How would YOU have rebooted Superman in 1986?

[Dispenser Of Truth]

I'd have avoided a break with continuity altogether (other than maybe getting rid of his Superboy days if you could somehow get away with it) and just utilized the housecleaning Steve Gerber offered in the last issue of DC Presents - Kandor, the Phantom Zone, Bizarro, and Mxyzptlk are off the table, so there goes all the 'silly' stuff DC would have wanted rid of along with Supergirl, but the Zone and Mxy at least would have been easily retrievable, and you can always make more Bizarros. And since Metropolis was inundated with Kryptonite, you could have told stories of a powered-down Superman on his home turf (until that status quo inevitably one day ended), while still able to do big cosmic Superman stories elsewhere.

[bat39]

Its a little hard to imagine how Superman would have been reinvented in a world where nobody read Byrne's 'Man of Steel' miniseries, and any of the later stuff, but I'll try.

I'd do a mini-series ala 'Batman Year One', set in the past of the Post-COIE DCU and revamping the start of Superman's career.

The narrative would begin with Clark's first day in Metropolis, as he begins his job in Metropolis and makes his first public appearance as Superman, and over the course of six issues would cover the first year or so of Superman's career, and how he changes the world.

The series would have a bit of a Golden Age vibe to it. Superman's suit would be straight out of the Fleischer cartoons. He will initially only be able to leap huge distances but gradually develops his flying ability. His powers would be limited but gradually evolve over the course of the series the more experienced he gets in using them in active situations. And many of his initial missions would involve fighting gangsters and tackling street crime, and protecting vulnerable communities - and he gradually starts to win the trust of the authorities, particularly Inspector Henderson. As Clark Kent, he works for the Daily Planet alongside Lois Lane. His persona as Clark will be akin to the George Reeves TV show - he's a tough, assertive guy and being 'mild-mannered' is more about him being subtle about it rather than acting like a weakling. While Lois chases after the Superman story, he spends a lot more time following up on stories of the common man - which is what leads him to investigate LexCorp and Lex Luthor.

Ultra-Humanite would be an early foe, as would Bizarro and Metallo, who are both 'created' by Luthor. By the end of the series, Luthor's nefarious schemes would be exposed, LexCorp would be bankrupt, and we see him taking the first steps towards becoming a super-villain.

As far as Superman's backstory goes, every issue would have a flashback to a relevant part of Superman's past. Clark arrives on earth in a rocket and is found by the Kents. He starts developing his powers gradually from when he's around the age of 5. When he's around 15, Jonathan and Martha show him the rocket and he finds a tablet with the 'S' symbol on it that is Jor-El and Lara's message about his Kryptonian heritage. Clark also uses his powers secretely to help people, in an earlier version of the suit - which Martha designed using materials from the ship - but he never has a public 'Superboy' career. It will later be revealed that the LOSH traveled back in time to meet him and in the future he worked alongside them as an honorary member as Superboy, but his memories of those times were wiped. Lex Luthor would have no connection to Smallville at all. Also, Jonathan Kent died when Clark was 18, while Martha is still alive.

Following this six-issue mini, the regular title would maybe devote an issue to giving a 'broad strokes' of Superman's history from then to now. Most of the Silver Age and Bronze Age stuff will stay, unless it contradicts what's established in the mini - kind of like how continuity was handled with Batman. I'd keep Supergirl in canon, along with her death during the Crisis. Kandor and the Phantom Zone all exist but are no longer in play for the time being. Krypton would be a revamped version of the classic Pre-COIE take, with maybe elements of the Movie folded in.

[superduperman]

The more time that goes by, the more I come to realize how pointless and unnecessary the reboot was.

This is where I am. But one of the things we need to keep in mind is that, in the short term, DC was suffering severe sales losses. Some kind of huge gimmick was needed to boost sales. And most people hated all the goofy stuff that got attached to him during the SA. Now, obviously they've gotten over most of that but in the mid-eighties, people were sick of Krypto and Kandor and Superbaby and maybe even Superboy. Part of this might have been the Donner movies. Part of this was we were twenty years out from Marvel doing "realistic" super-heroes and that became the norm. I personally think that Byrne went too far with the undoing the SA. But I am of the opinion, and I think this has become the general consensus, that COIE created more problems than it solved.

[manofsteel1979]

What was odd about MOS86 was that Byrne built in big gaps in between issues 3,4,5 &6 that supposedly added wiggle room for bits and pieces of the Pre-Crisis history to have happened, but given what Byrne layed down in issues 1&2, there's no way 70 percenet of that stuff could have happened. So it was ultimately pointless.

