Superman Through the Ages! Forum

I know his name is a four letter word among pre-crisis fans, but I really do like his art from the mid eighties. Especially his interiors of buildings and the detail required. So my question is, could the post crisis revision have gone better if Byrne drew it but someone else had written and planned it (Like, I don't know, someone who would have tried to address his Legion history before setting pencil to paper? Just a thought. ::))?

Of course! Johnny Red beard's artwork was never anywhere near as awful as his writing.

I believe that Cary Bates actual summited a proposal for a Superman revamp, but it was rejected by DC.

 

John Byrnes artwork is my favorite.

 I would love to have seen what Chris Claremont could have done with Superman. Given the unfavorable terms he left Marvel on, it probably wouldn't have been that hard to lure him away.

I'll say this first, the reboot wasn't need. Byrne on the books after COIE would have been "big" enough to bring in new readers.

That being said. Alan Moore was in the running for rebooting Supes but lost out to Byrne (which is sorta like DC giving Loeb the superman book after Morrison asking for it...oh wait that did happen).

Alan Moore writing and Byrne drawing a superman book. now that would be an actual classic.

I enjoy Byrne's artwork, for the most part.  But, does anyone else think that Curt Swan could've drawn Superman as a Christopher Reeve homage with much the same effect?

I've never been much of a fan of Byrne's artwork, it looks ok when you have Terry Austin or Karl Kessel pulling inking duties. Otherwise, yeesh.

I would have liked it much better had Garcia Lopez took over penciling duties after Swan's time was up.

Generally I'd agree that JB's writing is even weaker than his art, but I have to say one of, if not the only Superman story I enjoyed from his run was that vampire tale in the Annual with art by Art Adams.  This might have something to do with the fact that Batman's in the book, and JB has always been much better at Bats than Supes.

It's a funny thing, re: his art.  I was digging through some boxes recently and found no less than 3 books dedicated to JB's art and interviews, so obviously at some point in history I was quite enamored of him.  Looking back I think this was almost entirely due to his dynamic pencils on X-Men, where Terry Austin gave him the extra polish he needed (Austin made Marshall Rogers' quirky artwork more "user-friendly" in much the same way).

Karl Kesel was another good inker for JB, Dick Giordano less so (polishing is one thing, drowning another).  When he jumped back to Marvel for the FF, the art took a huge nosedive as he started inking his own stuff, with hideous results.  Much later in the run, however, Jerry Ordway's inks literally made a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Art Adams on the other hand is amazing.
See here: http://home.pacbell.net/adbm3/ArtAdams.htm

The only non-Superman Byrne stuff that I have is Alpha Flight. Yeah, I actually own some of that series.

Byrne's very first issue of Man of Steel was great, even breathtaking, if you forget about the some of the backstory. The rest of the series, and from what I've heard the rest of his two-year run, didn't hold up. It's a matter of personal preference, but I'd take Jerry Ordway's Superman art over Byrne's any day of the week. I'm not sure if he was around yet in '86, but any arguments that Superman needed a reboot and wasn't fresh enough would have been washed away by a long Moore/Ordway run on the character.

One can dream...

I wanted to like Alpha Flight, but ultimately they worked a lot better as guest-stars in the X-Men.  It's a classic case of seeing characters that make you think, "Boy they should have their own book," only to later read that book and realize, "Um, no...no, they shouldn't."

Mostly I just liked Vindicator, and when he was killed off (in one of the early harbingers, for me, of the just-starting "Dark Age" of stunts and sales gimmicks) there wasn't much reason for me to keep reading about a bunch of 4th-stringers.  I mean, c'mon, Puck?  And what was Northstar but a poor man's Quicksilver, who in turn was just a so-so Flash imitator? 

It's like something a fan would cobble together in middle school.  Flash clone?  Check.  Hulk/Thing variant?  Check.  Waterborne hero?  Check.  And for good measure, let's rip off Captain Canuck, too.

Sounds like a smashing success to me...exclusively Canadian 4th-string superhero archetypes. They have two great characters, so they kill one and transfer one to the X-Men. What could possibly go wrong with this model?

