Action Comics #595 (December 1987)
Action Comics #595 (December 1987)
Here it is, finally. The Death of Superman. When the Justice League can’t defeat a murder machine called Doomsday, Superman must…
Oh, wait, no, it’s not that Death of Superman. In this case, Superman is “killed” by Silver Banshee, a villain from Scotland (or Ireland, one of those) who has been going around Metropolis trashing occult bookstores and murdering people with her voice. When Superman tries to stop her, Banshee uses her powers on him and he just drops dead right there.
Superman’s corpse is put in a glass tomb, just like his idol Vladimir Lenin… and then, also like Lenin, Superman’s ghost emerges from his mortal remains and vows to continue his fight against crime. Superghost confronts Silver Banshee, but this time she can’t hurt him with her powers – in fact, she screams until she explodes.
At this point the ruse is revealed: Superman was never dead (he simply “fell into a deep coma” for a while) and Superghost was actually this month’s surprise action guest star… J'onn J'onnz, the Martian Manhunter! J'onn’s powers allow him to change shape and phase through objects, so it was pretty easy to impersonate Superman’s spirit in order to defeat Silver Banshee (whose death-scream only works if she knows the identity of the person she wants to kill). By that logic J'onn could have defeated her by pretending to be Al Roker, but whatever.
Character-Watch:
It’s never explained who Silver Banshee is or what she was looking for in those bookstores, but she’ll be back soon enough to clear everything up and later become a sort of anti-hero (despite having killed several people in this issue).
Plotline-Watch:
This issue takes place right after Adventures #435, so it’s explained that no one worried about where Clark Kent was while Superman was “dead” because Clark was still recovering from that race car accident. Meanwhile, Maggie Sawyer’s little daughter who went missing in Superman #10 still doesn’t show up. Other plots:
Manhunters in Smallville: At the end of the issue we see a bunch of shady people lamenting that Superman wasn’t really dead, because he could “interfere with their plan.” Then we see that one of those people is… Lana Lang?! I never saw that coming from all the foreshadowing in the past few issues!
Death-Watch: This is a silly issue for sure, but I kinda like that John Byrne got to do his own version of Death of Superman: we see Lois’ anguished reaction, the stunned response of the other superheroes, the funeral, and even Luthor throwing a hissy fit because he’s not the one who killed Superman. All those things will happen again when the actual death storyline rolls around. It’s too bad they didn’t save that funky glass tomb for when he dies for real.
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