Also what rankled me is that with Byrne's original timeline, MOS 2-6 covers about a decade of time and Supes was a veteran Superhero, but he only started facing his rogues gallery with SUPERMAN #1. This had the unfortunate effect of a Superman who probably only fought Lexcorp goons and gangsters and common criminals for his first decade while his contemporaries like Bruce, Barry , Wally and Hal had already faced their own classic rogues many times over and ostensibly had most of their pre 1986 adventures whilst Superman didn't. That automatically pretty much made Kal a step lower than his peers in terms of experience and history.

Later on as the 90s progressed and the triangle teams massaged and rectconed that and had the events of MOS happen all at the start of Supes career and lined Supes history up closer to his contemporaries, but it hurt the character's place in the DCU for years IMO.

I can understand the appeal of reintroducing the rogues gallery, but the way to do it was just have the events of Crisis and its fall out cause a second genesis of sorts of the villans. With Lex publically reforming but privately still a bad guy, you could have easily had Lexcorp bankrolling the revamp of some of the villains. Metallo for instance. Brainiac could have still been reinvented as Fine, bur have it so the original Brainiac's consciousness takes over Milton's Brain and slowly evolves him into the Post COIE Brainiac from Panic in the Sky. Toyman and Prankster could have been hired by a resurgent intergang. There were so many ways to revamp the villains and refresh them without inadvertently making Supeeman a quasi rookie.

[superduperman]

I am of the opinion that the reboot just wasn't thought out very far. They wanted a more realistic Superman and didn't think out the consequences very much. So you end up with problems with the Legion and everyone else's timeline as a result. This is why I liked New 52, I think it tried a little harder to be the clean sweep that COIE was supposed to be. It still ran into some mistakes but most of the missteps were more bad creative decisions rather than continuity problems.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

What was odd about MOS86 was that Byrne built in big gaps in between issues 3,4,5 &6 that supposedly added wiggle room for bits and pieces of the Pre-Crisis history to have happened, but given what Byrne layed down in issues 1&2, there's no way 70 percenet of that stuff could have happened. So it was ultimately pointless.

I remember him talking about that in an introduction to MOS one time, and his reasoning was exactly as weird and blunt and Byrne as you'd expect, something along the lines of 'in the interest of inclusiveness I left enough space that if you really desperately wanted to believe Comet the Superhorse* had been around you could, but I wanted to make it as clear as possible that you were kidding yourself.'

* This is paraphrasing, but I think that actually was the example he used.

[Sacred Knight]

I still would have been intrigued as hell to see what Moore could do. Hell I think Byrne's stuff was in many was a deconstructing of the classic Superman in of itself anyway. So that wasn't avoided in my eyes. At the very least had Moore been given the job, if it was deconstructing in nature in his own way, it still probably would have ended up better because all-around he was a better writer.

But, to go back to the hypothetical of what I would do. I'd dump the whole birthing matrix thing just for the goofy idea of having him essentiall born on Earth. That was stupid. If I were told to do something different with the origin in that vein, I would have used the idea of Lara making the trip with Kal-El. She's badly wounded in the death throes of Krypton, but Jor-El tends to those wounds the best he can in the brief time he has and still tearfully sends her and his son away. His treatment allows Lara to make the trip, but her wounds were ultimately mortal anyway, and she dies after getting to meet the Kents briefly. They bury her on the farm, in an inconspicuous place as to not draw attention, but at the same time its something they secretly honor with upkeep and the like. When Clark is old enough to learn the truth, and the AI teaches him some things of Krypton, he also is finally made privy to his birth mother's grave where he and Ma and Pa hold a little ceremony, a funeral she never got to have mixed in with a few things Clark had learned about Kryptonian culture.

There would be no change to the way his powers grew in the pre-Crisis outside of the erasure of the more camp "Superbaby" stuff. He had augmented strength from the get-go though. The Superboy stuff is all canon, with the addendum that he wouldn't wear an incarnation of the Superman suit in such adventures. Again in an attempt to cut out some of the camp factor that was a thing in crafting the reboot in the 80s.

That's just a couple ideas (though the Lara thing isn't MY idea, I think that had actually floated around the offices at the time).

