The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special (November 2022)
The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special (November 2022)
We take another chronal jump to the future because we CAN’T not talk about this special, which reads like it was specifically made for us. This 80-page book is made out of four stories by each of the creative teams who worked in the original “Death of Superman” saga back in ‘92 (minus editor Mike Carlin, inkers Denis Rodier and Dennis Janke, letterer John Costanza, and uhhh whoever did the lettercol back then). The stories are:
“The Life of Superman” (by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding)
The first official Jurgens/Breeding joint since… 1999, I think? I didn’t realize how much I missed seeing their combined signature in that little circle; you know the one. This is by far the longest story in the book and, while I enjoyed it a lot, I kinda wish they’d made it shorter so that the others could have more breathing space (especially since the plot will continue in an upcoming miniseries written by Jurgens).
This one is set during the ??th anniversary of Superman’s death, when a now adult Mitch Anderson (you know, the asshole teen who thought Superman was lame until a monster came crashing into his house and he needed someone to save him) visits little Jon Kent’s school to talk about that historic day. This is a cool starting point because it parallels Mitch’s first appearance being forced to sit through a televised Superman interview during class at the start of the “Death” storyline. The main differences are that these kids are much more polite than he was and TVs are way bigger now.
Anyway, Mitch’s story is a huge shock to Jon, since the fact that his dad died and came back to life just never came up at home. Jon is upset with Lois for not telling him, so she spends a few pages recapping the entire “Death” storyline while walking Jon through Centennial Park, where Superman’s empty (or is it????) (yes it is) tomb still stands.
Meanwhile, a mysterious creature has managed to demolish a whole building in Metropolis without anyone seeing it clearly, but reports indicate that it kinda looked like Doomsday. The Kents eventually come face to face with the creature right in front of the Daily Planet building, and it does look a whole lot like Doomsday, only with four arms… and, later on, wings. Jon names it “dOOmbreaker” (that’s how they keep spelling it) but I kinda like his earlier suggestion of “Doomerang” better.
Superman is having a pretty tough time facing Doomerang, since not only is it as strong as Doomsday but it can also evolve and adapt while fighting, instead of having to die first like the original. While Superman fights the monster in front of a crowd of people who are standing way too close (do they want to get good phone pics if he dies again?), Lois goes off to use her journalism powers to find out where the hell it came from. She finds out Doomerang is actually a city worker who helped clean the debris left by the original Doomsday and then took one of his broken spiky bones home as a souvenir. Somehow, the bone has been mutating the guy into another Doomsday for years and conveniently finished the job on the day of Superman’s deathiversary.
Lois brings the bone over to Superman, who decides to destroy it to prevent Doomerang from mutating even further. Blasting the bone with heat vision doesn’t destroy it, but it does turn Doomerang back into a regular person, meaning that Superman manages to end this particular fight without killing the monster OR dying himself. The end! Until that mini I mentioned comes out, I guess, since it’ll probably involve the magic Doomsday-duplicating bone wreaking even more havoc.
“Above and Beyond” (by Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett, and Doug Hazlewood)
The sweetest story in the bunch, which is no surprise given that Ordway was always the best at pulling on our heartstrings. This is about Ma and Pa Kent having an understandably tough time watching their son getting pummeled to death on live TV. In order to take Ma’s mind off the Doomsday fight, Pa pulls out her old scrapbook of Clark’s exploits (which dates back to John Byrne’s Man of Steel #1 in 1986) and they go over some other tough fights Superman has managed to survive. These include his tussle with Metallo in Superman #1…
…and the time he brought down Mongul in Warworld during his exile in space. Yes, THE BEARD IS BACK (along with the skimpy space gladiator outfit).