Marvel wasn't the only publisher with this problem though...look at what DC did with the Justice League. Puck could have taken out half of the Geffen league by himself. I'm glad that DC finally (albeit slowly) figured out that popular things sell better.

I agree that Byrne's artwork never looked quite as good as with Terry Austin's inks, though Dan Green did a good job on Iron Fist, which may be my favorite Marvel comic ever, after Power Man and Super-Villain Team-up! Byrne's self-inked stuff just looks kind of clumsy; it's to densely inked and lacks the smmoth lines that would clarify Byrne's details. I thought Generations was interesting, if ultimately feeling a little too "fanfic"-y.

As an artist, John Byrne is incredible, very powerful. If you trip, you could fall into his layouts, he's that three-dimensional.

I've always been amazed by Byrne's IRON FIST, which is where he convinced me a martial arts book in comics form could be exciting: the multiple-panel blow, for instance. So much of what he did there is internalized into comics language.

Then of course, you've got Byrne's classic AVENGERS stint with Jim Shooter. Byrne had the good fortune to show up during the memorable Shooter Count Nefaria/Masters of Evil storyline, and much of the sheer energy and brutality of Count Nefaria's rampage worked to make that story as famous as it is. Shooter's Avengers was pretty well off when it came to art: Shooter had Perez for the Korvac Saga.

The Giffen/DeMatteis 5 year run was reasonably popular.  It was Gerard Jones and Dan Jurgens few years afterwards where the death spiral really took place.  Remember the likes of Bloodwynd and Extreme Justice?  Ugh.  No one could find a way to maintain the laughs or the sales after Giffen moved on.

 The arguments both for and against a revamp could go on forever (and have for the past twenty years), my complaint was less the fact that they revamped him and more with how it was handled, other then the billionair Luthor,(which wasn't even his idea) and the return of one color kryptonite, there was very little I liked about it. Byrne was an exceptional artist and in truth I would love to get his whole Superman and Fantastic Four runs just for the artwork alone. I don't know anyone who does slick interiors better then him.   

Just thought of another JB art job I liked, maybe even better than the X-Men, and that's his stuff for Captain America back in the days Roger Stern was writing.  In particular the issue where Cap and a geriatric Union Jack take on Baron Blood (ending with the de-Cap-itation of the vampire) stands out as one of my favorite art jobs in all of comics, right up there with Adams' "Five-Way Revenge of the Joker."

If memory serves, the inker on that job was Joe Rubinstein.

those first 15 or so issues of Alpha flight are awesome.

come on, fighting in a snow storm so you dont see any action!!?!!!! totally awesome. take that dave sim for wacky page layouts.

I liked the concept of the Plodex more than the execution. The idea of an alien race that adapts to whatever world it finds itself in, is a pretty interesting attempt to explain why aliens look so human. Otherwise, the Master of the World was pretty much a boring villain with a boring personality and murky motivation; an evil-with-a-capital-e silent film villain, who if created in the sixties, would fit in with the "never used again" category along with Half-Face from TALES OF SUSPENSE and Master Man from FF.

The absolute nadir of the book was when Johnny Redbeard revealed Diablo's heretofore-unknown girlfriend. It was like the best-drawn fanfic in history.

For me, the best Byrne art I've seen was in the AVENGERS ANNUAL when Roger Stern was writing the book, which was in the aftermath of the battle with Nebula, which had the Skrulls locked into their forms permanently. The reason I like this issue is because Byrne did the layouts only, which meant they were power-packed and had the illusion of 3-D, but the actual linework and design, never a Byrne strength, was done by another artist (Guice, if memory serves).


Jeph Loeb once said that he thought this was the source of the appeal of Alpha Flight: it's an idea that makes everybody feel they can do their own version of it.

Actually, this is kind of true: who, as a kid, hasn't done some bored scribblings for a hero team that represents their nationality or ethnicity?


Ouch, ouch, ouch!

I have to ride to the defense of Quicksilver here, maybe one of my favorite Marvel characters. That's like saying Hawkeye is a Green Arrow imitator. If their skill set was based on another character, they transcended them, as have much more complicated and totally different personalities and totally different appearances and life experiences.

