Episode 87 - The Man of Steel (1986) with Frank Hernandez

When this show was still figuring out a format, Case just assumed we’d be getting to John Byrne’s era. Well, now, 4 years in, that’s finally true! Join Case, Jmike, and special guest Frank Hernandez for a talk about the definitive Superman origin, until it wasn’t.

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Notes

Superman Franchise Relaunch

The 1986 John Byrne "Man of Steel" miniseries rebooted Superman to make the character accessible and relevant for a new generation while addressing storytelling challenges from prior eras.

• Reboot Addressed Powers Escalation Problem (02:56)

  • Superman’s prior depiction involved escalating powers that made stories ridiculous and unrelatable.

  • Byrne aimed to reset Superman to a more grounded level with real character development potential.

  • The relaunch sought to mirror the popular, matter-of-fact style of X-Men comics to attract younger readers.

  • This reboot laid the foundation for post-crisis Superman stories used through the 80s, 90s, and beyond.

• Krypton Redefined as Cold, Sterile World (23:19)

  • Krypton was depicted as technologically advanced but emotionally barren, contrasting with prior vibrant portrayals.

  • Superman’s birth involved a genetic matrix, emphasizing a scientific rather than natural origin.

  • This dark vision emphasized Superman’s mission to lead humanity away from Krypton’s mistakes.

  • The birthing pod concept resolved political pressures to have Superman born on Earth while maintaining alien roots.

• Clark Kent’s Origin and Persona Reimagined (30:18)

  • Clark is raised by Jonathan and Martha Kent, with no public record of alien origins, grounding his identity firmly in Kansas.

  • He discovers his powers gradually, with flying only manifesting in adolescence, enhancing relatability.

  • The iconic Superman suit was explained as a tight, solar-powered uniform with a force-field effect protecting him.

  • Clark’s mild-mannered persona was emphasized with physical disguises like glasses and posture changes, supported by humorous details like his heat-beam shaving method.

• Lex Luthor and Lois Lane Modernized (55:37)

  • Lex Luthor was recast as a wealthy, bald businessman with red hair remnants, shifting away from mad scientist tropes.

  • Lois Lane was portrayed as a feisty, determined reporter with a strong personality, including a memorable scene where she disrobes to reject Lex’s influence at a party.

  • The story introduced Lois as an army brat with General Sam Lane as her father, a detail that became canonical.

  • The interactions among Clark, Lois, and Lex were staged with a theatrical style, enhancing interpersonal drama.

Character Dynamics and Storytelling Innovations

Byrne’s relaunch redefined relationships and narrative tone to deepen emotional engagement and create new storytelling possibilities.

• Superman and Batman Team-Up Redefined (42:03)

  • Their relationship was portrayed as begrudging allies, emphasizing conflict and tension over friendship.

  • Batman’s detective skills and moral code contrasted with Superman’s straightforward heroism.

  • The villain Magpie introduced a darker, grimmer criminal element, raising stakes beyond simple battles.

  • The team-up balanced action with investigative drama and character interplay.

• Bizarro Story as a Modernized Classic (01:04:00)

  • Bizarro was introduced via cloning technology with imperfect results, creating a tragic figure who believes himself to be Superman.

  • The story referenced Silver Age origins, updating the blind girl subplot where Bizarro’s presence restores her sight.

  • Bizarro’s powers matched Superman’s except without the usual “inverted” abilities, simplifying the concept.

  • The fight between Superman and Bizarro was dramatic, showing vulnerability and emotional complexity.

• Clark’s Personal Growth and Identity Exploration (01:17:27)

  • Clark Kent was emphasized as Superman’s true self, with Superman as a public persona, reversing prior interpretations.

  • The story explored Clark’s maturation at age 28, a young adult still learning and growing.

  • The presence of both Ma and Pa Kent alive was a novel choice, emphasizing family support and grounding.

  • Lana Lang’s role was expanded to reflect a close, secret relationship distinct from Lois Lane’s romantic role.

• Limitations and Powers Grounded for Storytelling (46:00)

  • Superman’s powers were explained with telekinetic elements, such as flying and heat vision having scientific bases.

  • His need to breathe after exhaling toxic gas established tangible limitations to avoid godlike invincibility.

  • Kryptonite was limited initially to a single chunk attached to his ship, controlling its narrative impact.

  • These constraints allowed for more creative, suspenseful storytelling and character challenges.

Cultural and Market Impact

The "Man of Steel" relaunch reflected and influenced 1980s comic market trends, aesthetics, and audience expectations.

• Targeting Younger Readers with Contemporary Style (02:56)

  • Byrne incorporated the popular X-Men style to attract kids familiar with soap-opera-like superhero stories.

  • The art and storytelling were designed to be accessible and fresh, appealing to a new generation while respecting legacy fans.

  • The relaunch coincided with a broader DC strategy to simplify complex continuity by consolidating multiverse elements.

  • The success led to the "Man of Steel" title becoming synonymous with the modern Superman brand, including later movies.

• Introduction of Soap Opera Elements and Realism (56:48)

  • Interpersonal drama, character conflicts, and 1980s fashion were emphasized to create relatable human stories.

  • Scenes like Lois Lane’s party and Clark’s bachelor lifestyle added texture and humor.

  • Violence and darker themes were introduced through characters like Magpie and terrorist storylines, reflecting 1980s cultural shifts.

  • The balance between fantasy and grounded drama was critical for the series’ appeal.

• Lasting Influence on Media Adaptations (04:12)

  • Key elements from Byrne’s work shaped subsequent Superman media including the animated series, CW shows, and the 2013 "Man of Steel" movie.

  • The portrayal of Superman’s powers, relationships, and origin in these adaptations echoed the comic’s themes and characterizations.

  • The idea of Superman as a hopeful figure with real problems, such as family and emotional struggles, became central to modern portrayals.

  • The comic’s depiction of Krypton and the birthing matrix influenced visual and narrative choices in film and television.

• Continuity Challenges and Editorial Decisions (33:55)

  • Post-crisis continuity retained Golden Age superheroes, creating some narrative dissonance with Superman’s “first superpowered” origin feel.

  • Editorial uncertainty led to treating older continuities as separate or ignored, complicating integration.

  • Byrne’s relaunch simplified elements but introduced new continuity complexities, especially with supporting characters like Superboy and Supergirl.

  • These challenges reflect ongoing comic industry strategies balancing legacy and reinvention.

Creative Contributors and Production Insights

John Byrne’s artistic and narrative style shaped the miniseries’ tone and lasting appeal despite some behind-the-scenes controversies.

• John Byrne’s Artistic Influence and Style (07:00)

  • Byrne’s prior runs on X-Men and Fantastic Four brought a polished, matter-of-fact art style to Superman.

  • His cinematic framing, with characters often addressing the audience, enhanced dramatic tension and character focus.

  • The clean, accessible artwork helped ground the story and appeal to both new and existing readers.

  • Despite personal reputation for difficult behavior, Byrne’s talent was key to the relaunch’s success.

• Narrative and Character Choices Reflect 1980s Context (25:42)

  • Political climate influenced origin details, like making Superman born on Earth to emphasize American identity.

  • The Reagan era’s cultural backdrop shaped Lex Luthor as a businessman and the inclusion of Cold War elements like smuggling scientists from China.

  • The series integrated contemporary social attitudes, such as Lois Lane’s assertiveness and military family background.

  • These choices made the comic resonate with its original audience.

• Legacy and Influence on Future Superman Stories (01:22:00)

  • Byrne’s reboot created a foundation that allowed future writers to expand and explore Superman’s character with consistent themes.

  • The series balanced respecting older mythos while trimming excess to enable new storylines.

  • It influenced later reinventions, even if some subsequent arcs were criticized for complexity or odd directions.

  • As Case Aiken noted, it remains an important reference and starting point for understanding modern Superman.

• Fan and Creator Reflections (01:28:12)

  • Hosts reflected on their personal experiences discovering the series and its impact on their understanding of Superman.

  • They appreciated the accessibility and fresh storytelling compared to earlier, more convoluted versions.

  • The reboot was praised for blending nostalgia with innovation, even if not perfect in all aspects.

  • The discussion highlighted how the series remains a beloved and influential milestone in comic history.

Current Projects and Community Engagement

The hosts and guest shared their ongoing creative efforts and ways for fans to connect and support related projects.

• Farragut Forward Fan Film Project (01:33:14)

  • Frank Hernandez is involved in producing a Star Trek fan film set in the movie era with new sets and costumes.

  • They are running an Indiegogo campaign to fund production, offering backers perks like credits and walk-on roles.

  • The team plans to use the assets for future projects, aiming for filming in late summer depending on COVID conditions.

  • Social media presence includes Twitter @Farragut1921 and updates on Facebook and Instagram.

• Podcast and Online Community Engagement (01:37:00)

  • Hosts J. Mike Falson and Case Aiken manage the Men of Steel podcast and recommend related shows like Screen Snark.

  • They encourage fans to join their Discord server to interact directly and stay updated on episodes.

  • Twitter handles include @Mike101 and @AES_Aiken for ongoing conversation and sharing media insights.

  • The network Certain POV offers a range of podcasts exploring pop culture and media analysis.

• Personal Backgrounds and Industry Experience (01:34:00)

  • Frank Hernandez is a professional actor with SAG-AFTRA membership, preparing for future on-screen work near a new Netflix studio.

  • The hosts share enthusiasm for blending fan culture with professional creative endeavors.

  • They emphasize the importance of community support and crowdfunding for independent projects.

  • Their passion for storytelling and fandom fuels ongoing work and engagement.

• Encouragement to Explore Classic and New Media (01:38:11)

  • The hosts recommend revisiting classic Superman comics and related media to understand character evolution.

  • They highlight the value of origin stories like "Man of Steel" for new fans discovering the character.

  • Listeners are invited to explore the wide range of content on the Certain POV network.

  • The hosts express excitement for future episodes and ongoing conversations about superhero lore.

Transcription

00:00
Frank
One of the problems with Superman is, and I'm sure you guys have probably covered this, is the minute you start writing a Superman story or anthology of Superman stories, you have a powers race. That happens. You cannot have every issue be Superman stops a bank robbery, Superman rescues a kidnapped kid, or beats up a thug. That's just not going to do it. So then the villains get more powerful, Superman has to get more powerful, and you reach a point where Superman is juggling planets and there are no stories. It's just completely over the top and ridiculous.

00:59
Case
Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken and as always, I am joined by my co host, J. Mike Falson.

01:05
Speaker 3
Welcome back, everybody. Glad to have you.

01:08
Case
It's great to be here today. We've got a guy on that I've been trying to get on this podcast for a while and it just never came up as like this is the right topic. But today we are talking about a perfect topic to have Frank Hernandez on for.

01:25
Frank
By trying to get me on, it means he asked me, I said yes.

01:30
Case
Frank, you and I have known each other for goddamn like 15 years now, off and on from creative projects.

01:37
Frank
Okay? I'll give you $15 to never say that again. How's that?

01:42
Case
I mean, we're all getting old here. It's fine. But fair enough. We've known each other for some time. We'll say sometime. Yes, sometimes. But mostly through working on sci fi projects, Star Trek fan films, those kind of things. We're working together right now on Farrargate Forward, which we've got an Indiegogo running for, to try to actually make a movie era. Star Trek fan film.

02:06
Frank
That's right. Wrath of Khan era with the monster Maroons.

02:10
Case
Yeah, the monster Maroons, man.

02:12
Frank
Something to check out.

02:13
Case
Weirdly, despite the fact that we've both been aware that we're both giant Superman nerds, we've never really been able to sit down and just talk Superman stuff. Because despite you currently wearing a Superman shirt and me currently wearing a Superman shir and our Facebook profiles, having tons of Superman stuff, usually we're talking Star Trek because we're talking work, right?

02:30
Frank
We're working on something.

02:31
Case
Yeah. But today we are talking about the greatest Superman story of its era. Until it wasn't. Today we are talking about the definitive origin of Superman. Until it wasn't. Today we are Talking about the 1980 relaunch of the Superman franchise. Post crisis, we're talking about the man of Steel by John Byrne.

02:50
Frank
That's right, man of Steel. And I collected this when it was originally released in 1986, because I was collecting at the time. And it was just post crisis, they were looking to reboot and regenerate the entire thing. And what I think Byrne was trying to do with this was the popularity of the X Men was really driving the comics industry at that time. And what he wanted to do was bring that matter of fact style of art and storytelling into the post crisis universe. And I think that's what this was about. And also he wanted to tell the story in a manner as if it had just been written in 1986, so it would be accessible to the younger fans of that time.

03:30
Frank
One of the problems with Superman is, and I'm sure you guys have probably covered this, is the minute you start writing a Superman story or anthology of Superman stories, you have a powers race that happens. You cannot have every issue be Superman stops a bank robbery, Superman rescues a kidnapped kid or beats up a thug. That's just not going to do it. So then the villains get more powerful, Superman has to get more powerful. And you reach a point where Superman is juggling planets and there are no stories. It's just completely over the top and ridiculous. And I think they wanted to bring it back to its roots and say, well, if were going to write this story today, and were writing it for the first time, if I had this idea, what would it look like? And then let it develop from there.

04:14
Frank
And the threads of this, you can see all the way up into the man of Steel, the movie threads of this still resound like the ringing of a great bell in the past. The notes still come through in certain iterations in the new stories and in the new versions of it. And Henry Cavill Superman, well, I mean,

04:34
Case
Like this set the tone for what's considered post crisis Superman. So Superman from the late 80s through the 90s through most of the 2000s up until we get to new do. So the basis of what we consider Superman stories during that entire era starts here. And we get a. A level of power and a level of or a set of character circumstances here that become like the status quo. I mean, the Animated Series famously has very similar elements, like from Ma and Pa Kent being alive and the power levels and so forth. The Ruby Spears cartoon from the 80s also is going off of this as like the. The status quo. Like you said, man of Steel, the movie certainly is borrowing elements from this.

