Superman Through the Ages! Forum

The Ask Matt (http://supermanhomepage.com/inter-action/inter-action.php?topic=ask-editor/ask-matt) column over at the Superman Homepage has just been updated with a new batch of questions and answers.  Most of them are about how Superman's new continuity relates to his previous one.

Well, I read it, and I'm none the wiser.  But then, I'm not sure what (or when) Infinite Crisis was.

well it pretty much read like this

eager lil reader: i have a question about the new superman continuity id like you to answer!

Matt: well i have the answer but i wont tell you!! buy our magazine the answers in there and they are mega hyper cool!

but im cynical

It's clearly stated that we are now in a new continuity;
We know there's a blue sun story coming up and that Bizarro is part of it;
We know the Krypto story had some legal problems - I can't even begin to speculate what they are, but I'm mighty curious;
We know that Dru Zod was an ancestor of General Zod;
An answer was given as to why the young Clark Kent bothered to wear glasses when he was teen but had no secret ID to protect - this is something we were debating about in this very forum;
We know DC is working out a new explanation behind Superman's indestructible costume;
They're also deciding on an explanation behind whether or not Superman ever killed the P-U Zod.

There's more there too.  I found it informative.

I can take a wild guess and say that good old Kurt brought back Superboy in that issue. The young Superman version, and the DC legal dept freaked since they do not own that character anymore.

I found that part of the interview highly reminiscent of old DC letters pages, when a fan would right in and say "What would happen if Superman was exposed to purple kryptonite --would he go blind?" and the editor would write "Funny you should ask, because Superman undergoes just such a transformation in next month's World's Finest, co-starring the caped crusader Batman!"

The rest of the modern minutae --whether Superman remembers when he had long hair in the 90s or if he brought a change of underwear for his trip to the Phantom Zone in issue 237 or if the events of Crisis in Ultimate Hypertime changed the recipe for Ma Kent's potato goulash-- went right over my head (or through the space between my ears). 

I would like to like these new Superman comics more but I just don't feel that the editors & writers have my or my future children's best interests at heart. :)

Honestly DC Comics has dissapointed me...again. First they had this stubborn unbearable godlike Supes. Then they undo all the good work of Byrne for some corny Weissenger-like tales written by "Fatso" Busiek  (he suffers of mercury poisoning by the way). "Khyrana" was for me the last straw of a long decadent series of stories about Supes that were written since Byrne left, the whole Warworld/Brainiac mismash, the "Dead Again", the Trial,  Manchester Black (ok, the Elite could be cool if only they were criminals), IMPERIEX for crying out loud!, the whole "y'know what, Lori Lemaris didn't die so all your grief and the epic poem was in vain" and the whole Brainaic 6 fiasco in OUTSIDERS (then again most of what Winnick writes is sh*t, they had simply no reason to kill Omen or Troia or kill Young Justice) which is by the way upcoming in Superman /Batman #34 with a late Byrne explanation of the origin of the Metal Men ignoring all of their heroic legacy...boy, how I hate DC

ROTFLMAO!!!

Superman Homepage is a post-crisis superman site, so we have to understand how those fans are reacting to these changes, I remember feeling the way around 1986 ;)

“You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can’t please all of the people all of the time.” -Abraham Lincoln

Wait until the next Crisis finishes, oh boy, that will turn some heads.     

In 1986 I remember feeling, "Thanks Rao, I don't have to read superhero comics anymore and have my heart broken when a writer or artist leaves my fave series or a new artist who I used to like comes on board and radically changes everything the last team did."

I remember in 1986 thinking "thank Rao I dont have to read comics anymore becuase they stop publishing superman. I can save all that money I used to waste!!!"

I remember in 1986, when I was 19 and even dumber than I am now, thinking that they were going to keep all the good stuff and get rid of the bad stuff. Within weeks, I was yearning to see Clark Kent as an anchorman for WGBS again, something I still want. Oh, how I miss Josh Coyle popping his ulcer pills.

