If the internet was around right after Crisis on Infinite Earths...

[Johnny Thunders!]

From what I've read, the irony is when Byrne was hired initially, he assumed he was just going to more or less continue things from what came prior, just with a new visual overhaul. True Byrne did tell Giordano of what changes he would personally make if he was the one fully in charge of the character and listed them as "unreasonable demands" half tounge in cheekly,but was shocked when Giordano, Kahn and Levitz greenlighted almost all of them (I think they drew the line at having a Pregnant Lara be sent to earth instead of just Baby Kal-El, so thus the Birthing Matrix contrivance to have Superman be a natural born US citizen). With that carte blanche given by the Powers that be....who would have said "no"?

I will say to this day he drew a damn fine Superman and was the last time his art was truly great, IMO. Artistically he was the right choice to make a clean break from the previous "house" style. It's the changes made on the conceptual level that was the problem.

I don't know if there is an artist right now that generates as much excitement as Byrne did when he took on Superman, at least around the drugstore spinner rack when I was a kid. I was immediately disappointed, but I never thought about writing a letter. That would of made comic books homework for me. About the only thing I read in the letters column was old Stans Soapbox or Ask the Answer Man.

[Tayswift]

Yeah it would have been the same. People look at Jenette Khan, Dick Giordano and Paul Levitz now as saints who cared about the integrity of DC Comics and it's characters and then the next breath put down Nelson, DiDio and Lee as the three headed antichrist who ruined Superhero comics "FOREVAH!" 30 years ago...the aforementioned were the ruiners of so many people's childhoods, disgraces to their profession blah blah blah. (and I would argue Khan, Giordano and Levitz DID cause more damage to the Superman franchise for the long haul than anything DiDio has done to the character in his tenure, as their changes were on the conceptual level and DiDio's and Lee have largely been on the visual and cosmetic level....but I digress).

Mark my words....if DC Comics (or the comics industry as a whole) still exists in 30 years time, the ladies and Gentlemen that follow the current hated regime will be seen as the antichrist by that generation of fanboys/girls...and suddenly Nelson, DiDio and Co will be seen in similarly glowing and nostalgic rose colored terms. I will bet money on that.

probably the next editotial team will be byrne, trump and Loeb, only such combo could make nelson/harras/didio look good. I really doubt that nelson/didio reign will be ever a good memory.

[manofsteel1979]

probably the next editotial team will be byrne, trump and Loeb, only such combo could make nelson/harras/didio look good. I really doubt that nelson/didio reign will be ever a good memory.

I'm sure your equivalent 30 years ago opined that no one would remember the Post-Crisis era fondly....yet here we are.

Hindsight is 20/20, and nostalgia most always clouds one's view of the past, thus Jennette Kahn is a saint now, and Diane Nelson is Satan to some, even though when it comes to Superman, Kahn oversaw nearly 50 years of the character completely scrapped , while Nelson at the worst oversaw an unfortunate costume change and a marketing gimmick disguised as a relationship. Heck part of the reason we even have the new 52 was Kahns (and Giordano and Levitz's) decision to do comics first ever reboot of a universe in 1985 rather than just using what was already there, thus opening a pandora's box that can never be closed. Yet the most ardent haters of the current era willfully overlook this and paint everything that occurred Pre DiDio as always respectful of the long history of DC Comics, when it was the same then as now really. Some really crappy choices with some good stuff here and there.



In 30 years our successors here (heck maybe even some of us) will be replacing Ms. Nelson's horns with a halo in relation to whatever changes her successor and their employees makes to the DCU.

[superduperman]

...would message boards like this one be hating on Byrne's Man of Steel?

