30 years later, thoughts on John Byrne's THE MAN OF STEEL miniseries

[daBronzeBomma]

30 years ago, in 1986, this happened:









And nothing was ever the same.

Superman got a hard re-start, "for realsies", in the comics, starting with THE MAN OF STEEL miniseries written and drawn by John Byrne.

The fallout from this miniseries, over the following decades, has been talked about and re-hashed and argued ad nauseum, here and elsewhere.

But what I'm curious about here is: what was your initial impression of those 6 issues (or tpb) when you first read it? What is it now?

Also WHEN did you first read THE MAN OF STEEL: When it was first released, Years or decades later, Still haven't read it?

I didn't start reading comic books when this was released, so I wasn't around for the initial impact. I finally read THE MAN OF STEEL when it was released in trade paperback in the early 1990s. I remember thinking "wow this is great art". Whatever happened to this John Byrne guy? He sure can draw a good looking Superman! Keep in mind, there was no common internet back then (I is an old).

I also thought that the dialogue was more "adult" than what I was used to, esp for a Superman story.

I remember being stunned. That's not the Krypton I'm used to. This Lois Lane seems a lot harsher than the movie version. And this Clark is not mild-mannered at all. And why are Superman and Batman not friends here? Why can't Bizarro talk? Why is Luthor red-haired and fat? Superman seems a lot weaker than I thought (he moved the Moon in SUPERMAN IV, didn't he?).

Today I have conflicting feeling about the miniseries. On the one hand, the Superverse got a lot more mature and sophisticated and the art still holds up great. On the other hand, a lot of what made Superman "Superman" was tossed aside and much of it still hasn't returned.

What were/are your thoughts on this important miniseries in Superman's history?

[Jadeb]

It seems very '80s.

Art is good, but I really dislike a lot of Byrne's changes. This is the starting point for many of the problems that plague Superman to this day. Wonder is stripped out and realism is added, to the detriment of the character.

Over the course of those six issues, Superman's world becomes way more unpleasant and dull.

[Superfan90]

The biggest mistake DC ever made with Superman and Legion of Superheroes.

[JackDaw]

Overall disappointing.

Can't help comparing it to what Alan Moore might well have done.

Or what John Byrne himself might have done with a different steer and a better editor.

After all JB did a great Fantastic Four run...with all sorts of wild things happening. But most important thing was to make Superman more "realistic"?? Utterly daft.

[Tony]

I read it as it came out and was blown away. John Byrne is my favorite artist, and I think he's a great writer. In retrospect he did a lot of damage, but in the moment I loved his run. At the time it was fresh and new. I think most people agreed with his direction in the moment.

a whole lot of great stories came about because of the changes, and Superman needed some exciting new ground. Nice thing about it being a comic book is if we have exhausted the stories from that direction they can do a new or even retro direction and call it Rebirth or something.

[madmodpoetgod]

Pretty horrible. Post Crisis was a great oppurtunity to make Superman deep and vital again and Byrne turned him into a whimsy

[Truman Burbank]

Before the deluge of hate hits this thread...

I still think very highly of The Man of Steel. I appreciate the more realistic take, and to me, it was also more sensible, as it allowed a shift to a character-based book. I thought the tightening of the mythos worked (and still do), and I like that it drew from many aspects of Superman media through the years to develop its characterizations without beating the reader over the head with such things.

Byrne definitely had some missteps in the issues that followed, but the miniseries itself was well-done.

[Sacred Knight]

A very interesting take for its time. All in all a decent story. However, the long term affects scarred Superman and it really hasn't quite completely healed even to this day.

[Jon Clark]

As you say the problems seem clear in retrospect, when you have years of stories building off these six issues.

At the time some of them weren't quite so obvious. And some of these were only problems based off how they were developed going forward.