LOL, I remember in the early 70s saying "no, they're NOT going to take Clark away from the Planet and put him on some trendy TV station!"  ;D

 I was only 8 years old at the time of the revamp and I didn't even find out about it until I was twice that age! I guess I'm one of those people the post-crisis universe was made for, too bad I never embraced it! ;D I guess I would be considered the "transitional generation". At any rate, my Superman is and always will be the "Ruby Spears Superman" from the cartoon (which is a sort of combination of both versions). But I do agree that fans of the post-crisis era are now in the same position pre-crisis fans found themselves for a decade and a half.   

I remember in the late 30s thinking, "By Crom, these Doc Savage mags are boring.  I wish I could read stories about a super-man who could fly and has super-strength!" as well as "I wish they would invent tv!"

I bet in the 1940's fans were going "I thought he could leap tall buildings in a single bound, why is he flying now?".

hehe, id like to see a 1940s internet superman message board, with talk about how superman "stopped being cool when he got too powerful" and that "Ultra-humanite was RUINED in his last story, Luthor is just a cheap imitation!"

in the words of unca cheeks "im just sayin thats all"

ooh wait ive got another one!

"so national has stated that Clark Kent didnt become a superhero intill he was an adult... and now they are contradicting established continuity with this Superboy junk? they are just trying to attract new readers while ignoring their oldd fanbase!"

A cute "what if," except that in the 40s the average comic reader was probably under 12, after which they moved on, something fans of today are simply unable to do. 

Editors of the time assumed their readership turned over every 7 years, and I'm betting they were right.  Today's publishers cater to 20- and 30-something true believers, which certainly guarantees an audience (if a small one), but it also guarantees you can never do anything daring or creative without generating a firestorm of protest from an army of armchair quarterbacks.

All true, my father read Superman in 1944 in England in the Army Air Corp and my mother read the Flash as a 15 year old.  Like many readers, they threw away the comics when they were finished and didn't think much about it.

makes you wonder, why could the kids in the forties could let go when in later years people became fans for decades and so

well i guess ya gotta have a hobby, and it beats killing babies

My father is 80 years old, he watches Smallville regularly, he's remained a fan of Superman in all the film and TV adaptations over his lifetime, but the last time he bought a comic book was in 1944 before he joined the Navy in WWII

Your father sounds like one cool cat.

1940's Michel Quote

"That's why I stopped buying Superman and started reading Captain Marvel".

Huge flame war ensues  :D

Wow, what's THAT supposed to mean?  :o  Are you suggesting 1940s Americans were baby killers?  Because the stats show they were the record-setting baby-MAKERS of all time.

Or do you simply, literally mean collecting comics is a better passtime?  Because that's one endorsement even I can get behind.  In fact, it might even work as DC's new tagline..."DC Comics...If Nothing Else, Superior to Infanticide!"

And only slightly less fun than babymaking.

woah i wasnt accusing the people of the forties of infanticide (unless you count ww2 but lots of people died in that, death for all ages). just that collecting comics is better than babies... not that ive tried it, thats my story and im sticking to it!

and yeah dc comics will do baby killing (hasnt the riddler recently gone infanticidal) but at least the baby is well armed in that pic

I seem to remember they killed off Wally West's twins.  Maybe it should be, "DC...Don't Worry If We Hit Rock Bottom, We Brought Our Shovels."

I thought the twins were stuck somewhere in the speed force or the like

I tried to figure all this out on a Flash website (by which I mean a website about the Flash, not that it had fancy animation), and there were so many links back and forth to all sorts of events and all sorts of speed force business that I didn't know how to read it in a linear fashion. So these twins are stuck in the speed force, which, I think, has ceased to exist, and maybe they went into the future or the past or something.

Personally I liked that Secret Origins story in which, when Barry Allen raced the tachyon in Crisis, he went back in time and turned into the very bolt of lightning that gave him his superspeed in the first place. That I can understand. Now I don't even know who the Flash is.

The Flash is Mopee. ::) ;)

I don't think that's true. Teens and adults have always been a big portion of the audience for superhero comics even in the Good Old Days (TM).

The name of the work escapes me (it was one of those slim "coffee table" overviews of comics heroes), but there was the interesting claim that a major portion of the audience of the Silver Age JLA (and a big reason for that book's unreal popularity) were adults who remembered the original JSA, as well as the original characters the JLAers were Silver Age variations of. These guys were thrilled to see the heroes of their youth in action again.   

