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The Man of Steel was a six-issue comic book limited series released in 1986 by limited series, several months after the twelve-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths completed. The Man of Steel was written and penciled by John Byrne and inked by Dick Giordano.

Overview

The mini-series was designed to reboot the Superman mythos. Using the history-altering effects of Crisis on Infinite Earths as an explanation, it was decided by DC editorial to give Superman an updated look and feel by completely rewriting his history, as an attempt to attract more readers. Thus, for modern comics, Man of Steel is the dividing point between the previous canon and the current one; many comic fans refer to the two different versions as "pre-Crisis" and "post-Crisis", per Crisis on Infinite Earths being the major dividing line across DC's universe as a whole. The pre-Crisis stories were drawn to a close in Alan Moore's "Superman: Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?".

From 1986 to 2004, this series was regarded as the "official" origin of Superman; in 2004, it was superseded by Superman: Birthright.^[1] However, after the 2006 conclusion of the DCU-spanning Infinite Crisis storyline, the Birthright series' was removed in favor of the Superman: Secret Origin mini-series in 2009.

The Man of Steel was followed by three four-issue mini-series that also retold and explored the rebooted world of Superman: The World of Krypton (December 1987 - March 1988), The World of Smallville (April - July 1988), and The World of Metropolis (August - November 1988), all of them written by Byrne.

Story

The Man of Steel retells Superman’s story beginning with his origin. Each issue focuses on a different time in the early years of his career. In telling the story, Byrne drew from all available media to have depicted Superman for inspiration.

The series reboots Superman continuity for a modern audience. Previous depictions of the comic book Superman and his mythology are discarded. Some characters’ backgrounds were largely altered.

Behind the Scenes

In the years before Crisis on Infinite Earths that led to the reboot, DC Comics and Marv Wolfman had been wanting to do a revision for Superman for a while, even bringing it up with DC's then-publisher and president Jenette Kahn. Nothing developed until Kahn asked for revision proposals for Superman. While regular Superman writer Cary Bates wanted the revision that kept the ongoing continuity as it was, Wolfman, and other writers Frank Miller and Steve Gerber wanted to start the continuity all over from scratch. Wolfman, Miller, and Gerber all wanted to do the same thing: get rid of Superboy, cut down on Superman's powers, make changes in Lex Luthor, and make Superman the last survivor of Krypton, but how they wanted to do it was different. Time passed, and no concept for a revised Superman series was given a go-ahead.

Work once again started for a revision in May 1985, and this was when Marv Wolfman found out John Byrne had left Marvel Comics. Since both of them liked the same media takes on Superman, and Wolfman felt that Byrne would "make it sell", Wolfman called Byrne and he accepted going to DC and proposed his revision of Superman. DC agreed with 99% of Byrne's plans, and the reboot was given the go-ahead. Wolfman was offered one of the monthlies: the Adventures of Superman comic book that was a retitle of the first Superman volume ongoing series. At first, Alan Moore was going to do Action Comics, which was to be a Superman team-up book akin to the DC Comics Presents Superman team-up series. But Moore proved to be too busy, so Byrne was given that book as well.^[2]

Unused ideas

In some pre-Crisis retellings, Jor-El wanted to save both Lara and Kal-El by sending them away in the same rocket, but she would refuse saying that the rocket was too small and might not make it to Earth because of her added weight, and she wanted to stay with her husband, (an idea that was briefly touched on in Superman: The Animated Series). Byrne's original idea was to show a pregnant Lara leaving Krypton. After landing near Smallville, Lara would immediately succumb to a small chunk of kryptonite that was embedded in the ship's hull. This would have been Byrne's way to show early on how deadly kryptonite was. Lara would then have been found by the Kents while she was in labor, induced by the stress from kryptonite poisoning. Before dying, Lara would have told the Kents to look after her son. They would then take young Kal-El, an alien born on Earth, and raise him as their own just as they promised his mother. This was also Byrne's way to emphasize the Kents being chosen caretakers rather than them being a random couple who finds a baby in a rocket, (this concept was also, in a way, touched on in Smallville and Last Son of Krypton). The idea was not used because DC wanted Kal-El to be sent to Earth alone, as all the previous incarnations agreed upon.^[3]

In his public debut, Superman was originally going to save a landing space-shuttle. After the Challenger disaster, the Constitution was changed to "an experimental space-plane".^[3]

Byrne suggested that the Legion of Super-Heroes was formed based on legends of Superman's adventures as a boy. The Legion would eventually be surprised to discover that these adventures never happened.^[4]

According to Byrne, it was initially agreed upon that he could depict Superman "learning the ropes" as a young hero early in his career (another concept similar to Smallville). This was part of the reason why Byrne eliminated Superboy from the mythos, as he felt Superboy would be an unnecessary character under those circumstances. However, once Byrne officially signed on he was informed by DC that his Superman would need to be "up to speed" and an established hero by the time the relaunch of the monthly titles took place. Byrne later stated that he wished he had kept Superboy to fill the role of Superman still "figuring it out". ^[5]

Another unused Marv Wolfman idea was to show Lois Lane and Lex Luthor being romantically involved and living together in Luthor's estate in the mountains until Superman came to Metropolis. Lois would then leave Luthor to go after Superman, another reason for Luthor to hate Superman. This idea was scrapped because Byrne did not want Lois as someone who was drawn to power (and he didn't want any mountains shown alongside the city either).^[6] However, Man of Steel depicts Lois and Luthor as having only casually dated.

