Two men are sitting talking at a table at sidewalk cafe. The camera keeps cutting under the table to show a bomb ticking relentlessly toward detonation. If the men get up and walk away before the bomb explodes, it's suspense. If they are still sitting at the table when it goes of, it is shock.

In comics today, they are almost always still sitting at the table.

••

Not quite. FIRST CLASS was yet another example of revisionist history. HIDDEN YEARS was set in a period when there really was a "gap" to fill. It didn't write over or retcon anything.

One of my greater frustrations when working on XHY was that Marvel was, at the same time, publishing CHILDREN OF THE ATOM, which was their first pass at a FIRST CLASS style book. Except, of course, they weren't publishing it. The book was constantly missing shipping. Meanwhile, Marvel did such a bad job of promoting XHY many people thought it was CotA, and that it was my book that was constantly late!

I also spent a lot of time at cons explaining to people that XHY was not a miniseries. Again, that was CotA.

Do you realize that after the promo sneak peek in X-MEN 94, Marvel made virtually no mention of XHY again until something like the ninth issue? Unbelievable!

There is so much to say about GM's interview, yet it catches in the back of my throat, like bad sushi.  It does seem a bit self-serving for a guy who wants to do movies instead of comics talking about how movies are much more powerful than comics. 

It reminds me of a certain politcal party which runs on the mantra that government is corrupt and ineffective, and then once elected to office, are corrupt and ineffective.

Also, apparently, the writing and art are as good as they ever have been, yet still cannot hold a candle to movies?  Sandbagging a bit, are we?

Yeah, possibly. Probably as much, although he changed things quite
considerably.

Really...aside from Pa' Kent, Superboy, the Superman we saw in JB's book was
pretty consistent with the one we'd known for the past 50 years. This guy
that Morrison's writing seems like a bit of a departure from that.

JB cleaned up Superman's history...Morrison's creating a new character.

••

Exactly right, since DC are worried about losing the original!

The common myth is that I made man radical changes to Superman's mythology when I did MAN OF STEEL, and yet all I really did was trim away a lot of the barnacles that had attached in what was then almost fifty years. Just how sweeping my changes were depended upon how important those barnacles were to individual readers. And, yes, I did get a letter castigating me for getting rid of Beppo, the Super-Monkey!

Basically, it all came down to whether or not you felt it was absolutely vital to the Superman story that Jor-El and Lara dress like rejects from FLASH GORDON.

••

Only if you assume his life began the day he put on the costume.

Friedrich wrote: (to JB)...But you changed the classic formula of Superman being the real person and Clark Kent being a disguise. That's a pretty big change.

John Byrne wrote: ...Only if you assume his life began the day he put on the costume...

That's an excellent point. I have heard the "Superman is the real person" thing for years, and it's only true in the sense that Clark Kent can't use his powers openly out of the suit for fear of revealing that he is also Superman, but Clark came first. Was Clark faking his personality from infancy until he reached adulthood?

Everything that made Clark the man he is as far as personality and ethics came from Ma and Pa Kent. They raised him to hold certain values and treat people kind, and to do right. They taught Calrk Kent that, not "Superman." Clark carried over those values to his alter-ego.

The powers came from Jor-El and Lara, the person came from Ma and Pa Kent.

Sure, the shy, timid Clark of the early years, or the bungling, clumsy Clark in other intrepretations were an act, but so too was some aspects of Superman, such as acting like he wasn't that boy who grew up in Smallville. When Clark Kent decided he needed an identity, both identities had a fair share of true personality and acting to them. It's for that reason that it is more accurate to say that BOTH Clark and Superman are the real person, just different sides of that person.

JT Molloy wrote: ...Superman, smirking, sure of himself, champion of justice...

I never saw Superman as being smirking. Not to say he has never smirked, but not so much that I'd say it was a defining character trait. Superman has most consistently been written as confident, but humble, not cocky.

Edit: Typo.

For anyone wondering where the talk of Grant Morrison preferring movies over comics comes from, it's in the article I linked to in the first post in this thread:

Grant Morrison (from the article) wrote: ...There's a real feeling of things just going off the rails, to be honest. Superhero comics. The concept is quite a ruthless concept, and it's moved on, and it's kind of abandoned, the first-stage rocket... ...Moving on to movies, where it can be more powerful, more effective. The definition of a meme is an idea that wants to replicate, and it's found a better medium through which to replicate, games, movies...

(Emphasis added by me.)