And you'll never believe how many of the letters pages of the original FF were from old-timers and G.I.'s reminiscing about when they first met Namor during the war, or about younger fans saying stuff like "I showed my Dad FF#6 and he thinks you guys are awesome!"

Absolutely there's a lot of turnover in readership, but there were even more adults that clutched their comics and never let their Moms throw them out. Among them Roy Thomas, Steve Gerber, and others that sent old issues of JSA and CATMAN AND KITTEN to each other through the mail.

One attitude I've never quite understood is the idea that today's fandom of teenagers, twentysomethings and thirtysomethings that love superhero comics is somehow something NEW that comics history's never seen before.

Stan Lee remembers IN THE SIXTIES going to colleges where counterculture kids made the Hulk the mascot of their dorm, and gave a special Marvel Achievement Award to one college kid that did his Volkswagen Beetle to look like the Thing's skin.




I'm calling B.S. on that, because at the time Crisis happened, it wasn't immediately known what the DC Universe was going to look like, and certainly not enough was known to have a giant drama "I AM LEAVING COMICS FOREVER" fagsplosion. At least, for those of us without psychic powers.

What's more, at the time when CRISIS happened, it just wasn't a big deal. I've mentioned this before, but a friend of mine told me that when CRISIS came out, nobody cared because everyone was paying attention to SECRET WARS.

What's more, the most popular DC comics, LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES and TEEN TITANS, were negligibly affected by CRISIS. And the two major characters that died in the CRISIS itself were a pair of (let's be honest here) has-beens: Barry Allen's book was canceled, and Supergirl had been a supporting character for nearly a decade at the time of her death.

It's easy with 20-20 hindsight to say what the ultimate effect CRISIS had was. But at the time, in '86? I doubt it. The majority of people I've spoken to about the '86 reboots of characters like Superman and Wonder Woman were optimistically curious and even excited...even if they grew to dislike the reboots later.

Sorry Julian,  I have to chime in on this one... like Carmine, I saw first hand what the changes were in the MOS mini-series... I read beforehand about the changes and you know what?  THOSE CHANGES (and the whole DCU change) SOURED ME TO COMIC BOOKS!  DC became a pale imitation of Marvel's Universe, but it sounds like you're more of a Marvel fanboy anyway, so you have your own slant on things... but your slant is your slant.  Don't tell me what my feelings and thoughts were in 1986.  I didn't need psychic powers to READ all the information coming out in Direct Currents.  The editors at DC said "With the Crisis, everything changes... we have a clean slate" "Heroes will live, heroes will die" and Byrne himself AT THE TIME stated that he will be ditching all of the survivors of Krypton, all the colored Kryptonite and revamping Krypton itself.  I remember all this.

Sorry about the rant, but you touched a nerve. Don't tell me what I thought at the time...

FWIW, I gave MOS and the post Crisis universe a chance.  I loved Byrne's work on FF (even though I'm a DC fanboy I still collected some Marvel) but his vision of Superman, post-Crisis, isn't Superman.  I stopped collecting back then.

I do agree with you on some of your points about Crisis, it really was an unfolding of new things post-Crisis that led to people embracing or leaving the stories, just like I left comics in 1972.

I strongly disagree with the points above and would love to know what the citation is (the slim coffee table book).  While I have no doubt that comics geeks that would later become a part of the industry held on to their comics or that Marvel published letters from people who did remember fondly (I mean really, would they publish letters from G.I.s who wrote "gee, I didn't really care THAT much about the Human Torch and threw out my comics in 1946"?), the number was probably minuscule.

There is no way the sales of Jimmy Olsen or Action in the 60s had a significant adult component.  I was at the drug store spinner racks with lots of other kids, and unlike the comic book store of the 90s, there were no 25 year olds whatsoever.  Mostly it was mothers saying "Eddie, I bought you 5 of those comics LAST month"...

I'm with Matter Eater Lad on this one.  All I have is anecdotal evidence from my own experiences, but I too am a fan who never saw a grown-up at a spindle rack in my youth, and never see a kid in a comic book store today.  Something certainly seems to have happened along the way.