05:17
Frank
Definitely the post Singularity environment, the high tech environment, all the babies being genetically engineered and born in Little pods. And then they decide, you know what? We're going to actually have a baby. You know, because Russell Crowe,

05:33
Speaker 3
My space dad.

05:37
Case
And you can see elements of that in the current CW shows too. Like, one of the big plot points, this is a minor spoiler, but a big plot point for Superman and Lois is the difference between a natural born versus a genetically engineered child of Krypton. And how they're like, Clark, Kal El is a natural born son of Jor El and Lara. Like that's a plot point there. And how that there are other Kryptonians who just never had that familial connection and are. Are disconnected as a result. That really starts here, right?

06:06
Frank
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. I mean, if you go back again, I'm giving away my age. If you go back to the original stories. I didn't mean the original run of Superman.

06:15
Case
Oh, back when you were collecting action comics number one in 1938,

06:20
Frank
Superman was from a planet of Superman. Like everybody could fly. And, you know, it was just completely out in left field. For some reason, the planet blows up. I mean, they don't even really some reason he escaped. So it has to be. It had to be reinvented. It had to be redesigned. The crisis gave him the perfect opportunity to do that. And I think they wanted to take advantage of that and again, bring it back to something that would be accessible to the younger readers of that time who were reading X Men, who were huge Wolverine fans and things like that were going on in comics at the time. And they wanted to use that style of art and that style of storytelling. And I think they did a terrific job in this. It's only six issues.

06:58
Case
Well, in terms of that style of art and that style of storytelling, they literally did it. They've got John Byrne, who is most famous for. Prior to this, he's worked on a bunch of stuff, but two big runs come to mind before you get to this era, which is his X Men run with Chris Claremont. He did the Dark Phoenix Saga. He's a big part of why X Men was big, why Wolverine was a.

07:19
Frank
Big character, which was a renaissance at the time in comics. Comics went through the roof at that point.

07:24
Case
Yeah. Byrne claims responsibility for why Wolverine and not Thunderbird died. He hadn't come on the book yet, but I believe he was in talks with them for coming on. And because Wolverine is Canadian, he claims that he was like, no, let's keep the Canadian one. Because the idea was that Thunderbird and Wolverine were both like these sort of animalistic kind of superheroes on the same team. And they're like, oh, it's too much. And he was like, no, I like the guy. That one. And honestly, probably just John Byrne talking shit, but, you know, sure. Okay, cool. You can't say that he wasn't responsible for Wolverine having some of his cachet, because certainly a lot of the big moments came from Burn. So we've got that X Men run, which is huge, and we've got some cool stuff going on there.

08:05
Case
And then he went over and he did the Fantastic Four run, which he wrote and drew.

08:09
Frank
That's right. Yeah. That was a total renaissance.

08:12
Case
Yeah.

08:12
Frank
Amazing renaissance. At the time, people who had never collected Fantastic Four were like, I have to have this.

08:17
Case
Yeah. Honestly, if you have never gotten into the Fantastic Four, the Burn era is not a bad era to jump in and be introduced to all the crazy stuff. Because Burn is a great artist. Like, whatever else you're gonna say about him, whatever kind of who would light an effigy of his boss at a party that everyone was at as sort of his way of saying you to Jim Shooter.

08:36
Speaker 3
Wait, what?

08:36
Case
Oh, yeah, no. John Byrne is a douchebag.

08:41
Speaker 3
Oh, I need to explain that.

08:43
Case
Oh, yeah. Now, you could argue part of this is that Jim Shooter is also a douchebag, but John Burns a douchebag. I'm not. I'm not gonna mince words on that part, but he's talented. Also, not gonna lie about that part. But, yeah, apparently there was this party that all the Marvel writers and editors got to at John Byrne's place in Westchester, and they all went up for a weekend, and they had a straw figure of Jim Shooter, who was editor in chief of Marvel at the time, that they burned just to make fun of their boss because they all thought he was an asshole. Yeah. Anyway, so John Byrne left Marvel for reasons.

09:23
Speaker 3
I was gonna say.

09:25
Case
Who can say what reasons there were? But he left Marvel about that time and headed over to dc, and DC was doing their. Their revision of their continuity. In general. They thought that, hey, the multiverse is too complicated. People are having a hard time understanding how you can have Earth 2 Superman, who's married to Lois, and Earth 1 Superman, who's on again, off again relationship with Lois, and also sometimes Lana Lang. And you can have Power Girl, who's the Earth 2 version of Supergirl, and also regular Supergirl, and you can have all. All the crazy stuff. And we've talked Crisis a few times. We talked about whatever happened to the man of Tomorrow, which was the finale of that Superman story. Like after the crisis occurred, that was the send off to that character.

10:08
Case
The, the Superman who had been a member of the legion of superheroes, right,

10:11
Frank
With the Superboy and so on, Right?

10:13
Case
Yeah. Who had Crip, who had Krypto, who had all the different Kryptonites, who had Bizarro, who had, you know, this whole pantheon of things, who had a future descendant of Jimmy Olsen who came back in time with anti gravity device so she could be Superwoman, like that Superman they didn't want to deal with anymore. There was a lot of bad guys.

10:30
Frank
Well, that's what I said. That's what I said. You end up in an arms race with powers, right? So now you gotta have a guy who has a kryptonite heart. And then you've got to have a guy who's an alien who's as strong as Superman or even stronger. And the arms race keeps escalating and different writers come in and they start giving Superman new powers or his powers get expanded and they become more powerful. And you reach that point in the late 70s where he's basically juggling planets. He's completely invincible. You know, it's ridiculous.

10:58
Case
Not basically like, and they tried to do power downs. They did stories where like, his powers were diminished or halved and they kept on being like, well, what's half of infinite?

11:09
Frank
Right? Exactly. Math, people, math. So, but the point is, what kind of story can you tell with a character like that? Here's our character. He has no character flaws and he has infinite power. And what's your story? Well, I don't know. You know, what are you going to do with it? There's no room for character growth. There's no room for storytelling. He's always going to win. And it's, you know, he might as well just be Zeus, just be God, period.

11:34
Case
Yeah, I.

11:35
Frank
You have to have something. You have to have something to risk and you have to have something that's interesting for the reader. And, and this was a big deal at the time. It had become inaccessible to these kids. I wasn't in 1986, but the kids at the time, they didn't find the Superman of that era of, I guess, what was it, 1984, accessible at all. It was like, well, that's my dad's comics. I'm over here with the cool X Men comics. This is what my Green Lantern, Green Arrow and Superman and the Batman is the world's finest. That's what my dad read or whatever that was. It wasn't, you know, the sales Numbers will back me up on this. It wasn't what they were interested in, and they wanted to do what they did here.

12:14
Frank
They wanted to reinvent it, tell the story as if it was fresh, new, and make it accessible. In the same way that as you're exposed to more and more music, your musical takes evolves. The things that you found enjoyable at a young age become simple and trite because your musical taste evolves and things become more accessible to you. The same thing happens with this kind of art and this kind of storytelling. You know, and the older guys like me were like, well, what about the Legion of Superheroes? What about Crypto and Superboy?

12:42
Case
Hey, man.

12:42
Frank
The kids of today. But now, of course, they're 46. The kids of 1986 wanted something they could. They could find for themselves for the first time.

12:52
Case
Well, I want to push back and at the same time agree with you about parts of this, because that. That was the spiel for what they were doing here. They were like, you know what? It's making it difficult to tell stories. And I think that what it really is doing is it makes it difficult to tell certain types of stories, and particularly stories that were in vogue of that era. Like there were. The idea of having superpowered brawls was becoming way more popular by the time you get to the 70s and into the 80s. So it's difficult to do that when Superman can just move the planet. Right. So I think those are flat out by this point for Superman and why they had to like reinvent that concept there. I think that there are elements.

13:29
Case
I. I think that this sort of like deity level kind of storytelling, this sort of like mythical standard for a character you can do really interesting stories for, but that takes a very talented WR that isn't necessarily up to doing it every single month. Like, there's a reason we talk about those Alan Moore stories that came out at that time where he was in that power set or things like, you know, we talked recently about Miracle man, for example, where who is a character who is nowhere near as powerful as the Silver Age Superman, but was still infinitely powerful for the purpose of the story. And like all the miraculous things he does to reshape the world. And you could do that kind of story, but you can't do that story every month.

14:08
Frank
No, right. You're right about the other stories too. There were some epic things happening there. And that was. You're right. It takes. And it's a limited thing too, and.

14:17
Case
It's a monthly book. And like comic tastes by this point like, you know, we cite X Men. X Men was a soap opera that could have giant slugfests and cool things. Like, a thing about superpowers that goes back to the earliest Superman stories. But superpowers in general is, what kind of cool puzzles can you put forward with your characters using those powers? You know, like, if a character has electrical abilities, can it do something with electricity to bypass this thing? Superman in. In the 30s and the 40s was super strong and super fast and not a lot else. And so it's like, all right, well, what kind of things can he do to solve this calamity? Oh, he can pick up giant boulders, and he can create a barrier or he can hold a thing up.

14:55
Case
You know, like, you know, as you introduce new types of powers, the Human Torch, like, oh, he'll spot weld a thing to. To fix problems. Like, the Flash is all about, here's the science of a thing moving fast. And at a certain point, when your character can do everything infinitely well, then there's only, like, why would you ever come up with a more creative solution on how you can use super breath when he could just have pushed it with his fingertip? He looked at it hard.

15:19
Frank
He really had reached the point of ridiculousness. I'm going to tell you a true story here. I remember an issue of Superman comics where somebody steals Clark's car, and he programs his nose because he has super control. Half the smell for the scent of Lois's perfume because she'd been in the car a little while before, and half the sense the other nostril to sense the smell of the new car, and he finds it from smell, you know, come on, man. I'm reading. I'm trying to enjoy this. You're killing. You know, I do want to tell a couple of Superman stories, though. First of all, as case mentioned, I'm an actor. I got into acting through costuming, and I've done Superman icons and stuff.

15:54
Frank
And were back at the con a few years, you know, some years after that, and I was wearing a shirt like I had, and that's the regular Superman shirt. And just in my street clothes. We were in the dealer's room, and Gina, my wife, was talking to somebody and negotiating for a sale or something over at a table, And I'm just sort of standing there waiting, and a woman comes over to me and says. She asked me, did you dress up as Superman here in the past? And I said, yeah, I did. Thanks. And she's like, I want you to know my son met you back Then and he spent like three years thinking he met Superman.

16:27
Case
That's great.

16:28
Frank
And that was like the best moment of my life up to that point, because I really felt like I influenced at least one person.

16:34
Case
I love those moments.

16:36
Frank
Me too.

16:37
Case
Where cosplay really makes it for a kid. We had Joe Carlton on last year when were talking Wonder Woman stuff, and she had a similar moment where she was interacting with a deaf fan and she actually knew enough sign language for that fan to be like, oh, the real Wonder Woman knows sign language. Right?

16:52
Frank
Right, of course.

16:54
Case
And like, that's so cool. I love those moments where, like, you can really make a thing for a child. Right.

16:58
Frank
She's the Santa Claus from Miracle 31st street who speaks Dutch.

17:01
Case
Right.

17:03
Frank
I have a similar story where I spoke Klingon to a woman who was speaking Klingon. But it's not as heartwarming.

17:10
Case
More. More heart stabbing.

17:13
Frank
And the other thing I wanted to mention was this quote by Ian McIntyre, who's a voice actor and does a lot of different things. He said superman stories are a fantasy about how good it would be to have power. They're a fantasy about what it would be like if someone with power was good. And that really moved me. That's a guy who gets it. That's what that's about. A lot of the superheroes. And this is a different thing that happens, for instance, with Batman, where he's become a total psychopath himself. You know, the niche thing of don't stare too long into the void because the void stares at you. Batman has gone over that cliff and is like having a bath. I guess he's just in it.

17:51
Frank
But the idea of Superman and the thing that made him special to me, makes him special to me, is the hope that he inspires in people. And the idea that we can just. The idea that we could better. And I think that's been lost. I think that's been lost in a lot of the comics. You know, they're more realistic, I'll give you that.

18:09
Speaker 3
Yeah.

18:10
Frank
Cutting off heads and hollowing them out, I guess. But that's not really what I came here for, guys, you know?

18:16
Case
No, we came here for that central power fantasy of Superman. Like, that's why the show is there, where the idea is like, isn't it cool to imagine if you had that power of action, you would do the right thing?

18:27
Frank
Yeah, that would be amazing. What I do like, and I'm only going to lightly touch on this, but I do like about Disney's show is they've given him real problems. Like, my kid has emotional problems. Well, I can lift this truck over my head.

18:39
Case
That isn't helping. Yeah,

18:43
Frank
That is counterproductive at this point. We're trying to. You know, the kid's having issues every year, and you're jacking the truck up into the air over your head. Doesn't really move that needle at all.

18:53
Case
Right. Yeah. No. The Superman as Dad scenario that has become popular recently, I think is a great balance there, because you get the scenario where, like, there are problems you just can't punch your way out of.

19:03
Frank
Exactly.

