Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Administrator's Note: This thread has been split from this one (http://superman.nu/smf/index.php?topic=3096.0).

Speaking as someone who started reading the Superman comics on a regular basis during the so-called Iron Age I would like to say that even though that is in the past I am rather enjoying the current crop of Superman books.

Having said that I really don't know what everyone's problem with the so-called Iron Age is.  There were some bad stories in there (especially between 2002-2004), but frankly I find them more entertaining and engaging than the Silver and Bronze Age that I had read.  (Which is substantial, btw.)

I think it's time to stop complaining about it.  It happened.  It's over.  Move on.

There's no reason to sing that the witch is dead since the witch has been dead for several years now.

A real Superman?

So the last survivor of Krypton who wore the costume and was secretly Clark Kent didn't exist during that time?

Funny, I seem to have twenty years of comics that say different.

I guess my question here is what exactly was it about the Superman of that era that bothered you so much?

I think what Monk was saying (and I share this opinion) is that the post Crisis/Iron Age Superman is not the Superman that us "old-timer" pre-Crisis fans consider being Superman.  I certainly don't. 

It's just that the Iron Age Superman is a parallel Earth Superman (contrary to what Crisis was supposed to do) that went against tradition.  Death? Long hair?  Electro-Supes? Kryptonite Rings?  No thanks...

What this Post IC Superman looks like is a return to greatness... but we'll see

I have read nearly every issue that the Post-Crisis Supes appeared in. The only issues that I really liked were Post-Byrne up until the Fall of Metropolis arc. It was downhill after that and the books were generally unreadable (with a few exceptions like the Superman/Aliens mini, Shultz's run on Man of Steel, Action 775, and some others) up until now.

As for story elements that I didn't like during the era:

Superman's execution of the Phantom Zone criminals. This was just completly out of character and wrong on so many levels. It also made him look like a hypocrite when he was chiding WW for killing Max Lord, Maxima for nearly killing Brainiac, Manchester Black and the Elite, and numerous other times.

Luthor as a Kingpin ripoff.

Matrix Supergirl. Not worth anything until Peter David took hold of the character.

Krypton that deserved to blow up.

The Kent boarding house for sidekicks and supporting characters. Kal can't help Mae or Kon, so he dumps them on his parents.

Kandor. None of the flair or depth of the original.

Kal-El the Pornstar.

Oxegen mask for space travel.

Supporting cast with suplots that made Superman a guest-star in his own book.

Lame villians like Doomsday, Brawl, Anomoly (Absorbing Man clone), Conduit, and the Kraven-like guy that controlled Star Labs at one point.

The breakup of Lois/Clark.

Lana Lang. Manhunter spy.

I found the mullet hilarious, though.

I posted this at another message board which I don't post at anymore back when IC 1st started:

To me that's not really Superman, and to The Great Rao who runs that site, it's not really Superman.

as to why, there are countless reasons.

You asked about the Origin, I will let you yourself and others here answer, since it's easy to figure out, can you guess which version I am referring to? I will explain why that version and so called Superman doesn't fit.

1. Where was Kal-El born?
Answer: In every origin, he was born on Krypton, except one where he was born on Earth.

2. Krypton's destruction was a tragic event.
This is true in all versions except one.
actual quote: "Wendy Pini said I'd created a Krypton that deserved to blow up." - John Byrne

3. Jor-El and Lora were loving parents, the rocket was made for two, the baby and one adult, Jor-el wanted Lora to go with Kal-El to Earth, he was willing to die to save her, she however, couldn't bare to live without him so they decided they would rather die together than live apart, so the baby was sent alone.

That happen in every origin except one.

4. When baby Kal-el arrives on Earth, one of his 1st acts was to save Pa Kents life by lifting that truck, in one of the all time classic scenes. (the movies anyways) Which foreshadows his career as the world's greatest superhero.

That happen in all versions except one.

5. Growing up in Smallville, young Clark learns how to master his powers (sometimes as Superboy sometimes not).

That happen in all versions except one.

6. The Kents taught him never to abuse his powers, ie for Sports, and of course not to kill.

Only in one version was he a football jock, and other than the early few issues of the Golden Age stories which were quickly reconned, did he commit cold blooded murder, then only afterward did he figure out that he should not kill, then he kills again anyway.