Quicksilver was never a poor-man's Flash. Quicksilver was always his own man: haughty, proud, instantly able to rub people the wrong way, explicitly "European" and traditional-minded, protective of his sister (which kept him 'human' - his sense of family). He started off a villain and became a hero. He was a mutant, and he responded to humanity's contempt with contempt for humanity in return.

And maybe he has the same power as You-Know-Who, but Quicksilver used it in totally different ways. He could, for instance, bounce like a pinball, and his leg muscles have tremendous lifting power: he could lift a car with his legs alone. Pietro never did traditional Flash feats like vibrate.

My favorite moment in Marvel history is when Englehart, in the VISION AND THE SCARLET WITCH miniseries let the cat out of the bag about the company's biggest not-so-secret secret: Quicksilver and Wanda were Magneto's kids. The letters page was absolutely unforgettable. Most of the reaction was something along the lines of "well, duh!" It was like when Elton John came out of the closet.

I'm a huge fan of Byrne's pencils from the Man of Steel era, but his writing? Jeez. I can't stand it.

I should add here in the interests of fairness that there is one run of JB's art I really, really liked (outside the X-Men) and that was his stint on Captain America with Roger Stern writing.  In particular that issue where he and a geriatric Union Jack take on Baron Blood, ending with the vampire's de-Cap-itation via adamantium shield.  That ranks as one of my favorite art jobs (and stories) of all time.

If memory serves, Joe Rubinstein did the inks on that one.

And Julian, I'm glad you like Quicksilver.  To me he was never anything better than annoying.  Sort of a cross between Johnny Quick and "Reggie" from Riverdale.

This is the one where the FF were also involved too, right?  The Avengers Annual was inked by Kyle Baker, and the FF Annual that year had a few similar pages but that annual was inked by Joe Sinnott.

 I know Byrne is unspeakable scum on this board and did the reboot and mucked up lots of things but he did tell often fresh and exiting stories. Remember he also really didn't want to do a real reboot just sort of softly move into things and have elements disappear he didn't like. I would have paid hard cash to have him instead of trash like Greg Rucka and  the guy who did "for tomorrow" on Superman. 

I didn't find Superman as a Pornstar, Supes executing Zod & co., or that nonsense with Amazing Grace on Apokalips to be fresh and exciting. Moreover, I found his entire run to be rather generic and boring.

Much of the same with Rucka with his two-year long muted rehash of the Death of Clark Kent which made use of numerous power-draining devices and more mind-control. The little gem about Supes not caring about civilian lives as long as he got his revenge against DD cemented in my mind that this hack shouldn't be allowed anywhere remotely near the Superman titles ever again. But, the hack gets the chance to damage Supes some more thanks to idiot extraordinaire Eddie Berganza.

For Tomorrow may have been boring, but atleast it didn't include any of the above.

For Tomorrow greatest sin was overstocking hospitals with new coma patients.

But it was a PRETTY coma, at least for the most part.  It reads better if you don't look at the words or try to interpret anything.

Yeah, that's the one. Funny how Byrne's art looks the best when paired with a writer like Roger Stern. I second everything Nightwing said about the Roger Stern/Byrne CAPTAIN AMERICA. Cap's decapitation of Baron Blood, out of mercy...was really powerful stuff.


That's the point! He's supposed to be a jerk!  ;D

I'll say this about Quicksilver: he may be the first character in comics to be from another culture, and characterized differently because he's from another culture. If you look at the Legion kids from all those diverse alien planets, they talk and act like sixties kids: "Chuck the chatter! Listen to that guy's spiel!"

I hear many contradictory things about what Moore's involvement was to be in the Superman books, post-Schwartz.

The version I've heard from Marty Pasko, which is the version I'm most inclined to think is true, is that Alan Moore was brought on by Schwartz to finish his tenure on the Super-Books with a bang, and Moore wasn't going to stay on post-Schwartz. This has the veracity of being from someone that was there, and also it's true: Moore DIDN'T work on Superman after Schwartz left.

