Superman's Pals

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I don't remember when it was, exactly, that I lost interest in Superman. there was a time, from Crisis on Infinite Earths until well into the 2Ks, that I had complete collections of every Superman title published (Superman, Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Man of Steel, etc.). I do know that I stopped buying Action Comics with #900, four issues before the title itself came to an end. There was a time, in 1986, when DC Comics wanted a new "Superman #1." But rather than cancelling the original series outright, they changed the title to Adventures of Superman with #424. Action Comics continued at that time with #584.

Then, in 2011, DC decided they wanted to revamp their entire line, including Action Comics. #904 was to be the last issue of the original run, but I decided to stop with an even 900. I say I "stopped," but actually I did continue to buy Action Comics and Superman for almost two years into the "New 52" era, but I was no longer interested in maintaining a set of sequentially numbered issues if DC itself wasn't. Except for those four issues of Action Comics, my "complete" run of Superman titles continued for some months to come. Action Comics continues, numbered in the 1000s today, but try finding issues #905-956. 

I know that I didn't bother buying Adventures of Superman when it returned (with a new #1) in 2013. I didn't buy an issue until #16, which featured multiple versions of Superman. I also happened to buy #17 because it featured a story by Jerry Ordway and Steve Rude, but that was it... for both me and the series as that was its final issue.

At that time, Captain comics was doing "Cancelled Comics Cavalcade," a post-mortem on all cancelled series. As much as fans complained about the redesign of Superman's costume (sans red trunks), Cap pointed out that the the then-recently-cancelled Adventures of Superman series featured the classic version and nobody bought it. I didn't even know it! and by that time it was too late. Last week, the Superman Red & Blue series, a favorite of mine, came to an end with its sixth issue. I really enjoyed those out-of-continuity tales, so now I'm contemplating buying Adventures of Superman (2013) #1-15 in hope of reading more of the same. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

GRANT MORRISON SUPERMAN: I have now read through #14. There are some series that are too complex to easily follow on a month-to-month basis. In such cases, if I'm enjoying it otherwise, I'll set it aside to return to later. Grant Morrison's Action Comics was like that for me... I thought. Reading through it in a span of several days I realize it really is a kind of mish-mash of story concepts and other ideas that's difficult to follow.

I say "Grant Morrison's" Superman, but writers Sholly Fisch and Max Landis had a hand in it as well. the "main" artist is, I suppose, Rags Morales, but many other artists (including Andy Kubert and Brad Walker) contributed, too. Ultimately, I blame original series editor Matt Idleson so the series incoherence. The story is distinctly non-linear, largely told via flashbacks and back-up features, as I mentioned in my previous post. It might have helped if the collected edition had been arranged in chronological order, but I doubt it, due to the art of "D. Hands."

When the post-Flashpoint DCU (a.k.a. "New 52) was launched, Action Comics and (I think) Justice League of America were set five years prior to the "present" of the rest of the line. Action Comics started out with Superman clad in jeans and a t-shirt, but in JLA, he was wearing his new "trunkless" costume (a stupid idea I need not go into here). Initially, I was curious to see this change come about but, when it happened, not much was said about it. Then he would alternate back and forth between outfits with no rhyme, reason or explanation.

There were two developments in these six issues that I do approve of. First, the Phantom Stranger's origin is revised as to make him a "stranger" who was inadvertently caught in the Phantom Zone. That may sound like a typical "neat idea," but Morrison manages to pull it off. (Also, Krypto arrives on Earth via the Phantom Zone, not space.) The second is that Krypton's sun, Rao, is identified as an actual exploded star, LHS 2520, some 27 light years away from Sol. Previously (post-Crisis) Rao had been established as being 50 light years away, but no actual star had been identified. Even if you didn't read "Star Light, Star Bright" from Action Comics #14, you may recall news coverage of the story as LHS 2520 was chosen by Neil DeGrasse-Tyson, who also made an appearance in the story.