7. About the Kents, when one or both of them die he moves to Metropolis.

That happen in all versions except one.

8. "Superman is Superman and Clark Kent is an assumed identity - his facade. The disguise of Clark may be vivid, important, and beloved to Superman - but Kal-El's true nature is that of the Hero. Clark has depth and preferences and structures of belief that grow as he grows older but they are all constructs of Superman's obsession with him. Clark is Superman's hobby and his template for humanity."

That is true in all versions except one.

9. Superman was the 1st Superhero.

This was the case on Earth-1 and Earth-2. Not true for one version.

10. "Superman honors and cherishes the memory of Krypton, not just because all things of beauty should be treasured, but because the values and strengths of Krypton's society are the foundation of Superman's character."

Again true in all version, except one.

11. "Superman is not just some big guy with a lot of powers. He is a shining example of all that is worthwhile in humanity. His morals are also Super. He is an inspirational and aspirational role model"

True, except for one version as Batman pointed out


Spoiler  ;)
What was that version you ask?
The Man of Steel Post-Crisis Bryne version.


Another quiz, this time from the site, this was written in 1997, kept that in mind:

Many people have been trying to put their finger on just what it is about the Iron Age Superman that is "wrong" - they've been theorizing about the changes to Superman's continuity, his history, or his powers. They've basically been trying to figure out just who Superman is. But this question is so easy and the answer so obvious that many people have missed it.

So here is the pop-quiz. Multiple choice:


Question 1

Superman discovers that Lex Luthor is formulating some plot against him. So he confronts Lex and says:



A
"Oh, No! You're tricking everybody! I'll never be able to stop you!" (Grabs Lex by throat) "What are you up to now? You'd better tell me, or so help me, I'll..."



B
"I don't know what scheme you've got going this time, Luthor, but whatever it is - it'll never work." (Hauls Lex off to jail)

Question 2
Superman and Lois head down to the post-office so that he can read his fan mail. When they get there, Superman sees the innumerable sacks of letters and says:

A
"Oh, No! I'll never be able to read all this mail!"

B
(Superman reads all the letters in 2.3 seconds at super-speed, using his X-ray vision so that he doesn't even need to open the envelopes)


For each question, if you answered B, you know who Superman is. If you answered A, you must work for DC Comics. Yes, both of the events in the As are from recent issues and serve to illustrate just how poorly DC understands Superman.
Superman's power level, his changed continuity, and even the new electro-costume are all irrelevent. The Golden Age Superman, the Silver Age Superman, and the Bronze Age Superman are all very different characters with different powers, different continuities, and different costumes - but they are all Superman.

Superman is moral righteousness - knowing what is right and doing it. That's it. He doesn't whine or complain about doing the right thing, he does the right thing because it wouldn't even occur to him to do otherwise.

The Iron Age "Superman" is a killer. This is not the right thing - it is the wrong thing. He complains, is unsure of himself, is pessimistic and ineffectual. He defeats himself before any villain even has a chance to. He is not Superman - Superman makes a difference.

T.M. Maple put it this way: "Superman is not just some big guy with a lot of powers. He should be a shining example of all that is worthwhile in humanity. His morals should be 'super' too."

DC Comics refuses to let real Superman stories be told. Even Scott McCloud, one of the best super-hero writers on the planet, has his hands tied in Superman Adventures.

Elliot S! Maggin has proven that it is possible to write post-Crisis Superman stories that actually have Superman in them. He has done brilliant work in Action Comics #642, Luthor's Gift, and the Kingdom Come Novel.

Mark Waid isn't even allowed anywhere near Superman.

DC doesn't like Superman - they are sitting on a goldmine but refuse to use it. Superman is the greatest hero of all time and today's comic book readers are literally starving for stories about real heroes.

Legends cannot be killed - someday, Superman will return. This web site is keeping him alive for just such a time. Meanwhile, I'll continue to follow the adventures of the white-haired Superman in Supreme and the red-garbed Superman in Astro City.

"Look! Up in the sky!"





Read the whole thread here: http://forums.comicbookresources.com/showthread.php?p=2314242#post2314242

Super Monkey...

Amen, my brother... AMEN!!!

