A question for JB, and I hope you don't mind answering, I only seem to post when I want to pester you!

I just reread all of your Man of Steel run and was curious about if DC wanted to restart Superman again, and you were hired, what things would you do the same and what changes, if any, would you make?

In advance JB, a big thank you, love the forum so much.

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I'd make one really big change. When DC called I'd say "No thanks!" and hang up!

Sorry JB is that a no thanks to the original call in hindsight, or a no thanks to a new call up? Or both!

I appreciate what you say in retrospect but at the time was being given the Superman gig the biggest buzz ever?

I ask this becuase that is my secret dream, I really can't describe how much it would have meant to me to be the writer/artist of Superman.

Nevertheless, Man of Steel and the first year or so of Superman and Action make up something unique and positive and fun in the history of the character and of superhero comics. Both would be poorer without those issues.

IMP.

I loved the first chapter of Man Of Steel, with JB's truly alien Krypton replacing the '1950's Krypton of the past.

I seem to recall JB saying sometime that he later wished he'd saved the Kryptonian scenes for the end, after Clark Kent figures out that he's not from Earth, but still.

If not for JB's Superman revamp, I don't know that I ever would have read Superman

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I can say I WOULD NOT have read Superman.

JB: I'd make one really big change. When DC called I'd say "No thanks!" and hang up!

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That made me laugh!

---but it also makes me sad. It seems you have been screwed over too many times, JB. Superman, X-Men: Hidden Years, Hulk, She-Hulk, Avengers West Coast, Captain America, Shazam, towards the end of your FF run... the list goes on and on.

Without JB I'd have read the occasional story with Superman in, but I wouldn't have followed him as a character, as such.

With JB's revisions, and resetting Superman sold comics to me, all the way through World without Superman, until I lost interest again around the revised Superman Red/Superman Blue stories.

Every so often I buy a Superman comic in the hope of getting the same excitement, but while some individual issues work, the tone and onward flow hasn't been the same.

I had high hopes for my Who colleague Paul Cornell's Action Comics run, but while its good, its The Action Adventures of Lex Luthor.

Simon BJ

Makes me sad, too.  SUPERMAN was my first exposure to your work.  I would hate to contemplate all the hours of enjoyment I'd lose had I never read any John Byrne. 

<shudder>  I understand your response, JB, but man, what a loss!