I'll grant you older fans are not a wholly new phenomenon.  Besides Roy Thomas and Jerry Bails, there was Biljo White, Bill Schelly and all those guys who started up the fanzines in the 60s.  But I'm betting they were the "fringe element" back then and not at all typical of the comics-buying audience of their day.  As Gerard Jones says in his "Men of Tomorrow" book, the evolution of "geeks" from obscure niche to the movers and shakers in entertainment -- as audience and creators -- is something that's happened within the lifespan of us 30- and 40-year-olds.

The big issue for me is not that older fans are collecting...more power to them...it's that younger ones are not.  There may well have been older readers in every "age" of the industry, but historically there were a lot of youngsters around as well, driving a majority of sales in the here and now and (a certain pecentage of them) eventually growing up to fill out the "adult" fan base.  I don't see that cohort now; the fans of tomorrow.  Without them, I don't think the future's very bright for comics, at least as monthly periodicals.

As for Marvel's appeal on the campuses of the 60s, I've always believed that was exaggerated hype from the House of Ideas.  It seems to have been part of bigger movement to re-examine artifacts of pop culture that were previously considered "disposable" and treat them with academic curiosity, albeit with tongue planted firmly in cheek.  Marvel may have seemed to college kids and teachers to be the only publisher who "got it," but what they "got" was the inherent foolishness of the medium.  Early Marvel, for me, was most remarkable for its ability to have fun with the conventions of the genre and to poke fun at itself.  A lot of what historians now call "a new maturity" in 60s Marvels looks a lot more to me like post-Modern irony, something succeeding Marvel writers lost as they took themselves and their work entirely too seriously.  Anyway, I'm highly doubtful that colleges in the 60s suddenly "realized" that comics were a "serious art form."

 And frankly, anything that comes out of Stan Lee's mouth is suspect by definition.

"....exaggerated hype from the House of Ideas"?  :o Bite your tongue, Nightwing.


Maybe. If you're talking about Stan's shameless promotion of his company back in Marvel's heyday, I don't agree, because I doubt if anyone with half a brain didn't realise he was being provocative and outrageous. And it worked.

His behaviour was backed up by the quality of the comic books; in some cases, exceptional quality. Your analysis ("post-Modern irony") is really interesting as always, but there is enough of a history in place now, not wholly from Marvel, to suggest they WERE very big among college people, particularly (maybe even only) "The Amazing Spider-Man". I don't relate to that personally because I was never an American college student.

You may be too smart for your own good, because young college students would have read those comics, when they first came out, without your insights, at your age and experience, and in the 21st Century. I have recently been reading (yet again) "The Amazing Spider-Man" from the 1960s and very early 70s (up till the death of the Goblin), and I am struck (again) by how exceptionally good those comics are. I could read them for the soap value alone, with Peter and Harry, Mary Jane and Flash, and (sob) Gwen, not to mention all the other crazy characters and their twisted relationships -- Osborn Senior springing to mind.

They're just a good read, plain and simple, and they are definitely works of art. I sincerely doubt that any 1960s college student ever held up a Spidey comic in class and said, "Hey, dad, dig this post-Modern irony!" More likely a college student had Spidey comics because they were just great comics. The proof is there, Nightwing; anyone can read those same comic books and see for themselves.

And you are right that Marvel wasn't taking it too seriously, but that was obvious, and Stan never kept it a secret, let's face it. It was ticking over nicely till the Goblin's actions put an end to Marvel's Silver Age in '73.

well DER! Julian I wasn't being 100 percent truthful (I was making a joke of the guy who posted before me) However I did pick up pretty quickly after crisis that I wasn't going to be enjoying superman and stoped reading (though I am not the type who has to own every comic ever published so it wasn't a big loss)

I still strongly disagree and wonder what the documented history is here (regardless of the quality of the stories).  Even in the 60s, for every 500 students at Stanford who protested the war there wes another 18,000 with crewcuts and the ambitions of their parents.  If more than 5 proudly proclaimed their loyalty to The Fantastic Four as great literature, I would be shocked.

