By 1983, SUPERMAN was feeling a bit like a product of a different age. While some effort was being made to modernize the Man of Steel, including having Gil Kane provide covers as he does here, the actual contents of the magazine were still very much of a piece with the kinds of stories that were being run ten years previous when I had first read an issue. On a certain level, this did represent a certain level of comfort and familiarity: Cary Bates was writing the stories, Curt Swan was illustrating them, and Julie Schwartz was editing them. As reliable as the sun coming up in the morning. But now, a decade older than I had been in 1973, this successful combination was feeling a bit tired. I was (somewhat) more sophisticated and I was demanding more from my comics as a result. So it wasn’t truly a big deal for me to drop SUPERMAN in my title purge as it was hanging on in there as much through momentum as anything else.
The first issue of SUPERMAN that I ever read was also the very first comic book I had ever purchased. And it was thoroughly forgettable. But I loved something about it at six years old, and I began reading more and more comics. And while SUPERMAN was often a part of my purchases, I couldn’t be certain at that young age of being able to buy consecutive issues as I was at the mercy of my parents to take me to stores that sold comics and also to be talked into buying me one. So I focused my efforts on titles that I loved more, such as THE FLASH, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, SECRET SOCIETY OF SUPER-VILLAINS and ALL-STAR COMICS.
it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I was finally permitted to venture out to the 7-11 by myself and I had enough of a steady income that I could begin buying SUPERMAN regularly. My first issue as a steady reader was this one, #311, no doubt pulled in by the guest appearance of the Flash–no way I was going to pass that up. This was right at the start of Marty Pasko’s tenure as writer, and I really clicked with his approach to the material. It had a bit more Marvel-style soap opera to it while still being a silly and wild and wonderfully reliable as the series had always been. So while Marty was in the writer’s chair, I was steadily on board. After he left it, though, the book sort of stumbled around for a bit, with different writers contributing one-offs. Eventually, editor Schwartz settled on Cary Bates as the more-or-less regular writer (though Elliot S! Maggin was never too far from the title either) and things settled down.
Cary had been a real favorite writer of mine as a young reader–as he was the regular scribe of THE FLASH, that’s pretty much a no brainer. But as the 1970s gave way to the 1980s, Cary seemed to have a bit of a struggle adjusting to the new times. His craft was always solid, but it seemed as though he was either pushing himself or being pushed to try to produce more edgy material (edgy being a relative term when you speak of the DC books of this period.) Cary had made his bones doing stories of colorful super-villains and science fiction adventures, so this shift into quasi-relevancy was a bit of an odd fit. He did his best, but there was often a bit of a tonal dissidence with his work at this time. It was at once attempting to be contemporary and hard-hitting yet still embraced the silliest aspects of the Silver Age that Cary had loved.
This issue was part of a crossover with THE NEW ADVENTURES OF SUPERBOY title, a book that I wasn’t reading regularly at all. But in essence, a collision in the timestream switches Superman’s mind with that of his younger self, Superboy. So the present day Kal-El is stuck in the past in Smallville while his younger self is left inhabiting his modern body in Metropolis. This was a kind of fun little crossover, of the sort where you could read any one piece of it and still feel satisfied. And again, it was an attempt to do anything to shake up the Man of Tomorrow’s adventures.
Superman/Superboy’s foe this time out is Euphor, a mentalist who feeds on the negative emotions of others, growing ever more powerful. Euphor was the latest in a long string of pikers who turned up for a single adventure and who seemed as though they shouldn’t have been giving the Man of Steel such a hard time. Some of the problem, I expect, is that artist Curt Swan’s design for Euphor feels like it comes from the past. He seems, well, dopey, and not a legitimate menace at all. At least in this story, there’s the excuse that it’s actually the much less experienced Superboy that Euphor is actually dealing with, but that only helps things so much.
After getting some good advice from Lois Lane (after freeing her from Euphor’s control, of course), Superman/Superboy speeds back into the timestream, reckoning that his older Superboy/Superman self will be waiting for him there. He is, and the pair play out a repeat of the accident that switched their personas in the first place. The end result of which is that Superboy returns to his proper time period with his mind intact but no memory of future events, while Superman is likewise restored to his adult body and can head off to face down Euphor. it’s such a simple solution that it makes it feel as though what we’ve been told is a problem this past issue or so doesn’t seem like it was much of a problem at all.
