Chuck Austen's Superman unpublished ending.

[AlexanderLuthor]

Chuck Austen's Action run may be the single worst run of comics DC has published in the last 30 years and that's a hell of an accomplishment. Nocenti's Catwoman and Lobdell's Teen Titans were absolute rubbish and they were probably only 1/2 as bad. During his run was one of the few times ever I've actually looked at a comic book and became slightly embarrassed I am a fan of the genre

[Patrick Gerard]

Chuck Austen's Action run may be the single worst run of comics DC has published in the last 30 years and that's a hell of an accomplishment. Nocenti's Catwoman and Lobdell's Teen Titans were absolute rubbish and they were probably only 1/2 as bad. During his run was one of the few times ever I've actually looked at a comic book and became slightly embarrassed I am a fan of the genre

I have trouble seeing how Austen's run would even rank as one of the top 5 worst Superman runs of the last 20 years.

I strongly suspect you have to be a serious X-Men fan to see it that way or you're working off his interviews, which really were never reflected in the actual books he wrote aside from Lana lusting after Superman (which Joe Kelly did just about as much) and shouldn't influence your perception of the run. But if somebody doesn't give a crap about the integrity of the X-Men characters, they'd be hard pressed to see Austen's non-X-Men work.

And, really, why should it matter if somebody does an X-Men or Titans run where they make the characters laughing stocks, have them engage in bestiality, or whatever? None of that would be inherently bad writing. It would be bad taste but it wouldn't be bad CRAFT in terms of dialogue and scene construction necessarily. It doesn't make someone a bad writer if they destroy a franchise because supporting a franchise isn't necessarily part of what makes a writer GOOD.

I would argue that Austen's Action run was probably of higher quality than any other work he did on work for hire super-heroes and towards the middle quality wise of Superman runs, the one distinguishing feature that could drag it down being that whole Preus implied rape scene. Which is two panels of an otherwise strictly middle of the road run.

[Rod G]

I'm kind of confused. Are you saying that the editors are giving preferential treatment to creators who happen to dislike their marriage?

And for what it's worth, Austen also said the following (though again, he might've just been covering his rear end):



I think one of the realities is that not everyone who likes Superman likes the same things, and maybe the post-Crisis relationship wasn't as enjoyable to them as some of the goofier stories where Supes and Lois were punking one another in times past. Furthermore, there are a lot of writers (TV is particularly "guilty" of this) that simply prefer that the lead characters have tension but not a full-fledged relationship, and certainly not marriage. I don't defend Austen's work, because it's as bad as most people say it is, but professional writers can come in with a negative attitude about a subject, put their feelings aside, and do what's expected of them from editorial.

I think the worst thing that you can say is that Superman line has had a handful of creators who weren't fully on board with everything going on in the Superman books of the time. To me, the bigger problem is simply that Superman has a big PR problem, and that the very best creators are either not writing for the books, do write for the books but don't do a great job, or just don't stick around very long.

Well, that's putting it mildly, to say the least.

[Rod G]

I have trouble seeing how Austen's run would even rank as one of the top 5 worst Superman runs of the last 20 years.

I strongly suspect you have to be a serious X-Men fan to see it that way or you're working off his interviews, which really were never reflected in the actual books he wrote aside from Lana lusting after Superman (which Joe Kelly did just about as much) and shouldn't influence your perception of the run. But if somebody doesn't give a crap about the integrity of the X-Men characters, they'd be hard pressed to see Austen's non-X-Men work.

And, really, why should it matter if somebody does an X-Men or Titans run where they make the characters laughing stocks, have them engage in bestiality, or whatever? None of that would be inherently bad writing. It would be bad taste but it wouldn't be bad CRAFT in terms of dialogue and scene construction necessarily. It doesn't make someone a bad writer if they destroy a franchise because supporting a franchise isn't necessarily part of what makes a writer GOOD.

I would argue that Austen's Action run was probably of higher quality than any other work he did on work for hire super-heroes and towards the middle quality wise of Superman runs, the one distinguishing feature that could drag it down being that whole Preus implied rape scene. Which is two panels of an otherwise strictly middle of the road run.

I guess you might say that.

[OBrianTallent]

I had cut my comics buying pretty sharply and the Superman books were casualties of that cut, but have gone back and picked up pretty much all of what I missed including the Austen run. While I hated the X-Men run he did, I really didn't think he was that bad here. There were some pretty off moments and I was really surprised by his treatment of Lois and his interviews in which he mentioned her. I was also really surprised that DC greenlit the Metropolis maxi series by him despite his reputation. But Patrick Gerard's comments above shed some interesting light there.
One thing that I do recall, which is admittedly from aging memory, but I thought Austen did a fairly good job with his characterization of Wonder Woman. That too might be colored by the fact that she was drawn by Ivan Reis. I would probably love anything he drew regardless of the writing.

[Rod G]

I had cut my comics buying pretty sharply and the Superman books were casualties of that cut, but have gone back and picked up pretty much all of what I missed including the Austen run. While I hated the X-Men run he did, I really didn't think he was that bad here. There were some pretty off moments and I was really surprised by his treatment of Lois and his interviews in which he mentioned her. I was also really surprised that DC greenlit the Metropolis maxi series by him despite his reputation. But Patrick Gerard's comments above shed some interesting light there.
One thing that I do recall, which is admittedly from aging memory, but I thought Austen did a fairly good job with his characterization of Wonder Woman. That too might be colored by the fact that she was drawn by Ivan Reis. I would probably love anything he drew regardless of the writing.

