Superman in the Bronze Age

And don't forget Steve Englehart; if O'Niel's work was the first step towards the Batman we know today, then Englehart was the next great big shove to that point. I think his run still stands up today in some ways. (And it's really short too, so there's no issue if you don't feel like making a long-term investment.)

Len Wein and Marshall Rogers were pretty awesome, too. And I think Frank Robbins was actually the first step towards today's Batman. It's weird going back and looking at Batman comics from the early 70's, because they waffle back and forth between the guys with the new perspective and stuff that still looks and feels like Carmine Infantino's interpretation from the late 60's. It's pretty jarring.

Sorry, we were talking about Superman...

edited 26th Apr '13 9:28:24 PM by Robbery

Actually, it's not so off-topic. These observations about the creative ferment in several Bronze Age titles simply highlight how safe and uninspired Superman's handling was by comparison. For the most part, DC coasted along on the creative proceeds of Supes's Silver Age incarnation, with only a few (often misguided) cosmetic updates.

It sounds like Superman didn't really have a Bronze Age at all; only an extension of the Silver Age. A lot of other franchises did, but not Superman.

No, I think he did have a Bronze Age. There's a definitely distinct feeling to the 70s and early 80s material compared to the wackier and denser Silver Age. It's just that Bronze Age material, out of the Kirby and Maggin books, wasn't that interesting at all.

It was the point where Superman was still monumentally successful, and as such they didn't want to mess with the formula at all. I believe he was still DC's best-selling property at this juncture, before Batman began to overshadow him.

Do you think Superman is on the verge of change now that he's being overshadowed as of now?

He's not on the verge of change - Superman has been in constant flux since Batman began overshadowing him as of The Dark Knight Returns. We had:

• the Byrne post-Crisis reboot.
• The death.
• The marriage.
• Electric Blue Superman.
• The restoration of Krypton to its pre-Crisis incarnation.
• Returning Superman's powers to pre-Crisis levels.
• Bouncing Lex Luthor around from corporate mogul to evil politician back to mad scientist (seriously, Luthor has cycled among those roles so much in the past decade that it's dizzying).
• Shuffling the Kents from dead to alive more than once.
• Reverting Superman back to his 1938 character motivations in New 52.
• The reinvention of Brainiac from the ground up under Johns.
• The entire New Krypton arc trying to do something completely off-the-wall and new with the character (IE, uprooting the entire "last son of Krypton" thing).
• The removal and restoration of the Legion to Superman's history.
• And most recently, experimenting with removing Lois as Superman's primary love interest (even if it turns out to be temporary in the long term).
• Tons of experimentation with Superman's motivations and setting in the Earth One universe.

All of this, to me, indicates that DC is very insecure about Superman as a property, and are desperately trying almost everything to try and build the audience for him.

Like, consider that Batman has been, in many ways, reboot-proof. They change things here and there (whether Joe Chill is alive, mostly), but they definitely know what works for Batman. Even the most off-the-wall stuff still stays within certain boundaries so as to not screw up what they have.

edited 29th Apr '13 9:02:40 PM by TheEvilDrBolty

Agreed ... but that still leaves us with a period that—though a distinctively diluted form of the Silver Age Superman—didn't qualitatively differ from it much.

Good point. That also suggests that by the time DC felt obliged to change the character, they'd waited until the needed updates had piled up enormously, and become hard to implement without a lot of experimentation and do-overs.

Depending on how WB and DC handles it, we might see a more consistent Superman after the Man of Steel movie.

I know I'm late to the party but I felt like leaving my thoughts, the Bronze Age is an interesting animal when it comes to Superman, the first half had that Kryptonite Nevermore storyline that tried to downgrade Superman's powers and the later half in the early 80's was basically the character being lost in the shuffle, however the middle part of that run was pure gold, especially when being written by Elliot S! Maggin who was like the original Grant Morrison when it comes to Superman except he doesn't go overboard, Maggin run is my personal favorite run on the character.

I actually liked Curt Swan art during this era and this era also featured fantastic by Jose Luis Garcia Lopez (praise be his name)

That era also featured his young self Superboy in the Legion of Superheroes title, which were great back in the Bronze Age.

