It has been 40 years since DC Comics made the biggest change to the Superman origin story after the character was introduced in 1938. When DC Comics introduced Superman, he was an alien from another world, but his home planet was destroyed by a natural cataclysm. His father, Jor-El, knew it was coming and sent his son to Earth in a small spaceship, while Jor-El and his wife, Lara, remained behind and died with the planet. Clark was found by the Kents and raised in a farming community where he learned the morals that influenced his heroic career. Over the years, more survivors arrived, including Supergirl and Krypto.
This all changed when The Man of Steel #6 by John Byrne was released on September 2, 1986, and this was the issue that changed his entire origin story.
DC Comics was in a period of drastic change 40 years ago. The company just released the crossover series “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” and when that ended, DC eliminated all its various Earths and condensed things into one Earth to simplify the entry point for new readers. This included reintroducing the heroes and, in many cases, giving them new origin stories. Superman was no different, with John Byrne taking over the character in the series The Man of Steel. This was a six-issue miniseries that allowed Byrne to reimagine the Man of Steel.
In The Man of Steel #6, Clark Kent returned to his hometown of Smallville after a long time away to see his parents and catch up on things in the small Kansas town. This return home ended up resulting in Superman learning a lot of things about his past that he never knew before. In the story, he realized that Pa Kent was hiding something from him, and when he went to look around, he found a holographic vision of Jor-El trying to communicate with him. In this new post-Crisis world, Clark had no idea who his real parents were, nor did he know anything about Krypton. When he snapped out of the illusion, Lana Lang was there, and Clark realized the secret Pa Kent was hiding from him. Lana was back, but she didn’t want Clark to know because she had loved him and knew they could never be together, since he was Superman.
This is what led Superman to seek out information about his origin and where he came from. This is also where Byrne was able to change Superman’s origin into something different, yet familiar. He had Superman seek out the rocket ship that he crashed to Earth on, and it was there that the hologram of Jor-El arrived again, and soon Superman finally learned everything about his past.
As this new version of Superman’s origin story played out in this final issue of The Man of Steel, readers learned that Ma and Pa Kent had told Superman he was found in a rocket that was part of an Earth-based space program. He learned here that they were wrong and that he was from a different planet. Superman then learned something more horrifying, and that was the fact that he was the only survivor from Krypton before that world was destroyed. There was no Supergirl, nor was there a Krypto. Superman was the last survivor of this doomed planet.
Byrne spent a lot of time making small changes to Superman to update him for a new generation of readers in this miniseries, and this final issue painted a full portrait of who Superman was and what his place on Earth was. There was no Superboy, and he never fought as a hero in his teenage years, not becoming a hero until he was an adult. This eliminated several things, including his role in the Legion of Super-Heroes, as well as explaining away Krypto. He also had fewer powers, as his godlike powers from before Crisis were pulled back, making him extremely powerful, but not overpowered.
Clark was also made a real person, rather than an identity that Superman hid behind. He was athletic and strong as Clark, and he was much more nuanced than the original depictions. This also allowed DC to reinvent Lex Luthor as a maniacal businessman rather than a mad scientist. However, while he learned that Krypton was what made him Superman, it was Earth that made him human. That is the one part of the Superman mythos that Byrne kept in place, despite Byrne’s changes to the rest of Superman’s history. Ma and Pa Kent were brought back to life, and they survived into his adulthood. This played an important part in the new origin story, and it proved that these two are the reason that Clark Kent grew up to become Superman, Earth’s greatest hero.
