Discussion with friends prompted me to do a reread of the post-Crisis Superman.

Interesting that Byrne included these very sad details to the Kents’ pasts; miscarriages, stillbirth, a brother mangled by a farming machine.
Clark raised the Titanic.
Clark adopts a costumed hero persona because people are scum.
I don’t think Clark designing his costume is as elegant as inheriting it from Krypton. But I think I know why Byrne did it this way: so Superman and his mission could be wholly devised by Clark himself; Clark the human being. Makes his alien origin incidental to his morality.
The much maligned glasses disguise. As someone who started wearing glasses in his thirties, i can tell you this actually works. I’ve taken off my glasses and stood right next to people who know me and they were startled when they recognized me.
The first of several unnecessary demystifications of Superman’s powers. This kind of “logic” stuff is a hallmark of Byrne’s work. To wit, Martha observes that skintight clothes don’t tear or even dirty. I WONDER WHY! The real reason is because it’s easier not to draw all that.
Amazing first page. Love everything here. So much detail, fashion, movement, urban environment. And a classic superhero flying through it.

Does anyone know if the credits were on this page in the original miniseries?
Behold this clever sequence of Superman oppressing an economically disadvantaged citizen.
Superman may be overstepping by putting his hands on this Suicide Girl’s radio but as we’ve learned recently, the police are called quite a lot to deal with noise complaints. He’s probably more right than wrong.
Byrne has this liquor store getting held up by several baddies with machine guns and a bomb. Dunno if this was an 80s crime thing or what but I don’t think we’d see that now. I think with some exceptions we always see superheroes fighting supervillains.
Lois Lane’s modern 80s apt. Glass desk. Cat. Not sure what the art is. Lois rocking the bathrobe-and-heels combo, which your mileage will vary on.

But notice how Superman doesn’t like brie cheese? Kinda wonder if that’s a misguided macho thing on Byrne’s part. Brie is delish.
This interpretation of Lois is clearly inspired by Margot Kidder’s in the Donner film, and would carry over into the best ever version of Lois; the animated series vision designed by Bruce Timm and performed by Dana Delany. This kind of Lois VERSUS Superman VERSUS Clark dynamic.
(The loss of this dynamic is why I kinda peaced out on Superman comics as a younger man. All this wonderful tension was dissolved when they got together. Like Niles and Daphne, Ross and Rachel, Charlie Brown and the football. The story feels over. But I realize people dig it 🤷🏻‍♂️)
Scenes like these are IMO used disingenuously by people who like to sound very smart and pithy by saying Batman is a billionaire who beats up poor people. Like, sure; but what he’s doing here is in service of stopping a supervillain. I think it’s a meaningful distinction anyway.
Also is that first page a Watchmen reference?
Byrne wisely resists explaining how Batman, a human being, could elude Superman. The answer is because he’s the goddamn Batman. This page has stayed in my memory since the first time i read it.
Many superhero origin retellings include some conspicuous artifact that’s peculiar to that story’s time or its author’s idiosyncrasies. In Man of Steel, it’s Magpie.

Incidentally she has gruesomely murdered the economically disadvantaged citizen Batman was menacing earlier.
I love how Byrne spots Batman’s cape and cowl in his work on the character.

Incidentally I like this speech Batman gives about the tension of fighting insane people. Noobs think this stuff isn’t in the text but it has been since I’ve been reading cape comics.
Let us pause for an appreciation of John Byrne’s fabulous fashions for Lois Lane in the 1980s. I honestly love all of this. Curious what @bettyfelon and others think.
Confirmed, credits on the art. I’m guessing they were removed like Watchmen’s were to make the trade feel more like a novel and not a compilation. Usually I’m against this because pages are designed w/ credits in mind, but I think this works better w/out . https://twitter.com/simps/status/1274973530480754692?s=21 https://twitter.com/simps/status/1274973530480754692
Thanks to everyone who pointed out the wall art is likely a framed kimono, a trend in 1980s interior decor.

