 |
| © 1991 D.C. Entertainment |
 |
| In 1991, Superman revealed his secret identity to his fiancé Lois Lane. © 1991 D.C. Entertainment |
Now, this "modernization" had began in 1986, with a reboot entitled Man of Steel, much like the new movie (though again, the film wasn't an adaptation of it) and it lasted all the way through the rest of the eighties and the nineties. It brought many changes to the Superman mythos: Krypton was suddenly a heartless planet devoid of human emotion, Lex Luthor was suddenly a billionaire everyone thought of as a wonderful philanthropist, and Jonathan and Martha both lived into Clark's adult years. As for his powers, Clark still had super strength & speed, but they were supposedly more limited, as was his invulnerability. He still had most of his vision powers (x-ray, heat, telescopic, microscopic, infer-red) and super-breath (for freezing and for blowing something away) and of course, he could still fly. However, some powers that Byrne simply couldn't rationalize (hypnotism, time travel) were done away with, even though they'd been used in the films, which were a clear influence on the books.
As a hardcore fan, I won't pretend anyone will be impressed by new supporting characters introduced to the book (Cat Grant, Bibbo, Keith Parks, José Delgado) but I do think some casual onlookers would be interested in all of the events that transpired between 1986 and 1999: the moment Superman kills General Zod and eventually exiles himself for a brief time, his engagement with Lois Lane forcing him to reveal his secret identity to her, the death of Superman, his return after four impostors emerge (well, two impostors and two would-be replacements who continued on as superheroes) and the reformation of the Justice League.
 |
| Beginning in May, 1997, Superman's appearance and powers were greatly altered for about a year. © 1997 D.C. Entertainment |
In a way, you could say that this was where "my Superman" died, but that's not quite true. This was the natural extension of the arc that began in 1991: Lois and Superman's engagement. In fact, they would have been married much earlier, but the producers of Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman (you know… even if it had just been called The New Adventures of Superman without the Lois & Clark, I think that would have made it just that much better) had it in mind that the two should get married during a later season and that it would make the comics and the show seem to have more synergy if they married simultaneously.
 |
| Superboy and Supergirl during Reign of the Supermen © 1993 D.C. Entertainment |
For several months, Superman continued on trying to regain his powers, but in May of 1997, D.C. published Superman Vol. 2 #123, in which Superman gains new electric-based powers and gets a wholly new costume. No, I don't mean he gains the same powers but they're somehow electrical, and I don't mean a costume change like the ones we've been seeing lately where they're "modernized" variations of his costume; I mean a wholly new costume.
Predictably enough, this change lasted an entire year, during which time, they actually made it so this Superman split into two, thus reviving the old "Superman Red & Blue" concept from a 1963 imaginary story. The two eventually merged, and expelled all their powers into some menace, with Superman reappearing with his classic powers intact, for the 1998 prestige format book Superman Forever. The subsequent arc involved Superman being sent into different time periods where they could do homages to comics of different eras (the best of which was Simonson & Bogdanove's ode to the Golden Age Superman) which was a harbinger of things to come in the '00s.
This was all due to a fiendish plot by a villain called Dominous and he soon manipulated Superman in trying to destroy the world's armaments. I don't remember that story too well, except for the fact that it paid off the plot line that the Kryptonite Superman gave Batman had been stolen and replaced with a fake.
After that, the Superman books just seemed to meander. There was a three-part prestige format miniseries called The Doomsday Wars which I had fun picking up as they came out, but it was clear that Superman's books had grown stale--and not in the way your typical pseudo-intellectual jackass would have you believe (it may not have helped that in September of 1999, there was a one-month arc called One Man JLA but it didn't gain much publicity).
 |
| Which couple is the real Jor-El and Lara? © 2001 D.C. Entertainment |
I would say that while there may have, indeed, been a jump in quality on the books, D.C. that this more-or-less marked the end of my era of Superman. I 'm not saying that as a snob telling people that this take on the character was wrong. Far from it, it was an improvement, but it was still the turning point that begat the Superman of the '00s.