I'm with Michael Bailey on the post-Crisis Superman. I love the Bronze Age Superman, but I always liked what came later, too. At least, the good stories. Those by Byrne, Loeb, Kelly... I'm a big fan of those runs (MAN OF STEEL will always be my favorite story).
Particulars change, but the basics always are the same. The problem is when the stories are replaced by eventsd and bad ideas... and you have the '90s Superman. Metropolis destroied, young Lex Luthor, the death of Clark Kent... No, thanks.

You know, it's funny, I think the opposite is true: Superman in the 1990s was an improvement over Superman in the mid-to-late 1980s - at least in the sense that the high points were higher.

Roger Stern told space opera stories introducing Maxima, and his magnum opus, "Panic in the Sky," featured an old school Superman that was a breath of fresh air after the very earthbound, Spider-Man lite Wolfman/Byrne tales. Then we had Louise Simonson's Superman stories featuring the incredible Riot (a one-man crime spree).

What originally hooked me into buying the Busiek/Johns book was the promise that Superman would be fighting in space. Roger Stern understood that science fiction and big, STAR WARS-type stories are a part of Superman's identity. "Panic in the Sky" had everything but the kitchen sink: Warworld attacking with an army of space gladiators led by Brainiac, Superman showing panache as a superhero general, Mister Miracle diffusing traps, Billy Batson using the wisdom of Solomon, Ice thinking Superman is the handsomest man she's ever seen, and use of the Superman supporting cast, which was pre-DEATH OF, and didn't have the usual idiots that waste pages in the Super-books like Emil Hamilton (who the hell is that?), and useless, boring wankers like Steel, Gangbuster and Superboy.

In Stern's "Panic," Matrix was a shapechanging alien with protomatter powers instead of being a confused, illegitimate Supergirl. Sorry guys, Loeb's Supergirl is ten times more "Supergirl" than this space blob is - her best stories were when she wasn't TRYING to be Supergirl at all, like Stern's "Panic in the Sky."

I've never liked anything Byrne has done as a writer, and Wolfman joins the illustrious company of writers that don't "get" Superman, whose solution to writing the character is to have him not act smart, or "scale back his powers." The Spectre story was confusing, the Metal Men team-up story shows Byrne's childish obsession with robots not being "real people" (which he first showed by demolishing the Vision in AVENGERS WEST COAST, calling this beloved character "just a toaster"), and the idea that the Metal Men are some sort of plastic polymer so totally undercuts who they are that it's not even funny. There was also the "I don't know what to do with all this fan mail!" moment that shows a truly embarassing lack of understanding of who Superman is, that Great Rao made that a part of this site's questionnaire like, a bajillion years ago.

The only story from the Byrne/Wolfman/Kesel/Helfer years that I really like at all is the Lori Lemaris story that Byrne did with Karl Kesel, and I wondered about this for years and years...until I found a SUPERMAN FAMILY with Silver Age reprints, and found the Kesel story was just about a panel-by-panel REMAKE of the original Lori Lemaris story!

And then there was Superman killling the pocket dimension Phantom Zone inmates at the tail end of the Byrne/Wolfman run.

Boy, this dead horse has been whipped, hasn't it? But nonetheless, I have a couple more things to say on this:

1) It was pretty darn gutless of Superman to kill inmates that had no powers and were completely at his mercy.

2) The pocket universe story wasn't the "odd story out" as many of its defenders say. The whole theme of the Byrne/Wolfman Superman revamp was that "this is not your father's Superman." In other words, it got by on being a deliberate reversal of what we know about Superman, which is why it was so shocking and interesting at the time. So much of what made MAN OF STEEL work was "a-ha, look at Clark Kent being a he-man, pushing Lois out of the way and saving her! Wow, that's surprising!"

Superman killing was just another shock value surprise in a series full of shock-value surprises. It was done because we KNOW "Superman wouldn't do that."

And I don't think that's good enough of a reason to monkey around with something as important as Superman's code against killing.

Sure, the nineties gave us arguably the worst stories in Superman's history, too, with an endless string of vapid villains: Conduit, the Cyborg Superman, La Encantadora....but still, at least it was all done for reasons apart from shock value and "this is NOT your father's Superman!"

Stern hardly deserves the sole credit for Panic in the Sky; like most everything of that era, it was done as a sort of round robin between Stern, Simonson, Jurgens, and Ordway.

