Superman in the Bronze Age

It seems that whenever anyone talks about Superman, it's either the Silver Age (thanks to Superdickery), or the Post Crisis Superman.

But what about him in the in-between period, where comics got darker than in the Silver Age while still retaining some of its elements? What was Superman like in that period?

It wasn't a very interesting period. Superman was technically just as powerful, but briefly lost one of his main weaknesses (Kryptonite). He got a new job as a TV reporter, but from what I have read, the cast's dynamics didn't really change that much. They had some interesting ideas with Morgan Edge, who was sort of a Proto-Post Crisis Luthor and a more benevolent figure apparently at random, and Jack Kirby's Jimmy Olsen run was rather decent if uneven, but otherwise, that era tended to be mostly forgettable.

The Bronze Age was...not a great era for Superman.

On the one hand: this was the era where Clark Kent became a TV news anchor instead of a newspaper reporter. There was a concerted effort to decrease the amount of Kryptonite on Earth so that it stopped being a too-convenient plot device. If I recall correctly, this is when Parasite was introduced; I cannot recall if Metallo was introduced around now, or earlier. This is also when Lex Luthor got his first costume, and later his first suit of Powered Armor.

And hey, this era was capped off with Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Can't argue with that.

And yet, for all of those changes I listed - this was a startlingly stagnant era for Superman. The character's direction didn't really evolve, nor did the style of the stories. While Bronze Age writers of the title were a lot more restrained than Silver Age writers in terms of making up superpowers on the fly, you still had stuff like Super-Hypnotism being Ass Pulled for story resolutions.

Basically - the Bronze Age ditched the things that were really repellant about Silver Age Superman (over-the-top sexism, ridiculous power usage), but didn't add much of significance to the mythology (and, by lacking those aspects, is also far less hilarious to look back upon). The 50's gave us almost everything we think of when we think of Superman; the 70's gave us a new status quo that did not advance the character in theme or content. This was an era of a lot of cosmetic changes. Thematically, and creatively, there was nothing particularly interesting added to Superman.

Contrast with, say, Batman - who was overhauled into something closer to his current incarnation during this exact same time period. The Justice League really hit its peak around this time with the Satellite Era and most of its signature secondary characters. The Legion and the Titans hit their all-time highs in popularity; this was the time period where the Legion was popular enough to push Superboy out of his own title.

Basically - Superman spent this entire era in a holding pattern. There were a lot of changes, but nothing that truly shook up the formula or the mythology of Superman.

edited 19th Apr '13 3:11:33 PM by TheEvilDrBolty

Yep. I was a child of the Bronze Age, and on virtually all counts, '70s Supes was your proverbial "bucket of warm spit." He had finally shed the Silver Age's weirdo conceits and much of that era's most retrograde traits ... but DC didn't replace them with anything. All that was left was essentially a placeholder character.

Moreover ... I hate to say this so bluntly, because the man was by all accounts highly professional and a prince of a fellow in person, but Curt Swan was a terribly uninspired artist, however skilled his draughtsmanship. His characters and scenery were always impeccably rendered, unsurprising, static, stodgy, predictably laid out, and 100% without verve or capability to awe. There was no intergalactic struggle, doomsday monster, or emotionally shattering moment that Swan wasn't able to make look kind of pedestrian.

I don't know, Perez's inks in Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow really brought a lot of dynamism to his work. And while by today's standards his art might seem somewhat pedestrian, it still was intense compared to most comic book artists of his time, who were even more rigid in style.

You're right about Perez—which goes to show how underrated a good inker can be! You're also right that Swan was at least on par with most of his peers ... but to my mind, that says more about the Bronze Age than about Swan.

Would For The Man Who Has Everything count as a Bronze Age story? I'd say that it's a story folks talk a lot about.

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow shouldn't count since it's basically a love letter to the Silver Age by Alan Moore.

edited 20th Apr '13 8:42:30 AM by zam

Except it looks much more like a love letter to the bronze age. Because there's pretty much nothing in there that was silver age and not bronze age.

Well, Luthor spending the story in casual clothes instead of his armor makes it clear that Moore was prioritizing Silver. There's also Terra Man and Parasite being killed off screen before the start of the story, whereas the lesser-known Legion of Super-villains had a prominent role.

But still - Whatever Happened was the end of the Bronze Age Superman, and it shows just how little was added. In a tribute to everything that made Superman great, almost everything in it came from the 50's (except Kryptonite Man, I believe, who is really just Dumb Muscle).

Whatever Happened uses Bronze Age's skullfaced Brainiac instead of the green version.

edited 20th Apr '13 11:46:26 AM by Nightwire

I've thought about it some more. Here's a more devolped answer.

The ages of comic books aren't universally agreed upon. Gold and Silver are always there, bit what they actually cover exactly isn't always the same. The Bronze Age is almost included, and will usually include stuff like Green Lantern/Green Arrow, but when did it start, how long did it last?

One of the main reasons for this is that not all comics fit into the same stages of devolpment, not even roughly. Superman didn't really change for the Bronze Age. There was Denny O'Neal's run, but most of the changes he made didn't last long after him.

A lot of fans would say that pre-Crisis there were only two (broad) incarnations of Superman. The second one was the one that started prior to the most common definition of the Silver Age and ended with Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow.

And it featured Clark in his TV news anchor job.

The Bronze Age was the age of Elliot S! Maggin, one of my favorite Superman writers. I'd recommend anything that he wrote. As written by most others, though, I'd have to agree that this wasn't a terrifically bright period for the Man of Steel. It gave us Steve Lombard, a character whose specific mandate from then DC head-honcho Carmine Infantino was to embarrass Clark in front of women. Morgan Edge, if I remember correctly, was originally supposed to be working for Darkseid and heading up Intergang on Earth, but that went by the wayside when Kirby left DC.

What are the names of Superman material written by Maggin?

http://www.comicvine.com/elliot-s-maggin/4040-42850/

Here you go. Just click on the appropriate links there for Superman and Action Comics respectively, (on 'appearances', which is under the names of the series',) and you should be set.

On the subject of Ages;

I divide them up as Stone (Anything before 1938), Golden (1938 - 1955), Silver (1955 - 1970), Bronze (1970 - 1985), Dark (1985 - 1997), Iron (1997 - 2011) and Digital (2011 - present).

Out of interest, what kicks off the Dark Age? And how would you characterise the Iron Age?

The Dark Age seems to be born with Watchmen and The Dark Knight Returns.

And then what constitutes the beginning of the Iron Age? Heroes Return?

That's the most common starting point. Since they were first published in 86-87 I was wondering why The Conductor wrote 85. It might have been a typo but there might have been a reason for it. Maybe Crisis, Swamp Thing or something outside mainstream comics.

edited 21st Apr '13 3:38:25 PM by C0mraid

Looking at our page for the Bronze Age Of Comic Books, I can definitely see what is meant by the observations about "ugly art".

Really, I love John Byrne and Neil Adams.

There's a Digital Age of comics now?

Yeah, the Bronze Age was awesome for Batman, for instance. It gave him Denny O'Neill and Neil Adams. Both of whom worked on Superman, too, but in O'Neill's case, to somewhat less than great effect...

I remember, I started actively buying comics around '83 or '84 (by which I mean I started to regularly buy certain titles; I've always read comics) and I remember feeling even then (I was 8 or 9) like as far as the Superman titles went, I was coming in at the end of something. Things didn't feel old and tired, mind you, but just very ...comfortable. They by no means sucked, but the stories didn't feel particularly dynamic, either. It's easy to see why DC felt the need to shake things up a bit.