Superman: The Man of Steel #61

History

The issue was written by Louise Simonson, who held near-unbroken creative custody of the Superman: The Man of Steel title from its 1991 launch through issue #83, and penciled and inked by the series' long-running art team of Jon Bogdanove and Dennis Janke, with colors by Glenn Whitmore. It appeared as triangle number 41 of 1996, part of DC's ambitious weekly-Superman publishing architecture that coordinated story beats across four concurrent Superman titles. Editor Joey Cavalieri oversaw the issue, which was published with a cover date of October 1996 and originally shipped polybagged with a supplement called 'On the Edge.' Mike Carlin, who had been the Superman group's executive editor, was transitioning out of that role in 1996, with KC Carlson stepping in — the issue therefore sits at a minor editorial inflection point in the franchise's mid-decade management.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First appearance of Riot (Frederick von Frankenstein), a Post-Crisis DC metahuman villain created by writer Louise Simonson and artist Jon Bogdanove.
• Riot's power set — triggering self-duplication whenever struck by a kinetic force, initially involuntarily and later at will — was established in this issue and used throughout his subsequent appearances.
• The story title is 'Losin' It'; it is triangle number 41 of the 1996 Superman publishing cycle, placing it within DC's coordinated four-title Superman continuity.
• Supporting cast in this issue includes Emil Hamilton, Jimmy Olsen, Lori Lemaris, Maggie Sawyer and the Metropolis SCU, Perry White, and antagonists Lex Luthor and the Contessa alongside Riot.
• A second plot strand sends Superman and Professor Hamilton to the Antarctic Fortress of Solitude on a mission tied to the bottle city of Kandor, continuing Kryptonian mythology threads active in the Superman line at the time.
• The issue was originally distributed polybagged with a supplement called 'On the Edge,' a packaging approach DC used on multiple Superman issues during the mid-1990s.
• Pages from this issue were later partially reprinted in the 1999 DC trade paperback Superman vs. the Revenge Squad, which collected the multi-title arc in which Riot joined Morgan Edge's assembled villain team alongside Maxima, Barrage, Anomaly, and Misa.
• Riot went on to appear in Superman: The Man of Steel #64–65, Adventures of Superman #543, and Action Comics #730, and later became a recurring Post-Crisis Superman villain appearing in Supergirl, Nightwing, and Batman-related titles.

Full credits

Key issues in Superman: The Man of Steel

Variants (1)