Superman is DC Comics’ first and greatest hero. Sure, Batman is the one that sells all of the comics, but the Man of Steel is the icon, the one who made the rest of them possible. Over the years, the public perception of the character has changed a lot. There was a time when the Metropolis Marvel was the standard bearer of the comic industry, the blue, red, and yellow boy scout that everyone grew up with. However, the changing tides of comics passed him by. It didn’t really need to be this way at all, though; DC hasn’t always made the best decisions with the first superhero.
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Kal-El has starred in some amazing stories over the years, but there have been stories, ideas, and entire eras of the character that were a mistake. They pulled him from the top of the industry and slowed down his momentum. These seven mistakes haunt the Superman comics, missteps that took them in directions that hurt them.
7) “Death of Superman”
“Death of Superman” is a beloved story, but it set a bad precedent for the Superman comics. See, the problem with this story is that it was massively successful. Suddenly, DC decided that the best way to sell his comics was to drop massive changes on the character, changing everything in big, eye-catching ways that would sometimes get reported on the evening news. It was a good strategy when it worked, but it became a cycle of diminishing returns as time went on, stemming from this blockbuster story.
6) Superman’s Energy Powers
Superman has a massive laundry list of powers and has a reputation for being one of the most powerful heroes out there. However, in the mid ’90s, DC decided to shake things up with the Man of Steel and changed his powers. He became a being made of energy, gaining control of electromagnetic force. It was a very interesting change and creators like Grant Morrison used it intelligently in JLA. However, most other creators barely used it in any interesting way and a lot of fans didn’t like the costume change. There was a lot of potential with the idea, but the publisher botched the whole thing.
5) The Bendis Superman Run
Brian Michael Bendis was the biggest writer of the ’00s, helping put Marvel Comics on the top of the sales chart and keeping them there. In 2018, he would leave the publisher and move to DC, who gave him the keys to the kingdom, handing him Superman and Action Comics. Bendis’s run isn’t as terrible as some fans like to say it is, but it completely killed the momentum of the Superman titles. The Man of Steel’s books had reached a new level of popularity thanks to DC Rebirth and Bendis cooled them off at the worst possible time. It was exactly the wrong thing to do and anything good about it was overshadowed by that.
4) Superman Red/Superman Blue
Superman’s energy powers were already kind of a failure and things would get much worse in 1998. This was the last big gimmick story of the ’90s and it sunk like a stone. Based on an old Silver Age story that was mocked by many, it was an idea that could have worked as a one-off, but instead it was an entire story arc. It was the last use of the Superman office’s only weapon to raise sales, but it misfired. The electric powers might have been better remembered if this story wasn’t the end of it and it hurt an idea that could have been used better by other creators.
3) New 52 Superman (Besides Grant Morrison)
The New 52 is a historic flop. Superman wasn’t the worst treated – Supergirl, Superboy, and the Teen Titans got it much worse – but he mostly had a bad time of things. Grant Morrison’s 19-issue run on Action Comics was outstanding, but Superman (Vol. 2) had problems from the start. After Morrison left the books, everything fell off a cliff. Superman was put with Wonder Woman in Justice League (Vol. 2), and it felt like DC was making every mistake you could make with the Man of Steel in a five-year period. Sure, there were some good stories not written by Morrison, but most of it was lackluster at best.
2) John Byrne’s Superman Run
John Byrne was handed Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths and was told to modernize the Man of Steel. He did this by transforming Krypton into a cold, antiseptic place defined by science, got rid of any of the other survivors like Kara Zor-El, took away Clark’s time as Superboy (so no Legion for him), changed it so that he was born when he got to America, and basically changed him into the personification of Reagan’s America. His version was popular for a while, but as new fans dug into Supes’ past, they discovered how much more interesting those old stories were. The ’00s would begin a process of making Superman back into the pre-Crisis one and most fans look at Byrne’s time as something of a mistake.
1) Denying the Superman 2000 Pitch
Grant Morrison and Mark Waid have proven to be two of the greatest Superman writers ever, but there was a time when DC denied them writing the Man of Steel. Back in 1999, Morrison, Waid, Mark Millar, and Tom Peyer Jr. pitched “Superman 2000”, which would have saw an attack by Brainiac resulting in Superman’s secret identity being wiped from everyone’s minds by Mr. Mxyzptlk. Everyone would forget everything about him, his marriage with Lois would be ended, and he’d have to rebuild his life from there. It was a massive swing and DC said no, instead going with safer pitches from Jeph Loeb and Joe Kelly. Loeb and Kelly were good, but the seismic change of “Superman 2000” could have changed the character and the world of comics forever.
What do you think was the biggest Superman mistake? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
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Image courtesy of Netflix -
Image Courtesy of Netflix