I have four issues of Morrison's arc yet to read, but I think a better, more coherent collection would have been just the stories written by Morrison and drawn by Morales. If anyone else reading this has a differing opinion (or any opinion at all) about Action Comics (2011) #1-18 (plus #0 and Annual #1), I'd like to hear it.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

ACTION COMICS (2011) #15-18: I have now finished the Grant Morrison run. Now that I'm finished with it, I can (kind of) see where he was going with it... but don't ask me to explain it! It deals with a Fifth Dimensional imp (but probably not the one you're thinking of) and his simultaneous attacks on Superman in different periods of his life. As Superman himself explains it: "It's... well, it's a long story. Let's just say that something's going to happen years from now. Something that will mix the past and the present together for a while." Let's just leave it at that.

One other little "neat idea" Grant Morrison (or perhaps Rags Morales) added to the mythos is that Clark Kent wears big, round "Harry Potter" style glasses with thick lenses that distort his face. making his eyes appear bigger than they are and helping with his disguise. 

I can't really recommend this run because I'm not all that thrilled with it myself; it's confusing and difficult to follow. Maybe an issue or two here or there. That's the way it is with me and Grant Morrison's comics: either I really like them or I'm indifferent. 

[Jeff of Earth-J]

ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN: GEORGE PEREZ

After reading Grant Morrison's post-Flashpoint "New 52" Action Comics, I had the desire to reread George Perez's "new 52" Superman for the first time since its initial publication. But Action Comics #1-18(+) was something os a mishmash (see above), so I had the desire to read something that would cleanse my mental palate first. Luckily, there is one collection that will accomplish both objectives: Adventures of Superman: George Perez. 

DC COMICS PRESENTS #61: This pre-Crisis (1983) tale of Superman and a time-travelling OMAC actually "reads" better as part of an OMAC reread than a Superman one.

ACTION COMICS ANNUAL #2: Similarly, this story takes place in the midst of Superman's self-exile to outer space and reads better within the context of the Superman: The Exile and Other Stories omnibus. 

ACTION COMICS #643-652: Immediately following Crisis on Infinite Earths, each of the "Superman" titles served its own function in the post-Crisis DCU: Superman focused on the hero; Adventures of Superman focused on the more personal aspect of Clark Kent's life and the Daily Planet staff; and Action Comics became a "team-up" book. The three series complemented each other, but were standalone; any one series could be read without having read either of the others. 

Immediately after reaching the milestone 600th issue, Action Comics became a weekly anthology series retitled Action Comics Weekly, which ran through #642. The Superman feature was a double-page center spread, drawn by Curt swab, and emulated a Sunday newspaper strip. That story was removed from the continuity of the other two series in which Superman exiled himself to outer space following the execution of three Kryptonian criminals. (No threadjacks, please!) 

By Action Comics #643, his exile was over, the series reverted to monthly status, and George Perez took over. This was before the days when Man of Steel was added to the lineup and "Superman" essentially a weekly title. Things that happened in the other series were sometimes mentioned in the Action Comics of this time, but the storylines were still more-or-less self-contained. Those reading any one of the series would get the impression that there was more to Superman's life, but those reading all three of the series would get the bigger picture. 

NOTE: The aforementioned The Exile and Other Stories omnibus presents Action Comics #643-646 in conjunction with Superman #34-37 and Adventures of Superman #457-460 in the order they were published. 

Action Comics #647-649 presented the three-part "Brainiac Trilogy." #650 was a "48 Page 650th Issue Extravaganza Brought To You By The Entire Superman team!" Immediately following that, "The Day of the Krypton Man" began the tight continuity between series the Superman titles would be known for for years to come, with Action Comics #651 and #652 presenting chapters three and six of the overall story. One definitely gets the impression of missing something reading just those two chapters, but because #652 is the final chapter, it is acceptable in an "all-Perez" format.

And that brings us to George Perez's Superman (2011) #1-6.

[Captain Comics]

What an interesting conversation.

Y'all are mainly talking about the last 30 years of Superman, which is the most pertinent. Of course. And that is the thing that needs to be discussed (and fixed). Much of it is new to me, since I don't buy/read comprehensively any more. (And my DC continuity enthusiasm, already waning, was given the coup de grace by New 52.)

And some of it resonates, especially the part where it seems like Superman is just Batman's back-up.

Well, that actually makes sense in the long run. Because Batman outsells Superman. When it was the reverse, Batman was Superman's back-up.

And, oh, I remember those days.

My formative take on Superman was in the '60s. And, yes, modern audiences aren't down with the Silver Age Superman. But at the time, baby, that was the stuff.

