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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 5, 2022 22:36:09 GMT -5
Shaxper, I enjoyed Byrne’s reboot as a kid and an adult, but you do notice things as you revisit stuff. Your posts are making me think of things I hadn’t considered, so thanks for that! I never want to convince someone NOT to enjoy something, so I apologize if I had that effect on you. This is just a very dear run for me (as well as possibly my favorite review thread of all time), so I can't not jump in whenever I hear Byrne getting more credit than he deserves. It's pretty much everyone who worked around him that made the Post-Crisis Superman great while Byrne seemed to almost purposefully drive it into the ground at times. Interesting that you think that. Byrne was the big fish they landed to reinvent Superman.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 5, 2022 23:23:14 GMT -5
I never want to convince someone NOT to enjoy something, so I apologize if I had that effect on you. This is just a very dear run for me (as well as possibly my favorite review thread of all time), so I can't not jump in whenever I hear Byrne getting more credit than he deserves. It's pretty much everyone who worked around him that made the Post-Crisis Superman great while Byrne seemed to almost purposefully drive it into the ground at times. Interesting that you think that. Byrne was the big fish they landed to reinvent Superman. They reinvented him long before Byrne was hired. They just needed a big name to run the plays. But Byrne decided to reinvent the playbook and sent Helfer and Wolfman packing.
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Post by zaku on Jul 6, 2022 1:53:09 GMT -5
Interesting that you think that. Byrne was the big fish they landed to reinvent Superman. They reinvented him long before Byrne was hired. They just needed a big name to run the plays. But Byrne decided to reinvent the playbook and sent Helfer and Wolfman packing. Yep! I remember that at the time Byrne on Superman was the BIG NEWS. In hindsight now we can judge his works more clearly, but then he was a kind of Comics God who never could do wrong. And really, in the early 80s he was one of the very few "superstars" in the comics world.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2022 4:55:33 GMT -5
Shaxper, I enjoyed Byrne’s reboot as a kid and an adult, but you do notice things as you revisit stuff. Your posts are making me think of things I hadn’t considered, so thanks for that! I never want to convince someone NOT to enjoy something, so I apologize if I had that effect on you. This is just a very dear run for me (as well as possibly my favorite review thread of all time), so I can't not jump in whenever I hear Byrne getting more credit than he deserves. It's pretty much everyone who worked around him that made the Post-Crisis Superman great while Byrne seemed to almost purposefully drive it into the ground at times. No apology necessary, it’s good to think about things.
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 6, 2022 8:56:36 GMT -5
Maybe you can provide more info to those statements. The only thing I heard that Byrne didn’t invent was the kingpin Luthor.
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Post by zaku on Jul 6, 2022 9:37:01 GMT -5
Maybe you can provide more info to those statements. The only thing I heard that Byrne didn’t invent was the kingpin Luthor. I believe "No Superboy" WASN'T his idea?
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Post by Icctrombone on Jul 6, 2022 10:15:10 GMT -5
Maybe you can provide more info to those statements. The only thing I heard that Byrne didn’t invent was the kingpin Luthor. I believe "No Superboy" WASN'T his idea? It actually was.
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Post by zaku on Jul 6, 2022 14:44:53 GMT -5
I believe "No Superboy" WASN'T his idea? It actually was. From Wikipedia:
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Post by chaykinstevens on Jul 6, 2022 15:26:45 GMT -5
They reinvented him long before Byrne was hired. They just needed a big name to run the plays. But Byrne decided to reinvent the playbook and sent Helfer and Wolfman packing. I think Wolfman may have departed because he fell out with Helfer over editorial tampering. I can't recall where I read about it, but I think Adventures of Superman #433, "A Tragedy in Five Acts", was altered without Wolfman's knowledge so it no longer included a tragedy.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on Jul 6, 2022 22:04:39 GMT -5
They reinvented him long before Byrne was hired. They just needed a big name to run the plays. But Byrne decided to reinvent the playbook and sent Helfer and Wolfman packing. I think Wolfman may have departed because he fell out with Helfer over editorial tampering. I can't recall where I read about it, but I think Adventures of Superman #433, "A Tragedy in Five Acts", was altered without Wolfman's knowledge so it no longer included a tragedy. That may indeed be true. However, it's also common knowledge that Byrne butted heads with pretty much everyone in that office. Even George Perez wouldn't be seen with him at conventions. Wolfman played a major role in creating the Post-Crisis Superman pitch, and yet Byrne was calling all the shots, and Wolfman wasn't even allowed to use Lex Luthor (the villain HE redefined for this run) in his stories. Helfer's departure coincided exactly with Action Comics #593.