Hamilton is a scientist, something like a Professor Potter but not as goofy. Both he and Gangbuster were part of the pre-death supporting cast -- the latter, in fact, pretty much disappeared after the death storyline -- and both did appear in Panic as part of the Earth defense force, although there wasn't much for them to do.

(Post edited for formatting)

Here's an interview by George Khoury with the funniest man in comics, Roger Stern, a true wit and incredible talent, easily the greatest of Superman's Iron Age writers:

http://www.marvelmasterworks.com/features/int_stern_1006_1.html (http://www.marvelmasterworks.com/features/int_stern_1006_1.html)

 I always really liked Hamilton and really hated the whole "ruin" storyline. I too really enjoyed some of the early post crisis stuff and felt that Some of these things really did "get" Superman. But then again I always felt the TAS continuety should be the "real" one. 

It's kind of funny, I agree with the philosphy that Superman would always find another way in favor of killing his opponent but at the same time, on a dramatic level, I found what John Byrne to be interesting.  What would happen if he crossed that line?  It led to almost two years of interesting stories and probably one of my all time favorite story arcs, Exiles.

Except when they changed things in Birthright, which had him born on Krypton.


I would argue that in Byrne's origin Krypton's destruction was a tragic event.  After sending the birthing matrix off Jor-El professed his love for Lara, something that had been anathema to the citizens of that world.  Jor-El was a rebel and maybe if the world hadn't been destroyed he would have changed things, but that chance was taken away.

To me that is tragic.

And again, that seemed to have been changed in Birthright.


Actually in the radio origin and several other early versions Jor-El (or Jor-L) wanted Lara (or Lora) to go instead of the kid.  And in the movie it was pretty clear that the ship was only going to hold the kid, so there have been variations on that theme.


Uh, I think that only happened in the first movie.  On the radio show Superman initally arrived as an adult before they changed it to the more recognizable one.  The serials and television series had the ship bursting into flames, as did George Lowthar's novel.  Even the classic Silver Age origin didn't have that happen.


In later issues of the Byrne run it was revelaed that as his powers increased he would go to a quarry to practice.  And later stories revealed how he learned to keep his bearings while flying.  I'd also argue that the fact that he had such a good handle on his powers later proves that he worked at it as they came along.


In Man of Steel #1 Pa is obviously disappointed in Clark for playing football the way he does and when he discovers the events surrounding him coming to Earth he changes his tune.  Plus there was the incredible story of his friend becoming a vegetable in a drunk driving accident.

And as I said as much as I agree that Superman shouldn't kill it is still worth pursuing the question of what would happen if he did.


I think enough has been done with Ma and Pa being alive to justify this, not only in the comics but on television as well.  Plus, I have always been confused with why you people want two old people to die just to give Superman some angst.


I like a balance between the two, but again Lois and Clark also went in this direction, for good or ill.  Personally I like the concept of Clark being the real guy because I can relate to that more than someone who has to pretend to be human to relate to us.


In all honesty this doesn't bother me, but at the same time this wasn't John Byrne's fault.  That was the Crisis on Infinite Earths, though there was the story done in the Golden Age Secret Files and Origins that revealed the fact that the Crimson Avenger (cited as the first masked crimefighter of the Golden-Age in DC history) was spurned to action by a vision of Superman dying in his battle with Doomsday.  So in a way Superman did inspire the Golden Age of heroes.


Krypton never seemed to be as important to the Earth-2 Superman.  And the fact that the "Iron Age" Superman got around to getting a Fortress of Solitiude to honor his past.  And I would put the values instilled by loving parents on Earth over the same values that were taught in previous versions on Krypton.

And again Lois and Clark didn't do this, Smallville hasn't done this and even the animated series implied that his virtue and heroism comes from the Kents, not Krypton.


Ok, when Batman said that it was at a certain point where Superman was at a low point.  Before that Superman was often cited as the light that others heroes followed.  And during the events of Infinite Crisis when Superman got his act together people followed.  Superman was an inspiration and a role model and to say that the "Iron Age" Superman wasn't shows an ignorance of the material.

And Mark Waid has been allowed near Superman since that second quiz, so I'm surprised you didn't edit that part out.

