The Death of Superman
"The Death of Superman" is a crossover story event mostly featured in DC Comics' Superman-related publications. The crossover, which originated from editor Mike Carlin and writers Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, Louise Simonson, Jerry Ordway, and Karl Kesel, began in December 1992 and lasted until October 1993. It was published in Superman, Action Comics, The Adventures of Superman, Superman: The Man of Steel, Justice League America, and Green Lantern. Since its initial publication, "The Death of Superman" has been reprinted in various formats and editions.
Development began after a planned story, in which Clark Kent and Lois Lane would be married, was postponed to coincide with a similar storyline in the television series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. While pitching possible replacements, Ordway jokingly suggested that they should kill Superman. As Superman comic sales had declined in recent years, the writing teams felt the character had been taken for granted and decided to temporarily kill him to emphasize his importance. They wanted the crossover to surprise readers and show Superman is not invincible.
"The Death of Superman" is divided into three story arcs: "Doomsday!", "Funeral for a Friend", and "Reign of the Supermen!". The first arc chronicles Superman's fight with the monster Doomsday and concludes with his death. The second depicts Superman's fellow superheroes and the rest of the DC Universe mourning his death, ending with his adoptive father Jonathan Kent having a heart attack. The third sees the emergence of four Superman impostors before the original is resurrected. A number of characters in "The Death of Superman", such as Doomsday, Superboy, Cyborg Superman, Steel, and Eradicator, would recur in later DC publications.
When news broke that DC planned to kill Superman, a beloved cultural icon, "The Death of Superman" received unprecedented coverage from the mainstream media. Superman #75, which features Superman's death, sold over six million copies and became the top-selling comic of 1992, while Adventures of Superman #500, which began his resurrection and introduced his possible successors, went on to become the best-selling comic of 1993. Retrospective reviewers are divided on the story, with some finding it ambitious and influential, while others dismiss it as a publicity stunt.
The story has been adapted into various forms of media, including two novelizations in 1993 and a beat 'em up video game, The Death and Return of Superman, in 1994. A loose animated film adaptation, Superman: Doomsday, was released in 2007. A second animated adaptation was released as a two-part film, The Death of Superman and Reign of the Supermen, in 2018 and 2019, respectively.
Publication history
Background
is a superhero created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster who appears in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character debuted in Action Comics #1 on April 18, 1938, to immediate success, and the following year became the first superhero to headline his own comic book, Superman. Since his debut, Superman has been a cultural icon in the United States.In 1985, DC launched the crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths, which took place in a variety of comics. Its conclusion resulted in the DC Universe—the shared universe that the publisher's comics, including those related to Superman, take place in—being rebooted. Writer/artist John Byrne re-envisioned Superman in his 1986 limited series, The Man of Steel. The following year, Byrne relaunched Superman with a new first issue and the original series was renamed The Adventures of Superman. In the reboot, Byrne removed various elements of the Superman mythos, like Supergirl, to streamline the character for modern audiences, which also allowed him to reintroduce them in a new way later on. The relaunch was a major success for DC and The Man of Steel #1 became the bestselling comic book issue of 1986. Byrne also wrote and illustrated Action Comics, and scripted The Adventures of Superman with artist Jerry Ordway. Under Byrne, a new Superman comic was released every week and each series maintained continuity with the others. He spent two years on the Superman comics before leaving in 1988, dissatisfied with DC's lack of "conscious support" for him and that the version of Superman licensed for merchandising did not reflect Byrne's stories.
As a result of Byrne's departure, Superman group editor Mike Carlin had to assemble new creative teams to replace him. Ordway began to write The Adventures of Superman, while Roger Stern, who had recently finished a 12-year stint at rival publisher Marvel Comics, took over Action Comics. Connecting stories also became harder due to the new, more diverse creative teams, whereas Byrne had managed most of them on his own. To control consistency in stories, the teams regularly attended a "Superman Summit", which started in 1988. The summit was a unique method of making the writers work together, focusing their attention to the next year's worth of stories. These meetings were often dysfunctional, with Superman writer/penciler Dan Jurgens noting they frequently disagreed when discussing story ideas and argued until one person was "left standing". Carlin recalled that he had to act like a "babysitter" for the 18 creators during summits, and the teams often compromised. When the writing teams were having trouble deciding stories, Ordway would jokingly suggest they kill Superman.
DC editor Paul Levitz liked the success of the three interconnected Superman comics, so a fourth, Superman: The Man of Steel, started. While the creative teams believed the quality of the comics increased because there were more people working on them, they experienced a decline in sales, primarily due to the popularity of violent antiheroes like the Punisher, Spawn, and Wolverine. A new Superman comic was released every week, each selling roughly 150,000 copies an issue—"a fraction" of the numbers bestselling comics like those featuring Spider-Man enjoyed. The writing teams increased the romantic tension between Clark Kent and Lois Lane in an effort to make the comics more appealing. Eventually, they had Kent propose to Lane and reveal he was Superman, and began to plan a storyline about their marriage. According to Carlin, they developed the wedding arc between 1990 and 1991, and planned for it to conclude in The Adventures of Superman #500. They also considered a "Death of..." story, but did not work on it in depth.
