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

[K. Jones]

This to my eternal shame is one I haven't had a chance to catch up on. I intended to as well - particularly after I wrapped up the Fourth Age Saga by Kirby, as I understand the Byrne Superman period is really quite steeped in Kirby stuff.

Thank god though, I have seen The Animated Series. As an un-caught-up reader, how Kirby is the Byrne run? And how Byrne is The Animated Series?

[Kuwagaton]

I didn't see much of Kirby in there at all. However, Ordway and Jurgens shortly followed with bringing back a ton from Kirby's Jimmy Olsen days. Like, virtually all of it, even if the tone was a bit different.

The animated series is about as Byrne as X-Men was Claremont. Eh, that's to say... it's a massive influence but they can be enjoyed separately. It came a decade later so they had the leg room and vision to tweak things. Sometimes the cartoon actually felt like it had a Kirby thing, actually.

[Jadeb]

It's funny how Byrne aims to modernize and mature the mythos, but one of his first villains is Margaret Pye, a woman obsessed with shiny things, who cleverly disguises her identity by going by Magpie. That's as goofy as anything in the Silver Age.

It doesn't help that she's a terrible villain. A bad sign of the trade-off being made. Bronze Age wonder for a painfully dull thief with a painfully '80s mohawk.

[phonogram12]

John Byrne inked by Terry Austin is and always will be a sight to behold (without Austin, though, that's another matter entirely). The writing, however...no. I much preferred Mark Waid's Birthright as a modernized origin, personally. MOS somehow just made Superman's world incredibly...ordinary.

[Kuwagaton]

It's funny how Byrne aims to modernize and mature the mythos, but one of his first villains is Margaret Pye, a woman obsessed with shiny things, who cleverly disguises her identity by going by Magpie. That's as goofy as anything in the Silver Age.

It doesn't help that she's a terrible villain. A bad sign of the trade-off being made. Bronze Age wonder for a painfully dull thief with a painfully '80s mohawk.

Magpie was goofy, but she was really only a plot piece in the story of Superman and Batman. I guess she was a Byrne creation but you could have put any goon in that spot and he never bothered with her after.

And then somehow she ended up good enough to reappear in Batman on different occasions through the years.

*shrug*

[Jadeb]

Magpie was goofy, but she was really only a plot piece in the story of Superman and Batman. I guess she was a Byrne creation but you could have put any goon in that spot and he never bothered with her after.

And then somehow she ended up good enough to reappear in Batman on different occasions through the years.

*shrug*

Establishing the new status quo for Superman and Batman deserved way better than that. She's a terrible villain for Batman alone, much less for the combined might of the both of them.

[Doctor Know]

It's funny how Byrne aims to modernize and mature the mythos, but one of his first villains is Margaret Pye, a woman obsessed with shiny things, who cleverly disguises her identity by going by Magpie. That's as goofy as anything in the Silver Age.

It doesn't help that she's a terrible villain. A bad sign of the trade-off being made. Bronze Age wonder for a painfully dull thief with a painfully '80s mohawk.

Byrne did give us Silver Banshee and she's endured. Plus his Kingpin-eske Luthor played better than the mad scientist, villain/scheme of the week Luthor from the Silver Age. Business suit > Jumpsuit. Hahaha

Others like Claash, Rampage, Bloodsport and Gangbuster didn't last. Then again, I don't think anyone was missing Beppo, Comet, and Streaky after the reboot.

[Death&Return of Superman]

Byrne did give us Silver Banshee and she's endured. Plus his Kingpin-eske Luthor played better than the mad scientist, villain/scheme of the week Luthor from the Silver Age. Business suit > Jumpsuit. Hahaha

Others like Claash, Rampage, Bloodsport and Gangbuster didn't last. Then again, I don't think anyone was missing Beppo, Comet, and Streaky after the reboot.

No he didn't, which is probably why the whole mad scientist thing ended up getting folded back into business man Luthor. What's even the point of Luthor as a poorman's Kingpin ripoff when Kingpin is a comic book character anyways?

[LordTrump]

No he didn't, which is probably why the whole mad scientist thing ended up getting folded back into business man Luthor. What's even the point of Luthor as a poorman's Kingpin ripoff when Kingpin is a comic book character anyways?

The mad scientist lex reappeared because Loeb sucks and couldn't write business Lex, and because Johns used infinite crisis as an excuse to bring back "the good old days".

[Johnny Thunders!]

I just don't get why Super memory, or the supermnd is such a stretch for fans. I don't get why that's gone with MOS Superman. We accept as a toddler, he can lift a truck. Why wouldn't his mind work differently? Wouldn't he have mental feats as a child as impressive as his strength? I have no problem with an infant having greater memory, calculation, language than me.

[Truman Burbank]

No he didn't, which is probably why the whole mad scientist thing ended up getting folded back into business man Luthor. What's even the point of Luthor as a poorman's Kingpin ripoff when Kingpin is a comic book character anyways?

One thing to remember is that businessman Lex is not Byrne's creation, but Marv Wolfman's.

Businessman Lex worked beautifully on a number of levels: it clearly established Lex as the #1 villain, it actually made stopping Lex a challenge, and it elevated him to a full supporting character in the stories rather than just an occasional villain. The revised origin for Lex was brilliantly done and made the dichotomy between him and Superman much stronger.

