Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Since I've been away, there seems to have been lots of discussion on the nature of the "Iron Age Superman," and I've decided to throw my two cents into the debate, so that we can all better understand one another's views..if my hunch is correct. At this point, fellow Georgian Michael Bailey seems to be the primary apologist for Post-Crisis Superman, while the Council of Wisdom pines for the pre-1986 Man of Tomorrow.

The points of view are simple and clearly defined: If you grew up as a fan of Superman by watching George Reeves on television, or reading comics by Jerry Siegel or Elliot S! Maggin, you saw Superman develop as a character over the years, only to be horrified at the end of 1986 when that character was completely erased forever. If you were a comics-reading youngster of late Generation X, you may have thought John Byrne's ideas were revolutionary, grew up with this Superman, and became upset when people like Jeph Loeb started tinkering with him. To you, the pre-Crisis Superman was too powerful, too complicated, and too unbelievable. Many people are not hardliners either way, and have rolled with the changes each time. You could debate these positions all day long; some already have, but I'd like offer my perspective on all of this.

A Post-Post-Crisis Superman

Either way, we now have a post-post-Crisis Superman, and I don't think it's a result of either side of this argument winning. Instead, I think these changes are simply the result of a new generation reading comics.

I am arguably one of the youngest people on this forum, and arguably a member of Generation Y. I entered Kindergarten weeks after Superman IV: The Quest for Peace came out in theaters, and in the afternoons we would watch Superfriends reruns (on TBS, I think.) The first comic book that my mother bought me in the grocery store was an early issue of Superboy: The Comic Book, based on the Superboy TV show. I never heard of 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' growing up, as that question had already been resolved by the first time I ate Captain Crunch.

Gen-Y Superman Comics

I would have completely missed the "Iron Age Superman" if not for his death. That was the biggest news ever in my elementary school, and people brought Death of Superman trades so that we could all pass the story around. I did my part when I got a 'Funeral for a Friend' collection, and several months later when the next issue of Adventures of Superman hit the newsstand, I was on top of it. For a few months in 1993 I got all of the issues of Superman that I could, intent on finding out which one of the 4 Supermen were "real."

And then it stopped. Aside from the new Superboy and Steel spinoffs from that era, I was completely uninterested in new Superman comics. My final reference point for my generation's Superman comics was the Reign of Supermen arc- my collection verifies this, as I look back through it, because the few comics that I bought in 1994 and beyond contained one of the characters from that arc: Steel, the new Superboy, the Eradicator, or the Cyborg.

Sales figures show that I am apparently not alone, and even these new series were eventually cancelled. When I talk to others my age about Superman comics, they invariably mention Doomsday or the Cyborg, and know little else about them.

A Generational Shift

What caused me, after my interest in Superman peaked in 1994, to become interested in Superman again, and end up on this site? The Smallville TV series. Millions of people watched it weekly in its early years, and it caused multi-colored kryptonite to be reintroduced into the comics, as well as Luthor in Smallville. At this time, an older friend of mine began recommending comics for me to read- "new classics" if you will. I found that I absolutely hated everything he recommended to me, from Watchmen, Sin City, Dark Knight Returns, you name it. Until he bought me a copy of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?" and then I knew that Superman was at one time optimistic, creative, and fun.

Generation Y is more optimistic than our X counterparts who gave us grunge rock: we grew up with the Internet and no memories of the Cold War. More than anything else, I think that trait is responsible for the changes in Superman's character in the last year. Superman has not changed because pre-Crisis Superman fans won out, or because "the true Superman has returned." Let's take a look at some of the characteristics of this new, post-post-Crisis Superman:

1) He was killed by Doomsday. As this is the only reference point in comics that Gen Y has for Superman, the whole arc must remain intact.

2) John Byrne is fired. Who?

3) The Fortress of Solitude resembles that of the Christopher Reeve movies (which we've all seen) or the Smallville TV show...NOT that of the Silver Age Superman.

4) On the front end, Generation Y had the Superboy TV show, and on the tail end, the Smallville TV show. As a result, the days of Clark Kent discovering his powers at age 18, or of Luthor never being in Smallville, are over. (Sorry, Iron-Agers.) By the same token, this new Superboy is not going to resemble the one who debuted in 1945...sorry, everyone else!

2006: A Cultural Odyssey

Julian Perez used the example of conservative Christians to show why people emotionally supported All-Star Superman. I disagree a little, but being an evangelical Christian myself, I'll steal his analogy to make a different point. In the 1980s, the Christian Right was credited with a lot of Ronald Reagan's success, which culminated in the 1994 Republican takeover in Congress. In 2006, young evangelicals are pro-environment, ant-war, and have notoriously written editorials at Wheaton College in favor of gay marriage...which has led to a new shift in government. Exit polls say that about 1/3 of evangelicals voted for Democrats this year, with high turnout among young people. (I'd argue that the number is closer to 1/2, because pollsters only counted white evangelicals.)

Political science aside, the same generational shift that caused Democrats to gain control of the government in 2006 could be what caused a shift in the character of Superman since November 2005. I have mistakenly claimed that the Superman of Earth-One had returned, but now I see that isn't the case. Silver-Age fans have been recruited to write Superman comics because they have the optimism down pat, but the new character that they have created is simply the Superman that Generation Y recognizes.

And that's my theory.

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It's not a generational issue for me. I'm 21 years old and I'm a Bronze Age fan primarily, but I like some post-Crisis stuff too.

Furthermore, my politics are pretty left-wing and I don't actively believe in any deity. (Oddly enough, I actually like the Judeo-Christian aspects of the Superman mythos. Pretty weird, huh?) I don't think there's any strong relation between politics and religion in regards to Superman fans. To me, Superman represents the person that I want to be like. Despite my strong political beliefs, I wish that I could just help people directly like Superman does.

Nonetheless, your theory is quite interesting. You should develop it further.

Interesting, but I'm not certain I agree with your conclusions.

I think the explanation for why classic elements are returning to Superman is much, much simpler than all this: people want to read something new and Iron Age Superman at this point after all these years, has gotten familiar and tired, just as all versions inevitably do near the end. The reason pre-Crisis elements are "returning" is because as SuperMonkey points out, the Carlin/Byrne/Helfer Superman after 1986 is the odd version out. It's inevitable future versions would have more in common with the versions precediing it.