At first, the Metropolis Marvel fares no better against his opponent than his younger self did. But working out the source of Euphor’s might, Superman lures him into the timestream and heads back to the moment in the past when Krypton exploded. Overwhelmed with grief, Superman’s super-strong negative emotions prove to be more that Euphor can safely take in, and he winds up overloading. So it’s a nice, fun, plot-oriented answer to the problem, and all wraps up neatly. Maybe a bit too neatly, as I wasn’t finding these stories as satisfying as I had only a couple of years before. So I let go, and let Superman fly on without me, at least for a while.
I came back a couple of times after that for a specific issue: notably #400, which I think is the greatest single issue of SUPERMAN ever produced.
And also Alan Moore’s extraordinarily good wrap-up to the Superman mythos, “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” I would follow Moore on to pretty much anything. But the big news coming thereafter was that Marvel’s John Byrne had jumped ship to DC to revamp and revive Superman. So i was there for Byrne’s initial MAN OF STEEL limited series and then I went right on picking up the three books in the line; SUPERMAN, ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN and ACTION COMICS. Byrne’s Superman was very influenced by the Richard Donner film and it was presented and told in a much more contemporary manner than Schwartz’s guys were employing. But I found a lot of it to be empty, I didn’t like a number of the changes Byrne had made in the character’s canon (some of which seemed to have been done solely because Byrne could rather than because they actually improved anything.) But it was all good enough that I read all three books throughout Byrne’s tenure and beyond, when Mike Carlin would craft the line into effectively a single title with storylines bouncing directly back and forth throughout the various books.
The Tom Brevoort Experience 
agree to disagree on the changes Byrne made. For me, pretty much all of them were significant improvements and it seemed, as a college age reader, a lot of thought had been put into them.
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I for one like John Byrne making Clark Kent more like George Reeves’ Clark Kent ( Adventures of Superman 1952-58 ) who would pretend to be knocked out and stood up for himself. Carl Kolchak ( Kolchak: The Night Stalker 1974-75 ) wasn’t a man without fear, but he wasn’t a wimp like the pre-crisis Clark Kent either. Plus Byrne gave Superman the ability to store his yellow solar energy so while he wouldn’t have any way to power up under a Red Sun, he would still have his powers for as long as the energy in his body lasts ( Like a laptop on battery power ) — more he used his powers the weaker he got until he ran out of power. But getting rid of his ability to travel and survive is outer space sucked. It was the Byrne era Superman that had me collect Superman ( all 3 titles ), before that about a hand full made up of different series.
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Speaking of Elliott, have you ever written here about Miracle Monday or Last Son of Krypton? I did a search but didn’t see any posts.
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I was also bored w/ Swan’s Superman, even before 1983. It paled to more dynamic superheroes in other series. The late 1970’s covers on the Super-titles were almost always stellar. Jose Garcia-Lopez. Rich Buckler & Dick Giordano. Ross Andru & Dick Giordano. Swan’s Superman suffered by comparison. I still respect Swan’s achievements. And Bates. I’d go on to enjoy Cary’s stories in “Captain Atom” & “Silverblade”.
Even Kane’s Superman had an outdated feel. Though I loved how he drew the cape, almost like wings. I’d’ve kept the same cover artist trio I mentioned above, if they were still available. Ed Hannigan & Giordano drew some good covers for the character, too, in the early 1980’s. Then Eduardo Barreto did a few good covers, too. To get a version of Superman that was more dynamic & satisfying, I’d keep an eye out for who was drawing “DC Comics Presents” and “World’s Finest”. Buckler, Garcia-Lopez, and even Klaus Janson would hired by Julie to guest on those series. Another “cover tease” was “Superman: the Secret Years”, w/ it’s 4 iconic Frank Miller covers, & interiors by Swan & Schaffenberger. Both skilled & legendary artists, but the covers hinted at a more modern, dynamic feel
Much the same way that in the late 1990’s, the best Superman was in Morrisson’s “JLA”, not in the 4 monthly titles edited by Mike Carlin. Carlin allegedly said he wouldn’t put creative teams on Superman that were as, or more popular than the character. Maybe the phrase was creators who were “too big”. So by that logic, if he’d been editor before Andy Helfer & Byrne took over (Carlin succeeded Helfer), Alan Moore may have never gotten to write his seminal Superman send-off. And maybe Grant Morrisson’s “All-Star Superman” would never have gotten off the group, up in those clouds on the cover to that 1st issue..
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“Can’t argue w/ success.” Byrne was the right talent @ the right time. His popularity then, his ability to delivery consistently. I’ve been a pretty petty critic of his style, though. But his taking over was hard, or close to impossible, for regular comicbook readers to ignore. First, his leaving Marvel. That alone was seismic. And then rebooting Superman? Seismic, plus a solar eclipse.
