Ah. I never remembered Jerry Ordway doing much work for MARVEL. But, then again, I smoke pot.
Does anyone know the true story of why Byrne left SUPERMAN? His runs never seem to end "properly". Except, I guess, his X-Men run. But, he quit West Coast Avengers almost immediately (still don't know why) and for rebooting the most important comic book character ever, he only stayed...what...two years?
DC hired me to revamp Superman, and then immediately chickened out. They backed off at the first whiff of fan disapproval, which came months before anyone had actually seen the work. During the whole two years I was on the project, although nothing happened that was not approved by DC editorial, there was no conscious support. They even continued to license the "previous" Superman. At one point, Dick Giordano said "You have to realize there are now two Supermen -- the one you do and the one we license." Seemed counter-productive, to say the least, since far more people saw the licensed material. After two years of this nonsense, I was just worn down. The fun was gone. (from
http://www.comicbookresources.com/features/byrne/)
Just happened to run across it in my internet travels.
Byrne did the MAN OF STEEL miniseries 1-6, then SUPERMAN 1-22 story and art. (issue 18 was Byrne story, Mignola art. Issue 23, the issue after Byrne left, was Roger Stern story, Mignola art). After that Stern wrote the series for a year or so.
Byrne also provided story or art on many other Superman series and miniseries, especially notewrthy on ACTION COMICS 584-600, and LEGENDS miniseries 1-6. I wasn't in love with everything Byrne did on Superman, but I'll say this, he did come up with a wide range of original ideas, however well (or not) they were carried out. And it was an
extremely prolific two years of new series and concepts from Byrne on Superman.
Earlier in the topic I said that Byrne's run on Superman works better if you think of it as an "Elseworlds" storyline. From Byrne's own answer, it turns out that's how DC's management saw his run, for the entire duration that it was conceived and published. . For all the heralded pretense of changing and "re-booting" Superman, it turns out that for DC management, they had a complete loyalty to the licensed version of Superman that preceded Byrne's run, and they never had any plans to make Byrne's version have any meaningful permanence. I still think it was a worthy effort on Byrne's part, regardless of DC not believing in it. But I felt after roughly 2 years, it has run its course. And while I liked some of it, I felt Byrne's work on X-MEN, AVENGERS, CAPTAIN AMERICA, and especially his one-man show on FANTASTIC FOUR were all miles above his SUPERMAN run.