I don't know if was the times, or the way the characters were handled. Probably both.

But take Batman in the late '50s and most of the '60s. He was terrible. First he was involved in silly stories that almost got him canceled. And when he was revamped by Julius Schwarz ... well, don't tell the Commander, but I thought they exchanged "silly" for "boring." The plots were needlessly arcane and the artwork pedestrian. (Does anyone really think Joe Giella is an exciting artist?) The young Captain plodded through Batman and Detective with horror in the late '50s stuff he read in reprint, and with boredom in the "New Look." (Does anyone really think "Getaway Mastermind" is a good villain?)

Meanwhile, there was Superman.

Some of what made him great to the Li'l Capn is specifically because he appealed to children. His powers were on/off, black/white -- and kids love organic, natural rules that nobody can break (especially adults). He was the perfect patriarch, who was kind, just, all-knowing -- the one we all wished our father would be. And, yes, Superman could always "find another way," although that was not a phrase that was ever used. He just could.

Man, is that ever reassuring to a child.

But he was also the guy whose universe kept expanding by leaps and bounds seemingly every month. Just like Batman, Superman was silly in 1956 or 1957. But he stopped being silly and started being exciting in 1958. (Meanwhile, as noted, Batman remained silly until 1963, whereupon he became dull. Batman didn't become interesting until Neal Adams got hold of him in 1970.)

I loved the Silver Age Superman for his orderly take on the world where everything was kind, everything was getting better, and children had nothing to be afraid of. Yes, he appealed to kids. Given.

But the Silver Age Superman also gave me sensawunda. You start with a guy with some super-powers, who lives in New York Metropolis, with his friends and enemies. But before you know it, you have:

• Brainiac, and all kinds of shrunken alien worlds to explore
• Krypto
• Bottle City of Kandor
• Supergirl
• Time travel
• Phantom Zone
• Varieties of kryptonite
• Fortress of Solitude
• Legion of Super-Heroes

And so much more. Every month seemed to expand the "Super-Family" and Superman's world. I fell into that world and loved it.

And I didn't believe World's Finest very much -- how useful could Batman be to Superman, really? -- and I don't think the writers felt any different. If you read Silver Age World's Finest, by and large all the stories center around the Superman universe, and the Superman supporting characters. Sure, Robin was always there, but I'm hard-pressed to think of more than a couple of stories that had Commissioner Gordon in them, or were set in Gotham. World's Finest was a Superman book, and Batman was the back-up.

And when I came back to DC Comics in 1970 -- after a four-year hiatus -- the most interesting books to me were the Super-books. I liked this new Neal Adams guy on Batman/Detective, sure. But there was Curt Swan and George Klein on Action/Superman, better than ever. And wow, the stories! Lots of sensawunda!

Well, until Denny O'Neil got hold of the Superman/Action. O'Neil, famously, did not like writing super-powered characters, and just like he did in Justice League of America, he proceeded to write out the part of superhero comics I liked most: super-powers. And after "Sandman Superman" and Terra-Man and other stupid stuff, Superman -- just like Batman before him -- got boring.

And I don't think he ever recovered.

[Luis Olavo de Moura Dantas]

Personally I liked the Martin Pasko stories circa 1977 and at least some of the Cary Bates stories of the same general time frame.  The Faora stories were particularly good.

I suppose it is hard to write stories with both Superman and Batman that do not end up contrasting their effectiveness and appeal. Avoiding some form of clear dominance is all but impossible when the basic concepts are so different from each other.

But I never bought the idea that Superman was boring because he was so exotic and supposedly overpowered.  His power levels just mean that the stories will be of a different (and more unusual) kind than those of street-level characters such as the Batman of until 1985 or so.  And having lots of colorful connections, abilities and items just makes the possible stories that much more varied.

A good example is one of my earliest Superman reads. Action Comics #452, cover-dated October 1975, has a striking cover with a man insisting that Superman must hit him even if it proves fatal.

