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Robert Greenberger
by Robert Greenberger
Superman’s primary artist for the previous 25 years, Curt Swan, was suddenly out of work as DC Comics revamped the man of Steel’s reality in the wake of crisis on infinite Earths. As John Byrne and Marv Wolfman prepared to relaunch Superman, Swan was relegated to lesser titles like Mask. However, there remained a strong interest in seeing Curt continue to draw Superman stories and finally in 1988 he was recruited back to Metropolis. By then, action Comics had been converted into action Comics weekly and to maintain its super-ties, title editor Mike Gold decreed that Superman would be in every issue, taking the center two-pages much like an extended Sunday comic strip.
Superman: The Power Within
He turned the series assignment over to then-Super Editor Mike Carlin, who brought writer Roger Stern onboard to provide scripts for Swan. For the next 42 weeks, the duo would chronicle one extended serial and a second shorter cycle. and finally, DC Comics is collecting these under the title of Superman: The Power Within.
Stern explained in a recent email, “Writing Superman is always a thrill, regardless of when you’re writing his adventures. Or in what order.
“Actually, although the strip for action Comics weekly was my first regular Superman assignment, I’d plotted Superman annual #2 a couple of months prior to starting the ACW series. and according to my records, just after I’d written the full scripts for ACW #601-604, I wound up scripting the Lois Lane and the Jimmy Olsen stories for action Comics #600 … which, of course, saw print before ACW #601. (See what I mean about order?).”
Some decades back a slim volume called The Gospel According to Superman tried to draw parallels between Superman’s lessons and those found within the Bible. Here, Stern explores a small cult that literally worshiped Superman as a god and how the action Ace handles the revelation.
Action Comics weekly #606
When Superman saves Bob Galt, an innocent man, from being killed, he discovers the cult and that Galt’s would-be killer is part of another faction dedicated to wiping them out. even worse, both groups are gaining super-powers due to a mysterious, space-born source that Superman must discover before it is too late!
Now of course, if Superman is a God then there must be a devil as good must forever oppose evil. Stern enjoyed setting up and getting to use one of DC’s darker foes of that time.
“I had a rough outline of what the first year’s storyline was going to be. Mind you, I’d left room, if some new wrinkles suggested themselves along the way. As it turned out, we didn’t get the full 52 weeks of strips that we’d originally been promised, but it all worked out,” Stern said.
Swan is ably inked by John Beatty for the first dozen chapters but then the legendary Swanderson team is reunited as Murphy Anderson climbed on board for the remaining parts.
“That was great!” Stern added. “I’d grown up reading Superman stories drawn by Curt, and a whole array of stories drawn by Murphy. and when Julie Schwartz first combined Swan and Anderson …wow! What a team. I still can hardly believe that I got to work with them.
“In fact, a few weeks after he’d started working on the strip, Curt gave me a call to tell me how much he was enjoying it. He said it was just like working on a Sunday newspaper strip, which of course was the whole idea. Curt got it immediately. That wasn’t too surprising. Curt always got it.
“And when Murphy joined us, that really put the icing on the cake. He also immediately got what we were doing. I’d written this ominous cliffhanger into the first strip that Murphy inked, and he later told me how much he loved it. And, having drawn the buck Rogers newspaper strip, he knew from cliffhangers.
“So, to have Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson tell me that they liked drawing a Superman story that I was writing? That was an honor and a thrill, both at the same time. The only thing that came close was a few years later, when Jerry Siegel told me that he liked my writing.
Looking back, Stern admits, “Well, I’m not comfortable judging my own work, but I’m pretty happy with it. people still come up to me at conventions, asking me to sign those back issues, so I guess we did a pretty good job on it. And, of course, it looks great. My part in it aside, it has some really beautiful work from Curt and Murphy and John Beatty. add to that the wonderful lettering of the great, much-missed bill Oakley, and colors by Tom Ziuko, all under the masterful editing of Mike Carlin. It’ll be nice to have it all finally collected.”
Action Comics weekly #641
The strip’s end may appear jarring, having much to do with the abrupt shift from weekly back to monthly but Stern made it work with a little help from Tom Peyer who received special thanks credit.
“Tom was a great, great help to me. Midway through the run, my schedule was getting more and more frantic. I was younger then, but even so, I was starting to run a little ragged.
“Now, I had known Tom for several years. I knew that Tom understood weekly deadlines, so I asked him to give me a hand with the strip.
“We’d go over my outline, and Tom would rough out the pacing and script for a few weeks at a time. Then, I’d make a final pass, writing a finished draft. I don’t remember exactly when we started working together, but Tom was a godsend. When we were given the word that the weekly strip would be ending prematurely, Tom helped me re-pace things so we could wrap up the story in good fashion. and we’d no sooner done that, than we were told, ‘Oh, you have an extra three weeks.’ and we were already finished! Curt was already drawing those strips! Gahh!
“Sure, I can laugh about it now. but it was maddening at the time. Fortunately, Tom came up with a great idea for a nice, tight little three-week story and we were able bring the series to a good end. but I wouldn’t have been able to do it without Tom. Not unless I’d been able to give up sleeping for a few months.
“Anyway, that’s the story of how Tom Peyer became my youthful protégé. (To this day, he always insists on the “youthful” part.)”
Superman #48
Since this unique feature ran a mere 88 pages, DC’s collected editions department decided to eschew the book-length stories from ACW #635 and #642, both featuring Superman, in favor of the Sinbad contract story by William Messner-Loebs and artists Swan and Dennis Janke from Superman #48, Adventures of Superman #471, and action Comics #658.
We meet Sinbad (Davood Nassur); who helps his sister Soraya, a Lexcorp secretary, using a belt device that boosts his natural psionic powers. They fear Superman won’t trust them because they are Quraci-Americans. Sinbad works on his own to manipulate Lex Luthor while Luthor has told Metropolis Police’s Maggie Sawyer that he’s a terrorist. However, Superman and Sinbad finally team-up to save the city from a post-Invasion! alien vessel.
“I’m looking forward to seeing all of those stories under one cover. I just wish that Curt was around to see it,” Stern noted.
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Superman: The Power Within