If you think of it that way, it isn't Jeph Loeb and Busiek and others that have put things back IN...it was Wolfman and Byrne and Kesel and the rest that took things OUT.

The principle source of my disagreement with this thesis of yours is...in other newsgroups and other websites, which have a good cross-section of Superman fans by age, from Boomers to Gen X and Y...the general reason people are excited and curious about things like BIRTHRIGHT or the Busiek/Johns Superman and the works of Jeph Loeb, is not because there's a generational shift, but rather, because at this point, after years and years of Byrne's MAN OF STEEL and Carlin and so on, it's all gotten terribly exhausted. People are in the same mood now that they were in the mid-eighties with Superman: they're hungry for something new, and I think THAT has more to do with "classic" Superman elements returning than any attempt to take the allowance money of MySpace.com kids with their Jessica Alba wall posters.

And more to the point, this exhaustion is across the board and not limited to any one age demographic.

Also, the people responsible for post-Infinite Crisis Superman are not exactly members of the Britney Generation. Kurt Busiek is a baby boomer whose formative comics stories were the Englehart Avengers and Detective Comics, and Geoff Johns is a Gen-Xer down to the disaffected goatee.

As for the factors you mention as being evidence that the Post-IC guys are trying to skew their book to the YouTube generation's perceptions of Superman...

1) True, the "Death of" is intact, but presumably so are many other Iron Age stories that Gen Y is not so familiar with.

2) Okay, I'll give you this one. If you grow up with John Byrne as the bitter crank that dissed Steve Irwin, certainly it makes what he established considerably less sacrosanct than if you grow up with John Byrne as the supremely talented demigod that did UNCANNY X-MEN and IRON FIST. If he's a mortal, and a hackish mortal at that, changing around what he did isn't sacrilege.

HOWEVER...the general attitude to Byrne at the present time is that Johnny Redbeard joins the company of Peter Bogdanovich, David Bowie, and George Lucas as someone that was great back in the day, but whose creative instincts have since died. People still consider his FANTASTIC FOUR a classic beyond criticism (and it was, at least for the first year before Byrne reverted to type as a creepy hack and perv as he inevitably does when he writes as well as draws). What I'm trying to say here is, just because Gen Y thinks of Byrne as a hack now doesn't mean they would be okay with MAN OF STEEL not being in play anymore.

3) Yeah, but this one is a no-brainer. The Silver Age Fortress was incredible, but the look was very dated. Of course Busiek and Johns are not going to bring it back looking all "Buck Rogers." Even towards the tail end of the Bronze Age, writers were playing interior decorator - for instance, they shrunk the Interstellar Zoo into a nature preserve.

4) Since we've only gotten the barest hints of how Superboy is going to fit into Superman's life post-IC, I'm not entirely sure how to answer this one. However, the fact they are bringing Superboy back does not necessarily mean they're bringing him back because he's an important part of how Generation Y thinks of Superman.

Another thing that may override a lot of elements is that the people who read comics are different...i.e. many more kids read comics in the Silver Age and abandoned them after adolescence, today, the audience is much smaller with a higher percentage of older readers.

I find it hard to imagine DC puts as much thought into their comics as you did this post.  I think they just do what the market demands.  Superman didn't sell as well as they liked in the mid-80s, so they re-booted.  Sales went in the dumps again and they're trying a new tack.  It's a simple as that.

I don't think the comics of the moment are a return to the Silver Age by a long shot. But if we old codgers did "win" anything, it's the argument that vintage concepts don't lose their value by the passage of time.  A good idea is a good idea, period.  It's not that we resented so much the fact that Superman was re-imagined all those years ago (I started out excited about the reboot!), it's that DC editorial's attitude was, "The old stuff is stupid and you're stupid for liking it."  As Alan Moore and others proved even back then, any concept can work in the hands of a writer who knows what he's doing. Any moron can "reboot" a book that's not selling or kill a character who isn't "cool" any more.  It takes real talent to make a book or character work by its own rules, but not much at all to wipe the slate clean and start over.  Especially if you do it every two years.

Characters like Superman, who endure for generations, will over the course of time accumulate a lot of baggage, some of which is retained and the rest of which is tossed aside.  The best stuff sticks, and I think it's telling how much of that stuff dates back to the 50s, 60s and 70s versus what's come more recently.

While my post was wordy, I don't think that DC made these changes because of any preparedness on their part for a new generation. I think they were doing as you said...what the market demands. I don't think that very much has changed at DC, because I think the comics are still very much market-driven. Byrne's Superman didn't last because All-Star Superman, reprints, and tv shows were outselling the current titles... not for any philosophical reason (i.e. Byrne Superman is the oddball in history)

And like I said earlier,  I think that Silver Age enthusiasts have been recruited to work on Superman ultimately because this is what the new generation of comics readers will buy. This new generation completely missed Byrne's run on the Superman titles, but is familiar with the Silver Age Superman in a way, thanks to Christopher Reeve movies and tv shows, including cartoons.

I don't necessarily agree with a market-driven approach, because I'm a leftist who thinks that fans should buy out DC and run it as a nonprofit organization. But it's DC's motivation. They killed Earth-1 Superman, they eliminated Byrne's Superman, and I do not hesitate to think that they'll kill again.

I've been thinking about the Iron Age threads that have popped up on these boards lately, which is usually a dangerous thing because the last thing in the world I need right now is to put more thought into Superman.  The result of all of this is the realization that as fun as the debate is and as much as I like to engage in "conversation" with my fellow fans it all really comes down to two things; opinion and what Superman means to us.

Gangbuster is right to a certain extent regarding the generational aspect as far as it relates to what type of Superman fan you are.  The problem is that, as Julian pointed out, this is a broad generalization.  When you get down to the hardcore fans, the ones who buy the books and trades as they come out every month (which covers the lot of us I think because even if you aren't buying the monthlies I would bet that an action figure or trade paperback has caught your eye), things get ... different.

