When DC decided its flagship character needed a top-to-bottom reboot for the post-Crisis era, they turned to superstar writer-artist John Byrne. The six-issue origin series The Man of Steel introduced a streamlined, modernized, and arguably “Marvelized” Superman, but many fans felt that it threw the baby out with the bathwater. We take a critical look at Byrne’s influences and controversial changes to the Superman legend (both good and bad) and how his take on Superman defined the character for a generation...and even seems to resist subsequent attempts to reboot!

In 1992, Todd McFarlane and his fellow Marvel superstar creators jumped ship to found Image, creating a major independent alternative to the comics industry’s “Big Two.” In this episode, we examine how McFarlane’s most popular creation, the grim ‘n’ gritty supernatural vigilante called Spawn, became not just a sales phenomenon, but also an existential threat to the traditional way of superheroes throughout the Iron Age. We’ll also discuss McFarlane’s legacy and just what exactly went on in a given issue of the series.

While DC was breaking new ground with the Crisis/Dark Knight/Watchmen trifecta, Marvel entered a paradigm shift of its own with the rise of superstar artists like Jim Lee. Under Lee’s creative direction, 1991’s X-Men #1 became the best-selling single comic book of all time - a record it still holds - but in the process drove away Chris Claremont, the writer who'd made the X-Men a phenomenon in the first place in his initial 17-year run. In this episode, we look at this comic and how it ushered in the X-franchise’s total dominance of the ‘90s comics industry.