Pre-Flashpoint Superman; Was it that bad?

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Really?
Because, unless I'm mistaking it with something else (the run that starts with an ex journalist writing a novel about basically Golden Age Superman, which comes to life, right?), it is collected in France.

Awesome, glad some people can get their hands on it. Also, #599 and #600, while not part of the 'year', are fantastic one-shots, and #610 (maybe mostly part of a larger story, I don't recall offhand) has a great moment at the end.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

Well if I'm already Kid A's sock puppet, I guess I can now be Dispenser of Truth's too!

Good man. I thought you were Holmes' sock puppet though? And now Kid A's? God, you'll just loan your sock out to anyone, won't you? I feel so ashamed.

My favorite story of Casey is actually the one where Clark disguises himself as a worker in a mine. It's like, half Golden Age Sup, half "Must there be a Superman?".

Not sure I read that one. I only ever saw these years after the fact.

[Auguste Dupin]

Good man. I thought you were Holmes' sock puppet though? And now Kid A's? God, you'll just loan your sock out to anyone, won't you? I feel so ashamed.



Not sure I read that one. I only ever saw these years after the fact.

-Not sure if you're joking, but Holmes and Kid A are the same guy. He changed his name.

-According to the editorial note on my French edition, it was a one shot story published a few issues before the run properly started.
It also features an hispanic kid.

[misslane]

Most of the stuff from that time is just so soap opera-ey to me, which is generally the fast track to my not being interested in a comic, but it's especially the wrong way to go with a Superman title. I'm not interested in Lucy Lane breaking the news to her parents that she's going to have to tell her parents she's having her black coworkers child out of wedlock or Cat Grant mourning her son's death, or Jonathan Kent getting amnesia while Supergirl struggles to determine if she was sent to Earth to kill Kal-El.

I have read those issues, but it's been awhile and I read them so quickly they're kind of a blur. Do you recall if those things you mentioned were a major part of the stories during that period, or just minor subplots that showed up on occasion? What was Superman doing, for example, while some of those things were happening?

Johns run was hardly perfect, but had good moments and an appropriate scale, and the arc with Bizarro featured SUPERMAN VISION!!!!! Casey's last year on The Adventures of Superman (#613-624) is one of the most quietly revolutionary and underrated runs on the character ever. He set out to write a year of Superman stories that didn't involve him physically fighting anyone--he even had Superman identify himself as a pacifist in-story--so it was just a series of one and two part adventure tales in the Silver Age mold with a really modern sensibility...and anyone who knows Joe Casey knows he can come up with some wacky s#!t for the likes of Superman to deal with, from runaway universes to honeymooning otherdimensional insect entities to a tulpa crafted in the image of the Golden Age Superman, AND the Funky Flashman. He clearly couldn't take things as far as he wanted*, but it was nothing short of an oasis and deserves a lot more attention than its gotten.

Interesting. I recall enjoying Casey's work too, and I don't recall having significant complaints about Johns' stuff either. That said, things like SUPERMAN VISION!!!! do nothing for me. Usually the kinds of stories that get me excited and are memorable are ones which challenge characters emotionally, morally, psychologically and stories that have a thread of romance and a good-natured sense of humor. Action sequences and superpowers are things that typically make my eyes glaze over; I just take in the spirit of it because the details don't matter much to me in this area. Art, though, can sway me. Since I only recently (in the last 5 years) caught up on lots of Superman comics, I can say that some of the art during Pre-Flashpoint was a real turn off for me. Anything that looks too cartoonish or too unrealistic in terms of boobs, butts, and muscles loses appeal in my eyes.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

-Not sure if you're joking, but Holmes and Kid A are the same guy. He changed his name.

Hadn't known.

-According to the editorial note on my French edition, it was a one shot story published a few issues before the run properly started.
It also features an hispanic kid.

Ah, that was #610 then. I didn't give it as close a look as it merited, since it wasn't part of that last year. I just went to that section at the end I'd heard about.

[Auguste Dupin]

Hadn't known.



Ah, that was #610 then. I didn't give it as close a look as it merited, since it wasn't part of that last year. I just went to that section at the end I'd heard about.

-Well, the only reason I know this is because Holmes is on my friend list.

-Let's just say I recommend you to give it a shot.

[Sacred Knight]

I thought Kid A might have been Holmes but wasn't sure. Glad to hear it. Was going to get really annoyed if he was banned.

[Flash Gordon]

I thought Kid A might have been Holmes but wasn't sure. Glad to hear it. Was going to get really annoyed if he was banned.

Yeah why are you always getting banned, man?

We like your POV.

[Flash Gordon]

There's a lot of wonderful SUPERMAN stories of the 90s, you just have to dig around. The last one was ironically Geoff Johns. 'SUPERMAN AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES' was effin great. It was all down hill from there.

'Cept for Sterling Gates on SUPERGIRL.

[Kid A]

I was going to use this name when I signed up last month, but I was gone from the old CBR for so long that I figured I should make it easy to tell it's me.

[andersonh1]

I started reading Superman in 1989 and stuck with it until going off to college in 1995. And for the most part, those years are a really solid run with some great stories. Exile, Panic in the Sky, the Death and Return (of course), The Fall of Metropolis, Dark Knight over Metropolis.... look into stories from that era and see what you think. I loved it.