At heart we all have one thing in common; we like Superman.  We like what he represents.  The S symbol means something to us.  After that it's like night and day sometimes.  So the generational thing can bring us in but what keeps us around depends on what aspect of Superman appeals to us.  For some it's the Silver Age.  For some it's the Bronze Age.  For some it's the Byrne era.  For some it's George Reeves.  For some it's the Super Friends.  For a lot of us it might be Christopher Reeve and that's where the debate begins. 

It really is like varying aspects of Christianity in a lot of ways.  You have your Southern Baptists, your Catholics, your Protestants, your Lutherans, your Presbyterians, your Mormons, etc.  I am not going to get into which Superman fan fits in with which sect because, well that wasn't the point of the analogy.  We all see this one figure and we all look at him different ways and it all comes from what version "speaks" to us. 

I'm an odd duck when it comes to being a Superman fan.  I can see all sides (which I guess makes me the Unitarian of the group) but still have my convictions.  There are parts of each version of the character that make me go, "Yeah, that's cool."  The Golden-Age version was just a ball when it comes to sticking up for the little man.  The Silver Age had a lot of imagination despite telling the same basic story again and again.  The Bronze Age added a lot of depth to the character and moved him forward a bit.  The Byrne/Wolfman revamp gave the property a shot in the arm because sales were down.  The Carlin years were dramatic.  In other media the radio show is just awesome, the serials were cute, the George Reeves series had one of the strongest first seasons I've ever seen, the Super Friends were fun, Christopher Reeve made us believe that a man could put on a pair of glasses and change his demeanor and we wouldn't see that he was also a man of steel, the Superboy season was also a lot of fun, Lois and Clark had some great moments...

I could go on and on but the point is that even though I will argue for the "Iron Age" because that was when I came into the comics and think that it is just as valid as any other version of the character I can see why y'all feel the way you do.

So it is generational, until you stick around beyond the three or four years that the average person collects comics or beyond watching the films or television series.  Then things can get sticky and tempers can flare and we get to the point where we can't agree on how to make Kool-Aid much less which version of Superman is THE version.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that we're all right, and we're all wrong depending on who is making the statement and who is reading the statement.

I think we can all agree, though, that the 1975 ABC television version of the Superman musical was the low point.

Yeah, I can say that with confidence.

I think the acrimony is a relatively new phenomenon.  Did Golden Age fans kick and scream when the Silver Age version added all the Wiesingerian baggage?  Did the Silver Age fans pitch a fit when Julie scaled back Morty's superverse?  Maybe a little, but not so loudly and not with the soapbox the Internet's provided to every shrill malcontent in the universe.

Frankly, I don't think it's all that hard to connect the Golden Age to the Silver (60s Superman comes off as an older and wiser version of his brash 30s self) and it's simple to reconcile Silver with Bronze.  The distinctions between those eras have been made by fans and historians in retrospect.  But what we saw with the Iron Age was an overt, noisy, in-your-face declaration that things were going to change, that the past was done and this was not your daddy's Superman.  From DC's top brass down to the fanboys, the buzz was "Superman is boring, out-of-touch and silly, and if you like him, so are you."  That is not an auspicious way to begin an era and, in my opinion, it set the tone for 20 years of shouting and bad feelings.

It also put pressure on DC to put up or shut up, and in many ways a lot of us feel they didn't deliver.  When you declare that a much-loved, carefully crafted mythos is just so much silliness, and that now things are going to be more interesting, more dynamic, better crafted and cooler, well then you darn well better be prepared to make good on your claims.  In my book, they seldom did. 

Anyway, that's how I see it.  Superman fans of the past may have been in different camps as far as who they felt was the best writer or artist or what was the best era, but they usually didn't come to blows over it.  In 1986, battle lines were drawn and war was declared on the old guard of fans.

To continue your religious analogy, Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians may all have different services and rituals, and may each place emphasis on a different part of Christian doctrine, but we tend to all get along.  A sure way to make sure we don't, however, would be for a Methodist to barge into a Baptist church and say, "You're all a bunch of idiots and your ideas are infantile!"  That's pretty much how it felt for me in 1986.  And just to make it more fun, DC said, "furthermore, we're closing your church down.  If you want to worship at our new church, come on in, but you'll worship our way or you can get out."

Or something.  That religion analogy is really icky, isn't it?  I tend not to like putting Superman and religion in the same thought, but in a sense they do correlate.  To wit, Superman fans believe in certain ideals and behaviors and in a human symbol of those ideals.  Whoever can work with those basic beliefs and bring us together under one  tent is a great editor, writer, etc.  But it's just as easy for a troublemaker to come in, find our few differences and splinter us into factions.  Trust me, as a preacher's kid I've seen a lot of congregations broken up in my day; it's always a sad thing when people who have so much in common, and can achieve so much united, nevertheless split up over the stupidest, pettiest trifles.

So thanks for offering the olive branch and staying open-minded it.  But as far as name-calling and finger-pointing, I have to show my immaturity here and point out that "they started it."  Once someone tells you the things you love are stupid, it's hard to resist the temptation to come back with, "no the stuff you like is stupid."

I don't think that current readers truly understand just how much DC HATED the classic Superman, while at the same time how much people still loved the classic Superman.

The main reason why the Death of Superman story sold so well was because many people who hadn't read a Superman comic in a long time thought that DC was going to kill the classic Superman, once they figured out that the classic Superman was long gone, sales drop big time and only the actual Iron Age Fans kept buying the comics just like they always were.

DC refuse to reprint ANYTHING from the classic age other that the TGSSET TPB. The main editor called in to radio shows when people were discussing the classic Superman and tell them that that "corny" and "lame" Superman was dead and the current version was hip and cool and modern.

This was the main reason why this site was created. Because the classic Superman was all but forgotten and DC wanted nothing to do with him.

The Iron Age Superman was everything that the real Superman wasn't, so different in fact that he wasn't really Superman but just another modern superhero with the same name wearing the same costume. That was the way DC wanted him! DC designed him that way on purpose! That's not an opinion, that is a fact.

Of course, some sneaky writers managed to sneak in some classic goodness into the clone: Grant Morrison in JLA, Superman for all Seasons, and a few odd moments here and there.