Yes. That's how the internet works. I didn't like the post-Crisis Superman, but even I can't deny what it did to save the character. From a technical standpoint, it, or something like it, was necessary to keep the Superman books going. You would have people who like the idea of a reboot but hate the way it was executed. You would have people who loved the old Superman and will go ballistic regardless of how the reboot is handled. And you would have people who hate the reboot and attack Byrne. You would have people who hate Byrne but love the idea of a reboot. You would have Barry fans who hate the fact that Wally took over. You'd have Supergirl fans complaining about her death. You'd have Superboy fans complaining he no longer exists. You'd even have Krypto fans wondering when the rebooted version of him would show up.

So the answer is, yes, the internet would complain about the reboot. Because that's what the internet is, a place to air grievances, apparently.

[My Two Cents]

The best thing to come out of Crisis was Wally West ( who just happens to be the worst to come out of the New 52) In My most humble opinion...
From issue #1 Flash was a terrific comics and than Dan Didio arrived and Barry came back and Wally and the readers got the shortest straw.

[Jon-El]

It's funny. I find myself nostalgic for the pre Crisis stuff a lot. It was a fun time for me. However, I was about 14 when the Byrne reboot happened & I really liked it. I loved Byrne so that was a big part to me. I remember worrying about what his Superman would look like. I was an amateur artist & I did a drawing of what I thought Byrne might do. He had no cape, big Quasar wrist bands & his hair was parted in the middle. A generic Marvel hero. I was surprised when he basically just slightly tweaked the costume. He drew a great Superman! After years of slithering out of the store with a brown bag of Superman comics while everyone else bought X-Men, my favorite character was hot again! It even got TV coverage it was such a big deal.

[jimmy]

I made this awhile ago when the Nu52 was happening. It's based on the old BBS boards back from the 1980/90's

Take me back to the days of running a Wildcat BBS and CP/M system

[Lorendiac]

Gee, if I'd been active on internet discussion boards back around 1986, I might have said the following things in an attempt to stir up discussion! (Knowing full well that some people would scream in outrage at some of my ideas, of course! )

1. "My money says Barry Allen will be back among the living, one way or another, within 18 months. Maybe he'll be brought back as a brainwashed 'villain' to fight Wally, but he will be back, sooner rather than later! Any takers?"

2. "On the other hand, Kara Zor-El didn't successfully carry her own title for nearly 30 years, the way Barry did. She just had a couple of much briefer runs in solo series, plus frequently being one of the features in one anthology title or another -- so it may be 3 years or so before DC feels the need to bring her back in some form. But that's fine, since Byrne is having Superman 'start all over from scratch,' pretty much, and so he'll need time to acquire some serious seasoning before his cute young cousin shows up to start taking lessons from him!"

3. "Huh. They missed a golden opportunity to reboot the Green Lantern Corps, didn't they? Instead, Steve Englehart is pressing onward, keeping all of that tangled and contradictory old continuity in force in his GLC title. I wish DC would make up their minds about whether they really believe in 'reboots' or not!"

4. "Let's face it, folks -- the way Paul Levitz writes those characters, the modern Legion of Super-Heroes can get by just fine without needing 'Superboy' as a regular presence, longtime member, and general role model. So what's all the fuss about if Byrne doesn't want Clark to have been a high-profile superhero in his juvenile days? Why should I care?"

5. "Too bad that they haven't done anything with the Post-Crisis version of Ray Palmer yet . . . but maybe it proves he can be allowed to just quietly remain offstage with his alien princess sweetheart for the next 10 or 20 years, because the JLA obviously needs The Atom even less than the Legion needs Superboy?"

6. "I'm still waiting for the inevitable 'Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew' revival! It should just ignore the Crisis entirely and carry on with its previous, largely self-contained, continuity! Ought to be happening any day now, right?"

7. "What's this nonsense about changing Jason Todd's origin story? The first version was just published a few years ago -- the paint isn't even dry yet! And how does 'ripping off the tires of the Batmobile' make sense as 'a good way to get Batman to trust you with all his secrets by the end of the story'?"

[Johnny Thunders!]

