TALES FROM THE KRYPTONIAN

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

It's a Legendary Tuesday with John Byrne !

Continuing with the John Byrne goodness we are taking a look at the six issue mini series LEGENDS written by John Ostrander and Len Wein ( co - creator of DC Comics Swamp Thing among many others ) , penciled by John Byrne and inked by Karl Kesel that was published during the post CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS aftermath and which served a few purposes.

The first one was to establish the new status quo for the best known heroes of the DC universe. CRISIS was a huge success but not everybody had read it so you could not rely on everybody knowing what was up with Superman for example. As we have seen Yesterday there were a lot of changes made to the Superman canon so we had to reintroduce him as well as his supporting cast to readers. The same was true for Batman.

Back then Jason Todd was Robin who up to this point had been just a cheap carbon copy of Dick Grayson only with red hair. It would be a while until they would come up with his new origin where the Batman catches him ripping off the tires of the Batmobile to make him an edgier version of Batman's sidekick and eventually dying at the hands of the Joker. Speaking of which, there is this Mandela effect - which is even perpetrated in some comics - that the Joker beat Jason Todd to death with a crowbar when in reality it was the bomb that killed him. Anyway, one of the reasons for making LEGENDS was to show the readers where all the important players were and where they fit into the DC universe.

Another big problem was the Justice League of America who at that point in time had been replaced by the dashing Justice League Detroit.

Yep, you read that right. After an especially gruesome Justice League adventure Aquaman of all people dissolved the satellite Justice League declaring that they had been acting too far removed from the people they swore to protect and to remedy that situation they relocated to Detroit. He also recruited new and hip members like Vibe and Steel, the romani Busenwunder Gypsy and nubian men milking machine Vixen ( yup, Aquaman had rizz long before slam - banging Power Girl ) and together with such high profile Justice League veterans like Martian Manhunter, Elongated Man and Firestorm fought crime in a radical time.

And yes, that was as exciting as it sounds. So on one side people were fed up with the Justice League Detroit, nobody wanted to continue that so they had to bury that team. At the same time they needed to form a new Justice League and for that purpose all the heroes had to meet.

Remember that DC Comics was establishing a new timeline here and not all of the heroes had met each other previously. Most of the writers were doing their own thing and I don't know if it was all coordinated or if they were given guidelines but most characters were wrapped up in their own thing. Wonder Woman for example was established as being shielded on Themyscaria island from what amazonz called men's world and this was the first time she interfered in the affairs of the outside world and met the other heroes - especially Guy Gardner who was loads of fun in this.

You can see that there clearly were plans to have her as an important member in the new Justice League of America but like the man of steel due to shenanigans in her own title she first was shuffeled off to Justice League Europe and taken off that team quietly. Speaking of introducing new teams to the readers this series is also where the new Suicide Squad was formed that would get a very successful series also written by John Ostrander and which is the Suicide Squad you know from the DC movies.

Another character who was re - introduced or introduced to readers was the original Captain Marvel who had been acquired by DC Comics - with all Fawcett Comics creations - and who previously had only appeared in crossovers with a parallel earth or as Captain Thunder. He and some of the Charlton Comics characters like Blue Beetle had to be folded into the new DC universe now that they all would live on the same earth.

So the series was successful in establishing all of that - even if a lot of it didn't last - and you can't go wrong with six issues chockful of John Byrne goodness. As my longtime followers know I have wanted to do a proper post about this series for ages but never had enough original art for it.

and there came a day

Monday, March 09, 2026

It's Man Of Steel Monday with John Byrne !

Continuing DC COMICS MONTH we come to the second most popular hero with the Man of Tomorrow - which back when I started reading comics was reversed because at that time Superman was the most popular with Batman coming in as a close second - and since I have so many posts on so many different versions of Superman we are going all the way back to the iconic John Byrne version as this is only my second solo post for him .