Now, certainly, the stories of 1986-1999 were stun in canon with the Superman comics that came out within a couple of years of Berganza's takeover of D.C. right? Yes, but it didn't take long to circumvent the direction of those books with Return to Krypton, which established that Krypton had actually been more like the Silver Age version. This was incredibly controversial and a year later, D.C. had backpedaled. Once again, the cold, forbidding Krypton of Byrne's miniseries was revealed to be the true form of the dead planet.
In September of 2003, D.C. Comics began publishing a 12-issue limited season, known as Birthright. This was another retelling of Superman's origin, but unlike a four-issue miniseries called A Superman For All Seasons, which retold the existing origin from another point of view; Birthright changed much of Superman's backstory, including the culture and nomenclature of Krypton, Clark's years between his life in Smallville and when he became Superman and a Daily Planet reporter, his first public feats as Superman, and to a lesser extent, Clark's personality.
 |
| Birthright definitively changed the appearance of Jor-El, Lara, Martha, Jonathan and yes, even Clark. © 2003 D.C. Entertainment |
 |
| The "new" Supergirl was essentially a return to the Supergirl of olde. © 2004 D.C. Entertainment |
Now, as I alluded to earlier, talking about the history of Supergirl in the "From Crisis to Crisis" era would take a whole hour, so I'm generally going to avoid talking about her here and save it for another entry. But long (long, long… LONG) story short, the original Supergirl, who was Superman's cousin from Krypton had died in Crisis on Infinite Earths and then eliminated from the continuity all together. A couple of years later, they introduced a new Supergirl who was an artificial life form and had very different powers. She was very popular in comics in the mid '90s, but I'm not sure what happened to her. The aforementioned Superman/Batman #8 introduced a version of the character who was more like the original. Oh… and Power Girl was introduced in the mid-'70s as the Earth-2 equivalent of the character, and after Crisis on Infinite Earths, they established that she was really from Atlantis. They later changed her back.
Anyway, back to Superman, Birthright constitutes another "death" of the '90s Superman. By this point, they were turning their back on established facts left and right. Superboy, the clone introduced during Reign of the Supermen was actually the clone of Superman and a mysterious "donor." Eventually, the donor was revealed to be a minor villain known as Paul Westfield, however, when Geoff Johns took over Teen Titans, he overrode that to establish that Lex Luthor was the "donor."
In a way, this makes sense dramatically as far more people would be familiar with Luthor than Westfield, but it was still such a dramatic disregard of the established backstory.
Meanwhile, I'd mentioned Power Girl earlier. In a 2005 miniseries published on the eve of Infinite Crisis, it was revealed that the character was, indeed, the "Supergirl" of Earth-2, just like in pre-Crisis history. Yet, if there were no parallel Earths, how was that even possible?
As an example in another line of comics, a change in Batman's history was that Jason Todd had been revived by Rah's al Guhl years earlier. There was also a Nightwing miniseries (in which Superman appeared in one issue) recounting his evolution from Robin to Nightwing, which contradicted things established in earlier versions of the story.
 |
| Conner Kent, a.k.a. Superboy, was a member of Geoff Johns' Teen Titans. © 2003 D.C. Entertainment |
Now, Infinite Crisis lead to yet another reboot for Superman, and other superheroes. The new version of Superman first appeared in Superman #650 (depending on how you look at it, they either re-retitled The Adventures of Superman so that it was just Superman again, or they bumped Superman up to that issue, but either way, they'd cancelled the other book, and had cancelled Superman: the Man of Steel years earlier, leaving Superman with two books: Superman and Action Comics) in which he's suffered the loss of his powers following the events of Infinite Crisis. Clearly, the nomenclature of Krypton was different again (owing much to the Superman films of the '70s/'80s and their psuedo-sequel Superman Returns) and other changes to the backstory which seemed to imply, for instance, that he grew up as Superboy, or that his first meeting with Batman was on a yacht, both of which are similar to stories from the silver and bronze age of Superman.
