Dick Giordano (1932–2010)

I've never been a big fan of Superman. For me, he's simply too powerful, with no real weaknesses. He's an interesting character study, but for the most part, he's always been far too much of a boy scout to really capture my imagination.

But then, along came Byrne, who promised to shake things up and give us the Superman we deserve.

Instead, he mostly told us things we already knew, just making the telling a touch prettier. Over the first 27-ish years these six issues span, we're treated to some average storytelling, some pretty art, and the rest is rather vacuous.

We're introduced to Ma and Pa Kent, Lana Lang (who really gets a short shrift in her very few pages), Lois Lane, Lex Luthor (Christ, what's with all the L alliteration in this series?), and Jimmy Olsen. We get a bit of Supe's real parents, and a whiff of Perry White, and a frankly dumb and insulting issue starring Bizarro. And he did something I didn't think Byrne was capable of...he made Batman boring.

Byrne's better than this. But he seemed reluctant to stray too far from what had already been done before. Superman is almost sickeningly moral.

I remember, 34 years ago, when my buddy Allan had purchased the first issue or two of this, and I was flipping through it. There's one scene where Clark is seen sitting in the dark in his bedroom back in Smallville. His parents come in, and he says something like, "They all just wanted a piece of me."

I remember how excited I was at that single panel. That, to me, spoke volumes. How do you humanize and de-power someone like Superman? By taking it all for granted. By wanting to stretch him so thin, by pulling him in different ways, by turning him into a brand instead of a man...that angle could have been interesting to read about. But, nope, Ma and Pa helped make him a suit, and he learned to put on glasses, and everything was great again.

Considering, at the same time, from the same publisher, a little title called Watchmen was being unleashed, this little experiment fell really flat for me.… (altro)