Inside, we learn that this is Rick Lawrence, who was given a slightly specific variant of the Adaptoid / Amazo powers.  He acquires the speed, fighting skills and strength of the opponents that he faces, albeit not nearly quickly enough to win the first fight.  Significantly, there is a very early hint that his self-confidence and emotional resilience may be boosted as well.  After early (short) scuffles with a professional boxer and Wonder Woman, he goes after Superman at a time when he is emotionally vulnerable.  Eventually we have Superman with a renewed emotional state fighting against a Rick Lawrence that has acquired his abilities from the earlier fight.  Superman wins and, in no more than two panels without even a glimpse from inside the bottle, we learn that he decided that Lawrence should be kept in Kandor until the inhabitants can find a way to reverse the process.

It is a great story because it shows that Superman can be emotionally fragile as anyone else, while carefully balancing his connections to a wider exotic world.  He is established to exist in the same world as Wonder Woman, and also mentions matter-of-factly, very casually, that a whole bottle of minuscle Kryptonians without active powers exists and is in good terms with him.

It is a wise use of narrative focus, hinting of exciting other environments for stories while also keeping to the Superman-specific heroics and the shenanigans of WGBS and his civilian life.   Superman _can_ be in outer space, Justice League team-ups and high fantasy sci-fi environments... but this story is not about any of those.  It is rather about a Superman who is both human and superhuman and values both sides of his existence.

[ClarkKent_DC]

I concur with a lot of this. I also lost interest in Superman gradually, and for many of the same reasons.

I for one do NOT subscribe to the notion that "Superman is too powerful a character to write for." Writers from the 1930s to the 1980s accomplished that in entertaining tales just fine. I take any comics creator who says that as admitting he isn't talented enough to do the job, and I wish he would step aside for someone who is. (Once, Vertigo published a graphic novel whose entire premise is that some writer was given the assignment to write Superman and couldn't figure out how. ) And to my mind, any reader who says "Superman is too powerful a character to write for" hasn't read enough good Superman stories and is swallowing the hype from the writers who write bad Superman stories.

Around the time John Byrne was hired to reboot Superman -- and let us not forget, DC hired him for that task, and if it wasn't him it would have been someone else -- the books were moribund and needed a shot in the arm. I didn't then think they needed a wholesale reboot, just some shaking up. One thing that made things stale, and this is akin to blasphemy to say so but I'll say it here, was having Curt Swan on the books for too long. The simple move of putting Gil Kane on Action Comics for a stretch got me excited about the title again. Unfortunately, Kane was matched with Marv Wolfman, who subscribes to the "Superman is too powerful a character to write for" nonsense.

But the reboot was launched. There are various pros and cons from the results, many of which have been chewed over at length over the years. One of my favorites was keeping the Kents alive into Superman's adulthood. One of the worst -- and nobody seems to cite this -- was depowering Superman so that he can't travel into space under his own power. That wiped out innumerable story possibilities because it made him Earthbound. Just like the Silver Surfer is uninteresting when he's stuck on Earth moping about not being able to travel the stars, Superman was made less interesting when he was similarly hobbled.

And I wholly agree with Luis that the bad characterization of Batman from The Dark Knight Returns was allowed to damage Superman as well. Too many of DC's writers and artists forget The Dark Knight Returns was set 30 years in the future and featured a Batman embittered by what transpired during those years, and they made the mistake of applying that characterization to the Batman in contemporary times, to ill effect. And, again, too many writers take The Dark Knight Returns as the template for writing Superman, ignoring that they were at odds for the needs of THAT story, not that they are and should naturally always be fighting with each other.

Luis Olavo de Moura Dantas said:

I lost interest in Superman fairly gradually between 1986 and 2001.   Not because he was too powerful, but because he had become too mundane and unremarkable.

A part of it is that the John Byrne reboot did not really suit my particular tastes.  It jettisonned nearly all of the Kryptonian aspects of Superman, rebuilt him as an often naive and hesitant character, and seemed to go out of its way to make him be defined by his relationships to Luthor and Batman.

There is also DC itself.  The 1990s were not kind to DC's editorial directions.  DC weathered the insanity a bit better than most other comics publishers, but it still ended up making a lot of short-term, short-sighted decisions, many of which affected Superman directly. 

It was at this time that the current trend of writing for the events fully asserted itself, and Superman increasingly came to feel like he was reacting passively to those events without much of a clue or significant, non-bureaucratic role on them.  It did not help that his role very often was to back up Batman and thereby reinforce the perception that Batman was the prime character of DC, while Superman was allowed to tag along because he might turn out to be useful at some point.  This was the height of popularity of the Frank Miller Dark Night take on Batman, which I found distractive and unappealling.