The "mad scientist" stuff got added back, at least in my view, because certain writers wanted that particular version and had an editor that would let them put it back in, not because the businessman version wasn't working.

[Truman Burbank]

This to my eternal shame is one I haven't had a chance to catch up on. I intended to as well - particularly after I wrapped up the Fourth Age Saga by Kirby, as I understand the Byrne Superman period is really quite steeped in Kirby stuff.

Thank god though, I have seen The Animated Series. As an un-caught-up reader, how Kirby is the Byrne run? And how Byrne is The Animated Series?

There's some Kirby, but mostly only with the Legends tie-ins. The story featuring Big Barda and Mr. Miracle Byrne did for Action Comics is better left unread.

[Kuwagaton]

The thing about Lex as a ripoff kingpin... he wasn't really much like Fisk at all. I think the last place Byrne looked for inspiration is in Spider-Man or DD.

I just don't get why Super memory, or the supermnd is such a stretch for fans. I don't get why that's gone with MOS Superman. We accept as a toddler, he can lift a truck. Why wouldn't his mind work differently? Wouldn't he have mental feats as a child as impressive as his strength? I have no problem with an infant having greater memory, calculation, language than me.

It's kind of silly but it's not a stretch or a problem

[Doctor Know]

I just don't get why Super memory, or the supermnd is such a stretch for fans. I don't get why that's gone with MOS Superman. We accept as a toddler, he can lift a truck. Why wouldn't his mind work differently? Wouldn't he have mental feats as a child as impressive as his strength? I have no problem with an infant having greater memory, calculation, language than me.

At the time, Byrne was told he was going to be allowed to write a Superman who was still learning the robes. From unsure but courageous hero, to champion of justice. However, after the papers were signed, TPTW told him to write Superman like he had always been written. Ignoring COIE and the fact that a reboot had just happened. Status Quo. Always the status quo. See Rebirth after Truth, Grounded after New Krypton, Our World At War's consequences being undone after Loeb left etc. Byrne still wanted to get his ideas and directions for the character in, so he kept somethings away, but was intending to return them as time went on. When Byrne left, we saw Dan Jurgens and Roger Stern (another Marvel alumni) picking up where Byrne left off and bringing back aspects like the Fortress of Solitude, K tech, ice breath, etc.

[BeefBourguignon]

One thing to remember is that businessman Lex is not Byrne's creation, but Marv Wolfman's.

I thought this for years but then I went back and re-read Byrne's FAQ

http://www.byrnerobotics.com/FAQ/lis...+Book+Projects


Who created the "new" Lex Luthor for MAN OF STEEL?



JB: It went like this: Marv Wolfman was offered the Second Chair on the Superman relaunch, to write what was then going to be ACTION COMICS, with a new title to be created for the team-up book.

Marv called me to discuss something he had in mind for Luthor, a "fix" he had been working on in his head for several years. Before he would tell it to me, however, he had a couple of stipulations:

1) It must be all or nothing. Either I accept his proposal in its entirety, or I take nothing from it. He was very insistent on this point: he wanted my promise that I would use nothing from his proposal if I did not take all of it.

2) If I decided I did not like his version of Luthor, he would decline the Second Chair and we would have to find someone else to write ACTION.

I agreed to both these terms, since they seemed very fair, to me. Plus I always like it when all the cards are on the table up front. That's how I play.

Then he told me his version of Luthor in exactly these words:

"Outside Metropolis, on a high mountain, in his palatial Xanadu-like estate, lives Lex Luthor, the world's richest man, and his mistress, Lois Lane." He paused, for dramatic effect, I suppose, then said "See, she's drawn to power!"

It took me about 3 nanoseconds to say "No." I said I liked the "world's richest man" angle, but what he was proposing was more of a reboot of Lois than it was of Luthor, and I already knew who I wanted Lois to be -- or, more exactly, what I wanted Lois to be: likeable ! And the Lois he presented was not my definition of "likeable"!

So I said "Thanks," and suggested maybe there would be some project in the future that we might work on together, and I was about to say "Good-bye" when Marv said "Well, we don't have to use that part!"

"But you said we have to use all of it," I reminded him.

"Oh, no! If you don't like the part with Lois, we don't have to use it!"

Huh.

So I told him I would think about it, and over the next few days, after discussions with a number of people (including Roger Stern and Mark Gruenwald) who all heard the story as I have told it above, and who had suggestions on what I could do with Luthor as "the world's richest man", I decided that basic four-word seed was a good place to go with the character. Of course, since I saw Metropolis as New York (quite literally) I didn't want any mountains poking up along side the city, so that went away, and I built the character as a cross between Donald Trump, Ted Turner, Howard Hughes and maybe Satan himself!

Later, when everything was launched, and ACTION COMICS had become the team-up book and Wolfman was writing ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN (the title was my suggestion, to invoke both the George Reeves' TV series and the old ADVENTURE COMICS home of Superboy), I found out that he was claiming sole credit for "creating" Luthor. I shrugged it off. It did not seem important enough to worry about.

Years later I found out Wolfman got paid a bonus for his "creation" of the new Luthor. Something that, somehow, no one at DC had thought necessary to tell me about.

After a most unsatisfactory first year of "collaboration" Wolfman's contract was not renewed, and I took over writing ADVENTURES, with Jerry Ordway doing a fair bit of the plotting. (10/20/2003)