Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.7.0.8 $; site uiucdcs Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!mcewan From: mcewan@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU Newsgroups: net.comics Subject: Re: John Byrne/DC rumor Message-ID: <36000059@uiucdcs> Date: Tue, 15-Oct-85 23:52:00 EDT Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.36000059 Posted: Tue Oct 15 23:52:00 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Oct-85 23:35:57 EDT References: <773@decwrl.UUCP> Lines: 88 Nf-ID: #R:decwrl.UUCP:-77300:uiucdcs:36000059:000:4909 Nf-From: uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU!mcewan Oct 15 22:52:00 1985 It is no longer a rumor. According to CBG 623, Byrne will be taking over as writter and artist as of July, 1986, with Superman volume II, #1. The following is quoted directly from the CBG article. Statements enclosed by [] are comments by me. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The familiar cast of characters (including Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, and Perry White) will be re-introduced, with alterations. "Lana Lang," Byrne said, "comes back in a substantially altered form," and Superman's foster parents, the Kents, will still be alive. [I'm surprised that he's keeping Lana. I always associate her with Superboy or those silly 60's stories. Sure, her personality has gone through 4 or 5 revisions since then, and she's dating Clark now, but that's just because of "Superman III" (hard to believe they thought they had to make changes to be compatible with that turkey). I assume that Byrne intends to make Lana a totally different character, and Lois will be restored to her proper position.] The relationship between Superman and The Batman (which Byrne begins in his fourth issue) will *not* be the chummy friendship of past decades ("Vastly different backgrounds, vastly different motivations"), and The Justice League "will have a role, but they are basically formed to take care of things that Superman is too busy to take care of." Drawing his inspiration from the original characterization of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the classic Fleisher cartoons of the 40's and the first of the Christopher Reeve motion pictures, Byrne stated his preference for "a Superman who has to *sweat*." Byrne said, "My whole approach is that the *man* should be more important than the *super*, and he *has* to be. If he's just a supremely powerful guy who never screws up, then who cares? I mean, I've got The Bible if I want to read that kind of stuff. Superman has to comprehensible in mortal terms." ... Byrne rejects the notion of recent years concerning Superman's feelings of alienation. "This guy was raised as a human being; he doesn't know from alienation." [Right on!] Planning to save the character's discovery of his native heritage for the 50th issue in 1988, the artist maintains that "as far as Superman is concerned, he's a human being who just happens to be better than everybody else. My first six issues are a compressed history of the character, to fix him up, bring him up to date. We proceed from there. The first six issues will hit the stands on a bi-weekly basis, and the first issue will be 30 pages, no ads. There will be no Superboy, no Supergirl, no cats, bats, rats, dogs, aardvarks, elephants, monkeys, orangutans, no Phantom Zones [I never could figure out why the Phantom Zone was considered a good place to put criminals. You commit a crime, they stick you in this place were you don't have to work, you don't age, you can't die or get sick, and you can see and hear into anyplace in the universe (which ought to eliminate the problem of boredom); after a few years they let you out; you haven't aged a day and now you can make a fortune blackmailing prominent Kryptonians.], no Survival Zones, no Kandor, no Krypto. The key phrase for Superman is 'Sole survivor of the doomed planet Krypton.' Nobody else walked away from that." [Good riddance. The DC universe has become so overcrowded with Krypton survivors that I was beginning to think that only 3 or 4 people actually died when Krypton blew up. I hope somebody blows up Daxam(sp? - you know, Mon El's home planet). There are just too many superpeople around.] Byrne received the assignment from DC Executive Editor Dick Giordano, who learned that Byrne had recently become a freelancer. "They took everything that I said I wanted to do with the character, all the fixes and changes - even the supreme egotism, on my part, of having my first issue being #1!" All other Superman titles will be done in concert with the main series. ... Byrne has made it clear that he will continue to chronical The Fantastic Four and The Incredible Hulk, adding, "there are a half a dozen DC titles that I'd like to play with, but unless something happens to affect the work I'm doing at Marvel, I won't have the time. Three books a month is as much as I can handle." ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- I'm looking forward to this. It's about time that SOMETHING was done to revitalize Superman, and I agree with most of the things that Byrne wants to do. The article doesn't say if Byrne intends to make his belief that Superman's powers are psionically based explicit in the book. I hope not. I do hope that he gets rid of some of Supes more ridiculous powers (super- ventriloquism, super-breath). Scott McEwan {ihnp4,pur-ee}!uiucdcs!mcewan "There are good guys and there are bad guys. The job of the good guys is to kill the bad guys."