Actually, he's not. He even stated before that to him Siegel and Shuster did not create Superman, the TV show did and he said that maybe someday someone might discover Superman through MOS like he did with the TV series, alluding that his Superman would one day be seen by some as the characters creation.
Please provide a link to that quote.
As to my opinion who created the character..... whether that's really a quote from Byrne or not ... Superman was invented by Seigel and Shuster but many hands were involved into making him the character we know today ... including the George Reeve's series. Kryptonite was an invention of the radio show to give the actor a short vacation. The name 'Jor-el' originally appeared as 'Jor-L' and was the invention of novelist George Lothar. Jonathan and Martha didn't have names until much later (and the first names to appear were Eben and Sara - taken from the George Lothar novel... names the George Reeves series adopted) and Martha was 'Mary'. Jimmy Olsen was not an invention of S & S. Lois, under the two creators, was originally a gossip columnist.
And although I find a lot of the Silver Age Superman comics fun and the concepts interesting, my favorite period is the Golden Age Superman, with the Bronze Age as written by Bates and Maggin a close second. What made the character appealing in the first place was the Clark Kent identity as wish fulfillment, and that was the first thing he got rid of, both by making Clark the real identity and by making Clark everything that he and Siegel and Shuster themselves were not. His character bears NO resemblance to the Golden Age version and not even much to the George Reeves version. It's more like a campier version of the Chris Reeve Superman with a very bland average guy Clark, as I've said before a cross between Spider-Man and Colossus. His Clark even looks JUST like his Colossus with glasses on.
Clark being a disguise and Superman the real personality is just not accurate to what Byrne did. Both personalities were the 'real' person. It's just that Clark wasn't a milksop anymore. It just didn't make sense for the identity he spends 75 percent of his time as would be a pose. Clark was still a quiet guy (bland as you put it) and Superman was still out there at the speed of light doing his thing.
... and before you go there... Byrne made Clark a high school football star as a way of explaining why the people around him didn't question why he had such a good build. He even had him keep weights in his apartment. As most of you know, being a High School football star is pretty meaningless after high school.
And his Krypton is the worst designed alien world I've ever seen anywhere, be it comics or movies or tv. But Byrne's designs have always sucked major ass. I remember how pathetic his Imperial Guard members looked next to the ones designed by Dave Cockrum...Byrne could draw (by the time he did Superman he needed a good finisher though), but as a writer he has ALWAYS been very hit and miss. Never forget he wrote the blandest Reed Richards ever and put Johnny and Alicia together in FF (which got instantly retconned as soon as he left). His Superman was and is a big hit with people who hate what Superman was from 1938-1986 but as for paying Siegel and Shuster or anyone who came after them any iota of respect, it was a huge miss. If DC had given a crap about the fans who had supported their books for years, instead of giving Superman to Byrne, they would have accepted Bates and Maggins in-continuity revisions and made Jose Luis Garcia Lopez (whose art is WAY superior to Byrne's) the successor to Swan. Then when Jurgens came along his godly as hell Death>Funeral>Reign>Return storyline could have been done with the real thing, and it would have been even more awesome. Even as is it's one of the greatest comics storylines ever written.
Where do I start to respond to that? First ... most of that paragraph is only your opinion. I hold a different one... I think the 1930 and 1950's versions of Krypton were juvenile and completely unbelievable. From a believability of concept and just an overall design ... I find Byrne's Krypton to be the more believable. It's based on a lot of thought and not just what bizarre concepts can we come up with. Byrne spent a lot of time asking himself questions and finding answers to things like how could a baby survive a many light year journey wrapped in blankets and shoved into the cockpit of a rocket. Answer? He couldn't... so the concepts had to be revamped... which led to a different understanding of what Krypton was. (Byrne also said that Donner's cold looking Krypton was part of his inspiration to go that way).
No one would ever say that Byrne was a writer on a parr with people like Alan Moore or Neil Gaiman. His strong suit was figuring out logical reasons for things like what I posted in the last paragraph. So, if his writing was uneven... well, it's Byrne... what did you expect? But his concepts work. More than I can say for some writers who get more respect. And I'm not referencing Moore or Gaiman with that last statement ... although Gaiman is more about fantasy than hard science.
I didn't hate the prior version of Superman (1938 - 1986). I'm pretty sure that most of us who like what Byrne and Wolfman did don't. It's just about how long can you hold onto concepts that are so outdated that they seem like Buck Rogers serials from the 1950's? (which, coincidentally, they were).
K, I don't begrudge you your affection for the earlier, simpler times but you must understand that, for most of us, we need more depth. To constantly denigrate the Byrne/Wolfman update is to tell us that we're wrong in wanting that.
