Superman in the Eighties Collection- Intro by Jerry Ordway

“We had a storyline we knew was good- Superman embracing his Kryptonian heritage- so we decided to do something to get noticed. We wanted to give Superman a new costume. Fearing a ‘thumbs-down’ from the powers-that-be at DC Comics, I joked at our story conference that we should propose something really drastic- like killing him off, so that changing the costume would be seen as the lesser of two evils.”

DC just can’t help themselves.

I recently picked up a collection of “Superman in the Eighties” from 2006, which sounds right up my alley. Sadly, Superman anthology collections are often stuffed with little more than goofy Silver Age stories, regardless of the theme of the collection.

Thinking that surely, a 1980s Superman collection would contain mostly John Byrne and post-reboot stories, I picked it up…

… and promptly realized that most of the stories in the collection are pre-Crisis. Not sure whatever for, as I have no doubt that Byrne’s stuff sells better.

Still, the collection features some lengthy commentary by Jerry Ordway, who worked at DC on both sides of the reboot, and has a very unique perspective on his time at DC, and of course working on Superman.

A lot of his commentary is mostly talking about the timeline of things, but there are some great nuggets of info I didn’t know before as well. The quote above about suggesting Superman’s death is one, meeting Jerry Siegel was another, as well as George Perez’s involvement and the origin of Superman house ads, and more.

A recent reread of the Triangle Era reminded me of Ordway’s infatuation with Kirby’s Jimmy Olsen stories, about which he adds the following in this intro:

“I had wanted to introduce elements from Jack Kirby’s 1970s run on JIMMY OLSEN – characters like the Guardian, and the DNAliens. When that was vetoed by editorial, I changed the Guardian into Gangbuster, and with my studiomate, Mike Machlan, wrote up a character arc which was then incorporated into our book.”

Interesting stuff! It’s a testament to Ordway’s creativity that I never realized a mainstay in Superman’s supporting cast was a riff on an old Jack Kirby idea from the Golden Age.