Superman Special #1 (1992)
Superman Special #1 (1992)
Superman vs. Sandman! No, not that Sandman. Or that one. This Sandman is a duplicate of Superman created after the explosion of a laboratory where Lex Luthor (Sr., since this story is set a few years back) was trying to create artificial kryptonite. At first, it looks like the project was a complete waste for Luthor…
…but then Sandman emerges from the site of the explosion, and starts stealing Superman's powers one by one. Luthor, of course, is a big fan of Sandman and convinces him that he has to kill Superman to fully become him. It kinda helps that Sandman is in tremendous pain at all times, though that's never an excuse to be a jerk to people, kids.
Superman is eventually left completely powerless thanks to Sandman and the machinations of Luthor. Luckily, Jimmy Olsen and the Newsboy Legion happened to be dicking around the site of their fight, so Superman hijacks their Whiz Wagon and flies off to his Fortress of Solitude. Sandman follows Superman into the Fortress and beats the crap out of him, seemingly killing him. At this point, Sandman sees Superman's "corpse" and, having fully become him by now, remembers “he" had made an oath never to take a life.
The anguish causes Sandman to self-destruct in another big-ass explosion, just as Superman (who was playing dead, naturally) had planned. With his powers restored, Superman goes make fun of Luthor for a while and reaffirms his promise never to kill another living being.
Unless they're big, ugly monsters with spiky bones coming out of their bodies.
Creator-Watch:
This special was written and drawn by the amazing Walt Simonson, who was a HUGE influence on this era of Superman comics. When he was writing and drawing Thor in the early ‘80s, Simonson became one of the first creators to consistently lay out plotlines that stretched out for very long periods of time, which allowed him to do some really cool stuff. For instance, over the first year of Simonson's Thor, we'd get mysterious pages showing the demon Surtur forging a sword… which produced the sound effect "DOOM."
Notice how the amount of panels decreases in each issue, counting down to the climax of the story? What a neat narrative trick. The Surtur pages then became full-page teasers that went at the end of each issue – hmmm, where have I seen that technique before? Beyond that, I think the art of Jon Bogdanove in particular owes a lot to Walt Simonson, as you can hopefully see in this totally random sequence where Nick Fury is trying to convince Thor that a pair of glasses can be an effective way of hiding his identity, and he bumps into some dork:
Oh, and I guess it's possible Louise Simonson has been influenced by the guy too, since they're married and all.
Plotline-Watch:
This issue has one of the most awesome openings of any Superman comic ever: Superman flies into the Fortress of Solitude, starts smashing some rocks, and eventually we see he's making a statue of General Zod, Zaora and Quex-Ul (the super-criminals he killed in Superman #22) with the inscription: "SUPERMAN WILL FOREVER BE THE CHAMPION OF LIFE AND NEVER ITS DESTROYER, AS LONG AS HE WALKS THE GREEN HILLS OF EARTH." At first it seems a little random, until Sandman sees the statue at the end and has his breakdown.
This story is very obviously set a few years before the current comics (Lois doesn't know Clark's secret, Luthor is a pudgy bald guy, etc.) because it was originally a intended as an annual back in the late ‘80s. By the time Simonson finished it, DC was doing the whole Eclipso thing with the annuals, so they just put it out as a special – which was appropriate, since this is a remake of a "special" issue from 1971 (that's where the "needs salt" scene comes from).
I remember driving myself crazy trying to figure out where exactly this comic should go in the chronology when I bought it as a teenager: Jimmy isn't mad at Superman, which happened in Superman #39, but this story couldn't have happened before that because Jimmy met the Newsboy Legion in Superman #43. So maybe it happened after Jimmy forgave Superman around Superman #47… but Lois and Clark were officially a couple by then, and they're clearly not that intimate in this story. Eventually I just said "screw it" and started organizing my comics by publication date. Yeah, I was a fun teen.
BS-Watch:
There's an interesting theory that this special was meant to be an "escape clause" for Death of Superman: supposedly, DC planned to reveal that the Superman who flies off at the end of the issue was actually Supersandman, and it's him who eventually gets killed by Doomsday (oh shit! SPOILERS!), allowing the real Superman to come back. But, someone asked Walt Simonson and nope. Considering how it went when the Spider-Man writers tried something similar, that's probably for the best.