Iron Age Retrospective

[NotSuper]

This is quite an interesting debate. I haven't really discussed Superman lately (I've been busy with school), but lately I've really wanted to.

In regards to the post-Crisis vs. pre-Crisis Superman, I feel like I'm kind of in the middle. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan of Byrne's reboot. In my view, it eliminated too many things that people unconsciously associated with Superman. Yet there have been writers that have done good things with the post-Crisis Superman. Because of that, I don't think this is a black or white issue.

Personally speaking, I'm a Bronze Age Superman fan. The Bronze Age had all the fantastic ideas of the Silver Age, but some of the more outlandish stuff was toned down and Superman himself seemed more concerned with how he affected the world. It was a nice balance. Furthermore, it didn't invalidate any of Superman's previous history. When you erase a character's history (like the Byrne reboot did), most rational fans will be able to accept the change as long as you respect the history of the character and don't try to drastically alter him because of some personal desire. A lot of fans (myself included) believe that the reboot failed in this regard. And, as Julian mentioned, much of it simply reversed things about Superman and his life (i.e. a cold Krypton instead of a utopian one, a macho Clark instead of a mild-mannered one, ect).

Now, I'm a fan of the current Superman comics. There are some good writers out there that understand the character (like Kurt Busiek). I especially like how the mainstream DCU Superman is like the movie version while the All-Star version is like the Silver/Bronze Age version.

That being said, I believe that the Iron Age is over. Right now we're in some transitional era. There's still going to be graphic violence (that's never going to change), but it will be used less for exploitive purposes. That's what *I* think will happen at any rate. While I agree that the Iron Age isn't as bad as some people say, I think it's easily Superman's worst era. It's not because I'm opposed to dark stories either (I like MANY dark comic series). I just don't think the Iron Age stories are as interesting.

[ShinDangaioh]

The Iron Age Superman?  Or Iron Age in general was all about angst and violence and nothing but angst and violence as good story-telling.  Humor and light-hearted stories were seen as childish.  Someone stills need to give Dan DiDio a whack with the cluestick about that.  The heroes could never win and just keep things from spiraling out of control.  Until the Guy fight, Green Lantern was one of the better comics they had.  Green Lantern Corps Quarterly and Starman were hold-outs against the angst only policy, so they got rid of them.  Starman with the Eclipso Darkness Within saga(which if you look back was the only real casualty in the fight) and Green Lantern with Emerald Twilight and the removal of Guy Gardner and Jon Stewart from the GL book.

[Genis Vell]

Particulars change, but the basics always are the same. The problem is when the stories are replaced by eventsd and bad ideas... and you have the '90s Superman. Metropolis destroied, young Lex Luthor, the death of Clark Kent... No, thanks.

You know, it's funny, I think the opposite is true: Superman in the 1990s was an improvement over Superman in the mid-to-late 1980s - at least in the sense that the high points were higher.

Roger Stern told space opera stories introducing Maxima, and his magnum opus, "Panic in the Sky," featured an old school Superman that was a breath of fresh air after the very earthbound, Spider-Man lite Wolfman/Byrne tales. Then we had Louise Simonson's Superman stories featuring the incredible Riot (a one-man crime spree).

The post-Byrne years (1988-"Reign of the Supermen!") aren't bad. I have read various good stories in that period, like the "Krisis of Krimson Kryptonite" storyline or one of my favorite post-Crisis stories, "Crisis at hand". The worst arrived later! The long haired Superman, the destruction of Metropolis, the death of Clark Kent (urgh), the whole "Luthor young, then old, then young again thanks to a demon" matter... Sigh. I liked the Electric Superman saga, though, even if it has been too long. It was a sort of rule in those years: storylines were long, infinite! I prefer the following years, when Berganza arrived with Loeb and the others.

Sure, the nineties gave us arguably the worst stories in Superman's history, too, with an endless string of vapid villains: Conduit, the Cyborg Superman, La Encantadora....but still, at least it was all done for reasons apart from shock value and "this is NOT your father's Superman!"

Guess what? My father don't like the '90s Superman! Yep, that's NOT his Superman. He, who used to read the Man of Steel in the 1950s, consider all that stuff a mountain of junk.

[Genis Vell]

And the issue I recently read where he was sitting at the table in the Kent home worrying over Lois and Lana dying from the same disease that took the Kents wasn't angst?

One of my favorite stories ever!

[MichaelBailey]

And the issue I recently read where he was sitting at the table in the Kent home worrying over Lois and Lana dying from the same disease that took the Kents wasn't angst?

One of my favorite stories ever!

It was a rather good story.  While I'm not huge of Elliot S! Maggin's Superman work (I don't dislike it, btw, just not blown away by it) Cary Bates wrote some rather inventive stories.  Gerry Conway wrote some good ones as well but his best work was on other characters like Firestorm and Steel.

But yeah, good story.