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Post by mistermets on Jul 7, 2022 9:58:53 GMT -5
Before I go into the regular post-Crisis books, I'm going to look at a major mini-series released a decade later, set during the same time of Man of Steel. It's not a prequel, or a sequel as much as it is a parallel story. Superman For All Seasons #1
When I was younger, I got disappointed at comics that were just too short, especially some Lee/ Romita Spider-Man stories in the Essential Spider-Man volumes. I made an arbitrary declaration that a standard 20-24 page comic should have 100 panels. I didn't quite make the connection that I did really enjoy rereading the Lee/ Romita Amazing Spider-Man issues. I could still make an exception if the art was really impressive. Superman For All Seasons was an expensive comic at the time. It was twenty bucks for the set, and it was not dense. The first issue had 116 panels in 48 pages. If I'm not mistaken, the second had under a hundred. In order to be worthwhile, the art would have to be exceptional. Fortunately, Tim Sale's art is lovely. Individual panels could be in some museum of Americana. This mini-series is an interesting parallel with The Man of Steel. Each individual issue has a different narrator and covers a different season. The first one cheats a bit by jumping ahead a few years. In the first issue, we cover a lot of the same material as the first issue of The Man of Steel. Clark knows where he came from, and is realizing his abilities. Byrne's Smallville was lived in, and that certainly applies to the Smallville mini-series. We get a sense of people who are important to Clark's life, and even if these are completely new characters, there's a texture to them, so that their inclusion just feels completely natural. We do get a sense early on how isolated Smallville is. They don't even if they can believe what they've heard about the big city, so imagine what'll happen when superheroes show up. One thing writer Jeph Loeb does that's easy to overlook is how he depicts Pa Kent. It feels so perfect it's easy to forget the necessary craft in making a guy seem like he has been farming for 40+ years, and he has raised a son who is going to change the world. This might just be one of the best examples of writing a supporting character in any comic book ever. The big challenge in this issue is a tornado, which is seeded pretty well with old farmers making fun of one guy who keeps expecting a twister. We've seen Superman face this kind of stuff before, but this does feel like one of the first times he does this. One controversial element of the relaunch was how they handled Lana Lang, as someone who likes Clark and doesn't want to be in Superman's world. The take here works. She's conflicted, but she's not earning readers' ire by standing in the way of Superman doing objectively important stuff. And the imagery remains astounding when Clark reveals his secret, a scene we see a few times in Byrne's run, but never this well. This is likely the best story featuring the Post-Crisis Superman (especially since All-Star Superman is in its own continuity.) Grade: A+
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Post by mistermets on Jul 7, 2022 10:07:34 GMT -5
Superman For All Seasons #2
This issue is mainly in Lois' perspective, even if she doesn't really appear for the first half, hiding on a hijacked nuclear submarine. Loeb and Sale have a fundamentally decent take on Superman. One small example is when he takes the time to wave while flying past an airplane after taking care of a nuclear missile. He may be doing something important, but he still has time to acknowledge and reassure ordinary people. Lois is a damsel in distress for part of the story, but has quite a few good moments, as when she realizes her kidnapper has lost his gun. One change between this and the Man of Steel was that MOS had more discrete issues. Each issue was like the side of a cube, showing a part of Superman's life. #3 was about Gotham. #4 was about Lex. #6 was about Smallville and Krypton. Here, we have a guy who can do anything, so something he'll go back to Smallville for a few pages. One clever gag in The Man of Steel #5 was when Superman had defeated a guy in a costume that Lex wore Pre-Crisis, and it turns out to be one of his employees. They build on this here, with Lex tryijng to make his own superhero army and failing to match up to Superman. The challenges in this issue are things we've seen before (terrorists getting their hands on a submarine, a large apartment fire.) But it's never been done this well.
Grade: A+
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Post by codystarbuck on Jul 7, 2022 20:20:47 GMT -5
I'm gonna call shenanigans on the depiction of Smallville, as isolated. Too many comic writers come from urban backgrounds and have no clue about small town and farm/farm town life. No farm-based community is THAT isolated. I grew up in a town of 700, with a small grocery store, a gas station, a feed store, and not much else, except the school and post office. We still had tv, still had newspapers, still had radio. It's the 20th Century, not the 19th. If you want to talk about getting an ambulance there or a sheriff's deputy, then that is certainly a factor. But, it is a city idea that everyone on the farm or in small towns is an unsophisticated rube. I see too much of that in every depiction of Smallville. The one time I saw a writer call BS on that was an episode of Lois and Clark, where they are at the Kent Farm and Lois inserts her foot into mouth about technology being available and Martha offers her the fax machine to send something, pointing out they use them all the time on the farm. Modern farming is big business and farms have the latest technology. Internet usually sucks, but that is due to provider coverage, and even that keeps changing.
It may take time to get to the nearest "city;" but, that doesn't mean the people don't visit them regularly.
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Post by Duragizer on Jul 7, 2022 21:34:36 GMT -5
Seems like the Smallville scenes were hearkening back to the early-mid 20th century. It's cute, but out of place in a story set in the late 20th century.
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Post by badwolf on Jul 8, 2022 8:57:00 GMT -5
Like the medieval European villages, I just accept them as part of the fantasy world.
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