The Man of Steel #4

History

The Man of Steel was a six-issue bi-weekly limited series DC Comics commissioned from John Byrne to reestablish Superman's continuity following the reality-altering Crisis on Infinite Earths. Byrne wrote, penciled, and co-plotted all six issues, with Dick Giordano inking throughout; the on-sale date for issue #4 was July 29, 1986, though it carries a November 1986 cover date. The corporate-mogul conception of Lex Luthor had been pitched by Marv Wolfman as part of DC's broader post-Crisis editorial planning, and Byrne fleshed the concept out in this issue, replacing Luthor's colorful laboratory with a boardroom aesthetic that reflected the leveraged-buyout era of the 1980s.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Story title: 'Enemy Mine...' — written, penciled, and co-plotted by John Byrne, inked by Dick Giordano; on-sale July 29, 1986 with a November 1986 cover date.
• First direct encounter between post-Crisis Superman and post-Crisis Lex Luthor: Luthor orchestrates a terrorist attack on his own luxury liner to audition Superman for his personal security team, then vows vengeance when Superman refuses and helps Mayor Frank Berkowitz arrest him.
• Byrne's Luthor is redesigned from a criminal scientist into a power-hungry corporate mogul — 'the most powerful man in Metropolis' — who resents Superman for displacing him as the city's most celebrated figure; the new model was conceived by Marv Wolfman and realized here by Byrne.
• Luthor's strategy of operating through hired minions, plausible deniability, bribery, and legal maneuvering — making it effectively impossible for Superman to prove his guilt in court — is introduced and explained in this issue.
• Lois Lane and Clark Kent appear as established Daily Planet colleagues; Lois notes internally that it has been seventeen months, two weeks, and four days since Clark scooped her on the original Superman story (establishing a firm timeline within the miniseries).
• The issue has been reprinted in Superman: The Man of Steel Vol. 1 (trade paperback, collected 2003 and reissued in a 2020 edition), and in the themed collection Superman Vs. Lex Luthor (DC Comics, 2006).
• DC's own editorial blog has described this issue as 'probably the most important Lex Luthor comic book ever published' outside of his 1940 first appearance, noting that virtually every subsequent media depiction of Luthor draws from the corporate-mogul model introduced here.
• The full Man of Steel miniseries — including this issue — was adapted as a 1990 BBC Radio 4 play by Dirk Maggs, entitled The Adventures of Superman, with Stuart Milligan as Superman and William Hootkins as Lex Luthor.

Cast · 6 characters

Full credits

Key issues in The Man of Steel

Variants (2)