Development
While the Superman comics struggled, DC's sister company Warner Bros. developed Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, a television series for ABC centered around the relationship between Lane and Kent. One of the ideas that arose during production was the wedding of Lane and Kent. Although the series did not exist in the same continuity as the comics, Warner Bros. wanted the Superman brand to remain consistent across all forms of media. As a result, Carlin and DC president Jenette Kahn decided to put the wedding in the comics on hold until Lois & Clark reached its wedding episode so that the stories could coincide. With the original storyline set aside in the comics, the teams needed a new event to replace it.The postponement disappointed the writing teams, as they had to put aside a year's worth of story planning and, according to Simonson, essentially had to come up with something at the last minute. At the 1991 summit, Ordway again made his joke, but no one laughed. Simonson spoke up and said, based on her experience from editing X-Men comics at Marvel, killing a major character "show just how much that character means – to his friends, family, enemies, to the whole world!" Carlin liked the idea, and in the documentary film Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, he recalled, "the world was taking Superman for granted, so we literally said 'let's show what the world would be like without Superman'". Jurgens formally pitched "The Death of Superman", and DC let the project move forward, which shocked Ordway.
Prior to moving forward, Carlin asked Siegel if he had any concerns with the concept of killing Superman. Siegel felt it was "a good way to shake things up"; the teams felt better knowing he approved. Bogdanove recalled how the story "almost began to write itself, from the end backwards. It felt like a story that could make the readers care again, the way we had always cared about Superman". "The Death of Superman" forced DC to cancel a non-canon, four-issue limited series Neil Gaiman and Matt Wagner were working on, as it also featured the character's death. The initial plan called for Superman to be killed in Superman #75 and resurrected in The Adventures of Superman #500, as both were milestone issues.
Jurgens created the concepts of a monster tearing apart Metropolis and an issue dedicated to a single fight sometime before "The Death of Superman"; the teams combined these when developing the story. Carlin had previously rejected the fight idea whenever Jurgens brought it up, feeling it would not be effective without a good story. When deciding which villain should kill Superman, the writers determined that his existing foes relied too much on technology and intellect, and did not want to use one of them or his traditional weakness, Kryptonite. Thus, they concluded that a new villain had to take him on physically. They chose to name this villain "Doomsday" after Carlin wrote the phrase "doomsday for Superman" on the whiteboard used for planning, and did not feel giving him an origin was important. The teams wanted Doomsday to have a distinctive look, so they gave all artists a few minutes to create designs and voted for the one they thought was best. Jurgens' design—a massive, muscular humanoid with bones ripping through his skin, inspired by the design style of Image Comics—won.
The four issues showing Superman's fight with Doomsday feature a "countdown" of panels: the first has four per page, the second has three, the third has two, and the last simply comprises splash pages. Inker Brett Breeding conceived this, as he thought it would increase the suspense and speed of the action. Furthermore, Jurgens wanted to make an issue told through splash pages and the fight seemed like the perfect fit. The story was partly an effort to show the ramifications of a superpowered fight in a city, because, as Ordway said, it "had to have consequences". The final page of issue #75—a triple-page spread depicting Lane mourning Superman—took considerable time to create. The writers wanted "The Death of Superman" to surprise readers, as they hoped to emphasize that Superman is not invincible and could be killed by something besides Kryptonite.
Chronicling the fallout of Superman's death did not take long, according to Bogdanove. He thought, as "the real meat of the story", it allowed them to accomplish their goal: explaining why the character matters. Ordway recalled the most exciting part for him was exploring what the DC Universe would be like without Superman and had fun writing about other characters' reactions to his death. DC did not intend for Superman's death to be permanent and the teams kept this a secret; they signed non-disclosure agreements preventing them from revealing the character would return. Carlin expected fans to know the death would be temporary, and in 2018 said he still could not believe many did not. However, the teams delayed all Superman comics for three months to create the illusion that he had really been killed because DC's solicitation cycle would have spoiled the resurrection.
[|The media attention] caused Carlin to delay Superman's resurrection beyond The Adventures of Superman #500. Furthermore, the teams knew bringing Superman back in that issue would be illogical and held an emergency summit at a hotel in Tarrytown, New York, where they plotted the final parts of the story. The teams considered bringing Superman back harder than killing him, as they did not want to make fans feel like they had been cheated. They decided to introduce a new version of Superman before bringing back the original, but the writers each had different ideas. Simonson suggested that each writer create their own Superman, which not only solved the problem of what this new character should be like but also let the creative teams have independence after years of forced collaboration. These characters, known as the Supermen, were created using three existing characters and a new one. According to Bogdanove, they used the Supermen to reinforce "what makes Superman so super".
Stern characterized Eradicator as an "Old Testament" Superman who was more alien than human and compared his character to Jack Kirby's Silver Surfer. He wanted the character to be introduced in a way that readers would not be able to tell he was Eradicator until revealed. Karl Kesel conceived Superboy for another series he pitched to editor Karen Berger beforehand and characterized him as "an MTV generation" Superman. Jurgens chose to reintroduce Henshaw, whom he created a few years earlier, with his Cyborg Superman. He hoped to trick readers into thinking Henshaw was the real Superman before revealing him as a villain. Simonson and Bogdanove based Irons, an "everyman as Superman", on the African American folk hero John Henry and the Marvel character Iron Man. Additional replacements, including "Little-Boy Superman" and "Rock-Creature Superman", were created but never used. Even if their original idea was altered, each writer maintained a sense of individuality for their Superman.
The Adventures of Superman #500 was Ordway's last issue on the title, as he wanted to spend time with his family. His contract was supposed to expire with issue #499 but he desired to end his run on a "historical" note. Ordway also hoped to use a character from The Sandman, Death, in issue #500 but was unable to do so because of an editorial mandate barring characters from DC's mature comics line appearing in mainstream books like Superman. Kesel replaced him afterward. Because Jurgens did not want to simply use Superman's classic design when he was revived, he gave him long hair. The teams also deepened the red and blue of Superman's costume to signify that things would not be entirely the same for him. Superman briefly wore a black suit after his revival; this design came from a sketch Bogdanove made at a meeting.