19:04
Case
You've got to be there for people. And I do really appreciate that element. That said, this comic is trying to get more back to the basics here. So let's actually divvy into talking about the comic here. All right. So, Frank, you read this comic as it was coming out? I read this comic later on because I was very young when this comic's been published. I was alive, but I was young, But I was picking up. I picked up a couple of the issues. I mentioned that.

19:31
Case
But there were a big part of how I got into, like, back issues of comics was, like, there was, like, a 50 cent bin at a bookstore that I would go to in the summertime, and they would have, like, lots of, like, random books from, like, the 80s and, like, early 90s and, like, late 70s, but, like, so a good chunk of Burns run I've picked up in random issues. And so probably about four of the six issues I had in singles. And then when the trades. When trade paperbacks started to become big in the 90s, I picked up the trade immediately. And so I've lived with this book for a long time because it was the foundation for the Superman books I was reading when I got into comics. Like, I didn't experience pre crisis Superman until it was in post.

20:07
Case
J. Mike, had you read this before?

20:09
Speaker 3
No, I wasn't even born when this book came out. So you guys are like, oh. I was like, oh. I wasn't. I came out, like, two years later. Two years? Yeah. 88. So I read this about a week ago.

20:23
Case
You goddamn super baby.

20:25
Frank
Well, what'd you think?

20:27
Speaker 3
Oh, I loved it. It was great. What I did. Like you said earlier, I did have some callbacks, like the man of Steel movie. And I was like, oh, this is where they got that from.

20:34
Frank
Right?

20:35
Speaker 3
Okay, this is where. Okay, I see it now. This is. Yeah, okay, I get it.

20:39
Frank
I read it about a week ago, too, for like, the 100th time.

20:42
Case
Right. So why don't we actually get into Issue by issue and talk about, like, what's going on in these.

20:47
Frank
Sure, if you have time. Yeah, I got the whole run of Superman over here too, if you want.

20:55
Case
I think we have time for the six issues of the man of Steel Min. Not necessarily the rest yet.

21:00
Frank
I like issue two of the release of Superman where they actually tell Lex Luthor who Superman is and he doesn't believe it.

21:07
Case
Yeah, that's a great issue.

21:10
Frank
Anyway, back to our main topic here.

21:13
Case
So Byrne, I believe in his outro on this. No, it was an interview I read with him somewhere, said that he regretted opening with the classic Krypton blowing up sequence. But in our discussion of Superman lore, the interesting part about that is, like, sure, everyone knows about Krypton blowing up and you can, you know, do a very quick version of it if you need to. But it is actually always how you open a Superman origin. Like every single property never does in media res and then goes back. It always is like, we got to at least, like, have, you know, shortest version is like All Star Superman, like, where it's like four panels. But. But we get. We get that Krypton blew up. Parents were desperate, they got their kid to Earth and that's always been the way that we do it.

21:57
Case
Prior to this comic coming out, Krypton was pretty cool. It was a place you wanted to be. It was a bunch of, like, action. Like Flash Gordon style Superman, at first they could leap like, crazy distances. Eventually that was removed. So it could be like, why didn't they all just leave? How did a planet blowing up kill them if Superman has survived that? Oh, it's only when they're not on Krypton that they have powers.

22:19
Speaker 3
Okay, cool.

22:20
Case
But at the very least, like, Krypton was always pretty awesome and it was deconstructionist works that would show. Oh, well, maybe it wasn't totally awesome. What do you get for the man who has everything where they show, like, the weird cults and so forth of Krypton? Like, those kind of deconstructions had started to pop up, but they weren't. They weren't the norm. It wasn't the status quo. Krypton was a pretty dope.

22:39
Frank
You're talking about the Krypton of the old Fortress of Solitude with Jor El and Lyra holding up.

22:45
Case
Yeah, yeah. With like, headbands and, you know, little, like half capes and the spaceships made.

22:50
Frank
Of gold because, you know, that's a thing they discovered. Anti gravit.

22:54
Case
Yeah.

22:54
Frank
No matter what, you built it out of an athletic Gold layer around. So, yeah, whatever. We'll make it the worst thing.

22:59
Case
You can use dope outfits that look like Superman's outfit. Just a different.

23:03
Speaker 3
Right.

23:03
Frank
Everybody had a family crest on their chest and so on.

23:05
Case
Right, exactly. So the decision was not to do that. And Byrne was not legally allowed to use the Donner Superman design because that was the Saucons.

23:17
Speaker 3
Oh, yeah.

23:19
Case
It was a licensed property, so they weren't able to use the actual designs. Even though that was his big inspiration here, he wanted to go and base it on that. But we get a Krypton that is cold and sterile and not a place I want to be.

23:31
Frank
Right. There's no love. Well, it's sort of almost post singularity, technologically, people have these body suits. They're connected to everything all the time, but before they even knew what that was. Because, again, it's 1986. Yeah. And everybody has the same clothing. There's no real fashion sense. It's just the black bodysuit with the red cover.

23:51
Speaker 3
Yeah. Little trust to go down the sides of the shirts and things.

23:55
Frank
Technology.

23:56
Speaker 3
Yeah. I was expecting I would know. I actually, I was. I was surprised. I didn't see Brainiac in those first couple of scenes. It was two completely different little automatons or robots.

24:07
Case
Well, it was Calyx. And then it's usually always like, Brainiac. Well, that's a newer innovation, though, that came from the Animated Series at this,

24:14
Speaker 3
Like, fine, you know.

24:17
Case
Yeah. Well, the Burn era. Brainiac is going to take a minute to explain, and we don't have time to do that today because he doesn't show up in this book.

24:25
Frank
It's not in these first six issues.

24:27
Case
But suffice it to say, it is an alien brain possessing a human psychic. It's real weird, but we do get, like, some. I actually rather like this, like, design for Kryptonian outfits, like the black sort of suits that have this, like, circuitry effect in profile. Right.

24:43
Frank
The little halo of circuitry. Exactly.

24:45
Case
I think that's really cool. I like the sort of toga elements to the, like, the draped cloth work that goes over that. Lara having this huge headdress is interesting at the very least. The idea that Kryptonian babies like Kal El is not a product of a sexual union between Jor El and Lara. It is literally just their DNA combined into a matrix.

25:04
Frank
Right. In this version, he's.

25:07
Speaker 3
Yeah.

25:08
Frank
It's a standard Kryptonian in that regard. They changed the movie, but, yeah.

25:11
Case
And I. I like a lot of the things that are going on There, at the very least, to make you sad about the potential. But it is a potential already lost in this cold, desolate world, as opposed to a world that was vibrant and alive and you wanted to keep going. Like, it is mournful that they couldn't have done better and that they are sending Superman to a world so that he can lead them away from the path that they took. There is a weird element here. So originally, Byrne wanted to have Laura in the, like, pregnant, travel to Earth and give birth and then die. Because there's this very awkward component because. So this is 1986.

25:46
Case
And even though John Byrne is a Canadian or, well, he's English by way of moved to Canada as a child and then came to the US this is the Reagan era. There's a strong sentiment of being like, he's an American, damn it. And so there was a strong idea about being like, let's have Kal El be born on Earth in America so that he can be like, I'm really.

26:07
Frank
Glad that was beat out. That really would have.

26:10
Case
Well, and so the. The workaround was that he's in a birthing matrix, but he doesn't actually get born until the ship lands on Earth,

26:16
Frank
Which they don't even cover here. There's eight pages of Krypton blowing up the rocket, zooping away. The next scene is him as a teenager playing.

26:22
Case
Yeah, I mean, I do like, the. The elements of, like, Lara being horrified by people. It's like they bear their flesh.

26:30
Speaker 3
Oh, God, they're naked.

26:32
Case
Right, right.

26:33
Frank
They're savages. Look, they're savages. You're gonna send them to this planet. They're savages there.

26:37
Case
Which from a standpoint of being like, oh, well, he'll never know a bathroom. Like, I could see that. Like, if you go the, you know, take our society and be like, oh, throw it back to, like, literally the Stone Age. Like, oh, okay, yeah, that would be pretty. Pretty jarring for people. Now, later revisions would add the element that Kryptonians weren't able to leave Krypton for a biologically determined. Which is the eradicator. And so Kal El is explicitly genetically modified so that it wouldn't be there. That's a later revision. Basically, the idea is just like, oh, yeah, that birthing matrix will survive a hyperspace jump. So we're going to take a birthing pod and we're going to strap some rockets to it, which I kind of love just from, like, the Pulp Fiction roots of the character.

27:16
Case
And we're just going to send it Fucking flying, hurtling away with a little piece of Kryptonite attached to it to drag and drag through hyperspace.

27:25
Frank
It shows the Kryptonite going through hyperspace with him. You know, in the prologue.

27:29
Case
Yeah, exactly. You see the piece get attached to the rocket so that chunk becomes the principal. They're like, we're gonna have kryptonite, but it's gonna be one rock that's attached and it'll be. There'll be more out there. But for the most part, we have that one rock at least to open up our stories.

27:43
Speaker 3
Everyone has access to for.

27:45
Case
Well, but not everyone has access to for. For the first, like five years of the post crisis Superman. It's very specifically, you can track the movement of that Kryptonite and how it gets split up and given to people. A good chunk of it's just in Metallo for a while. A piece gets carved off to be a ring for Lex Luthor. But, like, it's all from that same chunk. And it's only later that more chunks start arriving as, like, time has passed and more is like, traveled. But at first it's just that one chunk. And I think that's a creative idea where it's like, all right, we're not going to remove this one story hook that we had, but we're going to make it that we can't just use it as a crutch, but so we could smash cut 2 Superman as.

28:23
Case
As a football star, which is a novel concept that had never been played with before, of him actually just like, enjoying his powers and being kind of a show off.

28:32
Speaker 3
Didn't have a dad to tell him not to go out there and do stuff.

28:34
Frank
Podcast being a shame.

28:36
Speaker 3
Yeah, don't save me, son. That wasn't in here. I was disappointed.

28:42
Frank
All right, were you looking forward to that?

28:47
Speaker 3
Where are they going to steal stuff from this for the make the movie? I'm like, I was expecting this to that to be in there too. And I was like, oh, wait, darn it didn't happen.

28:57
Frank
I noticed something about that scene. I know what you're talking about, the Kevin Costner man of Steel scene, which everybody has a hard time with. But I noticed a very fine line, okay? All the guys who are dads, they understand that scene. All the guys who are not dads, they're kind of pissed off. They don't understand that scene. So my advice is wait. Get back to me. Get back to me on that.

29:20
Case
Well, it's interesting to have this sort of like All Star Superman Pardon the pun there. Like, we, you know, we've got a Superman who is the envy of everyone. Like, everyone wishes they could be as good a football player or they're all into him because he's the high school star. But we've got that moment of Jor El being like, I am disappointed in you, and taking him to see the rocket for the first time. And this is how we get the explanation for how it was all done. We don't have the scene.

29:44
Frank
Did you just say Jor El.

29:47
Case
Paint? Thank you for catching that one too many dads. But. But yeah. So Pocket, like, reveals the whole, like, oh, well, we had a snowstorm and we just said that you were ours. Rather than like the whole scene of, like, baby Kal El having, like, the needle break on his skin and all the. The stuff that we saw in the classic, like, action comics number one origin.

30:09
Frank
But if you go back even further to the first Christopher Reeve movie, nothing beats that scene with John Ford where he's like, look, I don't know what's going on. I don't know why you're here, but I know it's not the cash front balls. And that's what that is. That's a little bit of that. Like, come on, man. You know, you can't just be phoning it in.

30:25
Case
Absolutely. The Specter of the 78 Superman movie certainly looms over this. Like, we already cited the Kryptonian designs elements here. Sure. It's a showboating Clark as opposed to a Clark who wishes that he could be allowed to participate in sports. But it's still. It's still that. And it's just like Byrne being like, no, wouldn't he dabble in showing off before, you know, kind of coming to understand that wasn't the right thing to do. You know, we get the elements of. Well, so Clark Kent officially is the child of Jonathan and Martha. And that's. I almost said Jor El. Again, sorry about that. Of Jonathan and Martha Kent. So there's no reason to. To suspect otherwise.

31:04
Case
Like, they are just as far as anyone is concerned, looking into his records, it's like, oh, yeah, he was born in Kansas and we have all like, X, Y and Z doctor's records. Yeah, it was during a storm, so they were on the farm. Yeah.

31:16
Frank
Had to think all his vaccinations, though. I just want to get that in there.

31:21
Case
Possibly. Although he's only first indicated as being invulnerable when he's like six and a bull runs over him. But we See his powers grow and, you know, he doesn't even realize he.

31:31
Frank
Could fly until he's a teenager. Yeah.

31:33
Case
He gets pushed off a cliff by what fucking guy is just on a cliff and lets a dog push him off? That could have gone so poorly. I'm glad. Recently we talked about Superman for All Seasons, which was the Jeph Loeb Tim Sale book that kind of takes place between the issues of the man of Steel. And so one of the nice things about that is that Rusty is just around the whole time where Clark's like, oh, I want to see my dog. Hang on. I just want to pet my dog. He comes home just to see his dog sometimes, and it's just like, yeah, that's nice. And we get the confrontation with Kryptonite. We get the setup where it's like, oh, yeah, that's attached to the ship, and it's not that big, but it's there.

32:10
Case
And Clark gets sick and passes out and has to be taken away. Is he just overcome with emotion finding out that he's an alien?

32:16
Frank
Yeah, they don't hit that. They don't hit that too hard, which is nice.

32:20
Case
They don't actually. They still kind of try to present him as being a human. The phrase they use to bring us back to our conversation about, like, make it like the X Men is they call him a mutant a lot. They keep on being like, oh, we just assumed he was a mutant with weird powers. A human transformed strangely, a lot. And it's only later where they're like, oh, no, he must. He must be an alien. And then he gets his own confirmation of that later.

