Throwback Thursday: Ron Frenz On Redesigning Superman, Spider-Man and Thor

In the '80s and '90s, if there was a major superhero character being redesigned, there was a pretty good chance veteran artist Ron Frenz was "waiting in the getaway car." Those are his words, mind you, not ours.

Frenz, who drew Superman #123 and created the "Electric Superman" look in 1997,

"What we were told was that his powers were going to become electrically-based, and that the new suit would function as a containment suit," Frenz told ComicBook.com during our recent series of interviews about the Superman redesign. "One of the guys did a containment suit that looked more mechanical. Jon Bogdanove did something very similar to the direction I was doing, with having electricity on it. I think his was more in the yellow range and the patterns weren't supposed to be on the costume, they were supposed to be ever-changing as if he was a ball of electricity inside the suit. I think the reason mine was chosen — and whatever else the process was, I'm sure the final decision was down to Mike Carlin and our our line editor at the time, Joey Cavalieri — my belief is that the reason they chose mine is that I was the only one who dared to play with the 'S' symbol. And I think that suggested to them the possibility of more easily marketing the change."

"There was a lot of poster stuff and a lot of press stuff. There was a watch, there were t-shirts, and all of them with the new 'S' on it. I wore the watch for years until they didn't work anymore. I'm not going to say it was an afterthought, because I'm not a genius or anything, but I wasn't planning on turning in a design because I was kind of a short-timer on Superman at the time," Frenz admitted. "Guys like Dan [Jurgens] and Jon [Bogdanove] and everybody had been around longer than I was, so I wasn't even thinking about it, but it was bouncing around in my heads and one day in the studio when I had finished deadline-sensitive stuff, I sat there and played with it. The shot that ended up being on that first cover, of him just standing there, was a version of the sketch I did. I had come up with the idea of making the 'S' look like a lightning bolt and I kind of built the suit around that. I wasn't worried about the containment aspect of it; it's a comic book, so i wasn't worried about it looking mechanical or anything. I was taking the attitude that this was a brand new character called 'Superman,' whose powers are energy-based. I think all of those things contributed to it being chosen, which was a huge thrill for me. That has to be one of the most reproduced pieces of art I've ever done, was that first cover. It showed up in Time magazine and Newsweek and regional and local newspapers across the country just over and over again. It showed up in TV Guide for God's sakes, and at the time, the circulation of TV Guide was through the roof. It was a thrill for me, and I enjoyed doing the press, and of course we were tasked to tell everybody that it's permanent. 'This is now Superman!' They said if you're uncomfortable actually lying, this is your line: 'This is now Superman.' Just let the interviewer take it from there, but keep bringing it back around to 'This is now Superman.' I actually drove to a station locally to do a remote with Karl Kesel, I believe, who was part of the same interview, and it was a crazy time. At that point, DC had a well-oiled machine after the Death of Superman in promoting what was going on with Superman. They knew there was a market for anything involving Superman that was huge, whether it be the death or the wedding or whatever. That mechanism was very established and up and running, and we all got sucked into it. It was a fun time! I can't deny I got a kick out of it."

Frenz, who was one of the regular artists on the Spider-Man titles at the time when Secret Wars introduced the black costume, acnowledged that the superman costume he designed shared a number of design elements with it -- the two solid colors, use of negative space, and the design being the same on the back and the front, for instance -- but as he didn't design the Spidey costume, he mostly chalked that up to the kind of things that were common in redesigns -- and in his own work -- at the time.

"I thought it was a decent design. What I heard from most people was, 'It's a decent design, I just don't think it should be Superman,' and I don't disagree with those sentiments. I never thought Spider-Man needed a new costume, either, and I was kind of sitting in the car with the engine running when that whole crime took place, too," Frenz said, adding that he obviously owns the changes made to Thor during his long run on that title.

He also co-created the character of Thunderstrike with his Thor and The Amazing Spider-Man collaborator Tom DeFalco.

Check back next Thursday for the rest of our conversation with Frenz about Electric Superman, Thor, and more.