Adventures of Superman #429
☆ Be the first to review + Add to your collection — Join freeAdventures of Superman #429, titled 'Old Ties,' marks the first comic book appearance of Adam Grant — the young son of Daily Planet columnist Cat Grant and Hollywood director Joe Morgan — a character whose tragic fate at the hands of the Toyman years later would become one of the Superman titles' most emotionally resonant supporting-cast storylines. The issue deepens Cat Grant's newly established post-Crisis backstory, using her custody struggle to push Clark Kent/Superman into a morally ambiguous intervention and revealing the human cost behind superhero decision-making. As part of the early Wolfman-Ordway run that built the post-Crisis Daily Planet ensemble from the ground up, the issue is a small but genuine brick in the foundation of the modern Superman supporting cast.
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The issue sits six installments into the Wolfman-Ordway collaboration on Adventures of Superman, the title DC created in January 1987 by retitling and continuing the numbering of the original Superman series from issue #424 onward, as part of the wider post-Crisis on Infinite Earths Superman relaunch coordinated alongside John Byrne's concurrent Man of Steel continuity. Writer Marv Wolfman, coming directly off Crisis on Infinite Earths and New Teen Titans, and artist Jerry Ordway, fresh from All Star Squadron and Infinity Inc., were DC's chosen team for the title; Ordway handled pencils, inks, and the cover, with Tom Ziuko on colors, Albert DeGuzman lettering, and Andy Helfer and Mike Carlin as editors. The Circle villain subplot running through this era — in which the group seeks revenge on Superman for an earlier accidental death — provides the action framework while the Cat Grant custody drama carries the emotional weight, an approach typical of Wolfman's character-first scripting on the run.
Trivia · 8 facts
- Story title: 'Old Ties'; cover date June 1987; on-sale date February 24, 1987; published by DC Comics.
- Written by Marv Wolfman; pencils, inks, and cover by Jerry Ordway; colors by Tom Ziuko; letters by Albert DeGuzman; edited by Andy Helfer and Mike Carlin.
- First appearance of Adam Grant, the young son of Cat Grant and Joe Morgan — a character who later dies at the hands of the Toyman in a storyline that becomes a landmark moment in 1990s Superman continuity.
- First appearance of Joseph R. Morgan, Cat Grant's ex-husband and head of Monarch Studios, as well as first appearances of Concussion (Sthula) and the Circle as a villainous group in the series.
- The issue continues the ongoing Circle revenge subplot, in which the group (seeking payback for Prana's death in issue #427) empowers Concussion to physically challenge Superman.
- Clark's emotional investment in Cat Grant's custody situation raises explicit in-story questions about whether his personal feelings compromised his judgment as Superman — an early example of the post-Crisis titles using supporting cast drama to interrogate the ethics of superheroism.
- Reprinted in Superman: The Man of Steel Vol. 3 trade paperback and in the Superman: The Man of Steel Vol. 2 (2021 Edition).
- The GCD notes a production error: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster's creator credit is misprinted as 'Jerry Siegle and Schuster' on story page 2.
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Reprints
Reprinted in Supermán #22 (1987), Supermann #1/1988 (1988), Superman: The Man of Steel #3 (2004), Superman: The Man of Steel #2 (2021), Superman #26
Key issues in Adventures of Superman
Variants (2)
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