Superman
In 1986, along with writer/artist John Byrne and writer Marv Wolfman, Ordway revamped Superman, in the wake of the Ordway-inked continuity-redefining maxiseries Crisis on Infinite Earths. Launching, with a revised origin and new continuity, in Byrne's miniseries, The Man of Steel, Superman soon returned to featuring in a number of titles. After the titular title Superman was cancelled and replaced with The Man of Steel, it was relaunched as The Adventures of Superman, continuing the numbering of the original Superman series, with Wolfman as writer and Ordway as artist.[10]
When Wolfman departed the title with issue #435, Byrne briefly took over script writing duties before Ordway assumed the mantle of writer-artist and took over the series solely with issue #445 (Oct. 1988), making his writing debut two issues earlier with #443 (Aug. 1988). Ordway had also served as co-plotter on a few issues during both Wolfman and Bryne's writing tenures (issues #426, 435–437, 439–442, and 444). Switching from The Adventures of Superman, Ordway became the writer-artist on the companion title Superman vol. 2 between #34 (Aug. 1989) and #55 (May 1991), before later returning to Adventures of Superman as writer and sometimes as cover artist from issues #480 (July 1991) to #500 (June 1993). Ordway was the writer and primary artist for the story in which Clark Kent proposes to Lois Lane (Superman vol. 2 #50).[11][12] While writing for the Superman family of titles, Ordway cowrote such storylines as "Panic in the Sky"[13] and "The Death of Superman" storyline in 1992. After seven years working on the character, Ordway largely left the Superman titles in 1993, although he would make frequent returns to the character as writer and throughout his career, co-writing Adventures of Superman with Karl Kesel from issues #539–540, 558–562, 564–567 in 1996, and 1998–1999.[7] In Nov. 2017, he drew the variant cover for Action Comics #992 (cover dated Jan. 2018).[14]
During the 50th anniversary celebrations for Superman, he inked John Byrne's pencils for the cover of the March 14, 1988 issue of Time magazine[15] and an interior spread celebrating the Man of Steel's anniversary. Ordway has produced a large number of covers for DC from 1982 onwards, including for issues of Secret Origins and the painted cover art to the hardcover reprint collection The Greatest Golden Age Stories Ever Told.[16] He produced the cover art for the prestige format graphic novels, Superman: The Earth Stealers in 1988 where he inked Curt Swan's pencils and Superman For Earth (1991), among other work.[7]
