Its one of my fav runs by a Superman writer, where does it rank on your list?
Its one of my fav runs by a Superman writer, where does it rank on your list?
[QUOTE=tib2d2;4531019]Its one of my fav runs by a Superman writer, where does it rank on your list?[/QUOTE]
It ranks somewhere in the top 20. I loved some of his ideas and hated others. And a lot of his stuff was classic stories with a new paint job (Mxyzptlk, Lori Lemaris, Bizarro).
I'll give him credit (along with Wolfman) for creating a consistent Superman. You didn't get a lot of Superman struggling to do something in [I]Action[/I] that he did effortlessly in [I]Adventures[/I] or Characters having radically differing personalities from story to story. Even the stuff I disliked fit logically into his view of the character. So at the same time I might be cringing at what was happening I was still amazed at the skill he was using to make it fit a grand narrative.
I would rank John Byrne the Superman artist much higher than John Byrne the Superman writer. And I would rank their combined work on the SUPERMAN & BATMAN: GENERATIONS prestige comics well above their runs on the Superman floppies.
But given the long list of Superman writers that I love, John Byrne would come in very far down the list.
I dont think he's even on my favorites list at all.
Good reboot. An interesting new take on Superman that brought many compelling ideas to the table, I especially loved the addition of Ma and Pa Kent to the cast.
I think at the end I liked it better than the wildly inconsistent (and sometimes self-indulgent) Morrison reboot.
Ha, I have to do that counting fingers thing to figure it out. Going through the memorable writer runs.
I suppose I would just call it top 10. Byrne had a very impressive output in a short time, virtually writing and drawing up to three comics in a month. He ran for roughly two years and it would have been great if he did more.
The positives are the art, the consistency mentioned, his emphasis on Superman as a clever guy vs just really powerful, and the incredibly firm foundation he and Wolfman set down. We have had so many hard and soft reboots since and none of them have been as cohesive as what we had 30 years ago, warts and all. His storytelling style was geared toward smoothing rough patches and his Golden age and Adventures of Superman was so clear in his mind that he really didn't go back and forth on page. In conjunction with his own ideas, like removing the name backwards thing as a weakness for Mxy. The world building from Krypton to Metropolis SCU was excellent... the guy even wrote a whole four issues on just Smallville/Kent history. He successfully answered the challenge of making the world around Superman matter while making Superman a problem solver beyond just game breaking powers. He also has an underrated, weird sense of humor: he parodied the reboot itself with Brainiac and I still see people miss the gag today.
That sense of humor goes toward his biggest negatibe though: his extremely weird treatment of female characters. Okay I'll admit that I find Lana the loser kinda funny. But obviously, using Barda was terrible and an editor should have stepped in. Pretty much every woman was sexualized, to the point where other writers would come along and explain that Cat was drunk or something. Lex was his avatar for misogyny, and yeah he's a villain but it could be a little much. The reboot itself came with some challenges like setting the relevance level of what happened or making him work around some revisions. His ideas in some spots were different, like with the Legion, and though his regret now has a lot to do with hindsight it is worth acknowledging that at the time they were enough to make him jump ship. I'm sure he felt stretched at Millennium because that stunk, worst issues of his run after Sleez. I'm actually quite a huge fan of the Supergirl Saga though, where others might get polarized on the ending. It was a brilliantly told story and you could get a real sense of just how much he did (in collaboration or not) on groundbreaking stories like the Dark Phoenix saga.
Impact wise I think it might be the biggest of all time. Beyond selling well (I think Man of Steel #1 is still top 3 of all time single issue sales) then there are just so many things in particular that persist because of the run. Like... variant covers. Those things are only more aggressive than ever across the whole industry. Clark being seen as a man with great power instead of a man with great powers who sometimes goes by Clark is major. So is the vision of Lex he shared with Wolfman, those traits are probably never going away. Maggie Sawyer is a groundbreaking character who also won't be going away. We've seen some real classics born out of his mold and the baton pass to Stern and later writers made for all sorts of unrecognized achievements in storytelling, in an age where Superman was supposed to be left behind.
It's nowhere near my list.
They are some of the worst, most boring Superman comics I've ever read and established obnoxious trends that persist to this day. The character almost had Frank Miller in his prime (before he went crazy) to do his reboot, and he would have been far better off in the long run if it happened. Because if you compare this to Year One, it becomes obvious why Batman started to become DC's most popular character.
I think he did solid work with the character and created some really fun Superman comics, but he did some real damage to the franchise in the long run due to some of his more questionable retcons.
It's in my top 10. I wish he stayed longer like he did on FF and X-Men.
[QUOTE=SiegePerilous02;4531371]It's nowhere near my list.
