Man of Steel #1-6

Superman is one of those characters I've never been into. I read Action Comics and Superman for about a 4 year period in the mid 2000s. I watched some of the cartoons and Lois and Clark throughout the years as well. He's just never been someone I seek out randomly. I listed to some podcasts about him recently and it really made me curious to really try and get into the character.

I decided to go with the Post-Crisis version of Superman. If you don't know what that means. DC did an event in the mid 80s called Crisis on Infinite Earths. This compacted all of their heroes into a single universe and it rebooted the entire continuity. So when you hear the term Post-Crisis it means that it happened after this event.

Superman got a big reboot during this time frame. John Byrne came over from Marvel and spearheaded the project. Superman was depowered a lot in this era and he was more detached from Krypton in this era. The idea Byrne seems to push over and over is that Superman is human despite where he came from. The Man of Steel series was a 6 issue mini-series that came out in 1986 and goes about establishing a new status for Superman.

Issue 1: Retells the story of Krypton being destroyed and Superman coming to Earth. We see Clark as a teenager and being told about how he was found. We also see some of his early pre-Superman days and Ma Kent making the suit for him.

Issue 2: Serves to introduce us to Lois Lane. She follows Superman around trying to get the story on him but always being a little too late. She finally decides to try driving her car into the river so that Superman will save her. She interviews Superman only to arrive at the Daily Planet to find that Clark Kent beat her to the story.

Issue 3: Has the first meeting between Superman and Batman. It does away with the buddy buddy relationship they had previously and shows how their worldviews clash a little more.

Issue 4: Sets up Lex Luthor as Superman's main antagonist. We also see some of the rivalry and relationship between Lois Lane and Clark Kent.

Issue 5: Brings us Bizzaro. This is the first super villain that Superman takes on in this rebooted universe.

Issue 6: Kind of wraps things up from the last 5 issues and gives us an idea of what to expect from the three ongoing series that start up after this. Clark has a thing for Lois but wants her to love him as Clark and not Superman. Superman learns that he's from the planet Krypton but realizes that doesn't change how he was raised and who he is. It also shows Lana Lang and her dynamic with Superman.

All in all, I really enjoyed this mini-series. Superman was more interesting than I expected him to be. I really like the humility of the character. He showed a little more personality than I was expecting and I really like Lex Luthor as a big time antagonist to Superman. If I was grabbing this I would give it an A- or B+. It was a really enjoyable read and I just tore through the issues and wanted more.

It really made me want to dig beyond just this and get into the monthly issues that result from this. I plan to do that and I plan to post those in a similar fashion to this post. Starting from here there will be three monthly Superman titles (Superman, Adventures of Superman and Action Comics). I plan to read the books from a given month and post quickie reviews of each issue and more talk about how I'm feeling about Superman as a character with each passing month. So keep a look out.