I simply disbelieve historical underpinnings written by a tiny majority of people who made it in the comic book "industry".

Thank you for the reply, M.E.L., but I can't see where anyone has said this.

I think if you and Nightwing believe that young children bought 1960s Marvels, and college-age youths did not, based on your own experiences at the local spinner rack, that is OK.

The character of Peter Parker (with all of the emotional and relationship problems associated with someone of his age group, firstly at high school, then at university) created a resonance with readership of a similar age, whether you'd like to admit it or not. And this is what helped to make Spider-Man (and Marvel) so big.

For your own research, you could start with the letter columns of the time and work outwards from there.

I still disagree...how can you base research on letter columns? First of all, they are a self-selected group of people who are already fans, secondly, they are then picked by editors of the comics themselves.  A group that is self-selected is a poor representation of the thinking of any time.

My thinking isn't based on my experience at the spinner racks in 1968 as much as its based on the fact that these comics sold in incredible numbers but are actually relatively rare today - suggesting that most kids read them and their mothers tossed them.

Julian, I missed you!


The Golden Age of Comics Fandom is a good source for this sort of testifying.


Heh.  Well, I'm telling you different.  I read Crisis. It actually got me interested in Dc for the first time since my early 80s Teen Titans kick.  Gave the new Superman and Wonder Women books the benefit of the doubt --wasn't 100% soured on Byrne and didn't have anything against Perez at all.  Byrne quickly infuriated me --I read most of MOS and some Supermans and Action team-ups.  These were among the last super-hero comics I read on a reg basis.  Dabbled with Nexus.  Read some Miller, Moore, and Chaykin.  But for the most part switched to older comics, alt comics or new graphic novels.  While not 100% accurate to say Crisis turned me off supers, 1986 was certainly a turning point in my reading habits.  That, and getting a girlfriend.

Aldous writes:


Well I didn't mean to say that Stan's a pathological liar necessarily, in the way Jack Kirby for example might have alleged.  What I meant was that Stan is an habitual pitch man who's "on" 24/7...he's "Funky Flashman."  He developed a style of patter in those early Marvels and I don't think he could turn it off now if he wanted to.

But my point was that Stan was forever talking up his books as the greatest thing since Homer, and I think the first generation of Marvel fans understood that was part of their charm...the insane sense of bravado from this little upstart company that dared to poke the Distinguished Competition in the eye.  Let's face it, labeling the Fantastic Four "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" way back on Issue #4 (!) was akin to a kid adorning his lemonade stand with a banner reading, "More Popular Than Coca-Cola!"

I think over time either Stan started to believe his own hype or, more likely, the popularity of the books took away any sense of irony.  Spider-Man started as, essentially, a parody of super-heroes (Powers from a spider-bite?  A costume that won't stay sewed together? Etc) but as he became the flagship character of the line, what was fun became heavy, and the soap-operatics went from humorous (Ha! He has to run away from Doc Ock to get Aunt May's prescription before the drug store closes!) to out-and-out sturm und drang.  Similarly, I maintain that early Marvel, pretending to be the biggest kid on the block when it was really just a pipsqueak with a lot of wit and pluck, gave way to 70s-and on Marvel, which really WAS the big kid on the block and hardly any fun at all.  When an Underdog is full of bravado and boasts, he's charming.  When the guy on top talks the same way, he's a braggart and a bore.


Well, of course at the time they wouldn't have had the term "post-Modern irony," but what you see in Marvel for the first time anywhere is an acknowledgment by the storytellers -- and to a certain extent the characters -- that these are comic books; that both we and they know the "rules" of the genre, and that with this knowledge, this shared understanding between reader and storyteller and even character, comes the ability to play around a bit, to tell stories that "break the rules", confound expectations and upend convention. What if the bad guys get away sometimes?  What if the hero is a loser plagued by bad luck?  What if the "good guys" are so petulant and thin-skinned they fight each other as much as the villain?  What if a "monster" was really a hero?  And so on.  I wasn't around in 1961, but I imagine reading early Marvels made you feel SMART, and that's why some readers held onto the hobby...or resumed it...through their college years.  If you look at the basic concepts, they're as silly as any comics: people in long underwear fighting aliens and monsters and mad scientists (and each other), but Stan found a way to make it seem less silly, or perhaps more accurately to make silliness acceptable.  He found a style that said, "This stuff is completely ridiculous...and isn't it great?" 