Also more than one person theorized Superman’s distaste for Brie was due to his Midwest background, so I was possibly too uncharitable to Byrne in my earlier speculation.
Good catch from @HowardtheDuck95. The digital version is recolored. The original is far warmer. Interesting changes. If you’re interested in the topic of recoloring old comics, check out José Villarubia’s writing about it here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10163251815750117&type=3
The lettered credits are curious. Maybe @droog811 or @blambot or @swands or @SimonBowland or @deronbennett could weigh in. The credits styling seems so incongruous with the art and title. I wonder if this was a contemporary style. 1986.
More of the long lost Clark vs Lois dynamic I love. I fully own the possibility that I might be the minority on this, but I wince when I see Lois Lane in a kitchen with her loving family etc. I prefer Lois Lane tearing someone’s asshole open. Especially Clark Kent’s.
It was obvious from the jump that the post-Crisis Lex was inspired by Trump, but in hindsight it seems Byrne & Co were too generous to Trump and unfair to Lex. But here we see the trappings: gaudy possessions, tacky clothes and hair, bragging about his wealth and importance.
Lex as this corporate super criminal is a great idea that I believe is attributed to Mark Wolfman. See here the very relatable frustration Lois expresses about everyone knowing Lex is dirty but being unable to prove it in court. This resonates still, decades later.
A great showcase for Lex and Lois; he tries to own a piece of her by giving her an expensive dress she can’t except as a journalist or as a woman. She knows what’s really behind his “gift,” especially one so intimate as a sexy dress. She’d rather go naked than be Lex’s trophy.
Pity about these ambiguously Latino terrorists.
From Byrne’s pencil to God’s eyes...
I love this simple emotional root of Lex’s hatred for Superman: humiliation. Lex was happy to have Superman in Metropolis if he worked for him. Instead Superman had him arrested. It’s not about alien panic, or Lex wanting to save mankind, or about losing hair. It’s just HATE.
Which is not to say there haven’t been wonderful alt motivations/layers to Lex vs Superman. But the purest is hate. We used to criticize stuff like that as one dimensional. But as this Lex’s inspiration demonstrates daily, it doesn’t take more than hate to get up in the morning.
Amazingly prescient, John Byrne. Here, Lex performs an offensive mimicry of a person with brain damage. Who else have we seen do something like that?
(Sidebar: lest anyone mistake my praise for elements of this John Byrne work for any kind of love beyond the page, here’s a list of just some of the variously stupid and terrible things he’s said about all sorts of people and things. NOPE. ) https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Byrne 
Lucy Lane trues to kill herself because all she ever wanted to do in life is be a flight attendant.

(don’t worry, bizarro saves her)

I like that she has platinum hair and a far less glamorous style to make her visually distinct from Lois. Many artists don’t think of this.
Lois is an asshole.

I think I would wear this Clark outfit. Pretty sure I do have that tie. But look again; does that look like Superman? It does not. Byrne follows his own rules and the disguise works.
Just an awesome page. Sometimes you need to break from story-story and remind the reader what’s awesome about the hero.
Here’s where Byrne’s decision to keep Krypton out of Clark’s life really pays off. You get this wonderful sequence of pages of Clark just freaking out as Krypton reveals itself to him for the first time.
This might be my favorite scene in Man of Steel. We learn here that Clark broke Lana’s heart. It’s really sad but also really real. What are you supposed to do in this situation?
More agony as Clark endures the kryptonian Wikipedia download. This is a good, economical way to put a lot of backstory into place for later plot convenience.

Remember the shot of Jonathan Kent wacking this apparition with a shovel; it will be directly referenced years hence.
Final page of THE MAN OF STEEL restates, perhaps somewhat overstates, the reboot’s central mission: Clark Kent is a guy; a human guy; he’s an American; and he just happens to be Superman. He’s not an alien, an earthling.
Later work on Superman, even nominally in this continuity, would lean more into the sci-fi and kind of supplant Clark’s human upbringing with kryptionian backstory. Which is fine. More than one way to skin a cat. Especially DC cats, which IMO are more “elastic” than Marvel cats.
Some of the dated stuff aside, the only real weak link in MAN OF STEEL is the Bizarro issue. It feels aimless and ultimately pointless, since Bizarro is killed in the end anyway. It’s something that might have made a good one in done in the subsequent series, though.
Anyone reading this familiar with pre-Crisis Superman? I’m not. Curious to know more about what Byrne changed. Not just story but also visuals. Obviously the krypton redesign, the 80s fashions. What about Superman himself? What about corporate Lex vs supervillain Lex?
Oh yeah, no Superboy! As I understand it, this change royally fucked up the Legion for quite a while. Someone please elaborate on that.

