Worf actor Michael Dorn joins DC Comics for Steelworks, a new series about John Henry Irons, the Superman-inspired superhero known as Steel.
Star Trek’s Michael Dorn voiced the first TV version of the superhero Steel in two episodes of Superman: The Animated Series, and I wouldn’t blame him for forgetting. The show was made a quarter of a century ago (aired in the wake of the 1997 release of the Shaquille O’Neal Steel movie) and Dorn was busy enough evolving his best-known role of Worf through the latter seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
But when DC Comics reached out to the actor, Dorn tells Polygon, he absolutely remembered the role. “It stands out because he is a Black character.”
This June, DC will publish Steelworks, a new series written by Dorn and drawn by Sami Basri centered on John Henry Irons, the engineer who built his own supersuit to protect Metropolis in the wake of Superman’s death. Like Iron Man, if he wasn’t an asshole. For Dorn, the series is all about John the superhero and John Henry the American legend.
Dorn told Polygon that aside from Steel’s rarity as a Black superhero role in the 1990s, he remembered the Superman voiceover gig because of his own vivid memories of the American folklore figure John Henry, specifically in George Pal’s rather haunting 1946 stop-motion retelling.
