Man and Superman

Despite my inability to find a desk that suits my needs/sense of aesthetics, I did finally manage to spend some money this week.
Last year DC Comics launched what they’ve referred to as a “soft reboot” of Superman in the form of a twelve-issue limited series titled “Birthright.”
What this means is that they’ve retroactively altered the character's history. The basic idea is the same, they’ve just altered some of the details.
This is hardly the first time such a thing has been done. The most extreme example occurred in the years that followed 1985’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” in which DC effectively reset the continuity of every character in its stable.
It was hardly a graceful transition, and it took a long time for them to figure out which bits of history they wanted to keep and which ones they wanted to get rid of, but, after about ten years, they finally managed to stabilize things.
For the most part, at least.
But in those earliest days of the post-Crisis DC Universe, there were a lot of major resets of characters, with the most significant being the 1986 reset of Superman.
To understand how the reset came about, you have to understand that at that point Superman had been continuously published for nearly 50 years. There had been a lot of changes over the years, most of which I won’t get into, but essentially after nearly 50 years Superman had become stagnant. There were a lot of reasons for this, not the least of which was, with his ability to fly faster than the speed of light, to travel through time at will, and his being completely and utterly invulnerable, he was just too powerful to be interesting.
Beyond that, his history had become altogether too convoluted, and, well, silly.
Okay, it was completely ridiculous.
There were all the colorful versions of kryptonite, Krypto the Super-Dog, Comet, the Super-Horse, Streaky, the Super-Cat, Beppo, the Super-Monkey, and Bizarro, and a host of other pointlessly stupid characters and ideas.
Also, for someone who was supposed to be the last survivor of a doomed planet, he managed to have a lot of living relatives such as his cousin Supergirl and her parents. And given that the populations of two whole Kryptonian cities had survived Krypton’s destruction, he could hardly lay claim to the title “Last Son of Krypton.”
Sales of “Superman” and “Action Comics,” were sinking like stones. Clearly, something had to be done, as it would be an unacceptable state of affairs for DC to cease publication of its flagship character.
Enter John Byrne.
For several years John Byrne had been the biggest name in comics. He was a genuine superstar. As artist on X-Men, and later writer and artist on Fantastic Four, Byrne had cemented his reputation as a fan favorite. Having Byrne’s name attached to a title was a guaranteed sales boost.
There’s no question that the dominance of Marvel Comics over all of its competitors had a lot to do with the fact that they had John Byrne under contract.
In 1986 that contract came up for renewal.
I can only imagine what it must have been like in the offices of DC Comics when it became known that Byrne was up for grabs, and I can’t imagine what they would have been willing to offer to get their hands on him.
Regardless of whatever else they may have offered him, there was only one thing that Byrne wanted: Superman.
I doubt that DC hesitated for even a second.
With the recent reset of DC Universe continuity, this was the ideal time for Byrne to take over the reins.
The existing creative team had time to wrap up any loose ends on the two Superman titles, and in the summer of 1986 DC published a two-part story split between “Superman” and “Action” entitled “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?”
This story was written by Alan Moore, and served as sort of a means of tying up all of the loose ends of the past 48 years, and of providing a fitting ending before the new beginning.
“Superman” and “Action” temporarily ceased publication after this (really, really excellent) storyline, and the late summer of 86 saw the publication of a 6 issue mini-series entitled “The Man of Steel.”
This was Byrne’s retelling (and retooling) of the Supeman legend.
This was a Superman the world had never seen before.
Here’s a list of some of the major changes Byrne introduced:

No more Superboy. Clark Kent did not don his cape (or his glasses, for that matter) until he was well into his adulthood.
The continued existence of Ma and Pa Kent. In the old continuity, the Kents died before Clark moved off to the big city. Byrne decided to keep them alive, with the intention of making them a regular part of Superman’s life.
No more milquetoast. Seeing no real reason to bring it to such an extreme, Byrne decided to dispense with the nerdy, cowardly Clark Kent persona. Much more in keeping with the times, Clark was going to be a dynamic go-getter in his own right. He was, after all, an award-winning investigative journalist, and as such could hardly afford to be squeamish. Far from being a bookish nerd, in high school Clark was a star athlete, using his powers, in a greatly subdued fashion, to almost single-handedly win championships, until Pa finally gave him a talking to and he came to understand the selfishness of his actions and the responsibilities that his powers imposed on him.
Clark was a yuppie. He was also a best-selling author.
He was, truly, the Last Son of Krypton. On a personal note, this bothered me a little. One of the major events of the Crisis was the noble death of Supergirl. It was a very good story, and it was very sad, and it became completely invalidated by this change to continuity, since it now meant that Supergirl had never existed.
His powers were reduced. No more quick trips through time, or interstellar flights made in a matter of moments, or casually juggling planets. Supes was still one of the most powerful beings around, but he was no longer seemingly all-powerful.