Also, I prefer Bronze Age Morgan Edge, rough business who's a decent person deep down over the one dimensional evil businessman Post Crisis Morgan Edge.

So overall, I think the Bronze Age is really underrated.

edited 4th Apr '15 8:40:07 PM by BBally81

I think the Bronze Age did add one or two decent things to Superman. As people have already noted it gave Luthor his power armour, created the skull-faced robotic version of Brainiac, and invented Parasite. It also created Mongul I, who was a key villain not only in For The Man Who Has Everything, but in several other Bronze Age stories. There was an influx of characters, reimagined or brand new, who could fight Superman on an even basis. Their stories weren't always very good, but the concepts were, and there's a reason why most of those ideas have stuck around in one form or another.

Maggin was definitely great, particularly as time wore on. Superman # 400 was particularly excellent. The more of his work you read (including the novels he wrote, particularly Miracle Monday), the more you realize that he was building a very specific mythology for Superman.

Bump. Count me as a Curt Swan defender. I mean, look at the these panels◊ where Superman shows a criminal that Kryptonite no longer works BY EATING IT! Swan really sells the comedy here. In fact, Walt Simonson would reference this moment in a Post-Crisis comic,◊ complete with Superman saying it needs salt.

That moment actually made think Superman was just acting as a lunatic, if I have to be honest. Pulverizing the rock in his fist or something like that would have worked better than eating it.

Curt Swan needs defending?

I'd chalk that up to Denny O'Neill, who by his own admission never had a handle on how to write Superman. I will say this, though, Superman eating the ex-Krytoptonite does make for a memorable scene. It's about par for the course for the kind of stuff they had Superman do in the late 60's/ early 70's, too.

There was person on this thread who called him a "terribly uninspired artist".

edited 2nd Feb '17 5:50:17 AM by DS9guy

I believe that was me ... but one doubts my opinion could matter enough to affect Swan's reputation. He'll always be regarded as one of Supes's most iconic artists, and rightly so. (Though I'll also stand by my evaluation of the flaws that came with his indisputable virtues.)

After reading the post you mention, I have to say I can see where he's coming from, but I'd submit that the ability to juxtapose the mundane with the ridiculous and fantastic is a skill to be admired. Swan could take pretty much any situation, regardless of how wild, and make it look believable, which in certain circumstances can be terrifying. Swan's Superman was a man of awesome power but human dimensions, operating in a world based on mundane reality. Looked at from a certain perspective, the crazy things he did or encountered were rendered more outre by the naturalism with which they were portrayed.

In Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow, I love that Curt Swan only had to give Superman a different hairstyle, grey temples, and a thin mustache (oh, and the colorist gave him brown hair that is clearly a dye job since the eyebrows and facial hair are still black) to disguise him as Jordan Elliot. I'm sure at least a few comic book readers were fooled at first until they got a good look at his facial features, which Swan did not change at all. Suddenly, the Clark Kent disguise doesn't seem so stupid when are you are not actively looking for it, huh?

edited 21st Apr '17 8:34:02 AM by DS9guy

Superman is a master at hiding in plain sight.

There was a 3 issue limited series called The Krypton Chronicles written by E. Nelson Bridwell (DC's own continuity nut) that basically goes into the planet's history and how the decedents of Kal-El helped shaped it (said descendants' statues were previously the subject of a Silver Age Superboy story).

What I find amusing is that Bridwell used so much Kryptonian terminology that editor Julius Schwartz told the readers to look up the meaning of the words in a glossary that was in the back of each issue with an asterisk to show what words were in the glossary.

edited 23rd Apr '17 8:08:33 AM by DS9guy

You mean his ancestors. Your ancestors come before you, your descendants come after.

E.Nelson Bridwell apparently knew everything about the Silver Age Superman. He could tell you how many moons Krypton had, and what happened to all of them after Krypton's destruction. He could tell you the names of every island, and every continent, and who lived there.

edited 23rd Apr '17 1:34:56 PM by Robbery

Oops. I did mean ancestors.