But it did give us 90s Superboy, which I wouldn’t trade for anything. https://twitter.com/mightygodking/status/1275308534780047361?s=21 https://twitter.com/mightygodking/status/1275308534780047361
Following MAN OF STEEL was the new series, SUPERMAN, with a new #1. Rare at that time.

Bad #1 cover. I don’t know what they were thinking. I actually thought i couldn’t find issue #1 in back issue boxes, flipping past this cover because I thought it must be a rando later issue.
Just my opinion? If I was developing a new Superman series with a new #1 and my writer was like “Let’s launch with METALLO!” I’d be like J Jonah Jameson and be like “get the fuck out of my office.”

But also this comic has outsold anything I’ve ever done so
This should have been the cover.

Even now there’s debate within dv/marvel about “story covers” vs “cool covers.” The above cover is very story; you see the villain, hero in jeopardy, callout copy. On paper it works, in practice it doesn’t. This image is more commercial IMO.
Im a big believer in a kind of inception with comics fans. I think a lot of the most popular characters are popular in large part because there’s so many iconic images of them looking cool, so readers think of them as cool. The lower tier characters don’t get those opportunities.
Interesting that Lois and Clark have a mutual flirtation despite being work colleagues. There’s no question from the context that they both consent to the dynamic, but it does show how much things have changed; I suspect that would be something acknowledged in the text today.
Is this the first instance of alien panic connected to Superman? In any case I think this single page of story has proved influential.

BTW this guy was set up in MOS. Byrne obviously had a roadmap.
I get why Byrne used Metallo out the gate; to establish kryptonite, a crucial piece of lore, and showcase that even Superman can get the shit kicked out of him (Byrne and Terry Austin are very good at depicting this). I think Metallo is just underwhelming. Easy for me to say tho.
According to the trade I’m reading, this comes next. This is interesting from an editorial standpoint. To me this reads like a Teen Titans story with a phony Superman in it. And it’s the first new Superman story after SUPERMAN #1. Don’t like it. But TT were very popular then.
Even though it looks like a gigantic L-shaped penis in the sky, Luthor’s skyscraper and it’s interior decor are somehow more tasteful than Trump’s.
Here’s a story cover that totally works, but I think a more elegant alternative cover would be the splash page with Clark’s face instead of Lana’s. As ever I prefer more evocative “silent” covers to the explicit ones.
This is the second issue of Byrne’s run and I think it’s much stronger than the first, but your mileage will vary. The cover hook is about the secret identity, but it’s really about what a bastard Lex is, which we see by his graphic mistreatment of women. It’s kind of a lot.
We see Luthor employs an all-female staff. He says they’re the best at their jobs, but we also see him required them to wear revealing skirts, threaten, harass, and coerce them into sex. Roger Ailes did all of these things IRL. We also see Lex had Lana tortured to lure Superman.
This feels like a lot for what’s ostensibly a children’s entertainment and it could certainly be criticized as employing sexist tropes. But dramatically it works, and as someone who read this as a boy I can say that nowhere else had I seen so clear an example of this kind of man.
In our scene we talk a lot about the messaging of superhero stories. There will never be a true consensus on what is and isn’t appropriate or the right way to depict something like this. All I can say is that in this instance, because Superman hated this kind of man, I did too.
Superman is driven to rage (Superman has feelings, he has emotions, even negative ones), but Luthor wins this one with the kryptonite ring. This poisonous artifact, Lex’s rejection of the female scientist’s conclusion that Superman is Clark; all of it speaks to his insane HATE.
Here’s a scan of the original art for that MAN OF STEEL splash page we discussed earlier. Cc @THEBRYANHITCH. https://twitter.com/fukutopia/status/1275329633299423233?s=21 https://twitter.com/fukutopia/status/1275329633299423233
Original art from one of the Teen Titans pages above! https://twitter.com/judahthehammer/status/1275337116306808833?s=21 https://twitter.com/judahthehammer/status/1275337116306808833
You can follow @andykhouri.
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