To me the actual mini had a flaw that came from editorial changes made while it was being written. Byrne had originally thought of the series as a sort of Year One ending with a still neophyte Superman. Instead the book had to cover years of development so that Superman #1 could be contemporary with the rest of the DCU where Barry Allen's whole career had occurred and Batman was on his second Robin. This makes the mini feel a bit like a set of snapshots of Superman's life rather than an introduction into his life. e saw Superman meet Lois, Lex, etc but never saw how their relationships developed.

[Thor-Ul]

I liked a lot.

[sunofdarkchild]

This initial mini was very good. 'They all wanted a piece of me, Pa.' is a brilliant piece of character development. Unfortunately for whatever reason Byrne didn't develop the character beyond what he did in the mini in the years he was writing the main Superman book. If anything his Superman seemed to get dumber than he was in The Man of Steel mini. But in the mini Superman still had that majestic quality to him Byrne lost later on.

[SiegePerilous02]

Pretty dull. I think the one-two punch of this and TDKR were what harmed the character in the long run. The world of Post-Crisis Superman is just so excessively boring compared to the mythos that came before it. No Legion, no Krypto, boring CEO Lex, boring telepathic sideshow Brainiac, and alternate dimension protoplasm/angel wtf Supergirl all come together as a mess, among other things.

I'm not opposed to the idea of doing a realistic take on the Superman mythos. For the issue I have with them, I think the DCAU and DCEU have taken some of the basic thought processes behind Byrne's decisions and executed them better. But for the actual comics, I don't have any interest in it.

Can't help comparing it to what Alan Moore might well have done.

If Moore had been given free reign on Superman and also Wonder Woman, the two characters would have been much better off than what they got. The idea of a long run by Moore for either of them, but especially Superman, makes me salivate.

[WillieMorgan]

I absolutely loved it. This was the first work by DC Comics that was reprinted for the UK market as far as I know (apart from the odd Annual, certainly in relation to an ongoing). Marvel had branched out with a UK division during the 1970's but DC never did. Obviously we always had good access to the imported US originals. Then, in 1988, a company called London Editions Magazines started publishing these:



So that was my first introduction to the 'Man Of Steel' mini-series and, by extension, the John Byrne era. Starting in #20, the magazine expanded and carried the classic Giffen/DeMatteis 'JLI' as a back-up strip. What a combination!

I remember being surprised in an early issue when I read an incredibly negative review in one of the letters pages. It bemoaned the overhaul in continuity, accusing the strip of being a 'cheap forgery'. The guy then went somewhere along the lines that he felt like it had been knocked up on the sly in the USSR as an insult to an American icon! It's true is that. I guess that should have prepared me in a way. Some things never change.

[superduperman]

There were elements I liked and elements I didn't like. I liked the change to Luthor. A corrupt billionaire has a lot more resources to build a giant robot than a mad scientist who has to go out and rob a bank everytime he wants to kill Superman. I also kind of liked the fact that they took Superboy out of his history. But then, I grew up on the movies so that is my measuring stick for Superman. I didn't like the fact that he got his powers so late or the design of Krypton. I agree with the fact that it created a lot of long term problems nobody anticipated. You could tell by the mid nineties they were already running out of ideas because they put so many limitations on him. I don't blame Byrne for the problems with things like the Legion since DC knew that they were rebooting the universe and didn't take that into consideration beforehand. The one thing I do agree with is that a reboot of some kind was necessary. I didn't always feel that way but looking back at it, I get now why they did it. He had a lot of Silver Age elements to live down. And I think a lot of the problems with MOS was that they tried too hard to get away from those elements. Things like the depressing Krypton and keeping his parents alive all strike me as overcorrections to counter the SA.

[Johnny Thunders!]

I was so excited. John Byrne's Alpha Flight, X Men, and Fantastic Four seemed as out there and exciting as any comic I had ever read. I really hoped that I would see him do for Superman what he did for the Fantastic Four. I wanted him to hold all of the character's history and recreate it for now. Instead, I felt so disappointed. The character was very different than any version I had ever read. In the end, All Star Superman was the book I was waiting for when Man of Steel came out. The art still looks amazing.