There are few (if any) properties Byrne has ever worked on where he hasn't claimed credit that he wasn't due. The dude even tried to claim co-creatorship for Checkmate. But it's well documented that Miller and Gerber pitched the original grounded Superman idea, Wolfman made some significant contributions, Helfer than became editor on the project and really fleshed it out, and then they hired Byrne to write it. It's also well documented (even by Byrne) that he hated the idea of making Superman more grounded and was constantly pushing to bring back the more fanciful aspects of the Pre-Crisis mythos.

Regarding Byrne's Superman, a few things...

- What Shaxper said, for one.

- Telling the Phantom Stranger he didn't want to help with a crisis because he doesn't like dealing with magic.

- Clark Kent going AWOL for seven years, then suddenly waltzing into a newspaper office with no creds, no journalism experience, no history of any kind since high school (not even working part-time at the local pizza place or something), and strolling in with the world's biggest exclusive story since the printing press was invented.

- The Kents telling Lois Lane that Superman was raised by them, alongside Clark.

- Lois buying it!!!!

- Lex Luthor spending his free time jerking around small-town waitresses. THIS is a master criminal?

- Nine people killed in a bank robbery, followed by a Big Damn Speech from Maggie Sawyer about how pointless it all is... and never mentioned again, with a lighthearted ending. Similar things happened another time or three as well, including the Mxyzptlk story.

- No one guessing Superman might have a secret identity. Ok, I can see this kind of working before the reboot, when Superman was the first superhero ever. But on Post-Crisis DC Earth, where superheroes existed for decades, some known to have secret identities despite not wearing a mask?

- Superman vibrating his face to blur his features. If he doesn't have a secret identity to cover for, what is he trying to hide?

- Every story reading like a run-of-the-mill 80s Marvel comic, right down to the speech patterns, soap opera subplotting, and by-the-numbers story structure. What happened to the imagination, grandeur, the larger-than-life feeling of Superman stories?

(Yeah, I know that's exactly what DC was paying for at the time, as the "We gotta be just like Marvel!" fever really started to kick in. But still...)

- Not figuring out to use his X-Ray vision to find his way through a tunnel for half a story.

- Starting the trend (which continued long after Byrne left) of Superman essentially being a supporting character in his own book whenever another superhero showed up.

- The clueless kidult babbling to Wonder Woman, practically pleading "Will you go out with me, pretty please???"


Not entirely relevant to Superman specifically but amusing for all the wrong reasons... Darkseid screaming and waving his fists in the air like a TV cartoon villain. Tiger force of the universe, indeed.



Wave your hands in the air
Like you just don't care!

Where were these documented? Not doubting your word, but I'd like to read these.

I remember seeing a little about this in Amazing Heroes right before the revamp was published, but I haven't seen my copy of that issue since the 80s.

I hate the Wasp but even I like some of those costumes, as far as I can tell - those pictures are pretty small for my old eyes.

Problems I have with Byrne's Superman:

- lack of distinct personalities for his Superman and Clark Kent.  Byrne has claimed that the took inspiration for his Kent from the George Reeve's series and I can sort of see this.  Nevertheless, Reeves played Kent differently from how he played Superman.  His Kent often reacted to major events with a sort of bemusement and even at times almost callous indifference.  Furthermore, there was the suggestion that he was jealous of Superman.  These failings certainly didn't define the character, but it is interesting that Superman put so much thought into his alter ego that he even gave him his own weaknesses.  With Byrne, Superman was just Clark Kent with powers which leads to...

- "Superman is what I do, Clark Kent is who I am".  Byrne never wrote these words, but he has stated that the sentiment fits his creation.  In other words, Clark Kent is the reality, Superman is the mask.  Prior to Byrne, it seemed as if everything Superman did somehow tied in with the responsibility of being Superman.  His job, his thoughts, his attentions, his disguise as Clark Kent; with Byrne however, 'Be Superman' seemed to be number six on his list of "Things I Gotta Do Today".  As the greatest superhero of them all, Superman should be present at all times whether as Superman or while masquerading be Kent.  To be able to relegate the identity to something Clark Kent does for a few hours every evening when he's not being boring just lessens the greatness of the character.

- "Clark... would be proud of his Kryptonian heritage, but later portrayals have tried to shoehorn in too much of the psychobabble of adopted children longing for and seeking out their biological parents.  Excuse my French, but to me, they fall under the heading of 'ungrateful little shits'."  John Byrne. 

There seemed to be something cold and mean spirited about Byrne's Krypton but until I came across the above quotation, I hadn't realized that it was due to John Byrne himself being cold and mean spirited.  I understand that a lot of people can appreciate a person's work without liking the person himself, but when a person such as Byrne injects what makes him so unlikable into the thought process behind his revisions, I don't see how you can separate the two.  Krypton should be majestic, futuristic, and full of wonder - in Byrne's hands it became a "Krypton which deserved to blow up" according to Wendy Pini (an assessment Byrne agrees with).  Byrne didn't want his baby to long for his biological parents, so he gave him a place of origin bereft of anything of intrigue.  Like Byrne's Clark Kent, he got rid of what had come before and just substituted something bland and unmemorable.