By 2001 Superman was being drawn in a manga-inspired style that reminds me of the super deformed style.  When I saw him in a cover of Our Worlds At War I wasn't even sure if the comical effect was unintentional.  He seemed to be attempting to punch Imperiex at an odd angle and failing to aim the punch at all properly.  Imperiex himself, despite being the main concern of a wide ranging event, looked more than a bit comical himself, with an appearance worthy of Teen Titans Go, not a non-satirical issue of a core Superman book.

Superman is a great character.  But not when he has to be constrained by editorial into assuring White Martians that Batman totally is more dangerous than himself and more generally being treated as an afterthought of the event of the day.  He is indeed too powerful to be interesting in the roles that are usual for street level characters such as Batman or Green Arrow.  He works best as a cosmic level character that also has a well developed human side and therefore keeps navigating back and forth between the two worlds.  For too long a time he was instead a prime example of the Worf Effect - a character that is supposed to be impressive and consequential, but in practice is knocked down early on to quickly establish that the opponents should be feared and leave the spotlight vacant for others to shine on.

[Captain Comics]

I pretty much agree with all you've said, CK, even the part about Curt Swan. By the time he left, Superman's glory days were long gone, and the Super-stories being told in the mid-1980s didn't suit him well. Maybe no modern stories would have suited him; he was from another era. I don't know.

And I remember the GN you're referring to: It's a Bird ..., by Steven T. Seagle. I remember reading that and regretting the money I spent. "What self-indulgent tripe!" I probably muttered, especially since I think as you do, that there are no bad characters, just bad writers.

And you're right again that few point out the horror of a Superman post-Crisis who couldn't fly through space, when it is obviously a terrible idea. How limiting! But then, this is the same publisher that closed off a thousand, thousand potential stories by collapsing the multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths. I thought then, and think now, that the whole exercise betrayed a lack of nerve, ability and ambition by the DC powers that be (or were).

And oy, I am so sick of Dark Knight Returns riffs. What made Miller's story so striking in the mid-1980s was how unthinkable it was for the World's Finest team to come to blows for real. They had to act out of character for the story to work. That's not repeatable, modern-day writers, but you keep doing it anyway.

But the rest of your post take me back to my original point, that when they started to limit Superman instead of expand him in the early '70s ("Sand Superman" and whatnot), they started to kill interest in the character. What made the Silver Age Super-books so exciting, what makes any book exciting, is the sense that anything could happen, the feeling that everything is getting bigger and more complicated and more colorful. When you put that into reverse, as they did with Superman, you have a franchise in decline that no one is much interested in.

[Jeff of Earth-J]

I started this thread with the intention of discussing Adventures of Superman (2013) #1-17, but it has morphed into something else. I do still intend to get to that run, but I now have ten or so other "pals"  to get through first (some pre- and some post-Crisis), with more occurring to me all the time as I read the responses. Keep an eye on the changing title for the day's discussion.

SUPERMAN'S PAL, MICHAEL FLEISCHER

I have been thinking about Michael Fleisher quite a bit recently. In the early '70s, he wrote three "encyclopedias," one each for superman, Batman and Wonder Woman. In 2007 they were reprinted and I am certain I bought them all, but I can't for the life of me find them. ("If you can't find them, you don't own own them" I hear someone say.) 

"Modern audiences aren't down with the Silver Age Superman. But at the time, baby, that was the stuff."

I agree, but that's the era I am largely denied due to DC's failure to reprint that era in a comprehensive format (such as a Silver Age Superman Omnibus series). It occurs to me that DC will never again have a Superman mythos as consistent and complete due to their need need to constantly redefine the character. John Byrne's Man of Steel reboot lasted the longest, but since then we've had Mark Waid's Birthright,  Geoff Johns' Secret Origin, Frank Miller's Superman: Year One, American Alien, and probably several others I'm not thinking of off the top of my head. 

The only thing these diverse retellings have in common is that each one contradicts the other. Pre-Crisis, Superman had a career as Superboy; post-Crisis he didn't. No, wait, yes he did. No he didn't. Yes he did. The Legion of super-Heroes was inspired by Superman's career as Superboy. No, it was a "pocket universe" version of Superboy. No, it was Supergirl. No, it was  Superman's son. Back in the Silver Age, "common knowledge" had it that comic book readership turned over ever four or five years. I don't think that was true then, but I do think it's true now. 

