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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 13:13:09 GMT -5
My LCS informed me that the latest edition of Back Issue is out, which is a Superboy special. So it feels timely to discuss Superboy, specifically whether you think Byrne should have included him in his reboot.
(I wanted a poll option of “I don’t care” for Slam, who would have entertained me with a witty criticism of Superboy, but he is free to entertain me simply by leaving a comment)
I do like Superboy. My first experience of him was actually the live-action show, which aired here on ITV in 1989. After that, I probably got my hands on Superboy back issues at jumble sales and the like. As time went on, I did try and acquire some Superboy comics, I seemed to mainly get 70s and mid-80s issues.
Despite my appreciation for Superboy, I like the approach of Superman the Movie, which, as we all know, saw Clark become Superman as an adult. It could have been no other way, really. Somehow, Gene Hackman’s Luthor having flashbacks to bickering between him and Clark in Smallville just would not have suited that film in any way, shape or form. And as Byrne was no doubt inspired by some aspects of the Reeve movies, I appreciate what he did. As a kid, I was glad we got to see Clark become Superman as an adult - and meet Lex for the first time in Metropolis.
However, years later, and in recent times, I have often thought that maybe, just maybe, featuring Superboy in Man of Steel might have been beneficial. It needn’t have necessarily meant having Lex and Superboy meet, we could have simply seen Superboy doing what he did best - and kept Superman meeting Lex in Metropolis for the first time.
Didn’t Byrne express regret for not having his Superman be Superboy? Something tells me he did. Either I imagined that or he said it. Sadly, without my copies of Hero Illustrated or Starlog Group magazines to hand, I can’t quite track down what I may have read.
I honestly do not know what current canon is, given 9,998,383,750,000 reboots of DC have occurred since COIE. So, really, I guess anything Byrne did has been retconned/rebooted a dozen or so times. However, thinking solely about that 1986 reboot, if the choice had been yours, would Superboy have been a part of it?
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Post by Slam_Bradley on Mar 28, 2023 13:52:18 GMT -5
Not only should Superboy not have been included, Superman should not have been included. Then he could have drifted off in to the distant horrid memories.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 13:55:35 GMT -5
Not only should Superboy not have bee included, Superman should not have been included. Then he could have drifted off in to the distant horrid memories. Works for me. Well, it made me laugh.  |
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Post by badwolf on Mar 28, 2023 15:10:06 GMT -5
I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm happy with what we got, so I voted no.
Superboy did appear in a crossover involving the Legion, but as an anomaly (IIRC).
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 15:11:20 GMT -5
I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm happy with what we got, so I voted no. Superboy did appear in a crossover involving the Legion, but as an anomaly (IIRC). That’s correct. I thought that was done very cleverly; also, it gave us this great cover:  |
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Post by badwolf on Mar 28, 2023 15:14:59 GMT -5
I don't have strong feelings either way, but I'm happy with what we got, so I voted no. Superboy did appear in a crossover involving the Legion, but as an anomaly (IIRC). That’s correct. I thought that was done very cleverly; also, it gave us this great cover: Oh yes! And his little dog too! |
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Confessor
CCF Mod Squad
Not Bucky O'Hare!
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Post by Confessor on Mar 28, 2023 16:45:55 GMT -5
Even as a little kid I thought Superboy sucked. Maybe it was because my earliest exposure to the Man of Steel was via re-runs of the old '50s TV serial and the first couple of Christopher Reeve movies, but the whole idea of Kal-El having been Superboy as a teen in Smallville has always seemed really unnecessary and just kinda "wrong" to me. So no, I don't think Superboy should've been included in John Byrne's reboot.
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Post by zaku on Mar 28, 2023 16:56:41 GMT -5
I think absolutely no one missed Superboy after COIE (please correct me). The only thing people objected to was the continuity issue for the Legion, but if it weren't for that I think everyone would have done just fine without "The Adventures of Superman when he was a Boy".
And honestly, is there ONE, I mean ONE memorable Superboy story that isn't about the Legion? I'm really asking. And I mean a good story, not a story that is remembered for how bad or cringe it was.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 17:10:05 GMT -5
I think absolutely no one missed Superboy after COIE (please correct me). The only thing people objected to was the continuity issue for the Legion, but if it weren't for that I think everyone would have done just fine without "The Adventures of Superman when he was a Boy". And honestly, is there ONE, I mean ONE memorable Superboy story that isn't about the Legion? I'm really asking. And I mean a good story, not a story that is remembered for how bad or cringe it was. You can’t post a first sentence like that as if it is an incontestable fact. Well, you can. But that’s an opinion. Unless every Superman/Superboy fan was polled, no-one can know. These things can be 50/50, or 60/40 or whatever. There were no doubt some who did miss Superboy. Of the Silver Age Superboy stories I’ve read, there have been many I enjoyed, which didn’t involve the Legion. I like the quirky and less-than-serious nature of that era. I did also enjoy The Brave and the Bold #192, which featured a Superboy and Batman team-up. They were good stories for me (still are), it has ZERO to do with bad or cringe. I don’t think there can be absolutes. There are fans of Superman and Superboy. Some might like both, some might like one or the other. I do think it’s important to remember and respect that. I mean, I don’t care for Gambit (he’s never appealed to me), but I would not post that no-one missed him - or ask someone to name just one Gambit story that is good. Every character has his/her fans and detractors. The Gambit stories I tried and didn’t enjoy might be another person’s favourite story. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 17:15:37 GMT -5
I do not mean to sound hostile, by the way. Each to their own, and post whatever comes. But it frustrates me in life when words such as “no-one missed” or “can anyone name one good story?” are posted as it conflates facts and opinions. We can’t know the mind of every comic fan throughout history. If you ask someone to name one good story for a character, what if it’s a story you don’t personally like? Does that “invalidate” the other person’s choice? Is it absolute?
