By: Russ Burlingame on January 30, 2013
John Byrne, the comics icon responsible for the best-selling Superman series The Man of Steel, is returning to post-apocalyptic fiction with Doomsday.1 in May, according to his publisher, IDW Publishing.
Byrne’s first comics work, the Charlton Comics miniseries Doomsday + 1, gets a wink and a nod here, but is not directly referenced by the publisher in the statement; Byrne himself alludes to the work but never actually uses the title.
“I’ve been thinking for some time that I would like to revisit a post-apocalypse kind of scenario, such as was seen in my very first ‘dramatic’ work in comics, but this time without the more obvious fantasy elements of that original series (mermaids, alien robots, frozen mammoths, etc.),” said Byrne. “When bits and pieces of this new series first started to percolate around in my head, I knew almost at once the shape that ‘revisit’ would take; something in the ‘All-New, All-Different’ vein. And the first time I doodled some images of my ‘crew,’ I knew I was there!”
Byrne has done a lot of work for IDW of late, including some work-for-hire jobs on their licensed properties and, more notably, creator-owned work like Trio and Next Men.
“As much as I enjoyed seeing John work on the various licensed titles we’ve done, it’s a continued blast to work with him in developing new concept after new concept this year,” said Chris Ryall, IDW’s Chief Creative Officer/Editor-in-Chief. “If Earth has to be destroyed in a flaming conflagration, there’s no one I’d rather see bring that carnage and its aftermath to life than JB.”
