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Since his debut in 1938, Superman has appeared in over 10,000 comics. This includes solo titles, team-up books, special guest appearances, crossovers, and more. With 87 years of being published multiple times a month, it would be insane for anyone to try to read them all.

However, one Indiana high school math teacher is on a mission to do just that. Superman is on a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and a better tomorrow, and Jon M. Wilson is on a never-ending quest to read it all.

The great Superman readthrough

Jon M. Wilson has a mission to read every Superman comic ever published. This includes every issue of Superman, satellite titles like Adventures of Superman, team books like Justice League of America, and spin-off titles like Supergirl and Superboy.

The reading project began in 2009, shortly after the release of Marvel Studios’ Iron Man reawakened Wilson’s love of superhero comics. “I was working at this call center, and in between calls is when I did a lot of my reading, waiting for calls to come in,” Wilson recalls. “One of the other guys there was doing a lot of current DC reading, and he suggested I read some Green Lantern. What he meant was he really liked the Geoff Johns emotional spectrum stuff, so I should read that. What I did was go find All-American Comics #16 and start reading Green Lantern from 1941.”

“I have always been fascinated by going back to the beginning of things. My first comics were the first 20 issues of Spider-Man in a reprint collection. I got in on the ground floor.”

Looking to get into the DC Universe, Wilson pondered which character should be the subject of his reading journey. Before settling on Superman, he considered Batman.

“I was thinking about getting into one of the big two at DC, Batman or Superman. So, I was thinking about Superman. The initial draw were things like the science fiction elements, the fact that I had read his death story whenever it came out in trade that first Christmas of 92, and just other stuff, the trappings of the character,” Wilson says.

As Jon prepared to embark on his Superman readthrough, he discovered that the Man of Steel’s chronology had multiple starting points. “I did some research and found that there were two starting points. There was Action Comics #1 of course, and there was The Man of Steel #1 from 1986. The idea that there were different versions of Superman that were completely different continuities was news to me at the time. So, I started reading in both of those points, Action Comics #1 and forward, The Man of Steel #1 and forward.”

With that, it was off to the races.

58 years with Superman

Wilson and Superman have spent 58 years together, which is longer than Jon’s been alive. His Superman readthrough is currently in the year 1996, not long after the Death and Return of Superman saga and shortly before the character’s marriage to Lois Lane.

“I'm currently in the comics that came out in the summer of 1996, between seasons three and four of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. I have just recently read the first issue of the recently late Peter David's Supergirl for the first time. I've read the first three issues of Kingdom Come for the first time.”

In the early years of the readthrough, Wilson was reading Superman’s Golden Age adventures alongside the Post-Crisis adventures that began with The Man of Steel. However, he eventually streamlined things to stick with Superman’s Golden Age adventures going forward. This helped the pacing of the reading project as Superman began appearing in more titles.

For example, in 1938 Action Comics was the only monthly title Superman was appearing in. By 1958, Superman was regularly appearing in seven different titles. When Wilson’s readthrough reached those titles, he added them to the rotation. He’s also included non-comic book appearances.

“When I got to the late ‘40s, I watched the serials. I watched the Fleisher cartoons. When I got to the ‘50s, I saw the George Reeves film and then watched his television show, picked up Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen and Superman's Girlfriend Lois Lane, and added them to the mix.”

Wilson’s Superman readthrough also includes titles starring Superman related characters, even if Superman himself doesn’t appear. For example, characters like Darkseid and the Legion of Super-Heroes first appeared in a Superman title, so Wilson’s readthrough has expanded to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World Characters and the various Legion titles.

“There are other things that I've sort of kept up with along the way, because I kind of thought of them as Superman adjacent. The Fourth World, the Legion, and the Justice League books. Even though Superman's not in the Justice League for the late ‘80s and the early 90s, I've been reading all the Justice League books.”

If someone like Lois Lane or Jimmy Olsen makes a guest appearance in another DC title, that title is included in the reading project. Occasionally Wilson has learned that he’s missed something, and when that happens, he’ll go back and read it.

