Iron Munro - Publication History

Publication History

In 1985 DC Comics released the storyline Crisis on Infinite Earths, which effectively erased the history of almost all their past characters up until that point. They were then re-introduced, some with completely different origins. In the case of those characters who retained various versions of their past, all the previous storylines were merged into one. One example would be the character Earth-2 Superman who was retconned out of existence. To fill the gap, DC introduced a new superhero named Iron Munro to replace continuing storylines where Earth-2 Superman played a large role. Similar to Superman, Iron Munro had muscles of steel, the ability to leap tall buildings and a spit curl hairstyle. DC writer Roy Thomas created several new characters like Iron Munro (and the other "Young All Stars" characters) while trying to replace the now erased Golden Age Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman characters. Iron Munro's most recent appearance is in Superman #711, July 2011.

Using Wylie's novel as a springboard, Thomas had Hugo fake his death at the end of the novel. From there, the story of the second Iron Munro begins. Like the original, featured in Street & Smith's Shadow Comics, the modern Munro is a superhumanly strong adventurer with black hair, who favors tee-shirts and jeans, in lieu of a colorful costume. The original version had no connection to the Gladiator novel, whatsoever. (Gladiator was also partly adapted to comics by Marvel Comics, called Man-God.)