Legends #3
Released October 2, 1986
John Ostrander – Plotter
Len Wein – Scripter
John Byrne – Penciller
Karl Kesel – Inker
Steve Haynie – Letterer
Tom Ziuko – Colorist
Mike Gold – Editor
This will be a shorter post, as only one page of this issue really has any impact on Superman.
The bulk of this issue is focused on the new Suicide Squad battling Brimstone. It ends up being a good showcase of everyone’s abilities and by the end they prevail, albeit with Blockbuster as a casualty.
Superman shows up for another page with President Reagan where Reagan ponders if he’s doing the right thing. Superman rather politely declines to give his answer, though it’s pretty clear he disagrees with him. He takes off, saying he’ll abide by the Presidential Edict.
This page shows up a lot as “evidence” that Byrne’s Superman was a Ronald Reagan fan, but again, I don’t read this as respect for him so much as respect for the office AND this wasn’t even written by Byrne.
And since this issue is kinda light on Superman stuff, I’m going to take a digression to deal with this persistent myth (*cough* bullshit) that Byrne’s Superman was a Reagan Republican. One of the sources seems to be this November 1, 1985 article from The Washington Post that quotes Byrne as saying of his Superman:
“And he’ll become, not just a Republican, but “Super Republican,” said Byrne. “If Reagan has done nothing else, he’s gotten us to wave the flag again. Superman practically wears the flag. I’ll be shamelessly exploiting that.”
The only association Byrne makes between Republicans (and by extension, Reagan) and Superman is patriotism. There’s not a word about policy, nothing about the substance of what Republicans (or Democrats) believe. He associates Reagan with flag-waving and Superman with patriotism. When you look at what he’s actually say, it feels like he’s bought into the Republican talking point that they own patriotism and to be patriotic is to be Republican.
They’ve been selling that lie my entire life. It’s not true, but it’s definitely a perception that was stoked by Reagan – the idea that if you’re proud of your country, well that means you must be a Republican. But Byrne didn’t invent the idea of Superman being patriotic. His notion that he’d be a flag-waver isn’t some insidious plot to make Superman more Republican because the phrase “Truth, Justice and the American Way” has been associated with Superman ever since the radio serial in 1942 – eight years before Byne was even born!
And this isn’t just some obscure piece of trivia that Byrne brought back. The phrase was used each episode in the opening narration of the TV series The Adventures of Superman. In the 1978 Richard Donner film, Superman literally says, “I’m here to fight for truth, justice and the American way.”
I also think that the timing of that article is important. November 1985 is a year after Reagan’s landslide re-election where he carried 49 states and 58.8% of the popular vote. No candidate since has won more than 500 votes in the Electoral College or won the popular vote by a double-digit margin.
I might fucking hate Reagan, but in that moment in time, he was more popular than any subsequent Presidential candidate. In a national interview, it would be terrible PR to shit on him while trying to sell your product, in this case, a patriotic superhero. It’s all sales talk, and that interpretation is backed up by the fact that you can’t find ANYTHING political in Byrne’s actual Superman work. Hell, as we’ll see, Marv Wolfman writes more political Superman stories than John Byrne. Byrne’s stories barely feel tied to the 1980s as a decade, let alone Reaganism.
Fast-forward a year after that interview and the Iran-Contra scandal breaks in November 1986. Take a look at what that does to Reagan’s approval/disapproval rating:
The biggest drop in Reagan’s popularity happens not long after Byrne’s Superman hits the stands. So even if Byrne was a fan of Reagan in his peak, he might have held quite a different opinion a year or so later.
And so between the context of the original statement and no evidence of politics in Byrne’s actual writing, I’m going to stand by my assertation that it’s an ignorant myth that Byrne’s Superman was a Reagan Republican. It’s a dumb talking point made by people who haven’t read the actual stories and repeated by even more ignorant people who believe something because it was said in a YouTube video.
Now, we return to the actual issue.
Anti-hero sentiment continues to be on the rise, first shown with demonstrations outside Titans Tower. Again, this is a little “Springfield crowd on the warpath” for me, but the more effective thread exploring this involves an upset Billy Batson being taken in by the family of a young girl named Lisa. They seem like nice enough people, kind enough to take in a lost boy… until G. Gordon Godfrey appears on TV. Lisa calls him a “dufus” and then her dad flips out faster than your Fox News-watching uncle at Thanksgiving when someone calls Sean Hannity a “moron.”
He says, “It’s about time somebody did something about those super-powered menaces” as he throws a Superman action figure into the fire. Billy flees in tears and Lisa goes after him, saying she still believes in heroes.
(And yes, in the midst of this we get our second flashback to Captain Marvel’s battle with Macro-Man.)
Having witnessed Billy’s adventure, the Phantom Stranger tells Darkseid his anti-hero campaign is doomed to fail because he’ll never triumph over “the hearts and minds of children. The children will always believe in heroes.”
Darkseid says that’s all moot in the face of his soon-to-be unleashed warhounds.
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