Speaking of which, since we already talked about all of the trouble the elimination of Superboy from Superman's history caused - especially with Superboy being the inspiration for the formation of the Legion of Super - Heroes - in said post I won't get into the whole history of the relaunch.

Because I am sure I have already covered that in a previous post. What I wanted to add is that I finally managed to get a copy of the SUPERMAN - THE EXILE AND OTHER STORIES omnibus which I used to have back in Germany and which I wanted to rebuy after coming to Spain but which was out of print and then for the longest time it sold at ridiculous prices.

But now I have my copy and I didn't have to pay an arm and a leg for it.

This period in Superman's publication history has a special place in my heart although I won't pretend that this was MY Superman. That would be just ridiculous. As ridiculous as claiming John Byrne's Superman was MY Superman. Because as longtime followers of the blog know my history with Superman started long before that. Even long before the Bronze Age. Well, technically around the Bronze Age but the first stories with Superman that I read included some Silver Age Superman stories as well.

I am not clear what came first for me - the SUPERMAN / BATMAN comics, SUPERMAN pocket books and SUPERMAN SUPERBAND by Ehapa Verlag or the MV Comics - but they both included stories from the Silver Age and the Bronze Age of Superman. So with a sparkling of Silver Age superbness for the most part what could be considered MY Superman was the Bronze Age Superman which in most cases meant the Superman drawn by Curt Swan although on some occasions it was the super muscular Superman by Bob Oksner and Ernie Chan plus a steady diet of Ross Andru, Neal Adams, Gil Kane , Jim Starlin , Kurt Schaffenberger and Jose Luis Garcia - Lopez.

So yes, I would be hard pressed to narrow it down to one artist's vision while on the character side it was always the same guy. The Superman who could move planets, lived in a fortress of solitude at the north pole with special rooms with statues of his friends, an entire cruise ship and an intergalactic zoo, could travel to the Phantom Zone and through time to visit his dead parents on Krypton before it exploded and basically do anything the writers came up with. Although they had already dialed that down considerably before John Byrne decided to limit his powers.

There was the famous KRYPTONITE NEVERMORE story where the writers at DC Comics decided that enough was enough and that everybody and his dog could knock out Superman with a piece of green rock and some radiation from space converted all Kryptonite into something harmless.

This story also created the Sand - Superman and while the first part was published by Ehapa the follow up went unpublished for decades and to this day I have no idea how the end played out. But there were other times where the DC writers came up with ways to make Superman less powerful. Longtime DC Comics afficionados may remember that in THE NEW TEEN TITANS issue 23 Superman saves the team from dying in space but can't go after the bad guys because he has only half of his powers.

That was because of a story during Gil Kane's tenure on the Superman books in which Lord Satanis split Superman in two and each Superman gets half of his super powers. For those interested in the full story you can read more about THE SPLIT SUPERMAN on GONE & FORGOTTEN .

Coming back to John Byrne's SUPERMAN relaunch, I would like to say that it started a new period of heightened interest in Superman for me but the truth is that it was cut short. Unlike in the United States the MAN OF STEEL six issue mini series was released in Germany by Ehapa Verlag in one whopping 148 pages thick tome with a cover price of 9 Deutschmark 80 which was a lot but a small price for so much John Byrne goodness.

Naturally I was in comicbook heaven - especially when Ehapa followed that up with the new regular SUPERMAN series also written and drawn by John Byrne - but around the twelfth issue Ehapa stopped publishing DC Comics and it would be years until Hethke Verlag continued the story.

Later on Carlsen Verlag would publish some important Superman stories in trade paperback format like THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN and WORLD WITHOUT A SUPERMAN but it would take decades until the Dino Verlag brought monthly Superman comics back to german newsstands. In any case, since this is our first John Byrne Superman post for DC MONTH it's all about MAN OF STEEL which was heavily influenced by the Superman movie with Christopher Reeves and it provided the lore for everything we know about the Man of Steel Today. Well, what most of the people of Today know about Superman aside from a few hardcore Superman fans.