 |
| All elitism aside, this is literally not Superman. © 2009 D.C. Entertainment. |
2009 was a rather lousy year for Superman. Not only had Warners' planned sequel to Superman Returns failed to materialize, Superman would not be appearing in his own titles anymore. Action Comics would go to his adopted son, now known as Nightwing (oh, incidentally, the name Nightwing was originally a Kryptonian thing Dick Grayson had become Batman following Bruce Wayne's "death" in Final Crisis but he's alive again so never mind) who had adventures in the Bottled City of Kandor. I've never read any of the issues and cannot comment on them.
Meanwhile, Superman was taken over by Mon-El, a Legion of Super Heroes member with most of Superman's powers, but whose weakness was lead and who had been wrongly imprisoned in the Phantom Zone. I think. Anyway, they didn't even make him the "new" Superman or give the impression that it could be Superman (as in Reign of the Supermen), he was still just Mon-El and he was the new main character of Superman. This, to me, was one of the most asinine moves in comic book history. The character's popularity may have gone downhill and the stories may have been great; but having a comic called Superman when the main character is some other guy is just, I don't know, false advertising.
 |
| Oh, but the New 52 costume… that went too far. © 2009 D.C. Entertainment |
During this year, Superman went to a new planet to oversee the creation of a new Krypton-like planet. I'm afraid I don't even know how to describe it. I only bought one issue later on, and the idea just simply didn't appeal to me. I may read it one day. It may indeed be a great story. But I think the main problem here is that they had taken the character away from his surroundings to do, basically, a full-on space opera type story, and I'm not sure I wouldn't have objected to it as a shorter story in a six-issue miniseries, but it was its own series outside of the regular titles which were taken over by other characters.
The most disturbing thing is that after twelve issues, they apparently couldn't resolve the story and had to wrap it up in a miniseries called Superman: War of the Supermen in 2010. This was so indicative what what was wrong with superhero comics at the time. Everything centered around big events and crossovers, then publishing a new four-issue miniseries that would be easy enough for the collectable market to pick up.
The follow-up to all of this was an arc called Grounded which I'll talk about one day, but at this point, I'm far too tired. Suffice it to say, I had problems with the concept, but while it wasn't any more severe than the above transgressions, it's the classic case of a creative team who thinks they're turning a corner, but just ended back at square one.
 |
| Okay, this is actually from Vol. 2, but it's pretty cool, huh? © 2012 D.C. Entertainment |
 |
| One of the darkest days in Superman's history, though I welcome the typical attempts to defend it. © 2010 D.C. Entertainment |
In a sense, Infinite Crisis had brought back the pre-Crisis Superman with some post-Crisis mollifications. Minor supporting characters from pre-and-post Crisis reappeared almost obligatorily and, in perhaps one of the strangest ideas, Gary Frank began drawing Superman with an unmistakable likeness to Christopher Reeve. This despite many fans' clamoring for a reboot after the disappointing Superman Returns which similarly attempted to tie itself to the earlier films.It wasn't until 2009 that fans got an actual origin story for this Superman, but by this time, it was clear that we'd had a new demarkation. The era I grew up with was now a thing of the past, and I didn't really know how to feel about it. I wasn't buying the comics much, because they seemed even more obsessed with publicity stunts and experimentation than the '90s stuff I grew up with.
I'm not saying that any version of the character--in or out of comics--is inherently better or worse than the other (well, except Superman Returns, that's worse), but that the character is constantly evolving, whether you like it or not. And I happened to grow up when a lot of sweeping changes were occurring, so I don't feel it's such a strange thing, and I don't think that the fact that a given story is or isn't in canon anymore doesn't mean D.C. has forsaken or disrespected it, which may indeed be the basis for another entry.
No comments:
Post a Comment