There was some weird stuff in that wiki-index of Byrne's Superman titles, but at least it gives an overview and index of the issues he did.

I like Van Sciver's art (I think he's a Mormon from Utah), but I'm a bit repelled by him as a cog completely embedded in the DC machine, similar to people like Dan Jurgens or Geoff Johns or Dan Didio, where their stories are basically fan fiction that is completely derivative of work by people who preceded them, where they're just milking what others have done better, and all they offer is a re-tread of stories done better by others.

I like Van Sciver's art, but I'm hard pressed to recall a story accompanying Van Sciver's art that was actually worth reading. That's my complaint with most of the industry over the last 25 years or so, not just Van Sciver or DC. The characters now are corporate assets, and there's vvery little change or innovation permitted with these now-very-valuable and established characters. And they re-boot the continuity every few years with some new marketing campaign, with very little concern at this point to preserving the long-time continuity and history of the characters for longtime readers.


On the Byrne-Superman front and passing the pen, I haven't heard of that before, I like the concept of a reverent passing of the creative torch. There's a Moore/Swan SUPERMAN: WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? trade (1997), that has an introduction with photos of Julius Schwartz with Jerry Siegel, John Byrne with Curt Swan, and a third with Curt Swan, Kurt Schaffenberger, Julius Schwartz and Murphy Anderson together, that for me was as worth purchasing for these as for the story itself!

My point either with mentioning Byrne, or mentioning other creators' troubles with Shooter, is for whatever fun and creative aspects of comics, it's still a business, and whether making tough intellectual property-related decisions, or just having someone in charge who has an ego or doesn't play well with others, it can also be argued that they did what was best to protect their business interests and preserve the company and the jobs of everyone with what they did.
And obviously, others will hotly disagree.

And that Shooter is far from alone in having bad-blood accounts of his being difficult to work with. Even the likes of Bob Kane, Stan Lee, Jack Liebowitz, Joe Simon, Jack Kirby, Mort Weisinger, Julius Schwartz, Murray Boltinoff, Steve Ditko, Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway and many other stars in the firmament have been both the ones who complained of being mistreated, and had others complain they were they were the ones who wronged others.