SUPERMAN #22

“THE PRICE”
Story & Art: John Byrne | Lettering: John Costanza | Coloring: Petra Scotese
Assistant Editor: Renee Witterstaetter | Editor: Mike Carlin

The Plot: Above the ruined surface of the Pocket Earth, Superman, Supergirl, Lex Luthor, Pete Ross, and Bruce Wayne (the latter two in jet fighters) make their last stand against General Zod, Zaora and Quex-Ui. Bruce is killed by Zod, and Pete dies when Quex-Ui attacks Smallville Base. Zod and Zaora shoot Supergirl out of the sky with heat vision, transforming her into a being of pink goo. Luthor sends Superman to Smallville Base to locate some gold Kryptonite, which the Man of Steel uses to rob Quex-Ui of his powers. Superman does the same to Zod and Zaora, then traps all three Kryptonians inside a prison of his own making.

Superman finds Luthor, shot down and dying. After he passes away, Superman returns to the prison and uses green Kryptonite to execute Zod and his followers. The Man of Steel then finds the remains of Supergirl and takes her back to Earth, leaving her in the care of Lana and his parents as he departs to sort things out.

Sub-Plots & Continuity Notes: Lex reveals that Lana died during the Kryptonians’ earliest attacks on Earth, and that “Supergirl” was a being he created in her image to fight against them. My understanding is that this creature would go on to become the “real” post-CRISIS Supergirl for several years.

Lex also reveals that he knew about the gold Kryptonite all along, but he wanted the Kryptonians to die by his hand for their crimes against humanity. So basically, he could’ve stopped them any time, but allowed them to kill the entire population of Earth out of hubris. So I guess even a good Luthor can be a pretty bad guy, in his own way.

My Thoughts: And thus does Superman kill. I’ve occasionally read negative reactions to this story; “Superman should be better than that”, etc. — but I can’t help feeling that if someone like Alan Moore or whoever had done a similar tale in 1988, it would’ve been praised. Superman should be better than this, but in the moment he feels that he has no choice. And, as the cover helpfully reminds us, Zod and his people killed five billion people and annihilated an entire planet. This is an atrocity on a level that no human being could ever comprehend. So what Superman does here, as an exception to his typical code, makes perfect sense to me.

(Plus, the writers following Byrne’s departure would have our hero grapple with his choice, so it’s not like he just offed three bad guys and then flew off into the sunset with a grin on his face.)

As for Byrne’s run in its entirety: I think in the end, I like it in theory better than in practice. THE MAN OF STEEL shows a ton of promise which the ongoing stories somehow rarely live up to. Partly it’s Byrne trying to go “grim ‘n gritty” with a character that doesn’t fit into that concept. The casual civilian deaths have been discussed at length around here, and in general the entire atmosphere of Byrne’s Superman stories feels mostly darker than what you would expect from the character.

Plus, it seems likely Byrne was a bit overextended during this run, as well. Writing and penciling two series from the start is along the lines of what he had done at Marvel in recent years with FANTASTIC FOUR and ALPHA FLIGHT, but within a year, he would also be co-inking one of those two series, plus co-plotting and scripting a third. Byrne has always been a workhorse, but even for him this must have been a bit much.

While some of his stories were good and even great, most struck me as middling. They were usually fine, decent superhero action-adventures, but compared with the afore-mentioned FANTASTIC FOUR and ALPHA FLIGHT, they felt — for lack of a better term — “phoned in” (and that’s a phrase I really don’t like using, because I like to imagine any creator is putting in their best effort even when the results are less than stellar).

(And remember, I was never even that keen on much of Byrne’s FF, but objectively speaking, it just felt like he put in a lot more thought and effort on that run.)

Separation of all three titles into their own little “pocket universes”, to use a familiar term, didn’t help either, early on. It was like reading about three different Supermen with no connection whatsoever between each other. This also led to sub-plots feeling exceptionally drawn out, when they were visited once per month in a single title, while Superman was having two additional adventures each month. This, at least, straightened out once Marv Wolfman departed and Byrne gained sole authorship of the three books. At that point they essentially became one three-times-monthly series, and flowed way better as a result.

Byrne also didn’t seem to have much idea of what to do with Lois, using her as a foil for Clark, but rarely giving her moments to shine on her own. His handling of Luthor was very good, but the majority of the other villains did little for me. I did, however, like a lot of Byrne’s changes to the mythos. The elimination of different colored Kryptonite, streamlining of Superman’s powers, and presenting him as the honest-to-goodness Last Son of Krypton are all developments I like, and are my preferred status quo for the character (hence my love of SUPERMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES).

So like I said above, I think when I look back on Byrne’s Superman, I’ll mostly see a great setup with flawed execution. For over thirty years, THE MAN OF STEEL was my only exposure to the run. Now that I’ve read all of it, aside from some nice artwork, I think I should probably keep it that way, and let the inaugural mini-series be my end-all when it comes to John Byrne’s Superman!

Next Week: Our time with Princess Diana comes to an end as well, in WONDER WOMAN #23 and 24.