Recent Posts

[available at Amazon.com]

When Caveat Corner published a new edition of Superman: Miracle Monday in 2017, they incorporated a painting by Ken Penders as part of their cover design.

But much of Ken's painting was obscured and seems a bit washed out.

I wanted to try to show more of that painting and restore the original colors; so below is the official cover as it appears on the official edition, followed by my attempt at a redesign beneath.

Official cover:


My version:



Superman: Miracle Monday is available at Amazon.com and from the author directly at San Diego Comic Con from now until this Sunday, July 27 (2025) at Table P-02 in the Small Press section.

I don't know about a "catalog" but the DC Vault book (2008) included a facsimile repro of a Superman-Tim store booklet from March 1944.  It included puzzles, a message in secret code, some promotional pitches and a text-piece story or two, along with a few illos of Superman.

I'm not reading any monthlies now, but I just finished Waid's "Last Days of Lex Luthor" and thought it really captured the spirit of a Silver Age "Imaginary Story" like "The Amazing Saga of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue" or "The Death of Superman."  It felt like it could've been used to wrap up pre-Crisis Superman instead of Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow."  In particular I think it captures the spirit of old school Lex Luthor; brilliant but held back by petty grudges and personal demons, and yet -- in Superman's eyes -- never totally beyond hope of reformation.  A really good tale but -- without spoiling anything -- one that has to be out of continuity.  Not that that isn't a major plus at this stage.

[main welcome page]

Since 1995, the main welcome page at Superman Through the Ages has been designed to work well on a desktop PC, probably around 800x600 to 1024x768 pixels.

It doesn't really work well on tablets or phones, so I've started to put together a new responsive welcome page, that is designed to have collapsible menus and other screen elements that automatically resize to fit the screens on mobile devices. (vertical orientation probably looks better)

From any of the welcome screens, you can now pick which of the four you prefer (the new mobile responsive, the original classic desktop, one of the original desktop revamps or a later desktop revamp) using the navigation options at the top of the page, and whichever option you pick should be remembered as you navigate around the site until such time as you change it.  Most of the pages on the rest of the site are still optimized for legacy desktop PCs, but I'll be updating bits and pieces as we go.

[instagram page]

Anyone who has seen the new Superman flick may have noticed an all-new version of the spoken and written language of Krypton. This is a new conlang, created by David and Jessie Peterson who have created other conlangs for other Hollywood blockbuster films and are known figures in the conlang community.  I really like the aesthetics of the new writing system; the fact that the Petersons researched and incorporated the comic book material; they give credit to the work of previous creators; and they don't try to claim that theirs is the only "official" Kryptonian language!  In fact, they leave the door open to, and welcome, any future creations. They seem like very nice people!  

They will be posting future updates and language material on their instagram page.








(some of those comics are here)



(some original vocabulary and grammar)


















(Information about the caretakers:)
E. Nelson Bridwell (alphabet, glossary, comics)
Al Turniansky
Georg Brewer
Darren Doyle
Christine Schreyer

I forgot to mention above:  Elliot S! Maggin will be at the San Diego Comic Con next week (he writes "Wednesday to Sunday" (July 23-27, 2025), but the official convention start date is Thursday, July 24 - not sure how that works) at Table P-02 in the Small Press section selling his books and other sundries.

[Elliot S! Maggin fan-page]

Howdy!

I've updated the Elliot S! Maggin fan-page with all-new book/novel covers.  The old images were the size of postage stamps and really could no longer be seen on modern devices.  I also wanted to show Elliot's, post-Mass Market, post-Christopher Reeve covers; which are pretty nice.

As part of that, I threw together a new cover for Starwinds Howl, based on the original first edition cover.  This new cover only exists online, there is no actual "Starwinds Howl" book in print anymore; although the story is included in one of Elliot's anthology books.

]

["Headband Heritage"]

Supergirl's "Headband Heritage" of Krypton

(Starting to get a little more cosmic here)

(click for full size)



They weren't originally just for the men, however -
The Headband Warriors of Krypton!

[Birthright]

Any other current comics that you're reading?

I've really been enjoying the new Supergirl title; along with the Krypto miniseries; both are a lot of fun and my current favorites.

I'm also following Mark Waid's recent storyline in Action Comics which is basically now in effect "The adventures of Superboy."   I suspect, but I'm not sure (my knowledge is way out of date), this could be the first post-Crisis full-on "Superboy" storyline, with Clark in high school while also having adventures (and troubles) as Superboy, in an actual Superboy costume and using the actual Superboy name.

In style the issues read to me a lot like Birthright (which now seems to be canonical?  Again, not sure) and Waid's earlier story, Young Luthor in Smallville.  I think that he clearly loves these characters.  The current storyline involves a "mysterious visitor" who knows Clark's secret identity, but doesn't reveal it.  The way this plot thread is told, and the hints that are dropped, remind me a lot of Strange Visitor - I'm curious to see if the visitor will be the same person when his identity is revealed.

I walked by it in a comic shop and did not buy it, like a big dummy. Loving the new series so far, though.

I've been doing a read-through of all Superman family comics in the last 3 years, everything before Crisis except for a few newspaper strips and promos (if anybody knows where to find the Superman-Tim catalog, let me know!) I really enjoyed Supergirl and am glad that the new series is making references to the Bronze Age.

Still have my first edition, and just pointed some newly-minted Maggin fans here to read the online version.  Big year for Krypto!