Well I read the early Spideys in the mid-70s (thanks to those wonderful pocket-size reprints) and I agree they read great and look even better (though I'd gladly forego the soap opera junk you seem to love).  I think the Lee/Ditko run is probably the best stuff Marvel ever did, but I lost interest quickly after that.


Yeah, they're good, but back to my point: college kids may pride themselves on their "individuality" or whatever but ultimately they're no less susceptible to peer pressure than anyone else...adults included.  No matter how good Marvel comics were, no college kid would've been caught dead reading them (instead of say, Playboy, Rolling Stone or the Village Voice) unless there was a perception they were somehow "cool."  And I think what made them cool was the perception that they were, in their harmless way, anti-establishment, subversive and hip.  They took a genre that had been aimed at celebrating authority and the sort of ideals your parents would approve of and filled it with characters and concepts that were trippy, stylish and smart-alecky and a universe that was, ultimately, kind of morally ambiguous.  The leap from The Lone Ranger to Spider-Man was startlingly huge, and probably very appealing to young adults who couldn't connect at all with the Eisenhower era definition of "superhero."


Yeah, that's about when I lost interest.  I still have that comic, though it looks like it was run through a thresher.


I didn't say college kids didn't read Marvel, even if I never saw them at the racks.  I do in fact believe that the phenomenon of older readers really took off (and maybe was born) out of Marvel comics for the reasons outlined above. I think early Marvel appealed to different ages for the same reasons the Batman TV show did; younger fans could take it as straight action, older ones could appreciate the in-jokes. 

What I said was that all my life, my fellow comics shoppers have looked like me.  When I was little, so were they, and now that I'm getting on in years, they are too.  To a point, that's cool; I don't have to feel self-concious browsing the racks beside a pack of grade-schoolers.  But eventually you have to step back and say, "Hey, what happens when we're gone?"

I still remember taking my (then) 10-year-old brother-in-law to a comics convention and how excited the pros were to see a kid, any kid, show up.  They all talked to him, gave him free comics and drew him free sketches.  Obviously he loved it, but it was still kind of sad in a way; I really don't think a lot of pros get into the business hoping to impress other people their age.  I think they get in because they felt a sense of wonder as kids and they want to pass it on to the next generation of kids.  At least that's why I wanted to do it back when I was going to be the next Neal Adams.

Man, Nightwing. Talk about a poignant sidewinder! What's the answer then? Human nature hasn't changed that much, and maybe if I had a young relative I could sit him down amongst my comic collection and let him discover what I discovered all those years ago. But, would he discover it? Is that still possible in this day and age?

Perhaps those pros know that a kid doesn't start analysing and picking their work to pieces... A kid just looks at it and either goes "Neat! Keen!" and starts reading, or else throws it aside in all honesty.

And I guess that's how I was trying to describe those 60s Spider-Man comics to you (if you re-read my post you will see that), but you weren't having any of it. You seem to find it hard to believe that those Marvels, whether they present their heroes with a wink and a nudge or not, can be read and enjoyed by me or anyone who merely thinks "Neat!" or "Keen!" without any further analysis.

There are also arguments you take too far. The main one is:


I completely disagree. Spider-Man was not started as a parody.

Related to that:


Those soap operatics were not intended quite the way you're determined to present them. You really have missed something significant about what Lee and Ditko accomplished.


There you go again, deciding there MUST be an ulterior motive on that part of the reader. Refer back to my original argument that these comics are just a good read, plain and simple. Can you not understand that a youth, or even an adult, can read and enjoy a work like this in the same spirit a 10-year-old can? I'm not dismissing your point entirely, because you said "some" readers... So then, why were the rest of them reading?!


I can see a case for Lee-Ditko Spidey being the best of Marvel, and that's fine. As much as I like it, I still think Lee-Romita was the master-team. (On a side note, sometimes I look at John Romita, Sr.'s art in "The Amazing Spider-Man", once he had found his feet, and I just shake my head in wonder at how blamed GOOD it is.) Calling the non-super-battle "civilian" relationships in "The Amazing Spider-Man" junk is just so missing the point of these comics. It's such a vital ingredient in the mix that to want the same comics without it is an absurdity.