32:45
Frank
Right.

32:46
Case
I love that Ma Kent has the scrapbook of.

32:49
Speaker 3
Yeah. All his exploits.

32:51
Case
Yeah, I. I think that's a pretty good compromise overall if, like, if you're not going to do Superboy, but you want the idea that he's out there doing cool stuff, I think that's a good way to do it. It feels very Smallville.

33:03
Frank
Yeah, definitely. It's definitely the kind of thing that character would do. It's solid writing that way because it's completely believable and in the tone of that character.

33:14
Case
Yeah. Like, stay a little secretive, but, like, go out there and do good. Like, I think that's all good stuff right there. And then we get, like, a very 80s moment because there's a space shuttle coming in that he has to save. And it doesn't look like the classic space shuttle of the 80s, but it is the space shuttle of the 80s.

33:30
Speaker 3
I immediately thought of Superman Returns and the Airplane scene. Yeah. I was like, oh, stop. That's where that came from. I'm catching on here.

33:41
Case
Yeah. And then he's in the crowd and he sees it starting to crash and he has no choice. He has to leap out. And that forces him into the public being revealed as. As an individual with superpowers, as opposed to a mysterious thing that just occurs. So here's. Here's a spot here. So post crisis, they decided that the Golden Age superheroes were going to be a part of DC continuity. Which always feels weird with Superman being modern because it's always like, wait, isn't that weird that people are astounded that someone might have superpowers when Green Lantern existed in the 40s?

34:15
Speaker 3
Yeah.

34:17
Case
And I always find that detail, like, a little bit weird here. Like, this feels like an origin for a world that has not seen superpowers.

34:23
Frank
Yeah, I think you're right about that. I think you're right about that.

34:26
Case
It's a weird juxtaposition. Like, how do you. How do you fit that together where it doesn't feel like one is, like, undercutting the value of the other.

34:33
Frank
Right. I don't think they. That happened until later.

34:36
Case
Well, I mean, like, that. The thing is, D.C. editorial wasn't sure how it was going to fit together, so they just treat it like it isn't.

34:43
Frank
Like so many things. Yes.

34:46
Case
Yeah, we got a great Lois Lane. She's got that holder right there, Buster moment. She's feisty and fiery and exactly how I want Lois Lane to be. I love how much personality she has. Like the fact that she can cow Superman like he just saved a goddamn space plane. And he's like, I gotta listen to her for a second. Oh, shit, there's a lot of people. He freaks out and runs away.

35:06
Frank
Yep, yep. Although he does mention that there's a spark that seems to pass between them.

35:10
Case
Yeah.

35:10
Frank
Because there's a lot of built up potential in the multiverse there, I guess.

35:14
Case
And then we get Ma Kent making the Superman uniform.

35:19
Frank
The crest. The crest.

35:21
Case
Yeah. Well, Pa and Clark come up with a crest, and it comes to him out of inspiration. But Makes this, like, snug suit that shows off his muscles. But I like this detail to a certain degree, which is that the reason why it's like a tight costume. Is that dirt or tears? None of that really. Crews on tight clothes. It's like they just are all protected by Clark. And the meta lore that Byrne is trying to create is that part of the Superman power set is like a force field. Like that he has telekinetic abilities, kind of like what Gladiator has, which is another John Byrne Superman type character.

35:58
Frank
It's embarrassing, but back in the 70s, they actually had comic books that were just futuristic issues of what happened to Superman's suit. So some hobo would put it on, beat up somebody, and they would go stab him, and the knife would bend or break because it was the Superman suit made out of the original blanket. And the whole Superman didn't appear in these stories. It was just some guy who found the suit.

36:18
Case
I'd love to see those. If they exploring, like, oh, that's a cool thing. Whatever happened to his costume? That's all pretty dope.

36:26
Frank
Even as a child, I'm like, what the hell is this?

36:29
Case
But I feel like this does a pretty good job of selling. Like, okay, yeah, he's going to wear the tight suit because that's not going to get destroyed.

36:35
Frank
What they say, and it's a weird detail, is that each of his cells becomes like a solar battery. And I think that ties into your force field idea. Anything that's right up against him or that he's touching or that, you know, puts his cape over or whatever, it's invulnerable for that period of time, but.

36:50
Case
The cape is not invulnerable. And that becomes like a telltale sign of the post crisis Superman where we get all these dramatic shots of him being hit by a bomb. And like, his costume's perfectly intact, but his capes and tatters. And you can see like, just how terrible the effect was on him. So that's a telling point there. I like how they also sell the Clark Kent Persona where it's like, look how if he stoops and we comb his hair back and we put on these, like, big thick glasses, like, he looks like a totally different guy.

37:15
Frank
Which I think is hilarious because Henry Cavill's actually done that.

37:19
Case
I mean, it is shocking how if you just change the context of what you're seeing a person in just a little bit, you can be like, wait, is that. Do I know this guy? No, I don't. I. I'm crazy. I, like, I can't possibly know this person. The next issue is the Lois Lane issue where she is trying to track down Superman. And we get a lot of very 80s fashion perceived through John Byrne's lens. There's quite a few details I rather like about this whole thing. Lois Lane's like, pursuit of him. The fact that, like, he's moving around so fast that it's difficult for anyone to get a word in edgewise, the face vibrating.

37:52
Frank
Where this is where this originates.

37:53
Case
That's a really cool detail. I like that idea that, like. Oh, yeah. Photos just aren't very clear because he's always, like, moving a little bit faster than what a camera can, like, capture. Like, that's all really cool. It's like, just a little blurry. He has some cop energy going on a few times, and I don't love that part. Like when he, like, stops a purse snatcher and takes the purse back to the lady who it was stolen from and then, like, turns down her music and it's just like, be a little more polite, young lady.

38:18
Speaker 3
A little too loud here. Calm that down, please.

38:21
Case
But sure, whatever. He stops some armed robbers. Sure, whatever. Like, you know, classic Superman kind of stuff.

38:28
Frank
Well, this is what I was saying. You can't. It's great for an intro. Issue two. You can't do this every week. You know, every month, Superman pounds a thug. It's just. It's dull. It doesn't go away.

38:39
Case
I love the montage of Lois Lane showing up late every single time Superman has done something that's really cool. And we get some fun outfits and all that. And then we get an appearance of Jimmy, who suggests, like, well, it's too bad you can't be the person in danger. And she decides to sink her own car in the river to see if Superman will save her.

38:59
Speaker 3
And he does.

39:00
Case
Yeah. And then has a little sit down, chat.

39:03
Speaker 3
Chat with her. Yep.

39:05
Case
In a very 80s apartment, we get that kimono hanging up on the wall as, like, art decoration. And we get a spot where she's like, would you like some white wine and Brie? And he says, I don't drink and I've never developed a taste for Brie. And I'm like, oh, Superman, like, we're trying to sell this, like, country boy thing too hard. Come on now. But also, like, what a basic bitch thing it is to be like white wine and breathe.

39:32
Speaker 3
Because he tried to leave the first time, and she was like, hey, get back over.

39:35
Case
He was like, yeah, no, that's a good moment. Well, and then him revealing that he could identify that she had a breathing tank, like an aqua lung. She had, like, a breathing apparatus under the seat. So he knew the whole time. Like, that's a really cool element right.

39:48
Frank
There, in case Batman or somebody showed up and they weren't able to get a car out.

39:53
Case
But then he beats her to the story. And Lois Lane comes in with, like, the I've got The testimonial about Superman. Clark. Ken already got it. I'm curious about his sources. I'm curious how that's verified.

40:05
Frank
Look, Lois, I know you're a prize winning reporter, but you're never gonna figure this out. He's the same guy.

40:10
Case
But I love that as an introduction for the basics of the Daily Planet life. You know, the managing editor, Perry White. Not. Not the editor in chief, managing editor. He's on the floor actually working with everyone. You know, we got Lois Lane.

40:23
Frank
We get to see the big Daily Planet ball on top building. We get to see Perry White, Clark rocking his Clark can't look. Perry chomping on a cigar. Just the way it's supposed to be.

40:33
Case
It looks like a workplace comedy or, you know, like 80s, like New York workplace drama or like. Or dramedy or whatever you describe it as like, you know, that. That kind of vibe, the thing that the Donner movie did so well of being like. These scenes look like the scenes that you would expect to take place here. They look like an office scene. Which makes me wonder, would a proper Superman show adapted now set in Metropolis because Superman and Lois is set in Smallville, have the office stuff, be the office, have those moments there.

41:02
Frank
Right, right. Nothing beats the DAHR moment though, when she says to him anymore at home like you? And he just goes blank. He's like, not really. No.

41:12
Case
But then we get to issue three, and issue three is one of my two favorites in this collection. It is the Batman issue.

41:17
Frank
Yes, the Batman issue. I want it. This is my favorite.

41:22
Case
This issue sets up the dichotomy between Batman and Superman as actually being begrudging allies as opposed to best friends. And I think that's really cool.

41:32
Frank
Back in the 30s, their introduction was. I don't remember it exactly, but they're on a boat and they end up in the same stateroom and an emergency happens. They have to run back to their stateroom and they're literally in the middle of changing clothes. So Clark Kent is turning into Superman perspective. He's putting on the Batman cowl and the light comes in from outside, like an explosion happens. They're like, whoops. So it's completely ridiculous. This was a lot more sophisticated and a lot better at the same time. You know, as I say, reasons were totally accessible to younger.

42:03
Case
Yeah. Like they're trying to sell this Batman. He looks like the Batman from like Frank Miller's year one. You know, we've got, you know, it's this earlier era character. And I gotta say, I love the John Byrne Batman. Like, I, I love his drawing. Like, when he draws Batman, I think he has, he nails the chin perfectly. Like, the whole cowl looks so good. Like when we did Superman, Batman Generations, where when we get to the 90s and like, Bruce Wayne takes up the role again, I'm like, that's my favorite Batman look, period. Like, it's just such a, like, John Byrne drawing. Batman sometimes is just the best looking Batman. I, I don't know why. For me, like, I realize some people like the, like, more dramatized, like, big crazy ears Batman look.

42:47
Case
But like, sometimes it just works to have like a guy who looks like a brick house, but not uncomfortably so. Like, he looks like he could still, like, do some parkour. Well, he's pretty muscular, but he can do some leaps. And we see that as he tries to pursue this like, one hoodlum that he had, like, initially cornered only for his grappling hook to be snatched by Superman, who's like, you're a reckless vigilante. And even though some people have called me the same thing, I don't approve of a guy just beating up other guys instead of the law. So I'm going to take you to jail now. And Batman has to evade because, like,

43:21
Speaker 3
He, he had hooked his grapple around an eagle and I was like, how did he miraculously pull that off.

43:27
Case
Of there without him noticing He's Superman? Yeah, I, I, that's the only answer I have. I'm sorry, but I think this is one of the more clever ways of handling a situation with some copy ads. So Batman evades Superman and then gets a warning off being like, if you come any closer, I've got a force field that'll. Or force fields. Wrong term, because that makes it sound like it's gonna repel you. It's a detection field that if you, if dense biological mass enters the space, it'll kill a random person in Gotham, or rather an innocent person in Gotham. And he's like, my senses tell me that you're not lying, that an innocent person will die. And so he's like, I guess, Hang on. That's really fucked up of you talk. He's like, I'm going after a criminal. Do you want to help?

44:12
Case
And he's like, that's a weird way of being like, do you want to best friends? Okay.

44:16
Speaker 3
Can we just become best friends?

44:18
Case
Yep. And we get some really fucked up crimes here for this character called Magpie, who steals shit but also replaces it with deadly stuff in exchange. Such as explosive balls or a chess piece that fires razor blades at people.

44:36
Frank
Really explosive, really deadly thing. Blows the head off one of the thugs.

44:41
Case
Yeah, that thug, when he gets back, it's just like, this is such a grim moment there. She paralyzes him and then puts a dynamite stick in his mouth. And they're like, not happy birthday. She does that all the time, right?

44:57
Frank
You just did a happy birthday. Oh, I am not cleaning this up again.

45:00
Case
Yeah, it's pretty gross. And I mean, we see that the, the top part of that guy's in pieces on the lower part of that guy when we cut back to it. But it's a. It's a fun bit of team up work for them, you know, like Superman bypasses a lot of the detective work that Batman would have to do.

45:18
Speaker 3
He.

45:18
Case
He can just hear where they're at. So he's like, let's go, we gotta go there.

45:21
Frank
And the art here borrows a little bit from the old world's finest, which is nice. Two of them. Superman flying, Batman swinging it on a cable, standard. It's what you want to see.

45:31
Case
And they work well together up until Magpie drops just like a thing of acid or acid cloud or death, smoke, whatever. I don't know. It's gas. It's like acid.

45:44
Frank
I always like the S's in C more.

45:46
Case
As in Superman. Superman busting through a wall. Just like you. Just like a George Reeve right there.

45:52
Frank
As you do. As you do.

45:53
Case
So this is a trick. I saw a bunch in the 80s. And I don't know when it first shows up. Like, it might be here. It probably wasn't though, where he like sucks up gas, flies into space and breathes it out. It is also done in Death of the Family, the Jason Todd death story, which happens like two years after this. So, like it happens a bunch around this period. And like I said, I don't know when it first shows up, but he does so. And this is a good opportunity to set up a limitation of Superman. He sucks up all this, like terrible toxic gas, flies into space, breathes it out. We get this kind of cool effect as it crystallizes where it's like this, like squared off.

