The premiere superhero, Superman is the most iconic character in print in my opinion. A failed comic strip character , Superman has been firmly established in just about all other mediums including comic books, animation, radio, television and film. Everyone knows who he is and what he can do. I wager that the ‘man on the street’ could even hum the theme tune from the Richard Donner movie. So why is he such a difficult comic book character?
I really dig Superman. I mean, one of the first articles I wrote for this blog (‘Superman, Superman, Superman’) in which I looked at separate runs from the Bronze and Modern Ages. I was a fan of Superman as a kid and have dabbled with his monthly comic book adventures as an adult but the quality of the monthly books wavers so randomly that I have dropped the titles each and every time. The best run to date (in my opinion) was after the Crisis on Infinite Earths when Marv Wolfman, Jerry Ordway and John Byrne united to create the most exciting collaboration in Adventures of Superman, Superman and Action Comics (the team-up book). In 1985, DC Editorial had the unique opportunity to recreate their heroes to meet a different audience. To accomplish this, they modernized the concept, design and back-story of the series, relaunching Superman as a science fantasy adventure book that would appeal to a more sophisticated readership.
As the comic book market has changed in recent years, DC has lagged behind their competition Marvel Comics, despite having far more famous and popular heroes in their stable. Seeing continuity as the main problem, they wiped the slate clean (more or less) and restarted over 52 comic books in number one issues. Two weeks back, Grant Morrison re-introduced readers to a young Clark Kent just starting out in Metropolis. This week, George Perez and Jesus Merino will launch Superman to the skies once more.
To date, the approach to modernizing superheroes has been to give them some ‘edge’ and make them harder and less kind than their vanilla past history would present them. In the past five years alone there have been numerous revisions of Superman from Birthright to All-Star Superman to Superman: Year One, each one drastically different from the other.
The new Superman of 2011 has been described a socialist, fighting for the common man against corrupt big corporations, a far cry from the way most people view the man of steel but actually far closer to the Kryptonian as he first appeared back in his early days. Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s Superman fought crafty businessmen more than mobsters and giant robots from space. While Morrison and Morales chronicle the early days of a Superman rough around the edges dressed in a T-shirt, blue jeans and combat boots, however, Perez and Marino will be rocketing the man of tomorrow into explosive high adventure, clad in what appears to be a slick futuristic suit of armor.
In 1985, Perez wrote and drew the best run on Wonder Woman, recreating the Amazonian Princess in a monthly book. The issues are so amazing that comic book industry professionals and fans of Wonder Woman site Perez’s run as a defining period of the superheroine’s career. Can he accomplish a similar feat with Superman? In the 1980’s, George Perez was one of the finest modern cartoonists in the industry. Drawing the Avengers and Justice League of America concurrently, he also created the New Teen Titans with Marv Wolfman, a title so successful that it challenged the sales of Claremont and Byrne’s Uncanny X-Men over at Marvel. Since that time he has become recognized as one of the modern masters of comics.
With Perez at the helm (and with the assistance of stellar inker Jesus Merino), this could be the best Superman comic book ever.
(Preview via CBR.com)
By George Perez and Jesus Merino
RELEASE DATE: Wed, September 28th, 2011The new adventures of Superman begin here! What is The Man of Steel’s startling new status quo? How does it affect Lois Lane and The Daily Planet? There’s no time for answers now, because Superman must stop a monstrous threat to Metropolis – one that he somehow is the cause of!
The Daily P.O.P. 
I’d agree with your take on Superman, I began reading during the Byrne/Ordway era and caught up with (some of) the earlier issues and the Man of Steel mini-series through British reprints (tabloid size, yay). It was a modern take that didn’t remove the things that make him Super(man) but reinterpreted some elements, and they didn’t make him a Kuhl Ass. Now, I’ve developed a liking for the earlier 70s Superman (Maggin, Bates, O’Neil) at its best too but I felt the compulsion for trashing Byrne’s ideas once he’d left and reviving Silver Age ideas tho’ they no longer fit (how many Kryptonians survived now, Krap) made no sense. I also think that the return of Hal Jordan and (especially) Barry Allen, the most boring man alive, was retrograde. There were a lot of very good Post- Crisis ideas, when people focus on the mistakes they forget that there was a lot of dross Pre-Crisis too, and they overlook the Great things from the mid-eighties to late nineties (JLI, Flash, Perez Wonder Woman, etc) including the non-Superhero stuff. Frank Miller, Alan Moore, and Grant Morrison aren’t the Whole Story (I really liked issues of All Star Superman but that was out of continuity so I didn’t mention it above).
I really hope the Perez Superman is good, even with the silly armour, I pray DC don’t make changes simply to screw over the Siegels but multi-million dollar companies aren’t known for their ethics and good behaviour…
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