Sure, some token classic elements were brought back, after the trades of the classic Superman sold so well, but they all had very little in common with the real versions other than name.

There were some trail runs but I think that the OYL-Superman (One Year Later Superman) in the legit start of some thing new. What happen before was more like what the 1950's Superman was, not really Golden Age but not yet Silver Age. The current OYL-Superman is a step in the right direction, while he isn't the pre-crisis Superman at least he is not like the dreaded Iron Age clone. Instead, he is something new, worthy of the name, but still very modern.

Once again, this is not an opinion, since that is just what DC is trying to do now.


 

Actually I had a slightly different take on that affair.

I agree the book sold well because people thought DC was killing the "real" Superman, the Superman they knew from old comics, TV, movies, etc.  But I think the reason sales didn't stay high was because DC's publicity unit did their work too well.  They convinced the world that Superman was dead and that was the end of that, for most folks.  They never picked up a comic again, and no other sales event captured headlines and air time the way that one did.

Thus, to this day, I run into people who are surprised to hear Superman comics are still being published.  Personally, I think it's hilarious.  Even when DC succeeds, they fail.

I am sure that that played a part in it as well. Also the fact that the comics were really bad didn't help matters much. Mullet Superman didn't really set the word on fire, nor did Electric Superman, bringing back the deformed retarded grey Hulk clone or the other endless marketing gimmicks to try to recreate the sales of Death.

After the teams that were on the books left or got fired, DC created a new policy that no famous writers or artists were allowed to write or draw Superman anymore. The idea behind this was that they wanted a fresh take on stale Iron Age Superman and they knew that Iron Age Superman fans were loyal and dumb enough to buy any old crap with the name Superman on it no matter who was on the book or how much it stank. The result was some of the worst art ever for a Superman book where you couldn't even tell who was who and most boring stories ever written.

This went on for years, until DC finally drop this policy and put superstar artist Jim Lee on a Superman book
with Mr. I love to drag story lines as much as humanly possible in order to bore readers so much that they will never want to pick up an other superhero comic again, Brian Azzarello. I believe he had a bet going with Jeph Loeb to see who could created the worst Jim Lee comic ever, shockingly Frank Miller won.

I've got to disagree with you on this one, Nightwing. Fan acrimony and "fan complaining" is not a thing that is a product of the internet age, nor is it a product of the way we communicate on the internet (anonymity, the "echo chamber," etc.). It's not new, and even back in the day there was tons of angry whining.

Reading some comics letters pages from the 1960s is a very, very eye-opening experience for me.

In order to answer a question TELLE asked in the Other Superfriends forum about Stan Lee's AVENGERS lettercolumns, I visited a friend of mine that's an antique and first edition novel, book and pulp magazine dealer. He also has nearly a complete run of just about every single Marvel comic, and is otherwise an awesome cat to hang around, that I use any excuse to visit him and his wife.

Anyway, anyone that thinks that people being upset by a controversial or unusual decision (and talk about it loudly and shrilly) needs to read the lettercolumns for the 1960s AVENGERS issues, for the issues when Stan Lee reorganized the membership of the Avengers from being Captain America, Giant-Man and the Wasp, Iron Man, and Thor, and replaced them with Captain America and three former super-villains (Quicksilver, the Scarlet Witch, and Hawkeye).

Man, in that letters page, those guys used emotions and invectives that would make the angriest and most illiterate internet goon look like a piker. "Do you think you can apply 'the Avengers' name to just about any team you like?" Is just an example of the sort of things they said.

It was a weird experience - like reading Newsarama or the CBR forums 30 years early.

The only reason we don't see people pitch fits about things that happened a million years ago in comics is not because of the invention of the internet, or the idea the internet has somehow lowered our dialogue, but because as comics are such a transitory medium, people just plain forget, or things move by so quickly that nobody has a problem. The reason I used AVENGERS #16 as an example is because it's a little ridiculous (with 20/20 hindsight) for these guys to throw a big stink about Hawkeye, Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch - people that have been dedicated and great Avengers for decades!

On the other hand, I've seen people get into barfights and lose teeth in arguments over Sean Connery and Roger Moore, a changeover which happened quite some time AFTER AVENGERS #16! The reason is that you can still see Bond movies, on cable or on DVD. On the other hand, it's harder to read back issues, especially of less popular magazines; not everything's going to get an ESSENTIAL or SHOWCASE.


I said above that part of the reason that any new version of Superman is going to resemble the versions prior to the Byrne/Helfer/Carlin Superman version than the one written by those guys, is that in many ways the reboot was "this is not your father's Superman." The MAN OF STEEL Superman was based on being a deliberate reversal of what was done previously.

But how many people "love" the classic Superman? Look, MAN OF STEEL pissed me off, but Superman was exhausted and in phenomenally dire straits from 1978-1985 (at least in terms of sales; some writers were doing some interesting stuff). Any other character would have long since been canceled, but Superman was allowed to put-put around because of his role as a flagship character.

People tried everything. They first tried replacing the artists: there are rumors they tried to attract John Buscema away from Marvel, but they settled on the incredible Garcia-Lopez and Ross Andru (just back from Marvel). They tried to get "cool" Marvel guys to do the writing, like Len Wein, Gerry Conway, and Marv Wolfman. They tried a brief return to the Weisenger age, with multiple stories in a single issue...

...in the end a reboot was necessary because Superman was embarassingly tired.

Maybe Byrne and Wolfman weren't the right men for the job. Maybe they shouldn't have caved in when Byrne wanted Andy Helfer to be his editor-cum-yes-man. But if there was some antagonism at that point towards Superman pre-1986, it is to an extent, understandable. Carlin and Helfer and the rest didn't create the situation Superman was in, circa the mid-eighties; they inherited it.

My comic book owner was telling me a story that circa 1981, he was selling 800 copies of UNCANNY X-MEN per month. How many copies of SUPERMAN was he selling?

Ten.


No props for Roger Stern's space opera and old school panache?

JulianPerez:


An interesting post, Julian. I would just like to add that the situation now (as I see it) is somewhat different (but not entirely different). I am not disagreeing with you; just throwing my two cents in, that now you have a situation in which anybody and his dog can have an opinion and publish it (Yours Truly is guilty as charged), whereas in the old days all of the letters were read by an editor or assistant editor, judged worthy or unworthy in some way, and then published or not published according to (A) the letter's merits, and (B) the mood of the editor in question. (In my defence, I have had letters to the editor published in comics pre-Internet.)