46:30
Case
Like it's all like right angles on everything, which easy to do if this was digital art. And I'm not sure if what, like how they did it in pencil, like that would be a pain in the ass to draw. But he admits that he has exhaled all the air in his lungs and he has to fly back to earth and this sets up the 80s and 90s concept that Superman needs some kind of breathing apparatus to be in space for a long time. Like, he can hold his breath for, like, really long chunks of time, but if he doesn't.

46:57
Frank
And this is a case where he's not holding his breath, he's just expelled what would have been the air that he could have. Could have held on to.

47:03
Case
Yeah. And this is a burn thing to like, have a lot of, like, expository things going on in people's thought bubbles. But here I think it's really appropriate. Like, he's like, all right, yep, breathe all that shit. I better fly back. And it has nothing to do with the story, but it does set up the limitations for the character going forward because, you know, this whole mini is laying the groundwork for, like, what writers are expected of Superman. Once the books restart after the series.

47:27
Frank
Is done, it goes back to Batman. Batman has the crime lab in the trunk of the Batmobile. Yeah, very cool stuff.

47:33
Speaker 3
A different variation of the Batmobile, too. I was like, oh, it is.

47:36
Case
I was like, what is this? Not so much a Batmobile as just, like, a dope car that has, like, a crime lab in a trunk that he happens to drive. It's early Batman. Anyway, so he figures out that there's a fiber that's 5,000 years old. It's like, she can't be that old. It's like, obviously fucking not. Clark, Come on. He's definitely at the museum. So we're going to go to the museum. And she breaks down, and they're like, she's not the really. The really bad people. She just has. She's just crazy. And there's collateral damage because of that.

48:07
Frank
Right. Like, all of Batman's villains, she's just completely out of her mind.

48:10
Case
I do like her breakdown when she starts being like, it's mine. Can't have. You can't have the pretty things. Like that whole bit right there. My precious.

48:20
Frank
Yeah. Total collapse. I love the Batman and shadow and just solid black. Whenever the light's on him, you get the typical black and blue outline of the cape and the cowl and so on. But in the last panel here, he's behind Superman. Oh, it's not the last panel. The last panel of this scene right after the breakdown, he's in the shadow behind Superman, and it's just. It's just black. You know what I mean? He's actually, like, projects like a hole in space when you look at him, which is what the character would need to do.

48:52
Case
Would need to be.

48:52
Frank
I like that. I think Byrne captures that. Like you said, his Batman is spot on.

48:56
Case
Yeah, it's fucking great. I will admit that the first comic book I ever read was the Untold Tales of Batman, which was a John Byrne drawn collection of stories that sort of like acted as like, here's a, you know, here's all the bat, like, here's all the history for someone coming in as like a digest form of like here's Batman looking through all the villains he's ever encountered kind of thing. So I, I might just be like horrifically or like not scarred, but like bonded to that design. Because that was like the first like comic Batman I saw after like Adam west and like Michael Keaton. But it's there, I'm imprinted, it's there. I love the John Byrne Batman. And so after all this is all done, Superman's like, oh, hey, what about the bomb you put on an innocent person in Gotham?

49:41
Case
And he's like, oh yeah, that. And he pulls it out of his bat belt. Just like, oh yeah, it was me, I'm innocent. I'm the guy. Which is a ballsy take, right?

49:53
Frank
I like that they borrow a little bit from a little bit of Star Trek here with another reality. I might have called him Fred. I've heard that line, I can't remember.

50:00
Case
Well, he's got those pointy ears there. Next up we've got then the introduction of the modern Lex Luthor.

50:10
Speaker 3
She's kind of hair, the red hair too.

50:13
Case
Yeah. But before that we got the opening splash page of 80s Lois Lane and this like crazy frock that like on the one hand I'm like, damn. On the other hand I'm like, that is very 80s.

50:25
Frank
Oh yeah, that's some outfit.

50:27
Case
Like rereading this, I. So my grandfather was a Republican congressman. We've got all these pictures of these like balls that he went to with the Reagan's and the Bushes. And it's like, man, I am dead positive that either Nancy Reagan or my grandmother wore a dress very similar to that in one of those shots. And I'm like, that makes me very uncomfortable. But very 80s dress. It's, it's stunning, but it's a very 80s dress.

50:53
Frank
Yeah, she's got the hair up, she's decked out. This is going to.

50:57
Case
Oh yeah, you're going to a dope party with like one of the richest men in the world. Like, yeah, you gotta look good. Makes sense. We get a look at Clark's apartment, which you know, we saw Lois's before. This is a pretty good apartment. Apparently he makes a pretty good living as a reporter.

51:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. Somehow it's a very swanky bachelor pad he's got there.

51:18
Case
He's got his, like, little, like, trophy section, like, celebrating his football career, which Lois, like, calls out like, what the fuck?

51:25
Speaker 3
You play football? Oh, yeah.

51:27
Case
Which I don't know. Yeah. He then comments on it and is like, I still work out and so forth. And she says, like, he keeps having a good figure. And I'm, like, surprised that she's surprised that he would have been a football player because they keep talking about how he's, you know, 6 foot 4 and like 250 pounds of muscle.

51:45
Frank
Yeah. But he doesn't project the personality of the typical high school jock. He seems bookish. Nerdish.

51:52
Case
That's right.

51:53
Speaker 3
You know, he never brings it up ever.

51:56
Frank
Clark Kent never slips up and does something really athletic on the side. You know, he's always like, oh, you know, the other guy hits him and.

52:04
Case
He falls over at the office every time he, like, almost like a clown crumples up a piece of paper and always misses every time the trash can.

52:12
Frank
Right, exactly. Which statistically you'd be like, dude, you're trying to miss.

52:21
Case
But the flip side, though, is then he's got the display set up, so he's, like, clearly proud of it.

52:26
Frank
And then she finds his weights, which is a weird scene we skipped.

52:29
Case
Yeah. Before that, we get the shaving scene. So pre crisis, canonically, while he was exposed to a yellow sun, his hair would not grow. So he never needed to shave because it just. It wouldn't grow there in that scenario. But every time he left the yellow sun of Earth, he would. He could grow a beard and have to make sure to shave it before coming back. So this is like, oh, no. He grows facial hair, guys. And the way he deals with that is that he has a curved piece of metal from his spaceship that he fires his heat beams into and reflects it back to his own face, which is fun. I like the pageantry of being like, I'm going to turn on an electric razor. I'm not going to use it. I'm just going to have it buzzing.

53:10
Case
Why does he have that?

53:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, exactly.

53:12
Frank
For just such occasions.

53:13
Case
For the extremely specific occasion that Lois Lane comes over to his apartment while he needs to shave.

53:18
Speaker 3
Anyone?

53:19
Frank
Well, there's a thing in here. In the next scene where she discovers his weights, she decides to do a few reps and why.

53:27
Speaker 3
And she's curling him, but.

53:32
Case
His weights.

53:32
Frank
Aren't much heavier than the ones I use. Are you maintaining that physique with these weights? He's like, well, I hadn't thought of that. So. He's clever, but he obviously isn't.

53:40
Case
Yeah, he's got a facade that he's built up. He's like, all right, yeah, I'm in shape. I've got to have a reason to be in shape. I. I don't have a beard, so I have to have a reason not.

53:49
Frank
To have a beard.

53:51
Case
Yeah, I. I always found that, like, both a fun concept, although it's also a little weird where I'm like, all right, I get it for, like, the, you know, the barbells that she's using, that probably there aren't that many weights on it and she would notice it. But he's also got, like, a full weight rack there that I guess he just didn't put the pin in very low. Like, it's a. You know, it's a full bench press rack.

54:12
Frank
Yeah. It's sort of a universal that they don't show you very well.

54:16
Case
So it did occur to me, I'm like, on the one hand, like, yeah, it's a nice call out to be like, oh, yeah. He just wouldn't know what a heavy weight is. On the other hand, like, I mean, that's kind of a jump to conclusions, being like, oh, yeah, you don't work out with any heavy weights. It's like, maybe it was doing lighter curls. Maybe he was working as reps, like, you know? You know, I don't know. I think it was a narrative. Like, it was a. It was a clever bit right there. That doesn't hold up when you actually,

54:37
Frank
Like, yeah, don't look too close.

54:40
Case
But I love that Lex Luthor had sent a helicopter for them. She mentions that she had her ride, showed up early, and then we find out that the ride is a helicopter sitting on the top of the building and that, like, the building's probably not zoned for that.

54:51
Frank
Yeah, right. He makes a point of this. This is illegal. No doubt. You know, let's go.

54:57
Case
And they go to this mega yacht. Really fucking big. Like, looking at it, just period. It's huge. Whatever the ship is.

55:04
Frank
Yeah, it's like a cruise ship. It's like a cruise ship with a big helipad on top of it.

55:08
Speaker 3
Yeah.

55:09
Frank
Yeah. Beautiful. And then they get off the helicopter, they fix the air, and they run downstairs, and it's just a luxury yacht, just exactly what you'd expect. And then we have Lex Luthor, who's sort of an amalgam of the old Lex Luthors. Really old Lex Luthor had red hair. And then they did the story where Lex Luthor and Clark were friends as teenagers and Superboy was responsible for the accident where he loses his hair and that's why he hates him. That was pretty thin. But here he's got the heaviness of the weight. Later bald Alex Luthor. But he's still got the red hairbrush back.

55:46
Case
Yeah, but clearly balding. It's this receding hairline style, the giant bow tie.

55:52
Frank
That's what my school nod to.

55:54
Case
Yeah, it feels like a very classic Lex. Although we. It's very much this like the businessman Lex. You know it. This is the Lex Luthor that pretty much has shaped all future renditions of the character. Like I can't imagine a scenario where they go just purely mad scientist Lex, like the businessman Lex is kind of here to stay, at least in some capacity. Because the idea is if you're so smart and evil, why aren't you rich? It's like, oh, fair point. Yeah, yeah, do some shitty things to like make sure that he was rich. Like regardless of how smart he is, he's always going to be smart enough to be like, yeah, I could start a business that I can run in my spare time. While I also, you know, do my sciences, do some shady stuff on the side.

56:33
Case
This whole scene between Lois, Clark and Lex has like a John Byrne art thing that I. Once I noticed it, I was like, fuck, I can't stop paying attention to it. Everyone's always turning to camera to talk in all these shots. Like, like our view of the audience. So like every single one of them when they're speaking turns and maybe their head's tilted towards it. They're always cheating back regardless of their pre existing blocking. So it's this very kind of TV kind of look or theater kind of look of how you would do it. It's not even shot, reverse shot. Clark turns away and he has his hands out and he turns back to Lex being like, I'm just thinking about these things.

57:13
Case
It's just kind of a funny way of John Byrne trying to get the most character detail in the frame because he likes to rather have single frame with a lot of dialogue rather than like lots of like reverses and all that.

57:24
Frank
Right. It's cinematic in a way too.

57:26
Case
Yeah, it feels very theatrical.

57:28
Speaker 3
Right.

57:28
Frank
I agree with that. This became the style because of the X Men and stuff. If you look at those issues, they do a lot of this stuff too. The background with just the characters but like you say turning into the camera.

57:38
Case
Yeah, it's so good for like a soap opera style, you know, like where you've got. And like the X Men was a soap opera with superpowers. And you can see how that style is being brought over here to now what is the flagship book. But it needed that kind of energy, it needed that kind of interpersonal drama and like those kind of dialogue scenes where you know, people are mad at each other, people are boasting at each other, people are having these big emotional moments that, you know. I think a lot of people by this point looking at Superman thought it was too bland or too much for kids. And they wanted to have like sparring between of wordplay and so forth and. And like a little bit of sexiness.

58:18
Case
Like here Lois, like when she finds out the dress was a gift from Lex, not just a rental, she like takes it off and we get this sort of like sexy shot of her wearing Clark's coat and her leg like sticking out, you know, like, get this thing off me.

58:31
Frank
She gives him back the dress right in the middle of the party. She doesn't even go to a restroom or anything to take it off. She just takes it off.

58:37
Case
Eyes front, mister. Just stand there and be as wide as you know how.

58:42
Frank
Right. And then she accuses Luther of looking like Fred Mertz, which of course unhappy. Shock reaction from that nice little loosey tie.

58:51
Case
And then we get an 80s moment here which is the casual approach to terrorism.

58:59
Frank
Right. And for some reason there is a bunch of terrorists in camp.

59:04
Case
It's like when you go back and look at ET or something like that from the 80s where it's just like, no, you can't be a terrorist for Halloween. And it's like, ooh, that's. That hits different for those of us who spent most of our life post 9 11. Yeah, they hit Clark and he fakes being knocked out so they throw him over the edge.

59:21
Frank
So that's the end of Clark. He's dead now.

59:23
Case
Oh yeah, totally dead. Just deader than dead. And then the ship gets picked up and I need to look up the history of Sam Lane as a character because there very well may be pre existing stuff from the 70s, but this is my first encounter with the idea that Lois is an army brat. Really. And I don't know if they.

59:44
Frank
I don't think that's the. I don't think this is where that.

59:46
Case
It would be weird to introduce it here. But it's my first time observing it.

59:50
Frank
Your first time seeing it. But I gotta be honest, I can't tell you where it was first introduced either.

59:56
Case
But the idea that Sam Lane was like an army general at Lois Lane came up.

59:59
Frank
Right, right.

01:00:00
Case
It must have shown up somewhere. But, like, it doesn't feel like something that would have been part of the 60s. So, like, where does it come in? Yeah, so it's like 70s, early 80s. I don't know where, but it's here. And this Lois, like.

