At some point after John Byrne moved on from the Superman books, he was asked why he left. Though he’s given various reasons over the years, the interview that most stuck in my memory for over 30 years was one where he cited a surprising statistic. I’ve attempted to locate the direct quote to no avail, but I remember him specifically crediting Roger Stern with calculating all the Superman stories he wrote in a short and and pinned the number around 75 stories in two and a half years.
So Byrne’s output was about equal to a writer who wrote a monthly title for SIX YEARS, and he did that in half the time! Is there any wonder the guy was burned out?
This fact is also why I’m somewhat weary of claims that “Byrne’s SUPERMAN sucked” which tend the cite the same two or three stories. With that much output, you’re going to have a dud now and then. I think if the average level of quality is high, it’s dirty pool to define a creator by their weakest stories.
(This really drives me nuts as a STAR TREK fan. For instance, Brannon Braga has written a solid number of stone classics, including “Cause & Effect,” “Parallels,” All Good Things…” “Scorpion” and the feature film STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT. But what do his detractors fixate on? The fact he wrote “Threshold,” a notable VOYAGER howler.)
This motivated me to figure out exactly how many Superman stories Bryne has written and drawn over his career. Note: This chart includes material outside the scope of his initial run on the Superman books.
If you want to calculate how many issues he’d done at the time he quit, my count puts him at 70 issues as a writer, and 46 as an artist.
So in terms of writing he falls short of Roger’s estimated figure, but not significantly. (Though if Roger was including the six issues he drew of LEGENDS in this period, that would push his overall total of comics worked on closer to the figure Byrne cites.)
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