I tend to agree. Generally speaking, Marvel through the 70s (although there were exceptions) was in decline.

Somehow I knew this would get off-point and turn into a debate on "quality" of the stories rather than how many kids really read comics into college years in the 60s and early 70s (the 300 submissions written to letter columns out of 95 million baby boomer kids in the US notwithstanding).  ;)

I recall letters from servicemen in Vietnam appearing in the DC letters column, and I'm led to believe that comics are currently WAY popular with those currently serving overseas.   

 First of all, I actually like a lot of the Golden Age stories. For one thing, there is no continuity so you don't feel obligated to know his back story. You can read them blank and still enjoy it. I actually have some reprints of the early Spider-Man stories. Particularly the Sandman story. I do see why someone might see it as a parody of superheroes given how he compares his life to "real" superheroes.

 I admit I haven't been following the new continuity, I don't know if I like the idea of everything that was ever published being squeezed into continuity. This is why I developed a renewed interest in the Golden Age stuff. I guess I just think he works better simplified, but then I guess Superman has never been simple has he? 

Man, I remember how ticked off I was about the 1st Crisis!  I loved the multi-Earths!  I was 17 at the time that happened.  The only thing I really liked about Superman:MOS was how much a kick I got out of Byrne's Superman art.  (As I wince waiting for tomatos to get thrown at me.)  But I really did like the Superman art - I thought Lois could have been cuter though.

And also, put me down for hating that Bats and Supes weren't friends.  Oh, and Lex wasn't bald.  Hated that too.

I liked Ma and Pa.  They were always a great addition.  Lana however, always looked a bit mangy during Post-Crisis.  Swan handled her much better.

Oh yeah, AND DARN IT!!!!!!!!!!!  THEY KILLED SUPERBOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  (I was an unhappy camper!)

John Byrne can't draw women.

After all the stuff I've said about John Byrne, it's sort of time I admitted that I quite liked his stint on Fantastic Four. Wow, confession really is good for the soul.

I really liked his FF. Some of his best work.

I love John Byrne as an artist back in his heyday. His action scenes have such a WHOOF in them, a crazy energy I haven't seen since Kirby. Like Kirby, he's got that "if you trip, you fall in his panels" quality.

His best work, for me, is the crazy IRON FIST. Don't get me wrong, he had some great inkers on UNCANNY X-MEN that gussied him up (Dave Cockrum, anyone? Terry Austin - Names are familiar to comics fans as the Apostles are to Mexicans), but his fight scenes in IRON FIST had this wild, multiple-panel imagery about it.

I take it back: my all time favorite Byrne work is one where he did what he does best, the layouts, in the Roger Stern AVENGERS annual right after the Nebula story arc. His corridors felt huge, and his running characters looked like they were streaking.

As a writer, working by himself? I dislike Byrne very much. He so desires to leave his mark on comics but he doesn't have the talent for it, so all he really contributes are ideas that alternate between destructive and inappropriately regressive.

There's a quality to Byrne's ideas, a "Byrnistness," for lack of a better term, that leaves an idea simultaneously annoying and totally contrary to the spirit of a character. Galactus being a force of nature instead of a 3-D person. The Metal Men being a plastic polymer instead of the metals they're NAMED AFTER AND HAVE ALL THE PROPERTIES OF; Namor being "nuts" instead of an honorable, proud, complicated character with a grudge against the surface world that is legitimate; the Scarlet Witch being the center of the Marvel Universe (what does that even mean?); Superman's invulnerability being due to a forcefield. The Vision and the Scarlet Witch's children being a part of Mephisto's soul (which in the words of one critic, "makes about as much sense as it sounds like it does").

"Byrnistness" is the only way I can describe this stuff. It's a combination of thinking really deeply about something, yet totally missing the point.

To say nothing of the ideas of his that are so laughable, they literally remind one of bad fanfic. Remember the ALPHA FLIGHT issue he established Diablo had a girlfriend he never mentioned but was immortal like him?