01:00:12
Frank
Yeah.

01:00:12
Case
She's not Picks up an Uzi, starts fighting terrorists real good.

01:00:16
Speaker 3
Like, did she kill that guy?

01:00:18
Case
Probably. She. She kicks someone in the ball, steals his Uzi and then just starts firing. And we don't see where she's firing at. Yeah, probably a few people are dead.

01:00:26
Speaker 3
I was like. I was not expecting that. That's awesome. But kind of crazy.

01:00:31
Case
Yeah. Then Superman picks up the. The ship that they're on. And this is another spot where we talk about, like, the psychic nature of Superman powers. He talks about how it seems that things are lighter when he's flying than when he's on the ground. And that's, I think, a continuation of this idea which would have in universe, the culmination with like, Con El Superboy, where he only has one of Superman's powers, which is the telekinesis part. And it's like magnified to be a telekinetic force field. So, like, this is laying the groundwork for a lot of stuff that would come in the. In the 80s and the 90s. Probably not intended. Probably. Byrne was just like, how does he fly? I bet he's telekinetic and he can lift himself from the. Like with the power of his mind.

01:01:11
Frank
They did a terrific Fantastic Four story with where they face.

01:01:15
Case
Gladiator.

01:01:16
Frank
Yeah, Gladiator. Yeah, the Shi Guard, where they just cause him to doubt himself and his power is like evaporate for a half a second.

01:01:23
Case
Right.

01:01:24
Frank
Because he doesn't believe in himself.

01:01:25
Case
Yeah. John Byrne was really into the idea of a lot of those powers were like the power of the mind.

01:01:31
Frank
Right. As opposed to simple brute force like.

01:01:35
Case
Superman and super dense. He is strong on the ground. He's picking things up with his muscles. But that's different than when he like takes off. And when he takes off, he can lift other things up with it, you know, And I like that exploration of the powers. Like, is it. It does lock you into a type, you know, like, for a little while they tried to present that his heat. That his heat vision Was that he could telekinetically accelerate molecules. And eventually they were like. Or it's sunbeams from his body and from the battery storage. And people are like, or. Or whatever, who the fuck cares? It's. That's not the important part. But it is fun sometimes to be like, well, how would that work? What is the science of Superman?

01:02:10
Frank
That's a whole topic unto itself. It evolves over time.

01:02:13
Case
We did an episode on that one, actually, which is because they did like.

01:02:17
Frank
A documentary like I said originally. They were just so evolved. They were all super. So it changes depending on where you come into it.

01:02:24
Case
Yeah, I miss those golden age books where, like, how is Superman so strong? Well, if you look at ants, they're really strong. And if you're a super advanced human, maybe you'd be just as strong as Nat is, proportionally speaking, you know, shit like that. So Superman stops the terrorists, you know, because what are they going to do? Like, they're people with guns. Like, Lois Lane is winning before Superman shows up. So. Right.

01:02:44
Frank
Well, these are low level thugs that it turns out have been hired by Lex Luthor to stage the scene.

01:02:50
Case
Basically, yes. And he was a little too smug. So he admits it in front of the mayor, who's just like, that's really fucked up, dude. He tries to buy off Superman and Superman's like, I don't need this. Have you seen my apartment? I don't need this shit. And he takes Lex Luthor to jail, which J Mike, if you remember when we talk about for all seasons.

01:03:16
Speaker 3
Yeah, he did that too.

01:03:16
Case
This happened. This is the immediate scene before the issue where Lex Luthor comes out of jail.

01:03:22
Speaker 3
Right.

01:03:23
Frank
He thinks Clark's been murdered. Still, he has to say, well, no,

01:03:26
Speaker 3
Actually I saved him a while ago.

01:03:28
Frank
I saved his life first.

01:03:29
Case
Guys, Clark is fine. It's cool.

01:03:31
Frank
Don't worry about that.

01:03:32
Case
It's not. Yeah, we get Superman saving a pregnant woman from having a baby in the subway because the subways are GROSS in the 80s, guys. And Lex Luthor like, offers a. Like, I'm gonna get you. I'm gonna get you Clark. Or Superman, I should say. There is a photo taken of him. There are two reads on this one. One is that it's Lana Lang at the end because she also has been following Superman. Or two, it's Lex Luthor because he's been tracking data on Superman. And by the time we get into the main book, he's compiled quite a bit of info on Superman. But either way, he issues an ultimatum that you're going to Be a dead man. Like, I'm Lex Luthor. You can't, you know, can't do this to me. And then we pick up the. My other favorite issue in this arc.

01:04:15
Speaker 3
Why is that case?

01:04:17
Frank
I don't think you understand the concept of his favorite.

01:04:20
Case
Well, I said I have two. I said I have two favorite issues. I can say that I have two favorites. And, like, this one is the other one. And honestly, if it was weighted, this is actually my favorite. Favorite.

01:04:32
Frank
Favorite favorite.

01:04:33
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:04:35
Frank
In English. We just say favorite in English.

01:04:36
Case
Okay, sure. My favorite. And my second favorite's the Batman. So my. My. My actual favorite is the Bizarro issue.

01:04:44
Frank
Here we are.

01:04:46
Case
So first up, we open with the. You're getting sloppy Luthor. Him holding a guy in the suit, and you're supposed to think that Lex Luthor's in the suit. Yeah, because that's. That from, you know, from behind.

01:04:57
Frank
Green and purple power suit.

01:04:59
Case
Right, Exactly. It's. It's the 70s 80s battle suit that Lex would wear to fight Superman. And then we cut. We pull the camera around, and it's. He's talking to Lex, like, who's sitting at a desk, and there's just a dude in the suit with the helmet on. And we find out, oh, this suit will your brain up if you wear it for too long. Like, that is so brutal. Like, he even jokes about it being like. He's liable to be like. And it's like, that's. That's fucked up to just joke about like, oh, you broke a person's brain just now with your personal vendetta against Superman. Okay, but it was all a ruse. This. This more bald Luthor than he was in the last issue.

01:05:36
Frank
Yeah, well, you know, overnight in jail. See that scene?

01:05:40
Case
You know, it's just a receding hairline, guys. So he steps back and he's got a Chinese scientist that he talks about how he smuggled out of communist China. Because, again, Reagan era, who has a duplicating device that they scan Superman and created this. This. This duplicate. And this is the first time in the book where we address the fact that people can figure out he's an alien.

01:06:04
Frank
Yeah, this is really. This is all over the place, actually. But, yes.

01:06:07
Case
Yeah, I think this is a really cool element. Like, this is the. This is the first time where we introduced the idea that it would be difficult to clone a Kryptonian. Because previously Bizarro's like, you can Bizarro. You can make a Bizarro anything. You could. It was just an imperfect Duplicating machine, in this case. Oh. You can make a perfect duplicate of an Earthborn creature, but you can't do that like this. Or rather, yeah, Kryptonian. Like, it's going to create a Bizarro. And. Yeah, so we get this. This artificial construct that's like a. A biomatrix. Perfectly duplicating organic life, but it's crystallizing. It's like, kind of up. Because Kryptonians are just different. And we get this nice little, like, name call where it's just like. I certainly did not want this bizarre. Oh, forget it.

01:06:56
Frank
Right, right. Oh, my goodness.

01:06:58
Case
And then we get the Lucy Lane subplot in here.

01:07:01
Frank
Yeah. Showing the Lucy Lane thing, which is where it gets a little more. Again, soap opera. Ish. Dramatic.

01:07:08
Speaker 3
Is that the first time that she'd ever been in the comics, period?

01:07:11
Case
No, no. Lucy Landon existed for a long time. Usually has a love interest for Jimmy Olsen.

01:07:16
Speaker 3
All right.

01:07:16
Case
But the blind thing is new. And here's the thing. Here's actually why I love this issue so much. It is a direct update of the first appearance of Bizarro, which was a Superboy story where he, Bizarro, is created and befriends a blind girl. And when he fights with Superboy, the destruction of that Bizarro cures the blindness. So this is an updated version of that story. But, like, I love that they're doing that here, but you got a lo. So Bizarro saves some ambulances and whatnot, and then Lucy Lane tries to kill herself, and Bizarro just saves her, and she can see a little bit.

01:07:49
Frank
Well, at this point, what you don't realize is that the Bizarro creature thinks that it is Superman.

01:07:55
Case
Yeah.

01:07:55
Frank
It doesn't know. It just popped into the world a few minutes ago and has enough of his memories to think it is Superman. And of course, she's blind, so she doesn't see falling apart or whatever.

01:08:06
Speaker 3
Because there was a scene where he rescued a guy, and the guy was like, oh, thanks. Oh, wait, you're not Superman.

01:08:12
Case
Right. And they. They run and we see. You know, we don't see, like, very well, but we see that there's, like, this weird effect going on in his reflection, but we don't see his actual face.

01:08:21
Frank
Right, right. Again, theatrically staged.

01:08:25
Case
Yeah. We get Jimmy talking about how someone smashed. Smashed a thousand dollars worth of glass for to steal a suit that's only worth a couple hundred bucks. And we get Superman showing up to encounter this creature who has put on a suit and has taken sunglasses and popped out the lenses and is starting to slowly put together his Clark Kent outfit.

01:08:44
Frank
Right, right. Great sky.

01:08:46
Case
Yeah. That's when they get into a fight and that Bizarro is not holding back. One thing to note is that the Bizarro here has just Superman's powers. Like, while he is a failed duplicate, he doesn't have the ice vision, fire breath reversal going on.

01:09:00
Frank
Right? Yeah, no, which was always a little square Earth. You know what I'm saying?

01:09:05
Case
Yeah. I mean, it's when you're trying to get into that more abstract kind of like. Oh, it's like you. But it is on narrative level being like flipped around. In this case, it's just like. No, he's just a up clone of Superman. And, you know, this is very directly the inspiration for the Bizarro we get in the Animated series, which has like the most gut punch of an episode when he like sacrifices himself to save Lois. Like though, you know, so clearly, like, we've got some strong stuff going on here. But rather than things like the reverse S or like a lot of warping, the way they handle having him be distinctly different is that Superman blasts him with his heat vision and he's left with this like, burned version of the costume. Like, the blue is a lot darker.

01:09:44
Case
The reds are more like a maroon.

01:09:46
Frank
Yeah, it's really, really well done the way they do that here.

01:09:51
Case
He's monstrous and, you know, mute. And he forcibly kisses Lois in the sky. And then we return to Lucy and the fight continues where Superman's having a hard time, but he's able to scan Bizarro and be like, oh, it's actually a non living creature. It's, you know, this like, it is effectively android. Like J Mike. You'll recall when we looked at the nail.

01:10:16
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:10:16
Case
They presented the Bizarros as being like super sophisticated robots. And in a certain sense they actually are like, they're clones, but they're like artificial clones.

01:10:25
Frank
Well, what happens here is in the dialogue is that he reveals to the creature that it's not him. You know, the girls and him make it clear that this guy is Superman and the creature realizes that it's not.

01:10:36
Case
Right.

01:10:36
Frank
That he's not.

01:10:37
Case
That's a blow if you think you're Superman and then you find out you're not real. But then we get this moment where Bizarro, having observed the information that every time he's around Lucy, her vision gets better. Right. Ran Superman at full speed and the exploding cloud of dust created by the destruction of Bizarro Kryptonian cells is enough to actually fully heal her. Yeah, a thing they set up earlier because they talked about how if they could figure out the right chemical, it could, like, fix her eyes, which is, like, convenient for the plot. But it's a direct callback to in that Superboy issue. It was the shock wave of them colliding that caused the. The blind Smallville girl to have her vision restored. And it's nice that we do this and have it be part of the main cast.

01:11:24
Frank
And here again, you see what you pointed out, the torn cape. The rest of the outfit's fine, but there's a little tear in the back of the cape after the collision.

01:11:32
Case
Yeah. Very dramatic looking right there. And like I said, I really love that issue. I think it's such a wonderful update of a Silver Age story and kind of plays into a thesis. I will share when we get to the end of this. Okay, but then the last issue is Superman coming face to face with his Kryptonian heritage. He comes home to Smallville. You know, we get to see that Ma and Pa Kent are still alive at this point, too. And, like, some people listening are going to be like, yeah, so what? Whatever. Manpa. Kent always died before Superman became Superman. Like, that was always, like, a big part of his origin.

01:12:07
Frank
Well, that.

01:12:08
Case
Well, just. No, no. But going back to, like, action comics, Ma dies first, then Paw dies, and he's like, you must do good for your world. And, like, later, we get stuff like the movies and things where Ma is still alive, but, like, that balance of, like, either Kent, but especially both of them still being alive as an adult is novel. It was not a part of Superman. Until we get to the series, the.

01:12:28
Frank
Old Adventures of Superman TV show. It was Pa who died.

01:12:31
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:12:31
Case
Yeah. I wonder if that's just, like, adaptations go for Pa die as a thing.

01:12:37
Frank
And then, of course, in the 78 movies.

01:12:40
Case
Right, exactly.

01:12:41
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:12:42
Case
Yeah.

01:12:43
Frank
That's still a very powerful scene.

01:12:44
Case
And. And I think, like, a lot of us are kind of leaning towards, like, oh, yeah, Pa should die eventually, because that's a thing that Superman can't solve.

01:12:51
Speaker 3
Like, not in tornadoes.

01:12:53
Frank
Right, Right.

