Super-expert Anthony Desiato explores a bygone era that provided some of the greatest Superman moments and concepts… Anthony Desiato of the super Superman podcast Digging for Kryptonite is back this week with another episode — on The Death of Superman — and so here he takes a look at the early post-Byrne, so-called “Triangle Era” that gave us in essence a weekly series starring the Man of Steel and a robust supporting cast. Dig it — and dig Digging for Kryptonite, available in audio form on your podcast platform of choice and in video form on YouTube. Up, up and away! By ANTHONY DESIATO Action Comics #785, published in late 2001 during the Jeph Loeb-Joe Kelly tenure on the Super-titles, unceremoniously marked the end of a decade-long era for the Man of Steel: It was the last Superman comic to display a “triangle number” on its cover — a secondary numbering system that had denoted the correct reading order across Superman, Adventures of Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, Action Comics, and even the quarterly Superman: The Man of Tomorrow. (Yes, later crossovers would occasionally resurrect the triangle numbering, but those instances were fleeting.) At its best, the famed Triangle Era read more like an episodic Superman television show than a collection of titles featuring the same character. The books featured a rich supporting cast, consistent tone, compelling subplots that would gracefully ebb and flow, and a (mostly) grounded sensibility. At its worst? Look, even Electric Superman has his defenders, I’m sure. This Summer and Fall, I finally closed what I long considered to be the biggest gap in my Super-fandom: the period between Crisis On Infinite Earths and The Death of Superman, including the dawn of the Triangle Era. I’ve been chronicling this reading project on my podcast Digging for Kryptonite. (13th Dimension editor-in-chief Dan Greenfield even joined me to break down the John Byrne Superman run.) Recently, a three-episode arc with guest Scott Honig covered the 150+ issues between Byrne and “Death.” Listen via your podcast platform of choice or watch on YouTube. For this reader, it was during those post-Byrne years — including the “proto-Triangle Era” when the books worked in tandem but hadn’t yet formalized the numbering system — that the modern Superman truly solidified. The late ’80s and early ’90s finally advanced the romance...