemplifies this. He has no connection whatsoever with Krypton and at least as originally conceived has no powers. Yet even many people on this board who otherwise hate "post-Crisis" continuity see him as a worthy addition to the mythos.

Superboy, of course, hasn't always managed to do the right thing. He's made his share of mistakes, but he's generally been able to learn and grow from them. (At least that's the case in the original "Rebirth" storyline and the Superboy issues by Kesel; I've not read Young Justice so I can't comment on that.)

I'll add that while I of course can't speak for the writers at the time, I don't think that they were conceding to anything in having SB not be Superman's clone. I think the point of that was to tell a story of a guy whose sense of self-worth was based on his supposed parentage, of how he deals with it when that rug is pulled out from under him. Echoes of Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael.

It'd also be a problem just logistically to show human scientists capable of cloning Supey. If Cadmus can do it, what's to stop people like Luthor, Dabney Donovan, etc. from breeding armies of Super-clones for their own use? At best you'd have to do the Steve Rogers dodge -- it was a one-time fluke, and the one and only guy who knew how it worked got conveniently killed off immediately after, sadly not leaving behind any intelligible notes on the process. Yyyyyyeahright.

Well, to be fair, as far as superhero sendoffs go, Supergirl could have done worse...just ask the New Warriors, who died because Mark Millar thought they were a bunch of losers. Thankfully, other (GOOD) people at the House that Stan Built were there to play Damage Control. Dan Slott in a recent SHE-HULK issue, had the New Warrior survivors declare.

"No! You're wrong! They're weren't just kids playing heroes! They...WERE heroes!"

My point was that 1) Supergirl's death wasn't dramatic or worthy of a character like her, and 2) it wasn't entirely integrated into the Crisis story; Crisis's story would have been the same or not whether she died, which is a way of saying the death didn't really matter.



Good point, but bad example. The OWAW issue rubbed me the wrong way. There's a difference between having characters start to behave maturely (as Impulse and Conner did under Johns) and just having them come face to face with nasty events in order to scar them, like the trip to Apokalyps. Yeah, it's all fun and games until someone's sold into slavery!

A lot of YOUNG JUSTICE gags just fell flat. I'm almost positive that except for the talking crab advisor in AQUAMAN, Peter David has never done a single funny joke in his life. The absolute worst kind of joke (and this is what made Byrne's SHE-HULK so terminally unfunny, at least when he decided it would be a "humor" book - irony, thy name be Byrne) are fourth-wall breakers, where the humor comes from the fact the characters are talking directly to the audience. The flattest YOUNG JUSTICE gag was one where Conner, Impulse and the Ray are reading comics, saying "it looks like my comic is going to be canceled." "Oh! So's mine." And so on. Then, Robin (whose comic is not canceled) walks in the room. Everyone looks at him. "What?" He says.

 :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:  :roll:

As for C-K not wearing, really, a costume...I like the compromise that was achieved by Johns and his artists whereby Conner wears everyday clothing with an S-Shield shirt. Spandex would have been unfair to the characters' personality. This reminds me of SKY HIGH - watch the movie again: NOBODY, except the adults, are wearing traditional costumes; they're all wearing ordinary clothes. But their clothes nonetheless FEEL superheroic because they have either primary colors, or at least a consistent color scheme.

I won't deny that Peter David has been able to accomplish some really astonishing things (his AQUAMAN run had many high points). And maybe there is something to the idea that, as David was writing for a young audience, he didn't feel it necessary to make Conner Kent entirely three-dimensional.

My biggest problem with Conner was that he just never really "wised up" until Johns. I issue this criticism a lot, but Conner Kent was in a state of permanent arrested development; the fact that at one point, he could never age past 16 can be taken as a metaphor for his entire existence.

The thing is, Conner Kent's characterization as a vain, rather irreverant and occasionally immature teen is one that, by definition, has a brief shelf life. There have been occasions where the writers had an opportunity to make Conner "wise up:" I thought at the time, during the Death of Superman, that "a-ha, this kid is going to snap out of it, and show everybody he's got the right stuff." Alas, it didn't happen that story: during his follow-up series, he became a glory hog in Hawaii. Then came the death of Tana Moon, which would be the moment he'd start acting with maturity, right? Nope - he wasn't going into showbiz, but at the same time he was still kind of a slacker.



Don't get me wrong, there have been many great fellow heroes and support in the Superman Mythos that aren't Kryptonian or blood-relatives of Superman, and that shouldn't be a prerequisite: just look at Vartox, or Valdemar, or the Silver Age Superwoman.

However, the problem with Superboy's DNA Project origin is that previously, he was a straightforward character (Superman's teen clone) that was muddled to all hell. The origin is an important part of who a character is and it can't be wiped clean without the character being altered. This is why the Mantis was plunged into such despair with the knowledge that her origin was a lie; thankfully, we soon learned the whole truth and it was even more interesting.