- Byrne just had to make things perverse.  In his first issue of Action, a bad guy takes control of Superman's body and threatens to rape Wonder Girl.  Lex Luthor once had a teen-aged Lois Lane forcibly strip searched so that he could film the event and watch it over and over (World of Metropolis 2).  Superman spent so much time fantasizing about Wonder Woman - because, hey, this is Byrne's Superman we're talking about and not the real deal - that when the two met following Legends, he immediately grabbed her and shoved his tongue down her throat (Action Comics 600 - Yay!  Anniversary Issue!).  Anndddd... the porno he made has already been mentioned.  It's a recurring theme in a run which only ran about two years.  

- "When was Superman stupid enough to tell people he had a secret identity?" Byrne once smirked and it's another thing about Superman Byrne didn't like.  Never mind that an early issue of Action Comics established that by leaping out an alley only to have his Clark Kent clothes discovered by a police officer Superman inadvertently revealed that, yes, he had a secret identity, this is one time where I fault Byrne for actually making an effort to substitute one of the original aspects of the Superman mythos with his own idea instead of just doing nothing.  In his introduction to 1988's Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told, Byrne laments the number of barnacles which attached themselves to Superman over the course of his 50 year history.  This is one of them.  Rather than sidestep the issue of Clark Kent and Superman's resemblance to one another, he had his Lois Lane flat out ask Kent if he was Superman.  Now... here's the thing.  I can understand "Lois suspects Clark is Superman, but can't conclusively prove it".  You might consider this an overworked piece of the story line and I won't argue that, BUT... Byrne shouldn't complain about barnacles only to come up with alternatives such as: Lois is told by the Kents that they discovered Superman as a baby and raised him and Clark as brothers.  Only not only does neither Clark nor Superman feel this is an interesting enough detail to ever bring up again during Byrne's run, but Lois doesn't either.  'Did he just live in the attic?  Did he go to school?  What kind of relationship do you have now?'  Nothing - not mentioned again until after Byrne's left the title and even then, only in passing.  I mean, if I mentioned once on here that Alan Moore, for instance, and I were raised as brothers, I'm sure someone here would be somewhat curious about how that worked.  

- More of Byrne's barnacles.  "Super Aura" to explain his indestructible outfit (cape aside) and why he can't get dirty (although Erik Larsen did ask how he dealt with removing the stench of sweat since soap wouldn't be able to touch his skin); "Telekinesis" to explain how he can fly; Superman #9 dealing with the misconception that no one has ever had that Superman not being able to see through lead means that lead itself is invisible to him; The Legion of Superheroes no longer go back in time to visit Superman as a youth or adult to have adventures because that would be complicated so now get shunted to a pocket universe (NOT a parallel universe), hang out with a pocket Superboy for a bit, and get shunted back to post-Crisis Earth circa 3000 where they remain unaware that the 20th century they've been visiting doesn't exist even though they think otherwise.  Oh, and this leads to the creation of a Supergirl who isn't Superman's cousin from Krypton, but a proto-plasmic creature who looks like Lana Lang (or is Lana Lang, I forget) whose hair changes color, and she comes to Earth (after remaining in ice for either hundreds or thousands of years), and doesn't seem to know how things work.  

- Superman is so ineffective of an opponent for Lex Luthor that most people don't even know they're enemies.  Superman does jail Luthor in the Man of Steel miniseries and does manage to avoid being murdered by Luthor (so that's kind of a victory, I guess) but he never really puts a dent in his operations.  Compare this with Luthor having Lana Lang brutally tortured so as to learn what her connection is with Superman (which he does, but is thankfully too stupid to believe - again, Byrne's Luthor being flat out told that Superman is Clark Kent only to reject the suggestion doesn't really come up again in spite of the fact that the two characters do interact with one another thereafter) and it makes Superman look incompetent.  Even when Luthor does eventually slip up, it has nothing to do with anything Superman's done, but because of a mistake Luthor has made - he contracts cancer from wearing a kryptonite ring.  Honestly, Superman kind of looks like a jerk by not going public with his knowledge Luthor's crimes (either to the police or just by making a statement to The Daily Planet for example).  I mean, if someone repeatedly tried to murder me and I kept the matter to myself instead of reporting him in the hopes that I might one day figure out a way of stopping him and meanwhile, he's going around destroying people's lives left and right, aren't I somewhat responsible for the fact that his victims aren't at least given a chance to watch out for him?  Sure, lip service is paid to "again, Luthor's done something horrible but destroyed all traces of evidence", but should Superman really be saying "I can't stop him and by my best guess there's no evidence so I guess I won't report my witnessing his crime.  My best chance for a win is that he trips and falls or chokes while eating a pretzel or something (cue Superman music)".

- You know what?  There's more, but I'm just going to stop here.   

Superman 1938-1986 

I learned of it from an interview Marv Wolfman did with Amazing Heroes (might be the same article you're referencing), but I've since seen it in other places that I can't remember offhand as well.