I’m sure economics & politics were involved. But not longer after Byrne left the Super-books, one question was, why not have handed Superman to Alan Moore instead? At that time, there was no on better, if even as good. Maybe he didn’t want it, full time. Maybe his conflict w/ DC over profit sharing & their questionable contract w/ him had already begun by that time, & he was only indulging himself in sending off the current incarnation b/c it was such a rare opportunity, & the last chance to work w/ Julie Schwartz). As for art, for years I’d already really wanted to see Bob Hall draw Superman. I was still hoping he would have up into the 2000’s. I’d have let younger artist have a shot much sooner. A good side effect of Byrne doing Superman, we soon got to see others join him. Mignola & Art Adams, are 2 examples.
It seemed I had to wait way too long before someone decided to let someone like Rick Leonardi draw a Superman story. I get that editors & execs get too comfortable, meeting deadlines, reaching stability. But I’d’ve been always on the look out for new artists that could keep Superman dynamic & fresh. Arguably the greatest comics character (not my top fave, but I do like him), he should be a self-generating force of nature. But so many seem to mess it up, fall into ruts, or run out of ideas. I don’t think he’s inherently boring. But we have had to suffer through a lot of bad Superman stories & art.
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Ah, I typed an opus, & I was asked to log-in, & lost the whole draft. Ugh. Anyway, Byrne was the right person at the right time. Proven record, reliable, popular. His leaving Marvel was seismic in itself. Then taking over Superman? Seismic, plus a solar eclipse. In hindsight they maybe should’ve let Alan Moore take over Superman. But by 1985 he may have already started to resent the terms of his “Watchmen” contract w/ DC. He may have only indulged in writing the send-off of the current incarnation for the rare opportunity, & the last chance to work w/ Julius Schwartz.
Art-wise, for years I’d already really wanted to see Bob Hall draw Superman. I was hoping he would, all the way into the early 2000’s. During & after Byrne’s stint we did get to see Mike Mignola & Art Adams draw Superman. It took far too long for other greats of the day, & subsequent dynamic & fresh talents to get a chance. I got sick of the “house style” on 1990’s Superman, which was really close to the 1980’s Marvel “house style”. I’ve since loved getting to see versions by styles as separate as Steve Rude’s & Pascal Ferry’s. Lee Weeks. They come to mind quickly as favorites. Jorge Jiminez, Clay Mann, & obviously Dan Mora have been some of the best in the last decade.
Superman shouldn’t be inherently boring. I don’t think he is. But we’ve had a lot of boring Superman stories & art over the years. I get that editors & execs got comfortable. But DC should’ve always been looking for new artists to keep Superman appealing. It dseems too easy to fall into a rut. And some creators just have a better feel for the character than others. I think Phillip Kennedy Johnson was cut way too soon. I really liked his take. And Rafa Sandoval is offering his own definitive version.
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Somehow I’ve managed to avoid Pasko’s work on Superman, even tho I’m very familiar with Maggin and Bates. But hearing you recommend him so highly is going to make me search his stuff out.
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I liked the Byrne changes more or less (except his effectively dooming the Legion’s book) but I feel while he introduced great concepts, he never had the chops to flesh them out effectively. Concurrent and subsequent writers did that though so it’s all good.
One thing I disliked about Bronze Age Superman was having him say By Rao in place of Oh my god. It never made sense to me for Clark to start using Kryptonian epithets when he was raised from infancy in the American Midwest.
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Nothing wrong w/ incorporating some of his parents’ culture that doesn’t harm anyone else.
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Legion of Super-Heroes’ pocket universe did as good a job of preserving LSH history as possible under the circumstances. And the pocket universe Superboy’s death was the good bye the pre-Crisis Superman deserved and never got (just “oh, everything’s changed now.”). But in hindsight, it began the Legion’s death of a thousand reboots.
I enjoyed Bates’ New Superboy. Very good at showing Superboy’s first encounter with red sun energy and other stuff.
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Byrne’s Superman was basically Earth-2/Golden-age Superman shifted in time: only Earth-1’s looks remained. Which, ironically, as I think Mark Waid recounted, was exactly the initial idea for Crisis: Kal-El dies/disappears and Kal-L replaces him on New Earth, but this was then changed in favour of the limbo thing.
That would have probably worked better, as the old “new” Superman would have slowly merged in the new continuity forgetting about the switch (as happened in JSA), and a “Last Earth-1’s Superman Story” could have been told at any point about his disappearance, involving his younger self, time paradoxes and the Legion, leaving the new timeline and the new Supes outside of it.