[manofsteel1979]

I am of the opinion that the reboot just wasn't thought out very far. They wanted a more realistic Superman and didn't think out the consequences very much. So you end up with problems with the Legion and everyone else's timeline as a result. This is why I liked New 52, I think it tried a little harder to be the clean sweep that COIE was supposed to be. It still ran into some mistakes but most of the missteps were more bad creative decisions rather than continuity problems.

I still think both were massively flawed. The new 52 was a bit of a cleaner break but still was too selective about what stayed and what went in terms of the shared universe.

I prefer you don't reboot, but if you do, especially with a shared universe, EVERYTHING needs to be given the same treatment. No soft reboot for one character and a hard for another. If the people spearheading the New 52 had the balls to take everything and every character back to square one then it might have worked, but they wanted their cake and eat it too by dumping most of the universe overboard but doing everything in their power to protect their pet franchises as of 2011 ( namely Batman and Green Lantern) from the reboot as much as possible.

I'm all for doing refreshes and retoolings and prunings of characters and franchises, and there's no doubt Superman needed it in both 1986 and 2011, but it was too selective and extensive both times it was done and it ultimately just muddled things more than it needed to.

[astro@work]

Overall, I would have mostly stuck with what Byrne did (with a couple exceptions):
-Made Krypton more scientific and alien
-Eliminated Superboy career (too contrived) and by default his Legion connection
-Let the Kents live into old age
-Maintained Lois, Perry, Jimmy, Lana & the Kents as a supporting cast
-Powered him down a bit from the pre-COIE omnipotent levels

Where I would have made one change, it would have been to loosen up the rule about Clark being the ONLY survivor of Krypton. This led to far too many convoluted ways of getting around the obtuse rule (pocket dimension versions, etc).

I would have allowed in Supergirl and the Phantom Zone villains as other survivors, while eliminating all the other litany of Silver Age survivors.
(There was a point in the silver age where it seemed like ONLY Jor-El and Lara had gone down with Krypton). I would have re-introduced Kara as brand new to Earth (to make it clear she wasn't resurrected from her Crisis death) and gone from there.

[bat39]

What was odd about MOS86 was that Byrne built in big gaps in between issues 3,4,5 &6 that supposedly added wiggle room for bits and pieces of the Pre-Crisis history to have happened, but given what Byrne layed down in issues 1&2, there's no way 70 percenet of that stuff could have happened. So it was ultimately pointless.

Also what rankled me is that with Byrne's original timeline, MOS 2-6 covers about a decade of time and Supes was a veteran Superhero, but he only started facing his rogues gallery with SUPERMAN #1. This had the unfortunate effect of a Superman who probably only fought Lexcorp goons and gangsters and common criminals for his first decade while his contemporaries like Bruce, Barry , Wally and Hal had already faced their own classic rogues many times over and ostensibly had most of their pre 1986 adventures whilst Superman didn't. That automatically pretty much made Kal a step lower than his peers in terms of experience and history.

Later on as the 90s progressed and the triangle teams massaged and rectconed that and had the events of MOS happen all at the start of Supes career and lined Supes history up closer to his contemporaries, but it hurt the character's place in the DCU for years IMO.

I can understand the appeal of reintroducing the rogues gallery, but the way to do it was just have the events of Crisis and its fall out cause a second genesis of sorts of the villans. With Lex publically reforming but privately still a bad guy, you could have easily had Lexcorp bankrolling the revamp of some of the villains. Metallo for instance. Brainiac could have still been reinvented as Fine, bur have it so the original Brainiac's consciousness takes over Milton's Brain and slowly evolves him into the Post COIE Brainiac from Panic in the Sky. Toyman and Prankster could have been hired by a resurgent intergang. There were so many ways to revamp the villains and refresh them without inadvertently making Supeeman a quasi rookie.

Yeah, the timeline thing always bothered me. What's more, it actually didn't even make sense! As per MOS' internal chronology, Superman has been around for three years by the end of the mini-series. And Superman #1 picks up shortly after that, but is supposedly contemporaneous with the rest of the DCU. But there's no way that all the other events of the DCU that were still in continuity all happened within a span of three years!

I didn't know they tried to rectify it as early as the 90's though. I always assumed that they stuck to Byrne's timeline, such as it was, up till the continuous retconning of the 2000's.