“If I am reading along and I find I've missed a Lex Luthor appearance or something, I'll be annoyed and go back and read that. Lex Luthor, Lois Lane, they're Superman characters, and if they're showing up in other people's comics, I'm curious about that.”

Wilson realizes this complicates things, but he isn’t on any sort of deadline, and it’s always fun to explore more comics. “When you get further on things that spun out of Superman, I could have cherry picked when he wasn't involved, but I like continuity, so I've stuck with things like the Legion and the Fourth World. To me, it's not just a Superman reading project, it's a Superman franchise or Superman Family reading project.”

Tracking down the Superman comics

When Wilson began the reading project in 2009, it was a lot harder to get access to Superman’s early adventures. Many of those comics had been collected in DC Archive Editions, but it wasn’t always easy or cheap to get his hands on them. For the gaps, Wilson had to seek out collectors and fan websites. “I was reading everything I was able to find through digital access, reprints, or through just getting copies. I could read all the Superman stories,” Wilson says.

Thanks to digital comics services like DC Universe Infinite and Comixology, things are easier than they were in 2009. “Printed media and visual media is all out there. None of that is lost. As far as I'm aware, I have not had anything that I've wanted to access and have been unable to access. The newspaper strips, I think, might be the most difficult to get access to, but there are efforts to reprint all of those that either are complete or nearly complete.”

“As digital access has become more, licensed copies of the vast majority of these comics are readily available through DC Comics and Comixology subscriptions. It’s all readable. The entire project is there.”

Superman through the years

There have been periods throughout Wilson’s reading project where he’s spent a considerable amount of time reading comics he hasn’t enjoyed. “Some of it was, I'm not in a great era, but I want to have read this, so I'm going to keep on going.”

“The ‘50s. I remember reading and realizing that the stories were very largely following a pattern. There will be the same narrative framework, some problem they're trying to solve, or somebody Superman is trying to trick into improving their life against better judgment. And that narrative framework will allow Superman or Superboy to do three significant super-feats, and then they'll wrap it up at the end of eight pages. And it was like that consistently for a large percentage of the stories. Once I realized that was happening, I couldn't unsee it.”

While Superman’s Silver Age era has a reputation for being silly, Wilson felt it was a great creative renaissance for the character. “When I was getting into the Silver Age, I could feel the energy. One of the things that sort of characterizes the beginning of the Silver Age is a shift in storytelling focus for a lot of their characters. More sci-fi, less worldly crime, more super villains, more colorful costumes, that sort of thing.”

“The energy of the Silver Age I was not expecting to really enjoy as much as I did. It's tempting for a modern fan to take comics and superheroes a bit more seriously than is necessarily intended, and so silliness is no longer fun, whereas there's a whole movement of comics readers who want to make comics fun.”

Wilson’s readthrough contained many surprises. As he tracked the character across multiple decades, he discovered that his views on violence were malleable depending on the era. “Superman being recklessly violent is something I was not expecting. At first with his human antagonists, then less so. But then, whenever he fights monsters and aliens that he can really go to town on, he will do so and will throw aliens into the sun and will destroy monsters.”

“And when you get into the late ‘70s and into the ‘80s, you have this new batch of Superman writers who really like to harp on him having this code against killing. And I'm like, ‘Really, where have you been.’ Because Conway's Justice League says otherwise.”

Superman in crisis

When Wilson began his reading project in 2009, he didn’t do anything significant to document it. The reading project was for his own enjoyment, and he didn’t see the need to start a blog or website.

“Posterity never occurred to me in the early years of me doing this, not even until relatively recently. I wish I had kept all of the spreadsheets and such I had made along the way to help me organize my stuff, and maybe kept a list of pacing information, like dates of when I got to key areas, or something like that. Because right now, this is largely just in my memory, and my memory is not what it used to be.”

If you follow Wilson on X or Facebook, he posts about his reading project using the hashtag #SupermanReadthrough. He’s also podcasted about various phases of it, including one particular milestone.

