Recent Posts

[last panel of the original 1940 page 24 of K-Metal]

- Added the last panel of the original 1940 page 24 of K-Metal, drawn by the Joe Shuster Studio. I just found this panel online today; trying to track down the rest of the page. Anyone know where this came from?



- Added the fully restored Shuster Studio Splash Page of K-Metal (as already posted elsewhere);

- All of Michael Mautner's American Way youtube videos to date have been added to their appropriate pages. So far, he has read Cantos One to Twenty (out of 64).  He plans to do more.  You can jump right in starting with Canto One.  As far as I know, this is the first and only epic poem, told in the classic tradition, about Superman; or about any American hero, really.

- We will soon be doing an announcement and cover reveal about our next comic book project - looks to be fun!

[here]

I already posted here announcing that we have recently restored  the original Shuster Studio version of page one, replacing our interim version that we created when we had only the script to work from.

Part of our original charge has always been to replace any of our modern interpretations with the original pages if or as they are discovered; but we will keep our original versions online so that readers can enjoy both of them.

Pages 2 and 4 from the Shuster Studio, previously unseen, have recently been discovered in a private collection - we'll be adding those original artwork pieces to this site in the near future, along with the stories of their discovery.

The next K-Metal page to be fully restored will likely be one of those, or it could be something else.  But movement will continue; the K-Metal restoration project remains in progress; and it will remain so until such time as the entire story is recovered.

GREAT!

[page one!]

Kudos and many thanks to all concerned for a fantastic job on page one!



Potential future plans posted here.

[exciting announcement]

Stay tuned for an exciting announcement regarding our next comic book presentation!

I cannot recommend this title highly enough!

Supergirl #5 hit the stands today, here's a quick preview:



 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 


 
 
 
 



Available at finer comic shops everywhere, and online in many places, including Amazon Kindle!

WOW! GREAT job! I expected this would happen!

[original goal]

Well, K-Metal may now be "complete" (in that we now have a complete, finished version of every page in the script and a readable comic book), but that doesn't mean that it is in any way "finished" or "done"

As part of our original goal, we stated:

If you are an owner of any of the original artwork or have copies of any of the additional original pages, please contact us.  Even if we have already published our own version of the page, we will replace it with a restored version of the original page by the original artists.

and we stand by that statement.

Originally, working from page one of the script alone, Angel drew a proof-of-concept sketch for the restoration project, back around 2004 or 2005 -



Bob Rivard re-worked and inked Angels pencils -



- then added color:

This was our first published version of the page, from 2006 or so, I would guess.  I did the "Superman" title and lettering on this one.



Angel later inked his pencils himself, this time colored by Randy Sargent - I utilized my newly created "K-Metal" font (the above was "Anime Ace"); and we tried adding a "newsprint" effect:



The newsprint experiment was nixed, and this is the latest version, still live on the site (edit; no longer, see post below)



At some point along the way, a reader found and sent in a copy of the original Shuster Studio artwork for page 1.  And although it was very different, it was also remarkably similar in some ways.

The only drawback was that, for whatever reason, this reader did not have access to the complete piece of artwork; only to three sections of it.

W tried to place them as best we could in relation to each other, sort of extrapolating where they might be positioned, creating an incomplete jigsaw puzzle of the page:



A couple of years ago, Angel reconstructed an entire, restored Studio Shuster version of the page based on these three pieces, to replace his own earlier effort - in keeping with the integrity of the project goal. He had gotten as far as pencils and inks; just last week, he colored it:



As soon as I've recovered from the overwhelming emotional experience of the previous K-Metal update; I will be lettering and posting this fully restored version of the page.

And hopefully more updates to the project coming down the line, as always...  

Back in 2001, Michael Mautner kindly submitted his epic poem, Superman: The American Way, told in the same classic tradition as Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey, and we published it online, in installments.  There was a bit of reader discussion on the piece in the now defunct Superman Through the Ages! mailing list; and he also sent along his thesis and a family tree of the "El" family.

I find the whole thing to be brilliantly conceived and executed.

Recently (that is to say, two years ago); he began a youtube series, posting a reading of each Canto of his verse narrative, including scholarly asides.  The audio readings that he has created return the piece to the oral tradition on which the form is based; and the reading is extremely well done and beautiful to listen to.

Because I appreciate hearing it while reading along (it forces me to slow down), I have begun including his videos in each Canto. (note that there are occasionally small differences in the text between the spoken version and the written version; I will be editing the written version to match the newer spoken version. This kind of evolution of the text is part of the oral tradition, so I will be honoring it.)

I am also in the process of updating the American Way section of the site to be a bit more navigable and responsive, along the same lines that I did with the K-Metal section and the new STTA main page.

This is all online here:


(main page: www.supermanthroughtheages.com/americanway/
 or just jump right in here: www.supermanthroughtheages.com/americanway/text/?canto=1 )

and I'll post a follow-up here in this thread after I have completed the update and all of the videos are included.

WOW! CONGRATULATIONS! I'm SO glad this project is complete at least in some form! Congrats to all those who contributed over these 20+ years!