Byrne’s reboot (along with others, including Pérez WW) as a matter of fact had nothing to do with Crisis, it was just a reboot that ignored whatever was convenient from the past continuity. As frasersherman says, the most popular Superman of all-ages did not get the send-off he deserved and faded into the new one with no further explanation, as Moore’s epilogue takes place in a [imaginary] universe that no longer existed.
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The thing I’ve always disliked about the WW reboot is the deletion of any philosophical and scientific progress the Amazons made during their years of isolation. Since then they’ve just been barbarian warriors and that’s always bored me. Science Island and Marston’s wacko in real life but workable as fiction beliefs made them different and interesting. Now it’s all Amazons Attack done by different creators.
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Did they need to, though? People make tech advances to make life easier, reduce physical stress, fight disease, or increase wealth, etc. Would super-strong, immortal Amazons that lived communally have the same motivations? Their lives appear pretty rewarding, pretty straightforward, & without the worries of mortals. Not getting sick. No poverty. A fair & just society. What’s there to improve?
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It robbed them of character growth and avenues for storytelling. They had been a force for good in the world. Now they’re just a violent problem more often than not with a disdain for Man’s World rather than wishing to better it. I doubt Perez and his original writer thought it out that well but the trouble with using sense in a comic oftentimes is you cut off entertaining story possibilities. WW always had problems gaining an audience but making Diana one of just a few characters from Paradise Island who are good people who want to help others doesn’t help without superstar creators.
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“It robbed them of character growth and avenues for storytelling. They had been a force for good in the world. Now they’re just a violent problem more often than not with a disdain for Man’s World rather than wishing to better it. I doubt Perez and his original writer…” (you mean Greg Potter?) “…thought it out that well but the trouble with using sense in a comic oftentimes is you cut off entertaining story possibilities. WW always had problems gaining an audience but making Diana one of just a few characters from Paradise Island who are good people who want to help others doesn’t help without superstar creators.”
I don’t get that. What man’s not lacking in technology, we are in basic decent values. And technology advancing hasn’t really helped changed that. More destructive weapons killing more people at a faster rate. The rich countries hording the best tech, even in medicine, from poor countries (or even poor citizens in rich countries, if they can’t afford it- Capitalism). Heck even I have “disdain for man’s world”, and I’m a man.
So all the Amazons used to be a force for good? And still WW had problems gaining an audience? So making all the Amazons a force for good again would, what, in regards to gaining an audience? No society is completely homogenized. There’s always dissent, no matter how small. There’d still be an angry Amazon or more, being “a violent problem”. Hey, that’s another story possibility. ;-)
Also, “good story possibilities” SHOULD make sense. You said “the trouble with using sense in a comic oftentimes is you cut off entertaining story possibilities.” I disagree.
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I’ve thought the same thing Steve. I understand Perez’ interest in making them more Greek. On the other hand, the Greeks were an intensely curious, mentally questing culture and I doubt they’d sit still. I’d have liked to see, I don’t know, a kind of Greekpunk development in science on Themyscira.
Though nothing about the Amazons bugs me as much as “Whoa—what if they went away and Wonder Woman was alone?” getting recycled. It’s been done multiple times by now, it’s not interesting.
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It’s not an uncommon trait to have “Foreign-born but locally-raised person nonetheless feels a deep spiritual connection to their birth culture”. There’s quite a few stories based on Superman observing some Kryptonian holiday or ceremony. And especially as an adult, pre-Crisis there really wasn’t “Clark Kent” as a real person – that was just an act done by Kal-El The Kryptonian, for his own reasons. Thus I’d contend it’s entirely reasonable that he took up a few everyday expressions, maybe as a way of feeling closer to that culture.
I wondered if this cover was some sort of homage to Lois Lane #1, “The Witch of Metropolis”. But other than the title, I don’t see it.
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Yeah, I’m with you, there, Tom. I came in a bit earlier and by 1971 had started collecting comics, but by 1976 or thereabouts, I was losing interest. I came back to comics some time around 1981, but Superman wasn’t being inked by Murphy Anderson, Bob Oksner or Al Williamson, and inkers whom I felt were not up to the task of bringing Swan’s work to life were on the book. Plus, the stories were simply not what I expected, so there was no joy for me. Similarly, I picked up #400 and Moore’s stories, etc. I was mostly buying Marvel at this point, but the New Teen Titans and All-Star Squadron were hitting all the marks – and Batman had Don Newton for goodness sake. Certainly, what brought me back was following Byrne to Superman and DC. And then they had a rush of creativity at the company post-Crisis. Of course, the trend had started earlier in the decade with Titans and All-Star and they were quick to recognize their triumphs in Englehart & Rogers’ Batman and Wrightson & Wein’s Swamp Thing by reprinting them in higher quality on Baxter paper (plus, of course, great series like Camelot 3000). But why hadn’t they done better on Superman any earlier?? I love Curt Swan’s work to this day. And his three greatest inkers were absolutely Murphy Anderson, Bob Oksner and Al Williamson – which they didn’t seem to recognize until after Byrne had taken over the book and they didn’t have enough work to give poor ol’ Curt. I get that hindsight is 20/20, but did it really require a complete reboot for DC to get on the stick? And now that they’d done it, did they *really* have to keep rebooting every 5-10 years?