Every new readership, it seems, must have its own version of Superman (and Marvel is even worse, restarting a series with a "new number one" at the drop of a hat). Flashpoint/"New 52" turned me off from the DCU completely just as the original Crisis on Infinite Earths turned off certain older readers 35 years ago. I don't think "New 52" is even in continuity anymore, but then again, I wouldn't really know. I did follow post "Rebirth" Superman and flash for a time, as the post-Flashpoint versions of those characters "carried over" into the new universe, but I don't that's in continuity anymore, either.

There is a certain class of fan (mostly younger, excuse me) who object to Superman's red trunks as "wearing his underwear outside his pants." It is that generation who made the decision to alter the classic costume, dropping the trunks, in the new universe. When Brian Michael Bendis took over, he brought the red trunks back (for whatever reason), but the way he did it speaks to the total absence of the Michael Fleisher-style continuity. 

In BMB's very first issue, a bystander (unknowingly seeing the "original Superman, who replaced the deceased "New 52" version for the first time) remarked, "He's back in his red trunks!" Giving BMB the benefit of the doubt, I at first dismissed that as a metatextual remark because the Superman of this new universe had never worn red trunks. BMB certainly knew that. If he didn't, his editors should have. that they knowingly allowed that remark to pass sends a clear message: "DC Comics is no longer a slave to continuity" (or, as I interpret it, "Continuity no longer exists"). If, OTOH, they didn't know that the Superman of this universe never wore red trunks, that's even worse. 

[Philip Portelli]

Two of my more vivid childhood memories were my aunt taking me (and me alone as I have three brothers) to see SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE and cajoling my mother to buy me The Great Superman Book aka Michael Fleisher's Encyclopedia of Comic Book Heroes Volume 3: Superman which I still have though it's in very rough shape!

I always bought the SUPERMAN titles fairly regularly though I must admit that I enjoyed Action Comics' multitude of back-up features greatly. World's Finest  was different to me as it always felt separate from the rest of the line but still great with those 100 Pagers, added co-stars and an amazing Dollar Comics run.

To me Curt Swan was one of the best things about the Silver Age Superman and was still a force in the Bronze provided he was paired with the right inker. He also made his artwork more action-packed though his aliens and monsters were still mired in the 1950s! Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez was supposed to replace Swan on Superman, I believe but his time was split with doing DC Comics Presents, special projects and numerous covers!

Perhaps the biggest change that Superman needed in the 70s/80s (and this is just as blasphemous) was to replace Julius Schwartz as editor of all the Super-titles! From what I gathered, he allowed his writers a lot of liberties, never cultivated new artists, repeated previous storylines and crippled the mid-80s Action Comics by returning to short stories. 

[ClarkKent_DC]

Jeff of Earth-J said:

There is a certain class of fan (mostly younger, excuse me) who object to Superman's red trunks as "wearing his underwear outside his pants." It is that generation who made the decision to alter the classic costume, dropping the trunks, in the new universe. When Brian Michael Bendis took over, he brought the red trunks back (for whatever reason), but the way he did it speaks to the total absence of the Michael Fleisher-style continuity. 

In BMB's very first issue, a bystander (unknowingly seeing the "original Superman, who replaced the deceased "New 52" version for the first time) remarked, "He's back in his red trunks!" Giving BMB the benefit of the doubt, I at first dismissed that as a metatextual remark because the Superman of this new universe had never worn red trunks. BMB certainly knew that. If he didn't, his editors should have. that they knowingly allowed that remark to pass sends a clear message: "DC Comics is no longer a slave to continuity" (or, as I interpret it, "Continuity no longer exists"). If, OTOH, they didn't know that the Superman of this universe never wore red trunks, that's even worse. 

Dropping the red trunks was fixing something that wasn't broke.

[Randy Jackson]

One thing we can definitely agree on.

ClarkKent_DC said:

Dropping the red trunks was fixing something that wasn't broke.

[JD DeLuzio]

"Dropping the Red Trunks" sounds like some kind of Superman Rule 34 thing.