A very quick word about Len Wein. Although I like Marv Wolfman and Gerry Conway, since I was a kid I have really enjoyed Len Wein's writing for DC, Superman being no exception. Some of my favorite Superman comics are Len's.

Aldous writes:


Yes, but isn't it interesting to see which letters did see print?  If you go back to the 60s and 70s, a letter writer with a negative opinion about a story was just as likely to see print as one who liked the tale...provided they could assemble a well-worded and intelligent missive.  Sometimes it's amazing to read some of those letters which, as Julian says, tear into the editors and writers mercilessly.  In some cases, the editor doesn't respond, in other cases he may offer a defense, but either way, he printed the letter and that speaks volumes.

By the 90s the lettercols had degenerated into mindless suck-up sessions where everything printed gushed praise, deserved or not.  Was this because editors had developed a thinner skin and tossed the negative letters in the trash?  Or because the people still reading comics by that point were no longer the discerning type, just zombie fanboys? Or perhaps because the REAL debates, the most interesting discussions had already moved to listserves, usenet and the web, where feedback could be more immediate and putting in your two cents didn't cost you another 33 cents in postage?

Anyway, Julian, I appreciate your perspective and of course you're right that the most devoted comics fans have always been prone to heated rhetoric.  But I would argue it's worse now because (1) the internet makes it easier to split off into "camps" of opposing fans that can yell at each other, not just an editor, (2) the immediacy of the 'net also means the battle of words can escalate quickly, passionately and with no editor to moderate the exchange or enfore civility and (3) the audience for comics is no longer as broad-based and diverse as it once was, being composed now almost entirely of "hard-core" fans.  Where before you had people who might have only a casual interest in the books, or be "just passing through," these days I think the folks still reading comics are the kind of intense, obsessed fanatics who used to account for a lot smaller segment of the total audience.  In other words, these days if you don't take comics really seriously and have a lot of deeply-felt opinions about and personal history with them, you're probably not reading them anyway.


Well, with due respect to Clint, Wanda and Pietro, who as you say have a long and valorous history with the Avengers, you have to admit that team was a MAJOR come-down from the likes of Iron Man, Thor and even Giant-Man.  Even that early on, the Avengers were supposed to be the "heavy hitters" of the Marvelverse, and giving the name to this collection of lightweights was quite a shocker.  In fact, though I suspect you'll disagree with me, I think it's on par with reforming the Justice League with the likes of Vibe, Vixen and Gypsy.  When you pay for (and in those days, subscribe to) a book about one thing, you're likely to be ticked off when it suddenly becomes a book about something else altogether.


You mean to say people have actually come to blows defending Roger against Sean?  Good for them!  I love Roger as much as anybody, but I don't think even I would take it that far.


No, they didn't try everything.  They didn't try moving Julie to another book and letting a new editor try his hand.  They didn't try moving Curt Swan to another book and making Garcia-Lopez (or Perez, or Dave Gibbons, or some other young gun) the main artist.  And lord knows whoever was in charge of covers was asleep at the switch...it's hard to imagine any covers that were less enticing than those 80s creations by Buckler, Andru and the like.

You can put whatever "cool" Marvel writer you want on the stories, but in order for that to make a difference, somebody has to actually READ the story.  That's not going to happen if the cover is too boring to pick the book up and thumb through it, or if, upon doing so, the pictures inside look the same as they did five, ten, twenty years before.

Anyone who knows my history here knows I adore Curt Swan and Julie Schwartz, but honestly if DC dropped the ball anywhere it was in keeping these guys on the books out of loyalty or tradition or whatever long after they lost their sales appeal.  They should have been allowed to do other things instead.  Look at that great fill-in issue of Teen Titans (was it #4?) and tell me Curt Swan couldn't still make magic when presented with a challenge.  For their own good as well as Superman's, there should have been a shake-up in personnel about 1981 or so, maybe earlier.

Was Supes in a rut circa 1985?  Sure.  Did DC "try everything" to fix it?  Not even close.

My 2 cents:

1) I don't think that this new post-post-Crisis Superman is for new readers... Because I don't think that there is a new generation of readers, in this moment.

2) I don't think that DC editors and authors hated the classic Superman. John Byrne, believe it or not, is a huge fan of the character. And so Stern and other writers. The big problem with the one you call "Iron Age Superman", for me, was that DC produced his stories in the wrong way. Superman must be an accessible reading. A comic book for everyone who wants a comic book.
Look at what they're doing in the '90s, instead: events over events, bad ideas, unaccessible stories. If you wanted to follow the Man of Steel, you were forced to buy 4 titles a month. 4! In Italy we were lucky, because all the Superman stuff was published in one single comic book, but I suppose that for you Americans it was a nightmare.

3) (Hey, I had another cent in my pocket) I love the Bronze Age Superman. That's the way I like the character, alongside the Byrne and Loeb versions. I have collected most of the stories released in 1975/86 and rarely I find bad ones. Maybe the only complain I have about the reboot is that it interrupted that age. I always wondered how Superman could be if Byrne had written him without a reboot.

In retrospect, it looks like Byrne was the long-delayed introduction of a "young gun" to Superman.  Unfortunately it happened post-Crisis and long after Byrne had entered into his superstar/retcon/dictator mode, leading to a diminished shared universe and poor editorial/creative decisions on DC & Byrne's part.  I agree that the visual look of the 80s Superman comics was lacklustre and, as a non-Superman reader who enjoyed the FF and Teen Titans (2 graphically interesting titles that were essentially rejuvenated older franchises) the idea of getting Byrne to revamp Superman initially appealed to me back then.

I think that Byrne created/designed a few things that were visually interesting as late as his run on FF but most of what he introduced into the monthly run of Superman comics (apart from the odd Jack Kirby characters who guest-starred in Action/Legends --designs that are hard to screw up but impossible to master) went down the wrong design road.  Too much of the emaciated patented Byrne figures, black suits, 80s big hair, and totally unimaginative, visually dull, violent villains.  I tired of this after a few issues and now look back on that stuff as just ugly, frustrating, and insulting.