01:12:54
Case
Yeah. Yeah. No, a heart attack is a perfect example because that's a thing that, like, it shows the limits of your powers. Like, yeah, you can do all these wonderful things, but you can't stop everything. There are things outside of your control. And I like that element. And I. I think that, like, generally, we're kind of moving towards that direction that, like, Pa should probably die first and be like a, you know, a big pivot point for Superman. But here they're trying out, like, let's have them both be alive. Let's see what that's like. And that's what, you know, led to all the 80s and 90s material and all the adaptations from that era having both of them alive. But so we. We get them all hanging out, and it's. It's nice. And there's a hint that someone's back in town, but they.

01:13:34
Case
They won't say whom. And then Superman's like, I'm hungry. It's nighttime. I'm gonna go steal some pie from the fridge. And that's when he's face to face with a hologram of his actual father,

01:13:44
Speaker 3
Of Jor El, my space dad.

01:13:49
Case
And we can see him being, like, flooded with information about Krypton, so much so that he starts speaking in mixed words of Kryptonite, like Kryptonese mixed in with, like, regular English. And he sees Krypton, this, like, terrifying, cold, desolate world of. Of technological pillars and craggy surface that can't support life. And as he comes out of it, Lana Lang is face to face with him, and we get sort of an exploration of that relationship, which is dramatically different than where it was pre crisis, because pre crisis, you know, Lana Lang was. Was the Lois for the Superboy stories. And then she was introduced into his adult life as, like, another part of the love triangle. So that, like, it could be another competitor, another suitor. You know, it was. It was his co anchor for gbs. You know, like, it. She.

01:14:33
Case
But she played a similar role when Superman was split between Red and Blue. They both had, like, their. Their. The loves that they wanted to go to, but they fundamentally were very similar roles. Like, they just. One was the one that was always in his life, and the other is the one who was like, adult love. But, like, they still are both people who didn't know about his secret identity, who he, you know, did this little dance with of being like, I'm Clark, I'm Superman. Like, like, we can go on a date kind of thing. And this reframes it more as best friends, you know, like, she loved him, but she saw that, like, Superman's too big for small town Kansas.

01:15:08
Frank
Well, you know, she lets him know that really messed up her whole life. And she had to leave and come back.

01:15:13
Case
Right. Which to a certain degree, she's kind of done dirty in the. In this.

01:15:19
Frank
Yeah.

01:15:20
Case
You know, she. A person that she loved, had to, like, Reveal that he could fly and he could do all this wonderful stuff. And I'm glad that they've had the chance to explore on that more. Like, again, for All Seasons is a great companion to this, where we get, like, the last issue is all from Lana's perspective, and we find out a lot. A lot more about her relationship with Clark and how that has developed. And then, you know, this became a thing where going into the 80s and 90s, Lana knew who Clark was. And so that could be. He could be a person, like. Or rather, she could be a person that he could come talk to. And, you know, we could see how her life develops and, like, how they intermingle every now and then. And, like, they kind of.

01:15:56
Case
They know each other's secrets. But it's not the same kind of pressure because it's the. It's not just Lois part two. You know, it helped her, like, have her own niche, which I think is good to explore. And nice to set that sort of different character beat for her because, you know, I think a lot of people responded negatively to. To the fact that they were, like, kind of playing the same role up until that point, like. Or it's just like, oh, is Superman just Archie? Is it just Betty or Veronica all the time? And this was trying to fashion out more specific character arcs for them.

01:16:28
Frank
That never occurred to me. But I think you have a valid point there. The Betty of Raleigh, aren't you thing.

01:16:34
Case
So Superman discovers that his rocket is gone, right? But he is being subjected to even more holograms from his father. Up until Jonathan shows up with a shovel and smacks a hologram and it kind of explodes, burns up the shovel, and Superman is being flooded with all this information about Krypton. And he, like, goes off to think about it, and he's like, ultimately, it doesn't matter. I'm an American citizen, you all. I was born here in Kansas. And this is my whole, like, it's very regularly right there. Actually, we didn't mention this in issue one. There's a spot where it's just like, you have a responsibility as an American citizen to do good. They, like. They use that line quite a few times.

01:17:19
Case
But, yeah, Superman, like, flies off to the Himalayas and is just, like, thinking through all the Kryptonian stuff and decides, like, no, like, you know, for, like, I am human first. And this becomes, like, the. The thesis for Clark Kent in the 80s and 90s that he's Clark Kent and he goes out as Superman to use his powers to do good. But His. His true self is Clark, or his true self is Clark Kent. And that began, you know, like, because some writers have gone for the stranger in a strange land approach where he's Superman disguised as Clark, Kentucky. But this is trying to take the other tact. This is trying to present him as having that private life that's so important to him. And I do think that was a necessary renovation for the character for that era.

01:18:01
Frank
He's ruminating at the beginning of this issue about his relationship with Lois, and he says, superman, she's got a crush on Superman. I'm dissatisfied with that. But Superman's not real. So to him, he's Clark Kent. And Superman's just the celebrity guy, you know, the Hannah Montana kind of thing, I guess. But the opposite is true. They really hit this note hard in the New 52 with Batman, where they decide the three characters, Wonder Woman, Superman and Batman, decide to reveal their secret identities to each other. And, you know, they grab the lariat and he says clark Kent, and she says Diana Thomas Garrett. He says Batman, right?

01:18:38
Case
Yeah. He sees Batman is who he.

01:18:40
Frank
Batman. Batman is who he is, and Bruce Wayne is the mask. And I like that. I like that. It's the complete opposite.

01:18:47
Speaker 3
Right?

01:18:49
Case
Yeah. That juxtaposition is really nice right there. So here's my thesis about what is being done with the man of Steel mini in terms of what it goes on to be the status quo for Superman, which is that I think what they're doing is that they're taking some of the strongest elements of the Superman mythos, which is actually the Superboy stuff, and infusing it into his adult life. I think that elements like the support of family, the relationship with Lana, even stuff with, like, Lex Luthor and so forth, the discovery about who he is. A lot of that is as part of the unsure youth component, which had previously been handled by the Superboy point in the story, and that the perspective on maturation in society had shifted by the time we get to the 80s from the 40s.

01:19:34
Case
Like, 22 is not expected to be like a full. A full adult like you are, legally speaking. But, like, you're still growing up kind of. And I think that there is just a shift towards young Clark or young adult Clark. Like, yeah, so he's 28 at the end of this story arc. And that's not the Superman when he first shows up. That's him at the end of, you know, all these different issues that have jumped over a couple of years. 28 is still a young guy. And some of the maturation process that we'd associate with Superman, I think is what they're arguing is still happening as opposed to being something in a nebulous past that occurred.

01:20:10
Case
And while I love Superboy and whatnot, I don't hate the idea that, like, yeah, his parents are still around, they're eventually going to die, and eventually he's going to take on this more mature role. Like, I really love Superman as a dad who has stepped into his position of being, like a full, you know, adult. But having elements of him still growing at this point was a thing that they were trying to do because that's a thing that readers can associate with and respond to better. Right?

01:20:37
Frank
Exactly. That was the problem. That was the problem. As I said in the beginning, he'd grown to the point where there was no character growth you could do with him. There was no way you could challenge him. He had to bring in bigger and bigger, big bads just to have a story, just to have something to put down on paper.

01:20:53
Case
And it's always father knows best. Like, in this scenario, it's. Now, he can be a little bit more prone to mistakes. Like, he's really smart, he's really good, but he's trying.

01:21:03
Frank
But everybody makes mistakes, and he has to bounce back from that and take ownership of it. And you see a lot more of that here than you did in the previous iterations. They reached the point of just ridiculousness and a point where you couldn't tell a decent story. Forget about whether you like the character or not. There's no way to write it.

01:21:20
Case
Certainly not ongoing. That. That's the problem when you. When you get to a character who is so confident in his power of action. You can do specific stories. You could do a movie. You could do big annuals. You could.

01:21:33
Frank
I love Kingdom Come. I thought Kingdom Come was amazing, but even there, I don't want to delve into all of that.

01:21:40
Case
It's not an ongoing.

01:21:41
Speaker 3
No, it's like one shot.

01:21:42
Case
That's the thing. It's not a serial, a fixed story.

01:21:45
Frank
It's a fixed graphic novel. And but even there, he gets a warning and he's like, you come here to warn me. And, you know, because, you know, look, I'm Superman, you know, he has an attitude about it.

01:21:54
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:21:54
Case
I mean, here what we're doing is we're taking all the elements of Superman that had come up until that point and trying to cherry pick the best parts. And so there's this vibe of like, we're going to have. He's not going to be quite as strong. He's going to be a little bit more like the golden age version, who's not quite as powerful. He's got all the identifiable powers for Superman, there's not going to be a story you can't tell aside from like freely time travel. But. But he can, you know, he can do all the big ticket stuff, but not as easily. And he doesn't have like this long career as a child superhero first, because that's, you know, that's a different character ultimately. And they wanted to do something different,

01:22:28
Frank
Which was, needless to say, a disaster for leading the superhero.

01:22:32
Speaker 3
Right?

01:22:32
Case
Yeah, yeah.

01:22:33
Frank
We're also going on at the time.

01:22:35
Case
Yeah. For anyone who wants to know more about that, we talked about the death of Superboy arc a couple episodes back, and that, man, that was rough. And that's. That shows the limitations here where Byrne did not create a framework that was perfect for all incorporations of important mythos elements. But it is a good foundation and I think compare with like, you know, we looked at the George Perez Wonder Woman, like, relaunch. And I think while that's a great book, one thing that is weird is that it's like, oh, Wonder Woman is now just out there in the D.C. world as a new superhero. You know, this allows for. Superman has a career. Like, he's, you know, we're seeing all the. The early phase of his career.

01:23:13
Case
But like, any adventure that's important to your story could have happened somewhere between the pages of this books. You know, somewhere, you know, Superman did a whole bunch of stuff that's like, off screen because he was doing all those adventures. And so we allow for that without it breaking the continuity of previous stuff. Unless you want to do a new story, in which case you're allowed to do a new story. You know, in terms of relaunches, I think it's really effective there. Compare that with Batman, where they didn't do anything. It was just like, yeah, Batman's still doing Batman stuff. And like, nothing really changed. And because Batman was selling well, so who cares? Or compare with Hawkworld when they did the Hawkman relaunch and they waited like three more years. So there was like all these different hawkman appearances between 86 and 88.

01:23:57
Case
And then all of a sudden, brand new Hawkman shows up and he's hanging out with Wally West. You're like, how is this working? Nothing makes sense, Right? So, like, the burn arcs that follow have some issues. Like, you know, there's some infamous Issues like where Superman and Big Barda might do a porno together.

01:24:18
Frank
I didn't think you were gonna. They absolutely did a porno together. Yeah.

01:24:22
Case
And there's the Metallo stuff and the Brainiac stuff and lots of weird things. And, you know, again, the death of Superboy stuff and, like, the fucking headache that is the Matrix entity. Supergirl, no matter how much I love her, like, there's some weird stuff that come in the 80s and 90s from this, but in terms of trying to be just a breath of fresh air, I think what they're. They do a really good job of being like, here. Here is all that we want to say about Superman and we want to have it feel fresh. And I think Byrne did a really good job in that regard.

01:24:52
Frank
Right. And like I say, it made it accessible to the kids of the time. You know, any kids who were even younger than I was, who, like I said, they've been weird on. Or we're just getting into the X Men, that Fantastic Four Run, Alpha Flight.

01:25:05
Case
Yeah.

01:25:05
Frank
The other stuff he had done, the other popular things that he had done, and they wanted to. They wanted to tap into that for those readers. And they can always. You can always. The great thing about comic books is you can always go backwards. Like you said, you came into it sometime later than I did, but you went back and found the story. You can go back and find the stories from the 1930s and so on, and you can. There's a wealth of material to draw on there. If you're putting together a movie or a project or something as a reader, you can just go back and enjoy those aspects of it and. Oh, I didn't realize, like you were saying before, about where they introduced the idea that Lois is an army brat. I don't know where that came from the first time.

01:25:46
Frank
I can't pin that down in my memory at all.

01:25:49
Case
We're going to have to track that one down, because that's the thing that I really love about Lois.

01:25:53
Frank
After this, I'm going to Google that just so I can sleep tonight. It's the first time that they mentioned that her Dev is a general. It's a thing they harp on in the new show, too. Hey, folks.

01:26:05
Case
Matt jumping in with an editor's note.

01:26:07
Frank
So it turns out that this is.

01:26:09
Case
Actually the first point where Sam Lane was established as an army general. Pre crisis. He was a horse rancher.

01:26:15
Frank
Crazy how hard that detail stuck.

01:26:17
Case
Well, I. I mean, like, again, there's a lot of great stuff that has come since this, but this was a Nice. Like, refresher where Just like, all right, look, if you don't know about Superman or you only know him from the movies, or you only know him from the reputation, because, again, D.C. makes more money selling Superman T shirts than they make selling Superman comics. Like, that's like. Superman is a brand. So maybe you know the. The surface details, but you don't know the specifics. This is such a good introduction for the time. You know, obviously, stuff has changed since, but, like, if we came up with.

01:26:49
Frank
This story as an original story today without all the history, what would it look like? And that's what this is. And I think. I think it was, you know, it was enormously influential. As you've pointed out several times, it's enormously influential, but I think at the time, it was extremely popular. Whatever you think of it, you know, you go back and look at it now, and there's a different sensibility today than there was then. But I was there at the time. This was. This was the chef's kiss, if you would.

01:27:17
Case
Well, I mean. And there's a reason why, when they tried to do a modern launch of a movie series for him, they called the movie man of Steel after this. I mean, sure, it's his title, but, like, that's. They were deliberately trying to harken back to being like, this is our fresh start for Superman. It's not going to alienate you if you like the old stuff necessarily. Some stuff later on, like the way they handle Superboy with Legion.

