Superman Through the Ages! Forum

This one's  (http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/)for Bogdanove

(http://superman.nu/a/History/1998/mos80.jpg) (http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/)

:s:

I still think that DC should reprint all four of these storylines in a trade paperback collection.  They did a 3 part Golden Age Superman, a Silver Age Superman, a 1970's Superman, and a future Superman.

Only problem with that would be that Dominus would have to appear and well they screwed up and let that story line run longer than it should have.

Despite requests, I think it unlikely that DC will reprint this storyline anytime soon.

The Golden Age sequence generated some heat that DC would probably rather forget.  See these two newspaper articles for more info:

"Superman editors sorry about omission: Comic erases Jews from Holocaust" (http://www.jewishsf.com/bk980710/1asuper.htm)
  and
"Jewish groups seek super apology from DC Comics" (http://www.jewishsf.com/bk980717/usgroups.htm)

Over the last fifteen years I've had several moments where I was trying to get back into reading Superman after having decided to drop it for some reason (such as too many titles to follow, extraordinary price increases, or a shift in creative teams).

 This little Bogdanove story came along just as I was starting to get back into Superman yet again (after not buying all those titles during the electric Superman phase)--and I really loved it.

  But I hated the other storylines that ran at the same time in the other books (there was Polyester Superman, and some others--mostly garbage in my opinion).  

The Bogdanove material had the right spirit--respect for the original Superman.  In the end though, given the low level of the other material I went back to not reading Superman again.

India Ink, your experience seems pretty much the same as mine.  Over the last 15 years, I would keep trying to like the Superman titles.  I'd read them for a little while, then drop them all in disgust for a longer while.  This is still going on.  I just dropped Action, Adventures, and Superman (again).  Action was the worst of the lot.  The only continuing :s: titles I currently read are Birthright and Generations III.

Back in the summer of 1998 when those four homage storylines came out, I picked up the first issues of all of them.  Like you, I liked the Bogdanove Golden Age one, for the same reasons you list.  But I also liked Karl Kesel's take on the Silver Age.  A lot of fun and well done - we got Krypto for the first time in who knows how long, the real Supergirl, Jimmy Olsen having crazy troubles, the Silver Age Krypton, an optimistic and competent Superman, etc.

But the other two were absolutely horrible.  Stuart Imonnen was supposed to be writing about the 1970's (Bronze Age) Superman, but the name alone says it all.  He called it the "Polyester Age" and the story was disgusting.  It might have helped if he'd actually read a 1970's comic.  I was hoping for something at least vaguely reminiscent of Bates and/or Maggin (or even Wolfman!), but he didn't get the character or the era at all.  Same for Jurgens' take on a future Superman.  Great idea, and I'm sure he tried, but it was still just Dan Jurgens.

So I'd say that two of the storylines were worth reading, and two weren't.  I only wish they'd left out all that Dominus garbage and just let the stories stand by themselves without needing to "explain" them.  Or at least they could have let them have endings!  Superman got whisked back to the present before any of the storylines could wrap up.  Those first four issues got me back into the Superman titles - but the last four got me back out.

(http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/2/stop.gif) (http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/2)

OK, folks here's PART TWO (http://superman.nu/tales2/thesuperman/2) of Bogdanove's Golden Age Superman tribute.

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:s: