SUPERMAN #1

One thing I really like about a good reimagining of existing characters is when a writer figures out a new use for an old power set.  Here, Superman figures out he can CSI the scene later if he brings it out into space.  This also reminds me of the several times John Byrne lifted cities in the pages of Fantastic Four…

But here, in Man of Steel, Byrne explained how the soil didn’t collapse–how it could actually be possible to make this happen.  I love that.  And he does it twice in this issue.  When he introduces Metallo, he explains for the first time (at least to my knowledge) how Kryptonite actually works…

MAN OF STEEL #5

Bizarro in the John Byrne world isn’t nearly as much fun.  He’s actually a complex bacteria.

MAN OF STEEL #4

Yeah, John Byrne’s initial depiction of Lex Luthor looks like Gene Hackman.  He’s bald by the time Byrne starts writing both Superman and Action, though.

MAN OF STEEL #3

This was a ballsy move, turning Batman into a creepy a$$hole.  This was the Batman of Frank Miller, not the Batman of the 1980s, when this book premiered.

MAN OF STEEL #2

Lots of “big” drama in the Man of Steel mini.  It reads like a Richard Donner movie.  But that kind of tone is perfect for a Superman book.

MAN OF STEEL #1

Both my studies of Avengers and Fantastic Four are stuck in mid-1990s hell. I need some very good classic comics to read. And I think I want to look at a DC book, since I’m doing two Marvel ones. But Superman and Batman are both pretty bad for very long stretches…And I don’t own them. So, what to do?

Enter this wizard collection, available for about twelve bucks per volume at Amazon: The Complete John Byrne Superman. At a time when Superman had gotten stale, and far too powerful, DC realized they needed a reboot.

Other than a great, phonebook-sized collection of Golden Age Superman books, my exposure to Superman was either in the pages of JLA or Christopher Reeve’s version. This was the first Superman comic I bought religiously–and it was mostly because Byrne was my favorite writer/artist at the time. He’s still in my top 10.

He started with “Man of Steel,” a six-issue mini that “reintroduced” the character after Marv Wolfman “collapsed” the DCU in Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It retold the origin and early years, but it wasn’t a full reboot.  It was more of a tweak.

I loved these books when they came out. Let’s see how they stand up.