TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN

Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Jackson Guice's Titan of Technology Tuesday

Instead of DC COMICS MONTH I should've called March SUPERMAN MONTH because apart from the first post - with the complete original art for BATMAN 433, the first part of The Many Deaths Of Batman by John Byrne and Jim Aparo - all the other posts have involved the last son of Krypton in some way, shape or form. And Today's post is no different as we pay homage to Jackson Guice's contributions to the DEATH OF SUPERMAN saga, the WORLD WITHOUT A SUPERMAN and REIGN OF THE SUPERMEN.

Like my recent post for Jon Bogdanove I always had the impression that Jackson Guice was overshadowed in this iconic period of the Superman books and as longtime followers of the blog may remember so far he had to share his posts with Dan Juergens who also was one of the artists of the Superman titles as they both shared a birthday on June the 27th.

Now I'm not going to pretend that I was a Jackson Guice superfan from day one because I have already written numerous times about this period in the Superman history so anybody who wants to can go back to my old posts and discover that I really did not like his art. Maybe I wasn't ready for it or maybe his art is not so well suited for super heroic adventures.

I think the first series where Jackson or better Butch Guice - how he was credited back then - clicked for me artistically was RESURRECTION MAN.

His more realistic style was better suited to the dark underbelly of the DC universe that Resurrection Man inhabited giving it a dirty and used up look and his knack for depicting beautiful dames didn't really hurt either.

This intriguing, quirky and weird series became one of my favourite DC books and Jackson Guice rose higher in my list of favourite artists as a result of that. I don't know if there are any trades but if you have the chance hunt this series down which has my utmost recommendation.

Now I am not going to go through all of the various books Jackson Guice has worked on since that may yet be the topic of an entire spotlight unto itself but I must give a shoutout to Crossgen's RUSE where he exploded.

And in a good way. Not only did he make a huge leap artistically speaking ( but then most of the artists who went to Crossgen did ) most of the book consisted of double page spreads - which are not that easy to do.

Just check out Brian Michael Bendis POWERS series where artist Michael Avon Oeming is not capable to clearly convey to the reader if the next two pages are exactly that or a double page spread so that you go back and forth trying to figure out how to read that thing. On the other hand there is no confusion regarding how to read RUSE. Today's pampered comicbook readers can't really comprehend what a breath of fresh air Crossgen Comics was when it arrived on the comic scene. Amid all these old and tired veteran comicbook companies where issues came late all the time - sometimes it took them several years to come out - there was this new player who not only gave a money back guarantee no questions asked but also promised to have all of his titles shipped on time and kept that promise. On top of that the books covered genres most of the other comicbook companies neglected like science fiction, fantasy, adventures etc and featured strong female characters in leading roles. And not the unfallible " strong " female characters you get nowadays who are always perfect in everything they do, never make a mistake and always win but women who were strong despite or more often than not because of what others perceived as weakness or flaws. Add to that a roster of the Who's Who of writers and artists and the fact that each new wave had better and more exciting titles to offer to the readers and you might start to understand why Crossgen Comics was such an exceptional comicbook company and how it's demise was all the more tragic because of that.

But I have already written at length about all of that in the introduction for my post on Paul Pelletier's excellent NEGATION ( and with a lot of neat original art) so I'm not going to bore my visitors with that again.

Coming back to Jackson Guice's stint on the Superman books, I think another factor that contributed to the fact that he is not held in such high esteem as some of the other artists in this franchise is that he had the unenviable task to work on the least popular of the new Supermen.

I mean, you had Steel who was the one guy where you knew he was not Superman but not because he was black but rather because he himself said so. He was just a good guy trying to help now that Metropolis was one hero short but at the same time he was the one who was most like Superman should be. Then you had the breakout star - the new Superboy - who you knew would be folded into the new continuity somehow since you always need a Superboy. Even if the beans counters at Warner at that time didn't want to pay the heirs of Jerry Siegel and so started calling him Superman in the comicbooks and the otherwise excellent LEGION OF SUPER - HEROES cartoon. Man, how greedy can you get ?

Everybody knows that no matter how much you save for not paying for the rights to use the Superboy name that's peanuts compared to all the money you will loose for not using a worldwide recognized brand name.

Anyway, we also got Cyborg Superman - who everybody thought must be the real Superman because it has to be one of the four new guys - and then there was the Eradicator Superman. Who was just a Superman who kills and who got Guy Gardner's approval based on that. Anyway, in this post we have pages from just before the DEATH OF SUPERMAN story up to the ZERO HOURS tie - ins so everybody who read them when these issues of ACTION COMICS came out might feel a sting of 90s nostalgia.