The other idea I've heard, more as rumors...was that Moore was going to be on the new incarnation of DC COMICS PRESENTS, a book called SUPERMAN PLUS (insert guest-star here).

Moore left, from what I hear, because he was told to work on Byrne's plots. Which prompted his dry English retort, "well, only if he can ink on my pencils!"

The reason I doubt the veracity of this SUPERMAN PLUS story is this:

1) the only places I see it written about are hearsay. I can't find anyplace that gives Moore himself, or someone around at that time, talking about the project.

2) DC never did a Superman team-up book post-Schwartz! (Unless you count the brief period when Byrne wrote ACTION COMICS as a team-up book.)

3) The title SUPERMAN PLUS is also attributed to aborted projects by both Neil Gaiman and Grant Morrison as well! This leads me to believe there's some garbled history.

The idea Alan Moore was in the running to try a Superman Reboot is a new one on me, and frankly, I doubt if it's true. I've heard stories from people that were there that say Cary Bates was in the running, as was Frank Miller.

Also, I wouldn't compare Morrison to Moore. For one thing, Moore can do characterization amazingly well...of his generation, only Levitz, Alan Brennert, and Busiek are better at telling character-centered stories. On the other hand, characterization is Morrison's great weakness.

In retrospect, Byrne was always better with a writer other than himself.  I came in late to the X-Men but the seminal Wolverine Alone/Hellfire issue, seen by many as the beginning of the end, was a very potent image for me, as was the first issue I ever read, where Magneto had the team trapped in a circus wagon --those panels are burned on my brain. Previously, I had enjoyed his Avengers stint (but maybe not as much as Perez).  No surprise then that I picked up on Byrne's FF --I loved the FF and had been weaned on the reprints in Marvel's Greatest Comics and the 70s Perez issues.  To me, Byrne on the FF was genius personified.  I see now quite a bit of it was just retreads of Kirby/Lee. Some of the annuals and interstellar epics probably still hold up, though.  I began to lose interest in his FF just as it seemed Byrne did, or maybe his mullet haircut for sue, ugly costumes, and miscarriage storylines were Byrne's idea of "coming into his own" in terms of greatness. 

Anyway, I was well off him by the time Crisis rolled around --his bag of tricks seemed exhausted and the cynical nature of his work had started to bug me (ironically, I was a cynical teenager at the time --like repels like).  Although here and there I gave him a chance just to see what his art would look like on familiar characters (Avnegers West Coast, etc).

You're right about that. The characters were great when they were written like The Tick: a sort of spoof of the superhero genre. It was when the league was written as serious action/adventure that they sucked terribly.

Even when Giffen and DeMatteis came back to the characters a few years ago and wrote "Formerly Known as the Justice League," those were great stories. In the seriousness of the Jurgens era or Infinite Crisis, though, the characters were completely out of their element.

For me the right man for a Superman revamp was Perez.His job over Wonder Woman is still amazing even after all this years,put new ideas but still truly respect for the past of the character.

No it had Supes as a selfish smaller than life character with no moral compass, no resolve  or fortitude andcausing tons of horrible things to happen by inaction like some bad parody of Hamlet. You can name the downsides  of the byrne run all you want but personally I find them infinitely less offensive than the tiny little man Superman became later. ( Insert 10 page  rant here).

That would have worked better I bet.

hmm Perez on Wonder Woman
Byrne of Superman

hey DC how about hiring WRITERS to, you know, write your most important characters instead of giving vanity projects to hot artists.

(though I suppose frank miller was an artists who became a great writer).

Are we talking about the same story? He didn't cause any horrible things to happen. The Vanishing occurred while he was off in space saving Kyle Rayner. He put an end to a war, fought the OMAC prototype, fought Earth elementals who threatened to destroy humanity, and fought a half-crazed Wonder Woman who sought to prevent him from going into the Phantom Zone to save those who had been trapped. How in the blue heck is that inaction?

Moreover, the entire point of him modifying the Phantom Zone was to save humanity from the fate that befelled Krypton. I'll take that over the weak, marvilized, incompetent, moron that Byrne presented who couldn't find any option other than to execute Zod & co.