This is why stories that a alter an origin, like Mopee or the Byrne SPIDER-MAN CHAPTER ONE, are so unwelcome: it DOES matter where the Flash's speed comes from (accident or magical elf), or whether Spider-Man and Doctor Octopus were created at the same time.

Though I do believe that characters are the sum of their history, not just bite-sized soundbytes, there is something to be said for origins that are "tight." A character like Batman with an origin that can be given in a sentence is stronger than a character like Cable or Spider-Woman.



Some may say that, but not me. Steel is phenomenally dull from start to finish.

Here's the thing about noble and heroic "protect and serve" Silver Age style characters: you have to be given a reason to care about them. The fact that Steel was a Silver Age throwback in terms of outlook is just not enough.

A character like the Roger Stern Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau) was a character that was Silver Age in mentality, but she has other personality qualities that make her interesting: her feistiness, her devotion to family, her assertiveness; the way she was opinionated without being pushy, and the fact that occasionally she was given a great many cool things to do.

Steel, by contrast, has really no personality apart from serving and protecting.

Classic Superman is anything but bland; the best-kept secret of Superman is that he is in reality a very complicated character. Jim Shooter once said that it would take volumes to talk about Superman's personality. Superman has so many intriguing and contradictory character traits: his fundamental idealism and unwillingness to compromise his beliefs - but the fact that at the same time he is savvy and a realist, his sense of humor, his sense of law, his respect for humanity and his simultaneous detachment from humanity and loneliness and sense of exile, the way he was intellectual but simultaneously approachable, he was confident but also humble...and so on.

Not EVERY character can be the Fantastic Four, with all their idiosyncrasies. Captain Comet makes up for his lack of personality with the fact that he has an intriguing costume, origin, and suite of powers, and the fact the writers had him do neat things. But Steel has nothing this cool going for him.
 
His costume is GRAY. How appropriate - the most boring of all colors. What, they couldn't make his outfit a muddy, plain brown?

Steel has a terminally dull origin about being a weapons designer that wised up. Other characters have this origin, but there's not even a single other wrinkle in the formula to make Steel distinct.

He gets his powers from a suit of armor. Gee, how innovative. You'd think at least he'd have a few gadgets that someone else doesn't, right, like maybe those cool hammer-hands that Iron Man used in AVENGERS #2, or a finger that shoots freon, or a teleport matrix? Nope. He's got boot jets and super-strength, just like every other armor wearer in history, ever. Oh, and a hammer that he can kinda throw, but doesn't even have any other gizmos.

I can't even think of a single cool Steel moment, ever. Moments that make you say, "wow, what a great character," like the Black Panther cold-cocking Mephisto in one punch, or Hawkeye robbing the train in "Go West, Young Gods," or Batman discovering the true identity of the Hyperclan.

Steel is a boring failure of the imagination at every level, and is not worthy of the goodwill he receives because he kinda-sorta reminds people of other characters.

Well, one of the story telling elements I give the Crisis is the step-by-step escalation approach it took in its playing out, almost as if, this gets more and more serious as it goes...Barry Allen's destroying the anti-matter cannon didn't stop the Anti Monitor either...

It's interesting what makes a character memorable. As a kid, I thought it was mostly visual appeal and awe- or envy-inspiring powers.  Aspects of the character's personality were mostly lost on me --although stronger personalities (the curmudgeonly Thing, the wise-cracking Spidey, the alternately fatherly and absent-minded Reed Richards, the supremely competent yet socially inept Superman) tended to make more of a lasting impression and helped make the morality of superhero comics more palatable.

Maybe I never reached the stage where it became imprtant to me how well minor (or maybe I should say non-titular) characters expressed a unique point-of-view (unique to their milieu) and was integrated into a convincing backstory and supporting cast.  I have no idea if Doc Samson is a good character, from a literary standpoint.  I just remember him as being amazingly cool (circa 1978).

Yeah, but I don't see how you can lump post-Crisis Superboy into this category. He's not a character whose origin was settled and then later changed. He's a character whose origin was left mysterious and then revealed bit by bit. If you read the Superman's Rebirth arc it's clear that whether Superboy is Superman's clone is not settled. The very first SB story, if I remember rightly, ends with Luthor asking his Cadmus mole "I thought you couldn't clone Superman?" The mole answers "Well, yes and no. Listen, I'll tell you everything." And then the scene fades out.



I think both settled origins and mysterious, developing ones have their place. Neither is inherently stronger than the other -- it depends on the kind of story you're trying to tell. Settled origins are pretty much a necessity for series that are mostly episodic, where what happens in one month's storyline is usually forgotten by the next. When you've got more of a continuity, there are more options.

As for Steel, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

Sorry I'm chimin' in so late!  

Julian, I'm afraid I have to disagree with you here.  

The story MY friends and I discuss from 1982 is the 9-part serial in Action Comics that splits Superman into two beings while battling Lord Satanus and Blaze.  

THAT is the big story of 1982 with Superman!  :)