There's also Byrne's totally wrong belief that characters are only interesting the way they are in his first appearance. He made the Vision an emotionless robot again, scrapping all the stories where the Vision experienced emotions and proved his humanity time and again.

He wanted to return Wanda to the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants. Anyone who's familliar with Wanda's spectacular growth as a person into an assertive woman, finds her returning to an organization she joined as a weak willed, impressionable girl to be absolutely unbelievable no matter how much strain she was under.

As for Byrne's FANTASTIC FOUR...it was great the first year or so (Aunt Petunia being a sexy dame was fantastic) but it jumped the shark in the most spectacular way ever: the Terminus, the single most derivative villain ever, Johnny Storm being a teenager, and replacing the heart of the team, the Thing, with a cheesy marketing gimmick like the She-Hulk, and the lech-inducing plots that surrounded her (remember the one centered on her sunbathing naked on the top of the Baxter Building?).

Oh, that She-Hulk story. There was an awful lot of lechery in Byrne's FF (in fact, in much of his work), often in the form of a female character disportin' in the altogether for the flimsiest of reasons - like when the FF come across this ancient Roman city somewhere in the jungle, which finally crumbles to dust: Sue just happened to be wearing a toga, which suddenly disintegrates on her. Or off her, rather. None of the guys suffered that fate. Funnily enough, he toned that down in his Superman stint. Editorial input, I guess.

For all that, there were several standout issues on his run, like the one were Franklin Richards turned into a blonde Jesus Christ and the Negative (whoops, almost wrote Phantom) Zone trip, though that borrowed heavily from several outside influences. But then, there were quite a few dull ones, too, like Terminus.

I never read his IRON FIST, but I can see how his energetic style would fit the character. At least, his style was energetic then - at some point he seems to have become completely deflated, perhaps as a result of boring himself by only having a repertoire of two faces (generic male and female). Also, the guy can't draw wildlife for toffee.

there is a creepy factor to john byrnes work... say in superman and batman: generations 3 when he has a young teenage lana lang kiss a superman who was (physically) in his fifties... it just came across as a bit... odd.

that and another plot line was about two future supergirls who (for pretty much no reason) were stuck at 11 years old for several hundred years.. and an "awkward" relationship to an alien...

maybe just me

Isn't it glorious how the contributors to this forum manage to turn just about any topic into a John Byrne-bashing party?

I can't speak for anybody else, but bashing Byrne isn't as fun as it used to be. When John Byrne was a superstar artist and considered by the entire earth to be a genius, if you didn't like his AVENGERS WEST COAST you were a voice in the wilderness. Those were the days.

Nowadays, Byrne is seen as a megalomaniac surrounded by an army of bootlicking psychophants, the Byrne Robotics Forum, where he periodically insults Steve Irwin and leches after Asian porn queens.

I'd never thought I'd say this, but I actually feel sorry for John Byrne.

Also, I hate all the smug jackasses that laugh at him like cowardly jackals mocking a sick old lion. A statistically high number are hipster dipshits (fans of Morrison, naturally) that laugh at statements of Byrne's, about how seriously he takes comics.

I feel like grabbing these people, shaking them, and saying "You know what? Byrne's right and you're wrong! Whether the Scarlet Witch chooses Wonder Man or the Vision IS serious business. It's life or death stuff! Haven't you ever been a fan...a REAL fan...of anything in your life, ever?"

I dont think Superman got much out of kissing a teenage lana in Generations 2. But anyways just so people won't think I am a Byrne Basher I liked his Fantastic four (though I havent read that much of it) and his first 20 or so issues of Alpha Flight are awesome. (and i really liked his she-hulk...so sue me!!!)

but I really didnt like his superman (though its probably not all his fault most of its probably the editors or something)

I wish there was a way to ban the name John Bryne, seriously.

So let's review:

So he is the worst writer ever in comics, yes that is true. Yes, his artwork is the only good thing he had going for him. Of course, he says lots of insane and disgusting things, we all read them before and I am sure there will be more to come.


yes, there are a million posts here already, no need to start another.

I am going to close this thread for now.