Superman by Larry Tye

Author:Larry Tye [Tye, Larry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 978-1-58836-918-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-06-11T16:00:00+00:00

THE 1970S WERE A TIME for rebooting Superman’s comic books along with his movies. Gone were Mort Weisinger’s imaginary stories, along with Mort himself. Many of the Man of Steel’s powers melted away, as did the robots that Mort had inserted in Superman’s place to explain his absences when he was pretending to be Clark. The most surprising departure was kryptonite, which had been Superman’s most effective adversary. The changes amounted to decluttering an encrusted story. The aim was about marketing as much as storytelling: Bringing Superman closer to Jerry and Joe’s Golden Age creation would, his bosses hoped, win back older readers who missed the hero of their youth and educate younger ones on the brilliance of that more streamlined, less gimmicky vision.

Who better to oversee that restoration than an editor who had helped spawn the original, or claimed to have? The son of Romanian-Jewish immigrants, Julie Schwartz grew up in the Bronx—the place that had spawned more comics pioneers than any neighborhood in America. Julie and Mort attended the same high school, shared a passion for science fiction, and teamed up to publish a fan magazine, one of whose first subscribers was Jerry Siegel. Jerry liked what he read and launched his own publication, where he self-published “The Reign of the Super-Man.” All of which led Julie to pose, only partly tongue-in-cheek, his Big Bang Theory: “If Mort and I had not created our fanzine, neither would have Jerry Siegel created his—and as a result may never have triggered his creation of the original Living Legend, Superman. No Siegel fanzine, no Siegel Superman!”

Julie had taken his first job in comic books in 1944, as an editor with one of the firms that would be absorbed into National. In the 1950s he was a central force in reviving the Flash and Green Lantern, kicking off a Silver Age of comics that lasted until 1970 and recaptured much of the energy and prosperity of its Golden Age beginnings. In the 1960s, while Mort was managing Superman, Julie was Batman’s master. In the 1970s it was Julie’s turn. He took over Superman not because he wanted to—he liked Superman but loved Batman—but because he knew the company’s preeminent superhero was the comics world’s definition of professional success. Now he was in the big time.

It was time for a change. Writers and artists had chafed under Mort’s heavy hand. Circulation of the Superman family of comic books had been plummeting since 1966 and by 1970 its most popular title, Superman, was selling barely half what it had five years before. Archrival Marvel was moving up fast; within two years it would, for the first time, wear the mantle of industry leader. That got the attention of the Warner Communications executives who had taken over National and were asking whether they belonged in the comics business. Newly installed publisher Carmine Infantino was the man on the spot, and since his specialty was artwork, not writing, he turned to his friend Julie Schwartz, now in his mid-fifties, to come up with answers for Superman.

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