Of course, the Alan Moore Whatever Happened to.. issues, with dynamic Swan covers and a great story, indicate that the old formula still had lots of strength to it.  But could it have been sustained for longer than 2 issues?  Maybe Julie was the big problem.  Who knows?

1986 was really pre-internet and the hub-bub about man of steel and crisis was huge in the fan press.  It was harder to see it expressed in letters pages because A) many books were being revamped and B) DC had put alot of time and money into the revamps and publishing critical comments would undermine that effort.  Just a thought.

(Julian, really sounds like you went to alot of trouble about that Avengers info --you are a true fan and a scholar!)

More germaine to the subject of this thread (and realizing that my last post probably belongs over in the other Iron Age thread), I have to say that I really enjoyed Gangbusters longer "essay".  I love thoughtful posts that try to make sense of our fannish concerns with reference to larger macro-social trends.  A completely original take on things, in my experience, the idea that left-leaning Xians could be responsible for a change in Superman's demographic and editorial direction.  Food for thought.  Although I must say (and how could I not, as one of those Council of Wisdom types referred to in the original post who is susceptible to groupthink on the subject of Superman?), I tend to agree with Nightwing and Super-Monkey that the Iron Age was objectively ugly and Death of Superman suicidal and that the whole thing was as creatively bankrupt as almost anything in modern superhero comics, including the late-Bronze Age Superman or Image comics,  and that anything that DC could do (like hiring fresh artists and smart writers) to appeal to a new crowd or revive interest in old fans was to the good.  As an over-30 atheist lefty with conservative views on superhero comic book art (I love Fletcher Hanks, Odgen Whitney, Boody Rogers as much as the artists behind Project: Superior, say), I'm not really that attracted to either the new Busiek or Morrison books.  I am reading the latest Popeye collection and plan to buy some manga and comics published by Drawn and Quarterly, Picturebox, Fantagraphics, et al in the next few weeks.  But no new superhero pamphlets.  So DC's latest effort is really not aimed at me, I guess.

You don't get American radio so you don't know how DC actually said this time and time again, and refuse to reprint any old stories. Again, my opinion is based on actual facts.

John Byrne only knew Superman from the cartoons, TV Show and Movies. He never read the comics so how could he be a big fan?

Well, if his intro to Man of Steel is true, and I really have no reason to believe it's not because this was a time when the man seemed sane, he tracked down the comics after watching an episode of the George Reeves series.

And I'd argue that even if his only exposures to the character were through the George Reeves series, the Christopher Reeve films and the Fleisher shorts that he could still be a huge fan of the character.  Superman has transcended comics.  There are people who love the character but only know him from other sources.  It seems a bit elitist to suggest that the only true fans are the ones who read the comic books.

Having said that I think there was a bit of "old is bad, our new is good" going on in the late '80s and early '90s.  I don't think it was hostile or part of some over all plot to make everyone forget what came before, but there was a general air of snottiness going around. 

actual quotes:

Byrne claims that his depiction of Clark Kent is inspired by George Reeves' Clark Kent on the 1950s television series.  "I loved the way he played Clark Kent," Byrne says, "He was grittier, tougher.  He wasn't the mild-mannered reporter.  He had some guts to him, and that's the way I'm trying to play Clark.

"There won't be as much difference" between the personalities of Superman and Clark anymore.  "Clark's not as timid anymore."  In the fourth issue of Man of Steel Clark and Lois run into terrorists, "and Clark immediately steps in front of Lois, saying, 'Look out, Lois!'"

"I'm throwing in a little twist of the knife in every issue," John Byrne says, "so if you think you know" the Superman mythos, "there's going to be something in there to let you know that you don't." The first slap to hit readers is the new look that John Byrne has given Superman's native world of Krypton.  The next is the new visualizations of Superman's parents, Jor-El and Lara.

"I liked the cold, antiseptic Krypton that I saw in the movie, but we couldn't do it for copyright reasons." - John Byrne

Andrew Helfer reveals that the baby who becomes Superman "is hatched, essentially.  You get the impression there's no sex on this world. If you can judge the sexual mores of a society by how high their collars get, on Krypton they go around their heads so just their eyes and mouths are exposed.  They're really uptight people."

"When I showed the first issue to Richard and Wendy Pini, Wendy said I'd created a Krypton that deserved to blow up," recalls Byrne. "And that was my intent.  I don't want nostalgia for that place.  It's very clear in that first issue that Superman is lucky to have come here."  Eventually, when Superman learns he is from Krypton, he will declare, "'I'm a human being,' because he doesn't want to be Kryptonian.  Krypton is anathema to him."

In the previous Superman continuities, Superman and Batman were the best of friends.  In the new continuity, as in Frank Miller's Dark Knight series, the relationship between DC's two greatest superheros is now very different.

In fact, Byrne talked to Miller about the Batman so that in The Man of Steel "I could suggest the kind of Batman he was going to do."  Similarly, Miller talked to Byrne so that the Superman in Dark Knight could be based on his version.

I'd say that there was definitely some hostility towards the classic Superman. Of course, maybe that's just because Byrne comes off as arrogant (not confident--arrogant) in most interviews he does. As for DC, it was almost like they had an inferiority complex because of Superman. Marvel was constantly being praised (deservedly so) for their stories while DC's flagship character was in a bit of a rut. Unfortunately, they reacted in the wrong way. When your competition is doing something right you don't try to copy them. Instead, you should offer something different--something new.

Rebooting Superman in-itself was not a bad idea. If someone like Moore, Maggin, or Bates had rebooted Superman then it could've been great. What was needed was a writer that loved the Superman mythos but could also update it somewhat. Byrne reversed things to Bizarro levels, most of which have been reversed to the way they were by successive writers. In the end, any attempt to alter Superman to make him "cooler" will fail and things will revert back. The birthing matrix, the unfeeling Krypton, suave Clark, and many other elements have all been tossed out. (I won't even get into gimmicks like the Energy Superman or the super-mullet--ye gods.)

In a final analysist, the mythos is as invulnerable as Superman himself.