There were all sorts of other changes, but these were the most significant. In a lot of ways the changes reflected the times. For example, in prior continuity, Supeman’s hair didn’t grow when he was under the rays of a yellow star (which, in case you don’t know, is the source of his powers). Byrne eliminated that notion, since it gave him the opportunity to occasionally present Superman with some Don Johnson-esque five o’clock shadow.
As another example, and by Byrne's own admission, the relationship between Lois and Clark greatly resembled the relationship between Cybil Shepherd and Bruce Willis on “Moonlighting.”
If you ever saw that godawful “Lois and Clark” TV series with Teri Hatcher and Dean Cain, I should mention that, while it was very poorly executed, the basic ideas of the show were largely based on the changes that Byrne had introduced.
In any case, the way that the “Man of Steel” mini-series worked was that each issue moved forward in time by quite a bit, until finally “catching up” with the current time. It painted the broad strokes of Superman’s history from the moment he revealed himself to the world, up to the present day (which was several years later), and allowed Byrne the freedom to fill in the blanks later.
When “Man of Steel” concluded, DC launched three “new” titles: Superman, Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics.
“Action Comics” continued its numbering from where it left off, “Adventures” picked up the numbering of the previous “Superman” series, and the new “Superman” started fresh at #1.
There is SO much more I could write about this, but there are other things I want to focus on.
The point is that this was NOT a “soft reboot.” It was very much a “hard reboot,” as it completely scrapped the existing history and started fresh.
“Birthright” has not done this. Essentially everything that has happened since 1986 has still happened just as it did, it’s just that the events prior to that occurred slightly differently, according to the new history.
One thing that’s sort of interesting to note is that, in a lot of ways, with “Man of Steel,” Byrne revamped Superman’s history in the comics to more closely resemble the version presented in the Superman movie (No previous career as Superboy; no prior relationship with Lex Luthor, etc.), and with “Birthright,” writer Mark Waid has revamped Superman’s history to more closely resemble that currently being presented on TV’s “Smallville.”
In any case, the point of all of this is that the entire 12-issue run of “Birthright” has been collected in a Hardcover edition that goes on sale this week, and I ordered a copy of it from Amazon.
That was the first thing I spent money on, but while I was at it, I decided to start rebuilding my “Sandman” collection, and so I ordered three of the collected volumes from Amazon.
So that was nearly $90 right there.
Today I picked up an FM transmitter for my MP3 player. This will allow me to listen to my entire collection of MP3s in my car without having to buy some kind of MP3 player for my car or to burn all of the songs onto conventional CDs.
To extend the usefulness of the FM transmitter further, I also bought a cheap bookshelf stereo system to put in my kitchen. When I’m at home, I frequently plug my MP3 player into my home theater system, but because of the layout of my apartment, I have a hard time hearing the music when I’m in the kitchen without really blasting it.
Now I can just keep the bookshelf system in my kitchen and broadcast my MP3s directly to it.
It’s all kind of pointless, I know, but it’s pretty cool.
I think I’m done with spending money, though, at least for a little while. I’m going to muddle through with the desk I have for a while.
In case you’re curious, sometime in 1988 Byrne left the Superman titles, citing “creative differences.” The books floundered for a while, but ultimately they found a good team that made the Superman titles, as “Comic Buyer’s Guide” put it, “the most consistently good mainstream titles on the market.”
By the way, I thought I should mention that actor Brandon Routh, a relative unknown, has been officially cast as the next big-screen Superman. I’ve never seen him in anything, but I don’t really hold out much hope for the Superman movie anyway, so it’s kind of irrelevant. From pictures I’ve seen, he does at least have the right look anyway.
By the way, in case you were wondering, I do watch “Smallville.” I was resistant to the idea at first, as I thought it would be another “Lois and Clark” fiasco, but eventually I began watching it and became impressed with how well they’ve handled it.
For the most part, at least.
This season they introduced the character of Lois Lane, as portrayed by actress Erica Durance, and I have to say that I was just utterly blown away by her.
Her performance as Lois is the very best portrayal of the character I’ve ever seen. She just captures the spirit of Lois perfectly, managing to be strong and aggressive while still having a lot of heart and compassion.
During every scene featuring Lois I can be found with a smile on my face. No one has ever really done this character justice before, and I thank Erica Durance for finally presenting the Lois that I know and love to the world. Her interpretation of Lois Lane is of a woman ideally suited to be the love of Superman’s life.
I honestly can’t stress just how impressed I am by Erica Durance (and how depressed I am by the fact that she’s not a regular cast member, and, in fact, won’t be on tonight’s episode). I actually posted comments to a WB message board to express my appreciation, and my hope that she will return as a recurring character, and I even, briefly, toyed with the notion of putting up a fan page for her, but ultimately decided that I don’t want to be quite that geeky.
Still, I’m of the opinion that Lois Lane was a role that she was born to play, and I was actually having a conversation with Scott at work one day about that in which I suggested that, of all the people who have ever played the part of a comic book character, she was the most ideally suited for her role.
The possible exception I noted was J.K. Simmons as “J. Jonah Jameson” in the “Spider-Man” movies, because that is another excellent example of someone born to play a part. In fact, ultimately I had to agree with Scott and concede that Simmons does edge out Durance in that regard.
In a later conversation with someone else, though, we were forced to admit that there is someone else who edges out even Simmons: Shelley Duvall as “Olive Oyl.”
There is a person who was truly born to play a role.
I concluded that she doesn’t count, though, since she’s nowhere near as entertaining as Simmons as old J.J.J., and Erica Durance is at least a million times hotter than she is.
Hell, in contrast to how hot Erica Durance is, Shelley Duvall can hardly even be said to be a member of the same species.
(I’m sure that Shelley Duvall is a perfectly lovely human being, and, as mentioned, she was ideal for the role of Olive Oyl, and I recognize that the "species" comment was pretty extreme, but the fact remains that she is not an attractive woman.)
By the way, one other person who possibly edges out Erica Durance as Lois is actor Kevin Conroy as the voice of Bruce Wayne/Batman on the various animated incarnations of Batman (Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Beyond, Justice League, etc.).
For the rest of my life, in my mind, Kevin Conroy will be the voice of Batman.
And of course there’s Patrick Stewart as Professor X, but, even though he is clearly ideal, somehow he just doesn’t approach the level of Simmons, Durance, or Conroy. Maybe it’s because I have a hard time separating him from Picard. Who knows?
More to the point, I guess, who cares? I suppose I should apologize if I’ve bored the pants off of any of you non-comic geeks out there, but I should think by now you’d be used to it…