Impact of changes

The Man of Steel became the official origin story for Superman from 1986 through the early 2000s. Its changes to the origin story were adapted to other media featuring Superman. It was a huge success and within a few weeks after the first issues were released, fans picked up over 200,000 copies. Many of the biggest changes were on Superman himself. While many of his standard superpowers remained, Superman was effectively limited in power and scope to make him more believable. He still had superhuman strength, vision powers and super breath but while the Silver Age Kal-El at his peak could easily move planets, the post-Crisis version strained at moving a commercial airliner in flight. His vision powers still include x-ray, heat and microscopic/telescopic vision but are set at a more realistic level. He no longer had the ability to survive in space indefinitely without an air supply as he had done often in pre-Crisis stories. The powers dropped in succeeding stories include his ability to travel through time, freeze breath (though he still possessed super-powerful blowing strength), and super intelligence.

Byrne made the most important changes to Superman's personality. Superman's alter-ego Clark Kent was no longer "mild-mannered"; he became more assertive, and an important half of a double life. Man of Steel established Clark Kent as the "real" person, with Superman being the "disguise" - a reversal of the earlier canon.^{[citation needed]} Stories featuring people actively trying to discover Superman's secret identity became practically non-existent, since it was not known to the general public that Superman had a secret identity since he did not wear a mask, and most generally assumed that Superman was the full-time (i.e. only) identity. Additionally, Superman's status as the sole survivor of Krypton is restored. This resulted in the writers having to come up with alternative explanations to related characters such as Supergirl and General Zod and the Phantom Zone villains.

The changes among Superman’s cast include Lana Lang, Jimmy Olsen and Lex Luthor. Lana and Jimmy did not adopt any superhero identities (pre-Crisis they frequently developed superpowers). Lana was no longer a romantic rival of Lois Lane for Superman's affections, but a childhood friend with an unrequited crush on Clark. Lex Luthor became an evil billionaire (inspired in part by his portrayal by Gene Hackman in the Superman movies^{[citation needed]}). Clark's adoptive parents are still alive and well and remain important supporting characters to this day.

After the limited series, Byrne took over the storytelling in the monthly Superman series. The change he made to Superman’s greatest weakness, Kryptonite, was limiting the form to only the original green variety. Other variant forms of Kryptonite such as gold, yellow, blue and white no longer existed; only green remained. The other red version of Kryptonite would eventually resurface later on, created by Mister Mxyzptlk. Kryptonite was also made a much rarer element and extremely hard to find and acquire, having only come to Earth in a single fist-sized piece stuck to Clark's spacecraft. In fact early on only Lex Luthor had access to it (having taken the only existent piece from Metallo), and this knowledge allowed Superman to know who supplied Bloodsport with Kryptonite bullets. Superman's enemies had to become even more creative in finding a way to battle him. Lex Luthor believed early on that the radiation emanating from Kryptonite was within safety limits for humans. However it was determined later that long-term exposure to Kryptonite was also deadly to humans when Lex's right hand which wore a Kryptonite ring became poisoned, in fact requiring amputation.^[7]

The removal of Clark's Superboy career, as well as of Supergirl, from continuity would have a serious impact on the Legion of Super-Heroes. Byrne would later state that removing Superboy from continuity was a mistake.^[8] To correct this incontinuity, a storyline was created having the Legion travel back in time to confront the post-Crisis Superman^[9] to find an explanation for Superboy's existence. It was revealed that Superboy existed in a " pocket universe" created by the Time Trapper, consisting of only Earth and Krypton before its destruction. That universe's Kal-El grew up as the pre-Crisis Superboy; whenever Superboy would travel to the future or the Legion would return to Superboy's past the Time Trapper would shift them in and out of the Pocket Universe.

Continuity

From 1986 until 2003, The Man of Steel was the Superman origin story, with even Superman For All Seasons touching upon it. While Superman For All Seasons might have added and changed new things, it never removed Byrne's retelling. However, in 2003, another story of Superman's origin, a 12-issue limited series called Superman: Birthright, was published. DC stated that Birthright and Man of Steel formed the full "official" origin for Superman. Birthright made use of many elements of Man of Steel that tied into the other series, but also introduced new aspects ignored by Byrne and thus brought back various pre-Crisis elements (such as Lex and Clark as childhood friends in Smallville). The Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl was also brought back. The Infinite Crisis storyline made further changes to Superman, which left the question once again asked about Superman's origin. It wasn't until then-monthly Superman writer Kurt Busiek stated that the post-Infinite Crisis Superman origin had yet to be established.^[10] This ultimately removed both The Man of Steel and Birthright from canon, and in its place was Superman: Secret Origin, released in 2009.

Collections

The Man of Steel limited series has since been collected in trade paperback form in several editions. The first used a better paper stock after the series’ completion. In 1993, it was reprinted with newsprint-type paper and priced cheaper. The 2003 edition sported a new cover by Jerry Ordway and was titled as Superman: The Man of Steel Vol. 1, the first in a series of trade paperbacks collecting the early adventures of the post-Crisis Superman.

The Chinese version was transltaed by Michael Leung (梁德輝) and his team of Comic Network in Hong Kong.

With the release of Action Comics #584, Adventures of Superman #424, and Superman (vol. 2) #1 there was a card in each copy that readers could fill out and mail to DC for a chance to win 1 of 3000 copies of a collected trade paperback. This version was unique in that it was actually all six issues of the Man of Steel mini-series with the spines trimmed and rebound with a new cover with a photocopied note that read:

Congratulations!

Your entry has been selected to receive a copy of the "MAN of STEEL" special edition the entire six issue mini-series bound between two covers

Thank you for responding to our contest and your continued support of SUPERMAN and DC Comics

Sincerely,

Dale A. Kanzler

References