Funnily enough, DC took a different approach to rebooting each member of the Trinity. Batman got a 'soft reboot' wherein his origin was retold but everything else was more or less still in continuity, unless explicitly contradicted. Wonder Woman was rebooted from scratch and introduced as a new hero in the present-day DCU. Superman got a weird mix of the two approaches where he was completely rebooted, but with a time lag such that he was still an established hero in the present-day DCU. Personally, Batman's approach was the best one, and ideally what they should have done with Superman. I believe that's actually what Byrne wanted to do, but it was DC who forced him to do a hard reboot and wipe out ALL past continuity...

[Zero Hunter]

About the only thing I would change is his time time with the Legion would still be there. Like has been said he would be Superboy, but ONLY when he was in the future with the Legion. When he came back his memory would be cloudy every time thanks to Saturn Girl. He would remember his friends and that he has adventures with them, but he would not remember any details clearly unless he was in the future and Saturn Girl gives his mind a little nudge.

As far as the other big things like both the Kents being around much longer and him and Lex never having met until they were adults I would keep in since it made the character much better.

[Kuwagaton]

The more time that goes by, the more I come to realize how pointless and unnecessary the reboot was.

I think the idea of a fan revamp has undying popularity and seeing it actually happen for one fan makes it a stronger idea. It paved the way for like a dozen equivalents for almost every character, even at Marvel where they're stuck tweaking the same stories on the hope that some of their quirks stick to it.

What was odd about MOS86 was that Byrne built in big gaps in between issues 3,4,5 &6 that supposedly added wiggle room for bits and pieces of the Pre-Crisis history to have happened, but given what Byrne layed down in issues 1&2, there's no way 70 percenet of that stuff could have happened. So it was ultimately pointless.

Also what rankled me is that with Byrne's original timeline, MOS 2-6 covers about a decade of time and Supes was a veteran Superhero, but he only started facing his rogues gallery with SUPERMAN #1. This had the unfortunate effect of a Superman who probably only fought Lexcorp goons and gangsters and common criminals for his first decade while his contemporaries like Bruce, Barry , Wally and Hal had already faced their own classic rogues many times over and ostensibly had most of their pre 1986 adventures whilst Superman didn't. That automatically pretty much made Kal a step lower than his peers in terms of experience and history.

From the end of Man of Steel #1 to the beginning of Superman #1 it was three years, not a decade. In that time we know he met Barry, Hal, and Wally as a JL guest and I guess fought a few guys like Killgrave. It was a set up that others didn't really take, like the Morrison rogues or the original Black Zero.

Brainiac could have still been reinvented as Fine, bur have it so the original Brainiac's consciousness takes over Milton's Brain and slowly evolves him into the Post COIE Brainiac from Panic in the Sky. Toyman and Prankster could have been hired by a resurgent intergang.

That's exactly how those actually played out, rebooting was just to guarantee that new readers hadn't missed something they'd have to establish through exposition later.

[Netherman14]

Honestly, I wouldn't have rebooted Superman at all in 1986. I would have had the Pre-Crisis Superman survive COIE (a small tweak, as now he's a definitive version encompassing the Golden. Silver and Bronze ages all together), remove his make-up thus revealing he's still an adult in his prime. then resume his place as the main Superman at the time on the newly created New Earth.

[Sacred Knight]

I would have hated Wolfman's idea of Earth-Two Superman taking over on the new Earth. Its creative, but it would have created everything that was so monumentally stupid about Rebirth before Reborn. A Superman on an Earth not his own. HATE that idea with every fiber of my being. I could buy the idea if it was actually Earth-Two that was the surviving Earth to build on, but not E-Two Superman taking over on a brand new Earth he's not from.

That said though, if they had not rebooted, there was no point in even doing COIE as it was in the first place. You keep the Multiverse, and do an event that while maybe similar to COIE, different in the sense that its aim would only be for maintenance of the worlds, not erasing them all for Clutterearth.

[Netherman14]

In retrospect they never should have rebooted, but man I would have hated Wolfman's idea of Earth-Two Superman taking over on the new Earth. Its everything that was so monumentally stupid about Rebirth before Reborn. A Superman on an Earth not his own. This only would have worked if at the end of COIE, Earth-Two was the surviving Earth, with some tweaks and then Superman revealed himself as still young, and the adventures continued from there.

That said though, if they had not rebooted, there was no point in even doing COIE as it was in the first place. You keep the Multiverse, and do an event that while maybe similar to COIE, different in the sense that its aim would only be for maintenance of the worlds, not erasing them all for Clutterearth.

Honestly my main concern was just to ensure The Man of Steel as a miniseries didn't get written, as it's not a particularly good origin.