Bates did turn in a reboot concept that worked within continuity but DC rejected it.  Frank Miller and Howard Chaykin also turned in concepts and were also rejected.

The thing I think we should keep in mind on a historical level is the fact that the sales on the Superman titles were lousy.  I don't have actual numbers (sorry) but Marv Wolfman back in September at DragonCon related how he came on to the character both times in the '80s and sales weren't all that good in the early part of the decade and by 1984 or so things were getting desperate.  DC needed something that would grab people's attention and get them to look at the Superman titles again.

I honestly think all of it, as far as the higher ups were concerned, came down to money.  How can we get these titles back on track and get as much attention as humanly possible.  I believe that if there was any feelings of animosity towards the pre-Crisis Superman it was in how badly the title was selling and it wouldn't be the first time a company shook things up based solely on sales.  I don't think that they didn't like the character, they were just stuck in this "well if that didn't sell then the exact opposite might."

The one name I really don't see thrown into the mix too much is Marv Wolfman.  A lot of people seem to forget that he was the one responsible for changing Luthor into the tycoon (or as some called him the Kingpin rip off) basedis problems with how Luthor had been presented.  John Byrne agreed with the concept and the two together mapped out the new Superman. 

And Byrne was and is arrogant.  There is no getting around that, but I still don't see how that makes him a non-Superman fan going in just because he wanted to change things. 

Byrne wasn't alone, you should have heard of the ideas that were rejected!

We speak of the Big Bad Wolf every once and a while. Man was he a bad writer and to make matters worst there was a time when it seem like he was writing every book at DC! So wonder sales were so bad!

Bryne is a non-Superman because he is a non-Superman, and this would be true if he had never written a Superman comic.

I've heard a few and yes, they were kind of the suck.

I don't think I would classify Marv as a bad writer as I rather liked his Pos-Crisis Superman work (ducks the chairs that appear as if from nowhere) and I really liked the first decade of New Teen Titans/New Titans.  It seemed that was the time when sales at DC started on the upswing.

I am up to cover date October of 1981 on my Superman reading, so I haven't read a whole lotta his Pre-Crisis Superman work.

Wolfman wasn't a bad writer by any means. I just didn't care for his post-Crisis run on Superman. Oddly enough, I did like his pre-Crisis Superman stories. I doubt that view is shared by either camp of Superman fans, though.

I liked his run on the Titans, too. It was also one of DC's top selling books.

I liked both Wolfman's pre and post-Crisis stories. If I'm not wrong, he is the only writer who worked on the characters in the two eras.

You're right, I don't know what they said in radio, comiconventions or comics journals. I'm sure that they tried to promote their new Superman (business are business), but not that they hated the classic version of the character. Byrne, Stern and others love Superman, even if they worked on a modern, new version of the character. They gave us a surely different Superman, a Superman for the '80s and '90s, but with untouched basics. Is Superman from Krypton? Is Superman Clark Kent? Does Clark work at the Planet? Does Superman love Lois Lane? The answer is always "Yes". Particular changed (even big ones), but most of the myth was still there. Consider it just a phase in the editorial life of the character. Now it's over, and we have another new version. Maybe in 20 years there will be another Superman, and so on. I loved the Byrne era, now I'm enjoying what Busiek is doing.

By the way, I'm glad to see that, despite the different opinions, this discussion is very polite and interesting. Thank you.

You don't understand, they said that the classic Superman was stupid. This was around the same time as the Death storyline. So this was a LONG standing settlement there.

If you read the liner notes of Superman in the 60's, you can tell that they appeared to be ashamed to be reprinting the stories. At least in the English version.

Thankfully, things have long since change and DC has embrace their past with open arms, once they figured out they could make a lot of money off of classic fans of course!

I know one of the editors in Chief at DC, I talked to him about it, I am not making any of this up, believe me!

John Byrne was a big fan of the cartoons, TV show and films (you can tell he borrowed a lot from them) but he wasn't a fan of the comics, he never read them until after he got the job, then he hated them and changed everything he thought was dumb.

That's the truth, just read some interviews that he made.

My opinions are just my opinions, as long as you like classic Superman too, you can love anything else and that would be fine with me. That's only because this is a classic Superman website so it would be weird to post here if you didn't like the classic version as well.  ;)

So to post here you must like classic Superman and be nice person for the most part (no one is perfect  ;)), you can disagree with everything I write, and that's ok with me, as long as those two things are true.

Good, that gives me another chance to get in my four or five times a year statement that I don't like the Bronze Age Superman... ;D

Missed this.
As told above, they wanted to promote their new production... In a way I dislike, though.


I haven't that (only the '70s trade).


Included me.


I'll search for them. Or I'll ask him. But I'm still sure that various authors didn't hate the character. The big guns and the editors... Well, maybe they did. Or at least, they didn't care about him. Just like it happened at Marvel when Jemas arrived... Did he care for the characters? No. Did he know them? No. Look at what he did... Sigh.


Well, Byrne's run is my favorite, but I love the pre-Crisis version of the character.
I have spent a lot of time and money searching for Bronze Age original comics (which you cannot find very easily here in Italy... Mile high comics has been very useful!), I regularly buy the SHOWCASE PRESENTS and CHRONICLES trades... So don't worry!

In my beginning as a comic book reader i know only the Iron Age Superman,wich some time i like it and some times not ???,but i never truly appreciated him,because i was missing one important thing,is roots,but time was at my side,so i gradually learned what the character was really supposed to be,and now i can say that i'm sorry for reader who like it,i truly respect their opinion,but for me the Superman from Byrne and the '90 version was just a commercial attempt,for giving to everyone who has always thinked that this hero was silly,the idea that he wasn't,they didn't make a good job.

http://photos1.blogger.com/x/blogger/5075/381/1600/796823/top100.jpg

The above link is to a Top 100 list of comics sales from January 1985, the second month of the original Crisis miniseries.