He was a wimpy, indescisive, often morally challenged whinner compared to the real Superman and frankly even compared to me in real life.  most of his supporting cast personalities became unrecognozable or they were replaced with vastly inferior "more relevant" versions I liked Byrnes early stuff but things went south afterwards real fast as most iron age writers didn't get heroism or optimism or larger than life..  My hatred for Azzarello(sp) and Rucka's work probably is so deep that you couldn't comprehend it. They turned Superman into a person I not only couldn't look up to but felt I couldn't count on.

Superman never had angst until the iron age when his parents were alive. 


I can't understand why people think they have to relate to a character to enjoy a story.  Besides, Superman is someone who knows how to handle things.  Not someone who can't get his act together.

Well, that Crimson Avenger thing just sounds stupid... getting a vision from the future spurns someone to become a mystery man is such a stretch to have Superman inspire a generation of heroes ti keep up tradition.. just wrong...

And the Earth Two Superman, once he found out he was from Krypton, DID honor his birth planet.  In Action 484, he marries Lois in his Fortress under giant status of Jor-L and Lora... that ceremony WAS a Kryptonian ceremony.  He even adopted phrases like "Great Rao" and whatnot... so he was like his Earth One counterpart in those respects.. he just found out about his heritage later in his life than Kal-El did.

Think about it... when someone realizes he's adopted and can find out about his burth parents, he goes all out.. when someone who had a parent die when he was young (like I did) it become an obsession to find everything you can out about that parent and adopt mannerisms and stuff so you can be like them.  Kal-L and Kal-El did just that pre-Crisis.. the Iron Age Kal seemed to care less..

I'll respectfully disagree with the first point but I remain schooled on the second.  I had momentarily forgotten about the wedding ceremony for Kal-L and Lois.  My overall point was that the "Iron Age" Superman did get around to honoring his own heritage, even though it was the Eradicator that originally built the Fortress.  Superman, along with Steel, eventually rebuilt it in Superman: The Man of Steel #100.

I don't think he cared less, I think it wasn't as big a part of his life as it was the Earth-1 Kal-El.

How does a person in 1937 (or thereabouts) see something that hasn't happened yet?  I would LOVE to have a vision of life in the future!

Not true at all. One of the first Superman stories I ever read was an Action Comics three-parter, from 1968 or thereabouts, in which Supey is aged and trapped in a future era that no longer needs him. That story, just as one example, was as angsty as anything in the so-called Iron Age. (After all, how many times do you see Superman bummed out because he isn't able to kill himself?)


Nobody says you have to, but it is something that can make the difference between a work that's merely enjoyable and one that approaches something more.


The most interesting Superman stories of any age tend to be ones in which he runs into something that he doesn't know how to handle.

Uh, the Silver and Bronze Age Superman had tons of angst.  Everytime he thought, "Oh no, Lois is about to discover my true identity! CHOKE" he had angst.

And the issue I recently read where he was sitting at the table in the Kent home worrying over Lois and Lana dying from the same disease that took the Kents wasn't angst?


See, I do need to relate to the characters I read about.  It works on two levels; do I see anything of myself in the character and/or can I relate to what they are going through even if I haven't gone through the same thing?  I need to be engaged on some level and see the character go through something.

There's also the concept of a character evolving as time goes on.  As entertaining as some of the Bronze Age and early '80s Superman stories are the character is pretty much the same at the end as he is in the beginning.  They made some changes (Lois breaking up with Clark, Steve Lombard losing his job, etc.) but for the bulk of it the changes they made were undone either at the end of the issue or story line.

With the "Iron Age" Superman things changed constantly.  Dating Lois led to an engagment to break up to marriage.  He died and came back.  He killed and dealt with the consequences.  Things freaking happened that altered the course of the character's life whereas the Bronze Age Superman remained pretty constant.

I mean if I wanted to read or watch something that had a plot and yet the characters were the same at the end of the story as they were at the beginning of the story then I would watch Star Trek: Voyager. 

If memory serves he had a vision while visiting some temple in the mountains of Asia.  It was, again if memory serves, part of his training.

And, in all honesty I buy into that as much as I buy Superman (or Superboy) strapping himself into a machine to witness something tjhat happened to him when he was a baby on Krypton.

Actually a lot of my problem with iron age Superman was I couldn't relate to him. He was just to far below my personal standards which frankly I don't think are all that high. I can't relate to a Superman who is so much less than he could be and so far below his reputation. I hate naturalistic takes on heroic genres.

