John Byrne’s Man of Steel turns 40 today.

I am working on a small series of episodes for It All Comes Back to Superman (my current Superman podcast, for those that are unaware) that will be coming out later this summer, so I’m not going to be going too deep into the series today, but I wanted to put something out there to celebrate this momentous occasion because Man of Steel is indirectly responsible for me becoming the Superman fan I am today.

I know that this isn’t unique. If you talk to people who became Superman fans during the post-Crisis era, they will, more often than note, cite either The Death and Return of Superman or Man of Steel as their entry point. To be fair, it wasn’t even Man of Steel that got me to start reading the books. That happened less than a year later, but it was Byrne’s Superman that got me to start collecting the books and Man of Steel is where that all started and thus it is important to me.

Foundational even.

The thing is, I could have been there from the ground floor. And I almost was.

To quote Lois Lane in Superman II after Clark saves her from jumping into the water, “This is embarrassing.”

It was deep into the summer of 1986. My family lived in Mountain Top, Pennsylvania, but our time there was drawing to a close as we were a month or so away from moving back to the Allentown area. I was ten years old and I liked comics. I wasn’t into comics like I would be a year or so later, but I would always look over the spinner rack at the Triangle Pharmacy or the racks at the Weis market and the pharmacy next to it. At the time I was more into Marvel, but to be fair, there were more Marvel books on the racks than DC.

One night, I accompanied my dad to a farmer’s market on the edge of town, and, for some reason, this market had a shelf of comics. I have no idea why. It’s not totally surprising as this was still a time when comics could be found just about everywhere, but a farmer’s market is, in retrospect, weird to me because those places are usually humid. Comics and moisture don’t mix, but this place had a wooden rack full of comics and as my dad picked out whatever produce he was there to get I looked at the comics.

One of them was a Superman book. This may come as a surprise to people that have followed me for a while, but at the time Superman wasn’t my favorite character. I was a Batman kid. I liked Superman. I loved the Christopher Reeve films, and I liked seeing him on The Super Friends. There was a copy of Superman: From the 30s to the 70s in the school library that I took out as often as they would let me, but he wasn’t my absolute favorite.

But this comic looked interesting, so I picked it up and started leafing through it. I remember seeing Krypton exploding and thinking, “Oh, this is just another retelling of the origin. I’ve seen that.”

I put that comic back on the shelf and picked up Transformers #21. I wasn’t a regular reader of Transformers, but I had a few issues back at the house and this issue had the first comic book appearance of the Aerialbots.

Superion for life, yo.

So, yeah, that’s how I put Man of Steel #1 back on the shelf and got an issue of Transformers instead.

In my defense I knew nothing about comic book culture at the time. Like I wrote earlier, comics were an impulse buy. Something I got occasionally and liked but wasn’t into as a going concern. My best friend at the time was into comics, but he mainly bought Transformers which I would read when we were hanging out. I knew that there was such a thing as a comic shop because Brian would tell me about going to one and he would occasionally get me a book, which is how I ended up with copies of Superman #411 and the first issue of the second Super Powers mini-series, but I knew nothing about Crisis on Infinite Earths and the revamp of the DC Universe. I didn’t know who John Byrne was or that he was starting Superman over from scratch.

That was all in my future. At the time I was a ten-year-old kid who loved G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, Voltron, and Transformers. I loved the Hulk because of the television series. I loved Batman because of the Adam West series and The Super Friends. Superman was big to me, but he wasn’t tops.

To the Michael Bailey of 1986, Transformers #21 was the better bet. Ignorance doesn’t mean much when it comes to the law, but it does explain why I put Man of Steel #1 back on that wooden rack.

The Michael Bailey of 2026 can only shake his head, chuckle, and think, “Dumb kid.”

But yeah, I had the chance to get in on the post-Crisis Superman from the ground floor and I didn’t.

Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I did get it instead of Transformers. Would it have been the spark that lit the fuse of becoming a Superman fan? I just don’t know. I tend to get into things at just the right time for me and I love how my origin story played out. It would be nice to say, “I was there from the beginning!” but at the same time getting into it less than a year later was still early days and I wouldn’t trade the memories of the start of my collecting career for anything.

It’s weird.

Fun bit of irony about Transformers #21. Mike Carlin edited that issue. He also edited the first Superman books I bought after taking over the Superman titles from Andrew Helfer. He also wrote the first comic I tried to collect, which was Marvel’s Masters of the Universe title. Considering his role in shaping the Superman stories that took me from, “I want to get the next issue of the Superman titles,” to “I ABSOLUTELY NEED TO GET THE NEXT ISSUE OF THE SUPERMAN TITLES!” there’s a weird sort of serendipity in him being part of some of the most important books of my collecting life.

Still, Man of Steel became very important to me. Man of Steel #1 thru 4 were the first back issues I bought on my first trip to a comic shop in the fall of 1988. Beachead Comics in Allentown, PA. I own just about every printing of the book that has come out over the past forty years.

(The only ones I don’t have were SDCC exclusives that came out last year, one of which has a Todd McFarlane cover. I want them but looking at the prices on eBay make that not only unaffordable at the moment but irresponsible given my current circumstances.

Still…I have a mighty need.)

I have just about every collected edition and have plans in place to get the Absolute Edition and the DC’s Finest edition that are coming out later this year. I have talked about the series several times on podcasts, most importantly as the first episodes of From Crisis to Crisis: A Superman Podcast back in 2009.

My feelings about the story are more nuanced these days. That’s one of the reasons I’m working on the short series I’m doing for It All Comes Back to Superman. Man of Steel used to be my bible when it came to Superman and, on a certain level, it still is and always will be. My opinions on some of the creative decisions Byrne made have changed, but in the overall Man of Steel will always be important to me. Without it, I don’t know if I would have started picking up the Superman books.

Which is an alternate reality I don’t like thinking about.

Happy 40^th birthday, ^{Man of Steel}. See you soon to talk about it further.

More to follow…