Top 10:
1.x-men
2.ff
3.crisis #2
4.web of spiderman
5.alpha flight
6.new mutant
7.amazing spiderman
8.teen titans
9.who's who
10.thor

superman titles

30.superman's secret years min #4
50.DC comics presents #81
92.superman #407
94.action #566
99.world's finest #314

keep in mind, these are direct market sales and also probably crisis tie-ins (not to mention, word had already got out that the superman family titles were in for a change so fans my have stopped buying the titles in a "wait and see" sort of move).

most of the superman titles come in well below just about any other piece of crap in the direct market, from muppet babies (#98) to ROM spaceknight (#22) to Grimjack (#47) to teenage mutant ninja turtles #2 (#75)

list from Amazing Heroes #73 june 15, 1985

And you kind of have to wonder if that Superman The Secret Years did so well based on the fact that Frank Miller did the cover.

I also suspect that the DC Comics Presents sold better than the rest of the regular Superman books because of Ambush Bug.

Though now I see why World's Finest was cancelled.  Jeez.

The more I think about it, the more wrong this entire point becomes.

Generation Y cannot be responsible for the current Superman because Superman under Johns and Kurt Busiek is cool, whereas Generation Y is the least cool generation in human history. One would have to look back to the cheroot-puffing, Irving Berlin-listening doughboys of the 1910's to find a less cool generation. Generation Y combines the authoritarianism and brick-wall denseness of the "Great Santini/Archie Bunker" generation with the unbelievable consumerist selfishness of the 1970s-plus "Me" generation.

I will concede that the terminally uncool MySpace generation may have had one effect on Superman: no other generation would have tolerated a married Superman. Even Len Wein and Maggin suggested ever so subtly that Superman knocked boots with Lois and Lana outside the bonds of Holy Matrimony. Maggin even wanted to get rid of Lois altogether and have Big Blue run around with space babes.

This line made me realize where all this is coming from:


Generation X's great discovery, the one that made stars all over again out of losers like Gary Coleman, the two Coreys, Shatner, and Hasselhoff, was ironic appreciation.

That is, being able to appreciate something because of its unintentional awfulness, like, say, the Superbowl Shuffle, American Gladiators, or Dustin "Screech" Diamond's low-selling album, SCREECH: GOTSTA GIT FUNKY.

Generation Y, however, has grown up with irony and ironic appreciation to the point of immersion. Is it possible that Generation Y has so thoroughly internalized irony, that they just aren't able to tell the difference between honest appreciation and ironic appreciation?

Is it REALLY that Generation Y is less cynical that Generation X, or is it that Generation Y just doesn't get the joke?

You didn't like DARK KNIGHT RETURNS and WATCHMEN. This I can understand. DKR is a great miniseries, but it really requires a lot of its context to understand completely. And WATCHMEN is nowhere near Moore's best stuff. Its main mystery is tangental to the plot, it has dozens of annoying subplots that don't go anywhere.

If it was up to me, I'd replace WATCHMEN and DKR's hallowed, untouchable place in comics lore with the Englehart DETECTIVE and AVENGERS runs, anything written by Alan Brennert ever, Steve Gerber's DEFENDERS, Busiek's THUNDERBOLTS, and the Jim Shooter/Curt Swan ADVENTURE COMICS with Superboy and the Legion of Super-Heroes.

But going back to the main point...what does all this have to do with Gen Y having internalized irony? Alan Moore's Superman stuff is fantastic and is rightfully well-remembered. However, you need irony, at some level, to appreciate the Kryptonite Man, those absurd Flash Gordon fins on the Legion of Super-Villains, and Jimmy Olsen and Lana Lang getting powers (along with outfits that make them look like an Australian's Nightmare).

Lots of people enjoy DKR and WATCHMEN for many reasons, but ironic appreciation is not among them. On the other hand, Moore and his Superman downright thrives on it at some level. He played the death of Krypto straight, sure, but even if Lana Lang's final fate was tragic, at the same time...it isn't able to surmount the entirely ridiculous plot point of her getting powers just like back in LOIS LANE. For comparison...even if you tell a tragic, serious tale of Steve Urkel's clone being kiled in a transformation chamber accident, you still can't surmount the triple whammy of 1) Urkel, 2) cloning, and 3) transformation chamber hijinks.

I don't in any way mean to disparage your enjoyment of an excellent miniseries, or of classic sixties Superman. I am, however, pointing out that the juxtaposition of this with works like DKR is significant.

So, in conclusion, I ask:

(http://www.everything.ie/blog/data/1134075380/thumbs/gary_coleman_11.jpg)

Wat'chu talkin 'bout, Gangbuster?

I do thank my forebears for irony. "My So-Called Life," Nirvana's "Live! Tonight! Sold Out!," and the music and tv shows of the early 90s all reflect a sense of ironic humor. But what you call an ironic appreciation for awfulness, I call making fun of awfulness. People appreciate Gary Coleman's work... as a form of humor. Gary Coleman is unlike Lou Reed, David Bowie, or Adam West, who depended on people's sense of irony in their art. Gary Coleman is ironic by mistake, and therefore funny. As another example, nobody rushes out to buy Eddie Murphy's new remix of "My Girl Wants to Party all the Time" but people talk about it because it's funny...like the Superbowl Shuffle.

By the way... I looked it up and apparently I am a hybrid, of Generation XY, or the MTV Generation. Therefore, when it benefits me I can disown anyone I want, from Paris Hilton and Lindsey Lohan, to Tommy Lee and Dee Snider.  :)

Sorry, but you totally lost me on the Bowie thing. Did you hear "Heathen"? See "The Prestige"? Gone to see him live lately?

Since this thread was bumped, I finally got around to reading the last few posts in it.  My conclusion?  I missed a classic Julian Perez essay on Gen Y and irony.  It goes into my "favourite funny Julian posts ever!" file.

Maybe as an old person I just like to see something that in some way takes a shot at validating my own "what's wrong with these kids today?" pessimism.

And classic Bowie (say pre-1986), like classic Superman, is and was appreciable using some sense of irony.  Iron Age Bowie just plain stinks and now form of ironic rehabilitation can change that.

Sorry but Wolvman is far from being a bad writer, his run on Teen Titans proves this plus his Bronze Age revamp of Braniac was well done.

I would say his best Post-Crisis Superman story is the Gangwar arc, which is a really good story plus Jerry Ordway's Perry White is my favorite character design of the character.