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Posts: 741
Dec 15 09 9:45 AM
I am not intimately familiar with the "pre-silver age" (3), mainly due to the lack of easy access via reprints, as noted by others, so I won't comment on it. Of the rest, the following two are special for me:
- 1938-1941. The creation of Superman. The early Superman was very different from what he would become, in a number of ways. His powers were different as was his personality. I love these stories for the crazy "anything can happen!" factor and Superman's general kid-gloves-are-off attitude. The later scoutboy personality made him more predictable & rather boring. - 1958-1970. The birth of the "modern" Superman for me. The first Superman stories I read were mid-1970's stories, and many regular super characters and story elements had been introduced in this era, meaning that there were lots of references to books from this era in my childhood Superman books. Collecting and reading these stories in whatever format available was a neverending search for the Holy Grail. Generally lighter and zanier than the 1971-1986 era but always fun to read.
Runners-up: - 1942-1948. A lot of the same appeal as in the earliest Superman books. - 1971-1986. Occasional great stories and lots of Curt Swan goodness (the definitive Superman artist for my generation - I still prefer his manly and mature-looking "John Wayne" Superman over all other visualizations). All too often let down by mediocre, lackluster, misguided, and downright boring Cary Bates plots (fanboy turned writer, the Busiek of his era).
The rest? After the Crisis, I completely lost interest in the books and the character, mainly because of Byrne. He ruined Superman (for me). No, I didn't find it a "back to basics" approach. It was just another classic character and book turned into a Byrne book and forced to conform to Byrne's limited and uninteresting way of thinking (and to his god-size ego).
It was also a 'Marvelization' of the DCU: a single (more-or-less) coherent story universe + continuity, which I found ill-suited to DC books. Despite the good intentions, it just didn't work out; instead, it simply made the DCU lose the special quality that had made it different from Marvel. And don't get me even started on the 1990s Superman stories! 1986-1999 is easily the era that I hate the most. I need to burn those books before my children learn to read and find them, in order to protect my kids from the crap. (Let them read Conan or Haunt of Horror or Hellblazer or anything but not that!)
The current era, with writers like Geoff Johns is finally showing some promise again, so I'm following it in collected editions, even if Busiek's stories rarely agree with me.
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