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I’m a Gen-Xer and I was never, ever a fan of the Julius Schwartz-era Superman of the ’70s and early ’80s (with the exception of Superman 400 which, like you, I think is still one of the finest mainstream comics ever produced (please release it as a Deluxe Edition, DC)). Curt Swan was a competent draftsman, but his work was so bland to my eyes (an opinion that has only become stronger as I get older). He didn’t have the visceral power of a Jack Kirby or the sophisticated design sense of an Alex Toth or a Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. To me, Swan’s work just sat there on the page. I was five- or six-years-old when I first saw Superman (1978) in the theatre and it blew me away. My parents bought me a few Superman comics afterward, but they never impressed me. The gulf between what was on the screen and what Curt Swan and team were delivering was too wide for me to bridge.
I was all-in on John Byrne’s Superman reboot. I was 13 at the time and the absolute perfect age for it. Unlike Swan’s work, Byrne brought a swagger and a confidence back to the Superman character. I loved that. I also liked the simplicity of Byrne’s version of the character. More in line with the Fleischer cartoons and the Reeve movies than any of the comics of the previous 30 or 40 years. I know the Silver Age has its fans, but all of that Weisinger-era stuff just weighed the character down for me. Byrne’s version felt streamlined and efficient. I’ve recently re-read the work (in the recent hardcover collections) for the first time in decades and, for the most part, it still holds up. It’s not as sophisticated as the other DC reboots of the time that Byrne’s peers were doing (Miller and Mazzucchelli on Batman; Perez on Wonder Woman; Chaykin on Blackhawk; Grell on Green Arrow; Truman on Hawkworld; etc.), but for an all-ages book, it’s still really good. It remains my favorite comic book version of the character to date.
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For a Kane cover,
I can’t say I like that one very much. It does look like Lois has been made to look more like Margot at this point. Or maybe I’m just imagining it?
We didn’t read much Superman. The art and stories of Superboy/Superman were ok, when I was a kid, but seemed very dated later on. We had mostly become Marvel readers. Crisis and then Legends definitely brought us over. We mainly picked up Byrne’s Superman series, since we were fans of his work. At the time I really loved it, now I can see some flaws but still find it really good in comparison to what else was being produced at the time.
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They did change Lois to look like an attractive Margot Kidder for a time so I wouldn’t be surprised if Kane was told to do that.
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I did not like that era Superman a lot, too, but this particular crossover was OK, as it reminds me of the ’70s stories, also, I liked Bates’ Superboy book (mostly due to the great Schaffenberger’s art).
The problem is, I have never liked the concept of Superboy that much! I mean, the concept of a teenaged Clark is great, but the very idea of Superman being an adult version of Superboy is just belittling the character (honest, most of older people would stll be calling him “Superboy” in his thirties!) and basically suppresses any suspence in reading the stories: we know how the Kents will die, we know Lana’s future, we know everything!
So, in the end, one of the changes I liked most in Byrne’s tenure was deleting Superboy, unless… this was impossible to handle due to the enormous follow-up generated by the Legion introduction! I did not like how Superboy was dismissed after Crisis, as it totally makes no sense and basically denies the very Crisis outcomes and purpose, but I don’t think there would have been any better way to solve this. Probably Geoff Johns solution was the only viable one. Stories of a young Clark in Smallville were ok, just remove the costume and the name, reduce his powers and change the tone not to look as Superman stories but with teens (which “Smalville” TV show only initially did).
I also liked Byrne’s idea to make Clark feel as an earthling, although his kryptonian heritage was too easily dismissed and some adoption issues were basically handwaved (seriously, you discover to be adopted at 18 and just go “What? Oh, well…” oh, and yes, you are a freak from outer space, some more rhubarb pie, son?) But aside from that, Clark living with the ghosts of a past he never actually lived was a bit too much even for bronze-age authors, who in the end got rid of Kandor and rightfully so.
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