One of the major turning points in Wilson’s reading project occurred in 2021 when he reached the end of Superman’s Pre-Crisis continuity. “I was actually trying to find some way to sort of commemorate this event, because I had read almost 50 Years of Superman comics. This was two entire continuities (Earth-One and Earth-Two) back when DC wasn't rebooting continuities every few years. So, I did a podcast called Superman in Crisis where I talked about every issue of Crisis on Infinite Earths and all of the Superman books that came out alongside them.”

Wilson is no stranger to comic book podcasting. When he’s not teaching high school math and Spanish, he’s launched a variety of podcasts, including Amazing Spider-Man Classics, Golden Age Superman, Make Ours Marvel, Ninjas ‘n’ Bots, and numerous others.  

As Wilson concluded Superman in Crisis, his reading projected reached Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow, an Alan Moore written story that served as the grand finale to Superman’s original adventures before the character was rebooted in John Byrne’s The Man of Steel.

“I read Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow for the first time for that podcast. It is one of those things where along the way people were like, ‘Oh, you got to read Whatever Happened to Man of Tomorrow.’ I'm like, ‘I know it's there. I'm saving it.’ So, I did. I read it, and it was quite the experience. And then the next day, I picked up The Man of Steel #1, and it was a whole new ball game.”

Wilson had previously read The Man of Steel #1 when he began the readthrough in 2009, but now he was reading it again with the context of everything that came before. It gave him a deeper appreciation for Superman, and what the title meant for him at the time.

While the Superman readthrough focuses on the Man of Steel’s back catalog, there have been various periods when Wilson has tried to add Superman’s modern comics to the rotation. “Every time they launched a new creative direction, I think, oh, I should get back into Superman, but then I stay so focused on my back issue reading that I don't.”

However, Wilson has read all the Superman comics published 2011-2016. He’s also read various other modern runs. When his readthrough reaches 2011, Wilson says he’ll read those comics again so he could appreciate them with the context of everything that has come before.

The Man of Steel and the math teacher

Wilson picked Superman for the reading project because he was drawn to the science fiction elements of the franchise. Today, the character has come to mean so much more to him. “What drew me to the character is not what keeps me interested in the character. What drew me to the character was some of the sci-fi trappings, and some of the story elements that I'd read during his death.”

“What has me invested in Superman is that he is someone who is trying to do the right thing because it's the right thing to do. That's the core of Superman. There's no other reason he's doing the right thing just because it's the right thing to do, he's trying to live a normal life despite the fact that he has all this power.”

When asked how many comics he reads a day, Wilson had a coy response. “That’s an embarrassing question sir [laughs],” he answers. After pondering it, he says around three or four, but that number fluctuates based on how busy he is. Wilson also has other reading projects for Marvel characters, Transformers, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and more. However, Superman remains his first love (after his wife Mindi).

“Of all the reading projects that have come and gone over the intervening years. This has always been there.”

Will the reading project ever be complete? As long as DC Comics is publishing Superman comics, Wilson will be reading them. Catching up to the modern books would be nice, but Wilson isn’t in a rush. It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey. And what a journey it has been. Since starting his Superman readthrough, Wilson has moved across the country multiple times and gone through big life changes. Superman has been by his side through it all.  

“I left one profession because I was in IT. When I started this, I moved across the country, I went to school, got my degree, became a teacher, changed states again, got a divorce, changed states again, got a new wife, I’m in a much better situation now than before. I started this right around the time that my younger child was born. So, this project is basically the same age as they are.”

“There’s been a lot of life changes, because that's what happens as time goes by. 2009 to 2025 is a significant stretch of years. if I ever were to actually catch up to the current Superman books, I don't know if I'll be young enough to appreciate it anymore [laughs].”

James Gunn's Superman is flying into theaters soon enough, and Popverse has all you need to prepare. Refreshing your cinematic memory with our Superman movie watch order, learn what we know about the upcoming Superman movie, Superman's S-Shield through the ages, and read about what DC is doing ahead of their flagship hero's triumphant return.