Anyway, thanks to all contributions so far.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 28, 2023 18:30:24 GMT -5
While I am a huge Legion fan and on that alone I would have preferred the traditional basis for the establishment of the Legion including Superboy (and Supergirl) joining, the biggest reason I voted yes is actually more creator based.
Despite some of the things he's said and creative choices he's made over the years, I still love classic 80's Byrne. Truth be told, I like plenty of his later stuff too. But at that point, coming off of X-Men, FF, and Alpha Flight, I would have just liked to have seen him do more like the FF thing and inject new life without a reset. Origin stories are so boring to me, whereas if he had just come right in and had some awesome storytelling in mind, I would have really loved to have seen that.
Especially because he could play in "big" spaces...the X-Men were off in space, the FF traveling to the microverse or wherever. He could have taken "full powered" Superman to amazing places I think versus the depowered approach that was quite literally more "grounded".
So while that indirectly leads to "therefore Superboy still existed", I bet Byrne could have had some fun there as well. I always liked the Smallville setting, it was kind of an "Andy Griffith Show" vibe. And Lana was more fun to me than Lois to be honest.
But all that said, I DO like GA Superman as well, and how wonderful would it have been to maybe retell some of his back story using Byrne's "no Superboy" continuity ideas (where possible) and have retained a true Earth 2 (which was a terrible loss I think post Crisis).
So I vote yes AND no if I had my druthers and they had retained the original DC multiverse!
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Post by Chris on Mar 28, 2023 18:57:09 GMT -5
thinking solely about that 1986 reboot, if the choice had been yours, would Superboy have been a part of it? At the time, my thought on it was that Superboy worked better in a universe where there was a precedent for superheroes, it always seemed odd to me that Superman would have appeared as Superboy if he was the first superhero. Not saying it seemed impossible, just unlikely without some kind of precedent. I would think in that world he would first appear as an adult. Keep in mind, I did like the character of Superboy and read a lot of the stories. I don't think it would have really helped or hurt the reboot either way if they had kept Superboy. But them I'm very biased in that I really did not like much of what was done with the revamp. It would have made things a lot easier as for as the Legion went, though. I wasn't a Legion reader then, so no real dog in that fight, but I did read the "5 Years Later" version and not having Superboy caused some problems. And that's not even getting into the Superman Office changing their minds on things while the Legion storyline was in progress. Didn’t Byrne express regret for not having his Superman be Superboy? Something tells me he did. From here - Why did JB remove Superboy from continuity with the MAN OF STEEL reboot?
JB: There's hardly a job out there that I would not tweak in some way if I could. As you may know, I dumped Superboy from the Superman mythos largely because I did not see him as a necessary character, and DC had agreed to allow me to show Superman "learning the ropes" after the reboot. Unfortunately, once the contracts were signed, the backed down on this and insisted we do MAN OF STEEL so that Superman would be "up to speed" by the time the new first issue came out. (Eventually I would realize that they wanted Superman rebooted without him actually being, you know, rebooted. Odd, indeed, since I had said from the start I was prefectly prepared to work from within continuity, and the reboot was their idea.) So, since I did not have a Superman who was still "figuring it out", I wish I had had Superboy to fill that role. (2/21/2005) |
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Post by Chris on Mar 28, 2023 18:59:21 GMT -5
I do not mean to sound hostile, by the way. That's not hostile. But charging in with "I think absolutely no one missed Superboy after COIE" and "is there ONE, I mean ONE memorable Superboy story that isn't about the Legion?" is, if not a bit confrontational, at least dismissive. |
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Post by chadwilliam on Mar 28, 2023 19:37:52 GMT -5
Since I'm not a fan of Byrne's Superman, I can't imagine that I would have been a fan of his Superboy, but I do think that had Byrne established that Superman had used his powers as a kid, it might have satisfied that desire of his to present a Superman who was still "learning the ropes" (as Chris pointed to in his quote) by consigning those types of stories to his past with the end result being a Superman who was a little more grown up than what we got.
Byrne's Superman never quite seemed grown up to me - the way he handled his attraction to Wonder Woman, his reliance on Ma and Pa, even his "they all wanted a piece of me" speech after his big debut in Man of Steel - just felt more Dean Cain than George Reeves to me. Instead of relegating all those "Clark learns a lesson" stories to a time when he was Superboy, Byrne paused his childhood development by waiting to present those experiences when he was chronologically an adult.
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Post by wildfire2099 on Mar 28, 2023 20:10:37 GMT -5
I first got into DC around the death of Superman, so Connor Kent is my Superboy, though Jon definitely the best. I've only read Clark Kent as a boy a bit, and what I've read is very silly indeed. I also like the Legion better without him (he's too powerful) so all around no from me.
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