They are some of the worst, most boring Superman comics I've ever read and established obnoxious trends that persist to this day. The character almost had Frank Miller in his prime (before he went crazy) to do his reboot, and he would have been far better off in the long run if it happened. Because if you compare this to Year One, it becomes obvious why Batman started to become DC's most popular character.[/QUOTE]
Hm, I never heard that. It always seemed like after he made his name on Daredevil he wasn't too interested in the monthly big two grind. Like he didn't stick with Batman or anything. He definitely wasn't gonna write and draw two books. Byrne put his bid in actually before crisis, when the Marvel buyout rumors hit. I know Alan Moore apparently came up without them really asking him, but it's tough to say how that would have turned out with editorial trying to collar him at some point. And also his Supreme run years later not being in the competitive ballpark with the real Superman, never mind toe to toe with X-Men, Batman, TMNT, etc.
It's kinda fortunate he left and set the stage for Stern and Ordway, but it would have been interesting if he made it to Carlin or Cavalieri as editors.
For me it's probably number one, but it could be for nostalgic reasons. I haven't actually read his run in decades.
[QUOTE=Kuwagaton;4531614]Hm, I never heard that. It always seemed like after he made his name on Daredevil he wasn't too interested in the monthly big two grind. Like he didn't stick with Batman or anything. He definitely wasn't gonna write and draw two books. Byrne put his bid in actually before crisis, when the Marvel buyout rumors hit. I know Alan Moore apparently came up without them really asking him, but it's tough to say how that would have turned out with editorial trying to collar him at some point. And also his Supreme run years later not being in the competitive ballpark with the real Superman, never mind toe to toe with X-Men, Batman, TMNT, etc.
It's kinda fortunate he left and set the stage for Stern and Ordway, but it would have been interesting if he made it to Carlin or Cavalieri as editors.[/QUOTE]
I don't think Miller's take ever left the early proposal stages, but it was one of three comics he pitched with Steve Gerber. Miller would do Batman, Gerber would do Wonder Woman, and the both of them would do Superman. I'm not sure if the three series' would end up any longer than what Year One ended up as but...quality over quantity. Year One is still held up to this day as a mature, well crafted evergreen graphic novel that didn't make too many sweeping changes, while Byrne's Superman is dated in many ways.
It's impossible to know for sure, but I think the Trinity would be on closer to equal footing now if that had happened. It's no wonder Batman is seen as more popular when he got the best written of the three reboots.
Byrne created a lot of great stuff that’s stood the test of time: Lex Luthor using his brains to become wealthy for example, or the “Clark first” interpretation. I really like his Lois Lane, and I LOVE Maggie Sawyer, she’s a great character. But there were also a lot of problems that showed up in the long run. Byrne Clark was too generic of a guy. He didn’t have the weirdness of the Silver Age, the “**** you” attitude of the Golden Age, or the intellectual bent of the Bronze Age. And to be fair to Byrne that’s what DC wanted, to make Superman “just a guy”, to make him “relatable”. And we got some great stuff from that, but we also lost a lot of personality and ideas that made Superman feel less to me. It must be said though that Byrne turned Superman’s sales around VERY well. Supes had 4 books in the 90s and two of them outsold Batman! That’s a marked contrast to our current condition lol!
[QUOTE=Kuwagaton;4531614]Hm, I never heard that. It always seemed like after he made his name on Daredevil he wasn't too interested in the monthly big two grind. Like he didn't stick with Batman or anything. He definitely wasn't gonna write and draw two books. Byrne put his bid in actually before crisis, when the Marvel buyout rumors hit. I know Alan Moore apparently came up without them really asking him, but it's tough to say how that would have turned out with editorial trying to collar him at some point. And also his Supreme run years later not being in the competitive ballpark with the real Superman, never mind toe to toe with X-Men, Batman, TMNT, etc.
It's kinda fortunate he left and set the stage for Stern and Ordway, but it would have been interesting if he made it to Carlin or Cavalieri as editors.[/QUOTE]
Both Miller and Moore had ideas for how to reboot Superman. Miller wanted to reboot the Trinity all by himself personally iirc. Might have been terrible but given the longevity of Batman: Year One and an at his prime Miller, we very well may have missed out on a classic.
[QUOTE=Ying Ko;4531652]For me it's probably number one, but it could be for nostalgic reasons. I haven't actually read his run in decades.[/QUOTE]
First time I read the Byrne run I absolutely loved it. Years later I reread it and I hated it. I’ve got so many other Superman stories to get through but I plan to reread it again since my local library has the entire run, and I want to see how I feel.
For me it is top 5. It was needed as much a the pre-Crisis Superman fans scream it wasn't. At the time Superman was such a stale dated property it needed a reboot to save it from itself. I had zero interest in Superman before Byrne rebooted because it was just so buried in bad silver age nonsense the character seemed hooky and dated.
Extremely low. I despise what the reboot did to Superman's mythos, I don't like his interpretation of the character of Superman and I honestly found his Superman work to be really uninteresting.