[Kuwagaton]

I grew up with back issues from Stern and Perez, so I'm pretty nostalgic. A little bit from the time Simonson came on board, too. "Time and Time Again" was neat.

There's a lot of wonderful SUPERMAN stories of the 90s, you just have to dig around. The last one was ironically Geoff Johns. 'SUPERMAN AND THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES' was effin great. It was all down hill from there.

'Cept for Sterling Gates on SUPERGIRL.

Agreed. The problem was consistency. I could cherry-pick great comics all day from 1986-2011, but that's as great as huge, impressive runs or the kind of consistency you got Pre-Crisis. Whether you liked the comics or not, you more or less knew what you'd be getting from each issue if you went by the context of the decades.

I wish Cornell got to write Action when Superman was actually in it. I also wish my favorite writers, Casey and Kelly, delivered dynamite on a much more regular basis.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

I have read those issues, but it's been awhile and I read them so quickly they're kind of a blur. Do you recall if those things you mentioned were a major part of the stories during that period, or just minor subplots that showed up on occasion? What was Superman doing, for example, while some of those things were happening?

As I recall seeing, the actual adventures (generally of the low-key variety) were pretty much just the window dressing for the character plots. For a good point of comparison, the FF marriage was one of the first Marvel crossovers with Doom assembling ALL the families enemies and ALL the Marvel heroes uniting to help them out. The Superman wedding issue (which will admittedly always hold a major nostalgic place in my heart) was--aside from a really solid opening of Lois just owning the hell out of a plane full of armed criminals--literally just Lois dealing with parental disapproval while Clark worries about his suit fit. A couple great moments, but it was nuts.

That said, things like SUPERMAN VISION!!!! do nothing for me.

Usually the kinds of stories that get me excited and are memorable are ones which challenge characters emotionally, morally, psychologically and stories that have a thread of romance and a good-natured sense of humor. Action sequences and superpowers are things that typically make my eyes glaze over; I just take in the spirit of it because the details don't matter much to me in this area. Art, though, can sway me. Since I only recently (in the last 5 years) caught up on lots of Superman comics, I can say that some of the art during Pre-Flashpoint was a real turn off for me. Anything that looks too cartoonish or too unrealistic in terms of boobs, butts, and muscles loses appeal in my eyes.

Casey's material was definitely in the category you're suggesting, although the art was definitely on the more 'cartoonish' end.

[Kurosawa]

The second part of "Grounded" as written by Chris Roberson actually was a huge improvement, and it was clear that he was one of the few writers around that actually understood Superman. But he left DC mostly for moral reasons, and I can't blame him. These companies are ran by very immoral and crooked people, and although I love DC's characters, I don't care about the company itself at all and even though there is no chance of it happening, I would love to see DC go out of business and all their characters either become public domain or the rights revert back to the creators, according to how old the characters are.

I practice what I preach by buying none of their comics and not supporting their movies.

[dupersuper]

I'm a new comic reader and I started reading Superman comics because I love Man of Steel. I used to think of Supes as a boring, overpowered, too vanilla Superhero. Now that I've read some of the highly recommended Superman stories (Kingdom Come, Secret Identity, Red Son..etc) I realised he's such a fantastic character when the writer got it right.

I don't like the new 52 version of Supes. He's still a big gun but I feel like he's lost his 'Superman' aura. He's no longer the paragon of virtue, the hero of the other superheroes. In fact, right now I can't even find a book where Supes, in any universes, is still a good guy let alone THE good guy.

However, I keep hearing that pre-Flashpoint Superman was written even worse. How bad could that be? When has the big blue from All Star Superman become irrelevant?

Technically pre-Flashpoint covers 73 years or so of stories. There were many great ones, many many mediocre ones, and many sucky ones. The year or 2 right before Flashpoint had a lot of bad (Grounded, War of the Supermen...), but in the years before that we got the triangle era, Morrison/Waid Justice League, Birthright, Priest Steel, Peter David Supergirl, Busieks Superman, Kelleys Action, Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, Must There Be a Superman, JLA: The Nail, Kelleys Action, Caseys Adventures of Superman, Superman Adventures...

Not to step on your toes Miss Lane but the tragedy of Bludhaven happened after Batman gave his little speech up on the moon during Infinite Crisis.

Oh, that stupid quote. Between Death of Superman and Infinite Crisis Superman wrestled an angel, returned the moon to its orbit, stopped Megaddon, nearly sacrificed himself again stopping the Millennium Giants, lead the JLA, inspired Batman himself while they were searching for Lois, went to the 853rd century with the JL to watch his future golden self emerge from the sun, won the Imperiex War by pushing Warworld through a boom tube, been to the big bang twice, the end of time once, returned from the dead in the first place...plus all the daily stories of him saving lives...

Yeah, can anybody point to a Morrison Batman, Claremont X-Men or Johns Green Lantern style Superman run out of post-Crisis canon? I can't think of any. Most of it is just generic standard stuff.

Maybe Kelleys Action.

The Triangle era is just really dull to me.

We're very different people...