 The Zod execution thing didn't bother me as much as the "Superman as Hamlet" mentality that seemed to run all through most of the late eighties and early ninties. "Oh, am I too alien to fit in on Earth?", "Am I worthy of the title of worlds greatest hero?", "Would Cat Grant still want me if she knew I was Superman?", "Will Lois ever appreciate me as Clark?" Even in the Golden Age the "Lois hates Clark but loves Superman" thing never sat well with me. If I have one complaint about that era that would be it. Not interested in him as a love interest, fine, but abject hatred seemed a bit much.

Back in the early post-crisis years he even complained about havening to shave with a chunk of metal from his rocket and heat vision which never made sense to me. Why does the hair on his face grow but the hair on his head doesn't? Someone want to explain that? The pre-crisis Superman was way more obsessed with his alien heritage then his late eighties counterpart (even going so far as to worship the Kryptonian god Rao despite being raised on Earth) and he still didn't complain about being an outsider as much as this guy did!

Don't even get me started on the reduced power thing. The movie Superman may not have been able blow stars out, but at least he could still crush coal into diamond. The post-crisis Superman couldn't do either one! 

I take it you don't suffer from the sting of male-pattern baldness.  :)

I think the idea is simply that he can get away longer without a haircut than he can without shaving without looking ratty.  I'm in the same boat.  I don't shave for a week and I'd be described as having a beard.  My 5pm shadow happens at about 3pm. 

I hear that Supergirl and Krypto gives good haircuts, but I get leery event when a stray hairdryer gets near my ears, so the whole "heat vision" thing scares me.  I wonder about the relative invulnerability of Kryptonian skin versus hair.  Does he ever cut himself shaving, then cauterize afterwards?  Yowtch!

I wouldn't say that Golden Age Lois really loved Clark OR Superman. She would usually show her affection for Clark by calling him a "yellow coward," but that Lois was mostly a product of a teenage Siegel's views on women- she was manipulative and hated nerds. She seemed interested in Superman for mostly selfish reasons, at least in the beginning.

).


You right we obviously didn't read the same story. If that's what you got out of it I literally don't know how to talk to you about it. I'll take killing  the three over a psychotic episode that lasted  what seemed like forever. The weak Marvelized Superman WON battles and has 1000 times more resolution and competence than the idiot in :for tomorrow" I'm going to bow out of this now. We won't get anywhere and any positive feedback for that story makes me far too irrationally angry

Well, I don't know if that's necessarily a post-crisis innovation. Superman is a character that has a very rich inner life, and some of my favorite Pre-Crisis Superman stories have been ones where Superman experiences dilemmas and turmoil.

A major, major theme of Superman's characterization is him wondering if he is an alien interloper that does too much for humanity, for instance.


Despite all the "Great Rao" exclamations, I never got a sense that Superman was at all seriously religious. He honored Kryptonian holidays, certainly, but that was out of pride and respect for his heritage instead of piety.

Like a great many characters that Schwartz oversaw, Superman always seemed scientific, too secular and rational, as opposed to being mystical and intuitive. The best example of this "Schwartz-effect" is the Barry Allen Flash.

Maggin saw Superman as a cosmic monotheist, and something about that rings true. The idea he belongs to ONE religion and one only seems at odds with his "citizen of the world" characterization.


The idea of Superman being low-powered sounds really good on paper, but in practice...the character just doesn't FEEL like Superman.

I do however, appreciate concessions to reality. For instance, Superman wearing a breathing mask for long trips in space. Superman is superpowerful, and can tolerate the hostile conditions in space easily...but he's still a living organism from a terrestrial planet.

come on guys. Can't we all agree that the byrne marvelized version sucked just as much as "for tomorrow"

 ;)

PS. I really hated superman needing a mask to breathe in space. He doesnt breathe in space, he could just hold his breath for a really long time.