01:27:39
Frank
Yeah, yeah. It's a little weird in there, but, you know, that's the way comic books are, too. They, you know, the characters are perpetually in their 20s and 30s, and they have to be perpetually in their 20s and 30s. So you get the reinvention every couple of decades. This was a really good one. Of them were not so great. This one was all right. I loved Crisis. I thought Crisis was when I bought the Death of Supergirl thing. I think I bought, like, six issues of it. Just bagged them.

01:28:07
Case
Wow, that's a good idea.

01:28:07
Frank
I was sure that was worth a fortune. Of course it isn't. I have six extra issues of something. It's not worth much, but yet.

01:28:16
Case
Yeah.

01:28:16
Frank
If I live to be 300, I guess I can sell it.

01:28:20
Case
It'll be worth so much. Crypto.

01:28:21
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:28:24
Frank
I can use it to trade for Bitcoin.

01:28:26
Case
Trade it for a monkey. Nft. Abepo, the super monkey.

01:28:30
Frank
Nft. I'm sure that this was. It was an epic story. I was sure it was gonna be Important. And I wanted to have extra copies just to sell. And this led right out of that. All right, now that we've done that, what is the new story? What does the character look like again? And how do we present it so that it's accessible and enjoyable for a younger audience? And as you say, the older readers will stick with it. And I think this achieved that.

01:28:54
Case
Yeah, they didn't do anything crazy in terms of a redesign like, Compare with New52, where, like, the look is just like so much superfluous detail.

01:29:02
Frank
This just, well, red and blue Superman, which was a disaster.

01:29:08
Case
Remember the energy effect, Superman or. Yeah, yeah, those. Those attempts are all like these big shifts that, like, don't look like the brand. So people coming in are like, well, what the fuck is going on? This, like, John Byrne has a very classic style. Like, he looks like he can take any sort of, like, traditional superhero look and add, like, really nice detail that doesn't feel overly complex and at the same time overly simplistic. Like, he has a very clean kind of look. And this Superman looks good.

01:29:37
Frank
I had an artist friend describe it as his art style as very matter of fact. I thought that was a good description. Matter of fact, style. The X Men and the Fantastic Four, and they brought it here and it totally worked. At the time, this was head turning, you know what I mean? People who hadn't read DC comics in years. Oh, yeah, okay. I'll come back and check this out. Like you said, they didn't do enough with Batman. The Batman thing too, every once in a while. And I don't want to delve into a whole different thing, but they'll decide to retcon some kind of weird thing into the past or whatever. With Batman, they'll do like a run of black and white episodes or whatever. It's just as much as you can say, this is all over the place. This is nothing.

01:30:17
Frank
This is a stroll in the park thanks to what they do with Batman. Batman universe, the disaster area.

01:30:23
Case
And that impulse has always existed for Batman, which is one of the weird parts where, like, back in, like the 70s, they were like, oh, yeah, he was trained out of box by Wildcat. And it's like, but Wildcat's not from that Earth, so how did that work?

01:30:34
Frank
What are you talking about?

01:30:35
Case
Comics are weird, and Batman thrives on having it not be that weird. Superman loves weird. And so, like, I'm here for all the weirdness that they introduced with this era. Sure, I could have used some of the weirdness that they cut out you know, I think there are a few areas where they threw out the baby with the bathwater. Kara Zor El, for example. Like, I think that moving away from having other Kryptonians was a mistake. And even though I love the Matrix entity, Supergirl, I had to give it to Dan Didio, being like, we should bring her back. But in terms of, like, needing, like, trying to figure out a fresh start for a character who had been around at this point for 50 years. Like, right, exactly.

01:31:10
Frank
And gone completely.

01:31:11
Case
Yeah, I. I think this worked really well.

01:31:14
Frank
It did, absolutely. For its time. Totally groundbreaking.

01:31:18
Case
J Mike, So this was your first time looking at it. What are your takeaways?

01:31:24
Speaker 3
I mean, it's cool. It's a cool reference point to see where a lot of the modern stuff gets all of its lore from. Because you've got the man of Steel, Zack Snyder stuff. You've got a lot of the stuff that bled over into the TV shows and things. And it's kind of a cool reference point. It's like, oh, okay, this is where it comes from. This is kind of cool. I had never read this before because, like I said earlier, this came out 86. I was born in 88. So this is like, I read it like a week and a half ago and this was like my first time. Like, oh, okay, this is cool. No tornadoes. Kind of disappointed.

01:31:58
Speaker 3
It was kind of cool to see Lois Lane be a badass and like, straight up take over or in a hostage situation almost by herself, but kick.

01:32:09
Case
A terrorist in the ball, steal Azuzie.

01:32:13
Speaker 3
So this is really good. This is a really good jumping point. Was good to see, like, the red hair. Lex, too. It's really fun.

01:32:20
Frank
Yeah.

01:32:20
Case
And by the time we get to Superman number one, like when the monthly comics start right after this, he's totally bald. So we're gonna talk more about the burn era of Superman soon. But right now we are probably going to take a break from the hardcore Superman comics because we've been jumping around for a lot of runs recently. So I'm not sure what we're talking about next time because we haven't recorded it yet. Unlike the last couple episodes where we've been way ahead on recording. But, Frank, thank you for. For suggesting talking about this one. We have been meaning to talk about John Byrne Superman stuff since the beginning. Like, when we first made the show and like, I mocked up the artwork for the first couple episodes, I was like, yeah, we're gonna talk about John Byrne in, like the first 10 episodes.

01:33:04
Case
And it's episode 88. This is our first time delving into that era, unless you count the death of Superboy, which was part of us talking about the legion of superheroes.

01:33:14
Frank
This is a whole thing.

01:33:16
Case
Yeah, yeah, that's his own thing.

01:33:18
Frank
Listen, it was a real pleasure to do this with you guys. It's nice that you know a little bit about Superman and can appreciate the arc of my time. But, yeah, I had a real blast. I hope we can do it again some point.

01:33:31
Case
Yeah, man. So, Frank, if people want to find you, follow, you give your plugs. Although one of those plugs is a plug that I'm going to give as well. Go for it.

01:33:41
Frank
Well, the only project I got going on right now is Farragut Films. Farragut Forward, the reboot, or I don't know what to call it. We're continuing the story in the movie era, so Rathicon era. You can find me on Instagram, you can find me on Facebook. It's FJH2112, as Kay said, also a professional actor. You can find me on IMDb, find my wife on IMDb. We don't have any projects right now because of COVID We're kind of laying low, regrouping and working on things that we can use when this eventually gets out of the way. For instance, I live in Central Jersey. They're talking about a Netflix studio like 30 minutes from my house. Now, that won't happen for like two years, but we want to be ready when it does. You know, we're SAG AFTRA proud of that.

01:34:29
Frank
Paid our dues up and stuff all this time. So we're going to be looking to get back into that pretty heavily when the time comes. And in the meantime, you know, we're doing stuff like this. We're doing. We're using the Internet to talk about things that we've loved for a long time that other people are just discovering.

01:34:45
Speaker 3
It's not my fault.

01:34:49
Frank
Listen, it's not a fault at all. The fact that you're interested at all is. Speaks well for your character because so many people are just totally indifferent. But yeah, so I'm easy enough to find. And those are some of the things that we're working on and getting ready to do going forward. Farragut films will be the first foray back, but we don't shoot our scenes until late summer if then depending on the COVID what variants are at, how.

01:35:16
Case
Secure things are, and also that we get funding because everyone needs to go to our Indiegogo right now, because when this drops, we're going to be towards the end of the Indiegogo but like still in it. So go check out the Indiegogo for Farragut Forward and chip in some money because yeah, we want to have all these adventures in the movie era timeline. I'm production manager. Frank has been a longtime cast member. We're doing all the stuff for it. We want to make the best thing possible. You can check out our preview of what it's going to look like, our three minute prologue. So. So check that out. But yeah, look up Farragut Forward on Indiegogo or check us out on Twitter Farragut1921.

01:35:56
Frank
And also watch the old episodes. They're available on YouTube.

01:35:59
Speaker 3
They're free.

01:36:00
Case
Oh, yeah.

01:36:00
Frank
And they're terrific. They're terrific. Know the history, know the characters, the story continues. You know, we stopped for like five years and now we're coming back.

01:36:08
Case
Yeah. You can see Frank being an amazing science officer. Well, and you know, like the usual ones we recommend are checkout the Price of Anything and check out the Crossing are like the two that are like, oh yeah, fuck it. Fucking check out those ones. Those are like really great. Like, they're all fun.

01:36:26
Frank
So far is my favorite.

01:36:27
Case
Obviously, Price of Anything is amazing. And Frank, you're kind of the star of the episode.

01:36:33
Frank
So Don is always the star.

01:36:35
Speaker 3
Okay.

01:36:35
Frank
The captain is always the star. But I play the captain's dad, which is no small potatoes. And I'm going to be. I do a kind of a Morgan Woodward thing where I come back, the same actor comes back with a shave. He's a totally different character. He's Simon Gilder and then he's Captain Tracy because it's Star trek in the 60s and there's only like a dozen actors in Hollywood.

01:36:56
Case
Yeah, very Star Trek.

01:36:58
Frank
Very Star Trek. So I'm going to be coming back as Foster in the Wrath of Khan era. Really looking forward to it.

01:37:05
Case
J. Mike, if people want to find you, where can they find you? Follow you.

01:37:08
Speaker 3
I'm not as popular as you guys, but I am just on Twitter, Mike101. I try to respond to things that people send me. Especially Case because he does a lot but respond funny jokes and memes. That's me.

01:37:22
Case
We need that great chorus who's responding appropriately with the right gif at the right moment. So find and follow JMike. As for me, you can find me AES Aiken on Twitter. You can find the show enofsteelpod. You can find more episodes of this show and tons of other great shows@ certainpov.com like screen snark, which is one of the first shows that we brought onto the network when we first started having shows that weren't just J, Mike, me, Ben and Addie doing stuff. Screen Snark's a wonderful casual conversation about media and how it influences the your experience in the day to day world. So check that out. Our editor, Matt is one of the co or one of the co hosts for that along with Rachel Quirky Schenk. Great show. Check that out. Check out certainpow.com for more stuff.

01:38:08
Case
Check out a link to our Discord server where you can interact with us directly. And we'll be back in two weeks with another episode. But until then, stay super man.

01:38:20
Speaker 3
Men of Steel is a Certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and Case Aiken. The show is edited by Matt Storm. Our logo is by Chris Batista. Episode art is by Case Aiken. And our theme is by Jeff Moon.

01:38:38
Frank
I was telling Case before I had my. I broke out my originals back in the day.

01:38:43
Speaker 3
You got the originals? Oh, man.

01:38:47
Frank
And I read through them, you know,

01:38:49
Case
And those are the originals because there were multiple printings because it was a really popular comic.

01:38:54
Frank
This one, I think the first one, they actually did an article in the New York Times and a dual cover on this. And this was like the very beginning of that horrible trend of, oh, you need the alternate cover and you have to get 10 versions of it to just break even, which is despicable.

01:39:07
Case
And I've got the second printing. The close up of him opening his.

01:39:12
Frank
Shirt cover, Is that what it was? I don't remember.

01:39:14
Case
Yeah, that's the alternate cover. But it was the second printing because I was like, oh, I've got Man of Steel number one. Like, let me take this somewhere and see what it. Oh, oh, it's worth 75 cents. Okay, well, I only paid 50 cents for it. I'm feeling good, right.

01:39:28
Frank
Gotta open it up and read the fine print so I can print right.

01:39:33
Case
Hey, all you amazing sentient beings, this is Case Aiken from Certain pov. And outside of podcasting, I work with a group that does Star Trek fan films called starship Farragut. For 15 years we've been doing material inspired by the original Star Trek series. But now we're moving on to the movie era with our latest production, Farragut forward. And that means new sets, new props, and we're going to have to make those monster maroon uniforms. So we have a crowdfunder running right now. Backers can get access to our soundtracks, have their names show up on screen as part of a duty roster, or even get a walk on role.

01:40:06
Case
Our hope is that this is just the beginning and that the assets we create with the money we raise will go towards future productions, including possibly a sequel that may just be written by a certain scruffy nerf herding man of steel who. Who will take another pass at it. Wink wink. To back the production, go to Indiegogo and look up Farragut Forward or find us on Twitter farragut1921 and hey, while you're at it, check out the three minute prologue we put together to show what we can do. But in the meantime, live long and prosper. Hey there screenbeans.

01:40:40
Frank
Have you heard about Screen Snark?

01:40:42
Case
Rachel, this is an ad break. They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show. Fine. Potential Screen beans. You like movies and TV shows, right?

01:40:51
Frank
I mean, who doesn't?

01:40:52
Case
Screensnark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are shaping us as we live our everyday lives. That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode. Hailing from all walks, we've interviewed chefs,

01:41:05
Frank
Writers, costumers, musicians, yoga teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the face and TV industry and more.

01:41:13
Case
We'd be delighted for you to join.

01:41:14
Frank
Us every other Monday on the Certain POV Podcast network or wherever you get.

01:41:18
Case
Your podcasts fresh and tasty off the presses. What?

01:41:22
Frank
That's. No, that's not.

01:41:24
Case
Can I call them Screen beans now?

01:41:27
Frank
Fine, Scream Beans. So tune in and we'll see you.

01:41:35
Case
At the movies or on a couch somewhere cuz you're a whole scream beans now. Cpov certainpov.com.

  Transcribed by https://fireflies.ai/