That's good to know.

By the way, I managed to have the first few issues if his Action Comics run at Tampa Bay Comic Con. Signed by him, no less.

Yes, he was a guest and a rather nice gent.

[Carabas]

I don't know that it's interference. An editor is the one who sets and maintains direction.

Eddie does seem to like to get people talking but that's not a bad thing.

I do think there was an interesting thing going on with DC in the 2000s, in that:

Paul Levitz tried to keep DC more or less under the radar.

Dan DiDio seems to have been brought in by folks at WB but folks at DC weren't aware of why. I think from his Superboy writing run to his role as liason, he was like the new manager of a restaurant being assigned a job waiting tables to get a feel for the place. Only folks didn't know that.

I think this created issues as folks inside DC saw DiDio as a guy who was ambitious, who wanted the top job. But they didn't know it was already his so they started setting up alternatives, including Waid and, my guess, Loeb. Most of the alternatives were more or less encouraged away once DiDio's role became clear.

So I think and I might be totally wrong about this but I THINK what happened in terms of the big picture was an undercover boss type situation. And some people think that any rivals knew that DiDio was working with folks at WB, some folks may have underestimated how final that decision was, and some (and I think this is Waid) were clueless about the power structure and really just wrapped up in telling stories. But I think Waid was probably treated (for at least the second time in a decade at least) like he was taking something that wasn't his. And I think he didn't know what was his to ask for or what was promised to anyone else. But some other folks saw him as a guy who stepped out of his place by interviewing for a job.

Honestly, if I had to guess, I'd guess that Jenette Kahn wanted Loeb running DC at one point, Levitz was interested in Waid and fielding several other candidates, Johns and Morrison were considered, Jim Lee was considered, and none of them were aware that the decision wasn't DC's to make and that WB was groomed DiDio for the role.

There's very little creative interference there aside from hemming and hawing on Superman's origins and how much Lois to have in the book and whether Lex knew the secret identity.

But I think most of the interference was at the editorial level. And Eddie was always trying to approve the most ambitious pitches he could but he couldn't always guarantee that his bosses would still back those directions six months later because who his bosses were was changing with Kahn's retirement, with DiDio's promotion, etc. Most of the creators worked with that as best as they could and I think Joe Kelly considered that an absolute vacation compared to his time writing X-Men. Loeb had a very definite vision for where he wanted things, had been selecting artists, and had pitches approved that were suddenly unapproved. He walked off Superman, unplanned but fairly professionally, because his pitch (which dealt with Krypton, Luthor knowing, Mxyzptlk's involvement with the Emperor Joker stuff, Ignition etc.) was more or less canned halfway through and I think he was lured back to launch Superman/Batman with a promise of more creative independence. But I think that was taken from him as well which is why the book gradually drifted off towards bizarre alternate timelines.

He wanted (and was approved twice) to tell a story about Lex Luthor knowing Superman's secret identity. And the first time, he was told he couldn't do anything with that despite getting the reveal in the book, which left it as a dangling plotline Geoff Johns did clean-up tying up. And then it happened again. He pitched the story, it was greenlit, it was put in the script and they relettered the book to take it out at the last minute.

I think he probably had more editorial interference than most in that era but, to be fair, I think pretty much only Loeb and Geoff Johns could be said to really try to tell the kinds of stories that REQUIRED them to have definitive control of major elements of Superman's mythology. Most other folks were more confident sort of playing in the margins whereas Loeb and Johns both wanted to do definitive statements about Superman's world... and both wanted, basically, Byrne's characterization married to the full publishing, animated, and cinematic history. And I think had to deal both with folks who wanted to keep things rooted in the 90s status quo more and also people who wanted a Superman that was basically a brand new character.

Damn. It's like a kindergarten there.
Sheer miracle that they occasionally put out a somewhat readadle story?

[Carabas]

I also enjoy Austen's characterization of Superman, because I think the more calm and wise one should instead be of an older age, a la Kingdom Come.

Meh.
Sure, KC Superman has got grey in his hair, but he was one of the more unwise, hot-tempered, and irrational versions of Superman.

[Dispenser Of Truth]

I just checked out of the library and read the first half of his run, and yeah, sorry to anyone who went to sleep whispering to themselves that everything was okay until they convinced themselves to believe it, but it really was that bad. I was more entertained than furious, since A. It isn't coming out NOW, and B. It's widely ridiculed and ignored enough to have no chance of contaminating anything else. But it has a version of Superman who's pretty pointedly a bitter nerd who relishes having the power to be a bully, but isn't very good at it because his witty comebacks are the actual worst. I'm imagining a whole "Bruce asking the bust of Thomas what to do when a bat crashes through the window" moment for Lobdell and JMS before they started their own runs on the character.

[Rod G]

Seems to me like a bunch of readers were butthurt.

Personally, I found his Action Comics run okay. Just okay, mind you. No big deal or anything.

[Moriarty]

i absolutely hated his X-Men run. i thought his Superman stuff was actually pretty entertaining. i certainly don't think it belongs among the top five worst runs. not even top 20.