Yes, we can agree - Byrne´s Superman sucked as much as "For Tomorrow", but Byrne have done the greatest damage to the character. It was his revamp that destroyed everything unique and special about Superman, from cold and sterile Krypton to the supermurder storyline.  "For Tomorrow" is just a bad story from a good Vertigo writer who have no place in a Superman comic, but, as least, followed some interesting themes like the messiah angle, Bronze Age/Maggin-esque moral questions and used Mark Waid´s Birthright backgroud. It was a bad Superman story, but with some good intentions. 

Does Superman breath at all?  Arguably, no.  He is from a terrestrial planet but has been transformed into a solar battery who can fly through suns, faster than light, through the ages, etc.

The tiny super-oxygen mask is just dumb.

Why doesn't he wear a super-diaper so he doesn't super-excrete all over?  Why doesn't he take a super-lunchbox so he has some super-food and water.

 Unless Kryptonians evolved to the point where they no longer need mitochondria, I can still see why he would need to breath.

People always said that superman can breath in space. Of course he can't! he could just hold his breath for a really long time.
He could probably fill his lungs to a far greater capacity than a normal human (like a SCUBA air tank)

there is no air in space, in real life, but in comics and Star Wars movies and the Super Friends TV cartoon show, there is.

Re: breathing...

The only reason we breathe is to oxidize our food, (http://www.sk.lung.ca/content.cfm?edit_realword=kbreathe) to get the energy that we need. If Superman can store solar energy, then he doesn't need to breathe (arguably, he would still need to exhale, but that's it.)

No, I really can't.  Notwithstanding all the poor moments and changes everyone obsesses about. Byrne's was still enjoyable and heroic at times. I found nothing admirable in "for tomorrow".  On the other hand, I hate "kingdom Come" also because it seems like core Iron age to me but others see it differently ( good lord, I HATE that book!) Any damage Byrne did is as nothing compared to the Superman later writers, not Byrne, that I had to look on as vastly morally inferior to myself.( and I'm just a guy nothing special)

I guess the argument is that he doesn't need to breath --no mitochondria, no cell division, no metabolizing of anything besides solar energy.  And who says that Kryptonians had mitochondria --maybe their biological structure was entirely alien?

-1 Karma! :D

There aren't any comics where there is air in space.

Paul Levitz gave an explanation for the Legionnaires' ability to survive in space without suits: they actually DID wear spacesuits, which were automatic transparent "trans-suits," designed to not interfere with powers, that activated on contact with vacuum.

The "trans-suits" were not activated by "sudden" changes, so the gas weapons in something like, say, Tharok/The Dark Man's citadel or Gas Girl (from the Champions of Lallor) could affect the Legionnaires normally.

All in all, a good explanation.


That makes sense.


Don't forget the damage done to the Metal Men. Yeesh. That's an annoying Byrne obession: establish the inhumanity, the lack of personhood of robots.

Johnny Redbeard did it to the Vision in AVENGERS WEST COAST (a story arc that irritates me far, far more than his Superman reboot ever did). Here's a character that under Thomas and Englehart and others, acquired a soul, the ability to love. He acquired friendship, emotions, belonging. And Byrne called him a "toaster."

I never read "For Tomorrow," so I can't comment on whether it is better or worse. (Hear that, TELLE? :D I'm keeping my mouth shut because I haven't read something. )

That is the same reason I don't respond to many of your arguments.  ;)

of course there is Air in Space. how else could you hear anything (like explosions or punching someone)

der!!!!!

He needs to exhale if he's going to use his super-freeze breath to freeze things in outer space.  :)

I came up with a theory awhile back that his freeze breath really created a localized temporal anomaly and stopped time.  The ice was his "exhale" to some degree, but mostly a byproduct of atomic motion being stopped as air and moisture hits the localized temporal anomaly. 

Does he need to exhale to use super-ventrilloquism?  Now that's a fun one!

here is my totally made up explantation (which makes no scientific sense and I dont feel like doing research)

He super compresses Air in his lungs so that when he releases it , its really really cold. I am not sure if he stores oxygen in his lungs as a liguid oxygen (as I have no idea what that actually is)

as for superventrilloquism. you got me. regular ventrilloquism is just a trick, its not actually throwing your voice.