Okay, here's mine, " Typical DC, they poach the wrong Marvel Guy at the wrong time. Everybody knows Walt Simonson should reboot Wonder Woman. And Superman, way to go not putting Starlin on Action and at least offering Superman to Steranko. Talking about losing a bird in hand."

[ManSinha]

I suppose another question is that would DC care about what was being said on the boards back in 1985 any more than they do today?

[Lorendiac]

I suppose another question is that would DC care about what was being said on the boards back in 1985 any more than they do today?

Until a few years ago, DC used to host a bunch of discussion boards on their own corporate website. I was a fairly regular participant there.

Then they pulled the plug on the whole thing. I'm not sure why.

One possibility: They felt paying someone to maintain those boards was simply not worth the expense. (In other words: "No, they didn't care about the boards, or what was said on them; not enough to make an effort to keep them alive.")

Another possibility: They resented the way the boards were often used to post loud complaints about the things DC was doing in each month's new comic books! (That could suggest that they did care -- not care enough to agree with the criticism and change what they were doing, but at least "care enough" to want to make those complaints go away so that visitors surfing through the corporate site would not become biased by all this negative feedback!)

[nepenthes]

"Never be the same....suuuuure"

[Powerboy]

Yeah, it probably would cause controversy. I think most people back then would bet that Barry Allen would have been back within a year.

You would probably have gotten a huge argument going on the GLC because a great appeal to a lot of people was that it survived the Crisis with it's continuity more or less intact.

At the time, I really did not think we would be seeing anything like Captain Carrot because I mistakenly thought that a point of the Crisis was not just to get rid of the alternate realities. I never really understood the need. It's like Star Trek needing to get rid of the mirror universe. Why? Alternate realities are just part of a good many sci fi/ Fantasy settings. But I thought part of the reason for the Crisis was to get rid of the corny grade school Silver Age stuff and make it more "realistic". But then you instantly had the stand-up comedy Justice League, Plastic Man and Lobo existing in the main DCU, etc. All of which made me wonder what the point of even doing a reboot was if you're going to have all of this in the main DCU.

I think rebooting Superman so that he was never Superboy was probably a good idea for the Superman titles though too much of a rewrite of LSH continuity. Although rebooting Superman so he was Football star Clark Kent was another matter.

See? It's starting already. If the Internet was around then, the arguments we had with friends in the living room would have been Internet arguments.

[Powerboy]

Until a few years ago, DC used to host a bunch of discussion boards on their own corporate website. I was a fairly regular participant there.

Then they pulled the plug on the whole thing. I'm not sure why.

One possibility: They felt paying someone to maintain those boards was simply not worth the expense. (In other words: "No, they didn't care about the boards, or what was said on them; not enough to make an effort to keep them alive.")

Another possibility: They resented the way the boards were often used to post loud complaints about the things DC was doing in each month's new comic books! (That could suggest that they did care -- not care enough to agree with the criticism and change what they were doing, but at least "care enough" to want to make those complaints go away so that visitors surfing through the corporate site would not become biased by all this negative feedback!)

One theory was that they did it on the eve of the new continuity because they knew there would be a nuclear explosion over it once people realized it was truly a reboot.

To me, it doesn't matter. Those boards were an unmoderated disaster that were essentially little but people who hated a character or book ruining any chance of enjoyment of discussing them for everybody else.

[Lorendiac]

If the Internet were around in 1938, people would have been hating on Siegal and Schuster's Superman.

Hey, a few years ago, I did the best I could to make up for lost time in that department! Better late than never!

Specifically: On April Fool's Day, 2012, I posted a "scathing critique" of what was wrong in their first Superman storyline (part of which was published in "Action Comics #1" in 1938, and part of which -- although it had already been written and drawn -- was only published later, in "Superman #1" in 1939.)

I posted my piece here on CBR at the time, but of course it would have been wiped out last year when the forums got rebooted. Fortunately, I posted it in other places, as well, and here's a link to a copy if anyone is interested.

When Superman's stories got dark