In a roundtable discussion in the "Krypton Companion," several comics creators are asked to describe Iron Age Superman (though they don't call him that) and the majority of them have the same complaints we do on this site.

Even Byrne pegged him as "a conflicted whiner" and a "parody of the way Chris Reeve played him in Superman II."

Unfortunately I can't remember who gave my favorite response.  Maybe Karl Kesel?  I'll look it up tonite.  Anyway, he says the pre-OYL Superman is "like your sister's boyfriend who hangs around your house all the time.  He thinks he's cool but he really needs a shower and a job."

 :D :D :D

I stand corrected.  What I meant to say is that at least Superman didn't go on and on about his problems. 


I do see your point.  I guess I do relate to Superman in as much as he is a character I aspire to be like.
I just don't like Superman to dither and feel sorry for himself. 

This is quite an interesting debate. I haven't really discussed Superman lately (I've been busy with school), but lately I've really wanted to.

In regards to the post-Crisis vs. pre-Crisis Superman, I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Byrne's reboot. In my view, it eliminated too many things that people unconsciously associated with Superman. Yet there have been writers that have done good things with the post-Crisis Superman. Because of that, I don't think this is a black or white issue.

Personally speaking, I'm a Bronze Age Superman fan. The Bronze Age had all the fantastic ideas of the Silver Age, but some of the more outlandish stuff was toned down and Superman himself seemed more concerned with how he affected the world. It was a nice balance. Furthermore, it didn't invalidate any of Superman's previous history. When you erase a character's history (like the Byrne reboot did), most rational fans will be able to accept the change as long as you respect the history of the character and don't try to drastically alter him because of some personal desire. A lot of fans (myself included) believe that the reboot failed in this regard. And, as Julian mentioned, much of it simply reversed things about Superman and his life (i.e. a cold Krypton instead of a utopian one, a macho Clark instead of a mild-mannered one, ect).

Now, I'm a fan of the current Superman comics. There are some good writers out there that understand the character (like Kurt Busiek). I especially like how the mainstream DCU Superman is like the movie version while the All-Star version is like the Silver/Bronze Age version.

That being said, I believe that the Iron Age is over. Right now we're in some transitional era. There's still going to be graphic violence (that's never going to change), but it will be used less for exploitive purposes. That's what *I* think will happen at any rate. While I agree that the Iron Age isn't as bad as some people say, I think it's easily Superman's worst era. It's not because I'm opposed to dark stories either (I like MANY dark comic series). I just don't think the Iron Age stories are as interesting.

The Iron Age Superman?  Or Iron Age in general was all about angst and violence and nothing but angst and violence as good story-telling.  Humor and light-hearted stories were seen as childish.  Someone stills need to give Dan DiDio a whack with the cluestick about that.  The heroes could never win and just keep things from spiraling out of control.  Until the Guy fight, Green Lantern was one of the better comics they had.  Green Lantern Corps Quarterly and Starman were hold-outs against the angst only policy, so they got rid of them.  Starman with the Eclipso Darkness Within saga(which if you look back was the only real casualty in the fight) and Green Lantern with Emerald Twilight and the removal of Guy Gardner and Jon Stewart from the GL book.

The post-Byrne years (1988-"Reign of the Supermen!") aren't bad. I have read various good stories in that period, like the "Krisis of Krimson Kryptonite" storyline or one of my favorite post-Crisis stories, "Crisis at hand". The worst arrived later! The long haired Superman, the destruction of Metropolis, the death of Clark Kent (urgh), the whole "Luthor young, then old, then young again thanks to a demon" matter... Sigh. I liked the Electric Superman saga, though, even if it has been too long. It was a sort of rule in those years: storylines were long, infinite! I prefer the following years, when Berganza arrived with Loeb and the others.


Guess what? My father don't like the '90s Superman! Yep, that's NOT his Superman. He, who used to read the Man of Steel in the 1950s, consider all that stuff a mountain of junk.

One of my favorite stories ever!

It was a rather good story.  While I'm not huge of Elliot S! Maggin's Superman work (I don't dislike it, btw, just not blown away by it) Cary Bates wrote some rather inventive stories.  Gerry Conway wrote some good ones as well but his best work was on other characters like Firestorm and Steel.

But yeah, good story.