Superman leading a bunch of DC heroes to fight off Brainiac’s invasion in “Panic in the Sky” also warrants a mention, which leads to has to be the first Agent Liberty cameo in decades. Side note: all due respect to Brad Anderson, who did a great job coloring the first story, but seeing Glenn Whitmore’s colors in this one immediately makes it “feel” more like an authentic '86-'99 comic. (Note: see Don's section below for a different take on Anderson vs. Whitmore.)
Back to the story, Ma reveals that she had a second, secret stash of Superman-related news clippings where she keeps track of the hundreds lives Clark has saved by quietly transporting donated organs across the country (without even charging for it! Hear that, Flash?). The point is that they reflect on how life can come out of death, unaware that that’s literally what’s going to happen to their son pretty soon. A beautiful observation illustrated via pictures of Superman punching villains. What more we possibly could ask for in a Superman story? (Other than it lasting more than 10 pages.)
“Standing Guard” (by Roger Stern and Butch Guice)
The Superman/Doomsday fight retold from the perspective of Project Cadmus’ Guardian, filling in some of the gaps in the story and answering some questions only a massive Superman nerd could have, like “How long did it take Guardian to drop off Maxima at the hospital?” or “When exactly did he pick up Dubbilex?” Luckily, I am a massive Superman nerd, so I loved it.
So, we see Guardian learning about Doomsday’s cross-country rampage and helping Superman in that small town that gets blown up, then in the tree city of Habitat, and then being too late to help him in Metropolis (not that he would have made that much of a difference). The story ends at the morgue where Superman is pronounced dead, when Dubbilex alerts Maggie Sawyer and Dan Turpin that Cadmus’ Director Westfield is coming in to take the body for his experiments and Guardian says he’s not letting that happen.
It didn’t “end there,” as you know (or Superboy wouldn’t exist), but it’s a nice moment. It’s cool that, despite how much Guice’s artwork has changed, this still feels like an Action issue from back in the day. Part of that is that Stern reuses a lot of old dialogue, but it’s also due to his careful attention to detail when it comes to continuity and his knack for keeping characterization consistent – Guardian, Dubbilex, Maggie, and Turpin are straight out of the '90s. Again: I wish this was longer.
“Time” (by Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove)
Finally, this story shows us what John Henry Irons was doing right before and right after Superman’s death. This one takes the opposite approach as the previous story: if Stern and Guice made sure to meticulously dovetail their scenes into existing continuity, Simonson and Bog play fast and loose with it to tell the story they wanna tell. In the old comics, we were told that John was buried under a building while trying to help Superman against Doomsday. This one retcons his origin so that John actually gets to see Superman’s corpse.
This contradicts John’s first appearance in Adventures #500, when he comes out of the rubble days later still thinking he can help Superman stop Doomsday (though he could be excused for being a little confused under the circumstances). However, this retcon provides a pretty strong ending for the story, which is mostly about John trying to reach Doomsday in his single-minded obsession with helping Superman, only to get sidetracked helping people trapped by the destruction in Metropolis. By the time he reaches the front of the Planet building, Superman and Doomsday are already dead. John is devastated, but then he gets up to continue “making a difference” and helping people, setting up the moment when he gets trapped under that rubble.
Yep, that’s the psychic lady who later comes up with the whole “Superman’s spirit possessed John” story; haven’t seen HER in a while. This issue features other long-neglected characters like Keith the unlucky orphan, Myra the orphanage lady, and even Zoid, the kid with the glasses and the camo jacket who gets smoked by a Toastmaster™ in Steel’s debut issue.
Overall, this special is like hanging out with old friends, and I love that it doesn’t shy away from some aspects of the “Death of Superman” saga that usually get retconned away in all the retellings and adaptations. For instance, when Lois tells little Jon that Doomsday defeated the Justice League, we see the actual 1993 JLA including Bloodwynd, Booster Gold, and yellow ring era Guy Gardner, as opposed to Batman and Wonder Woman or something. One of the pinups even shows up long-haired Aussie Lex Luthor Jr., who is not a character DC seems eager to revisit (just because of how confusing he would be to casual readers, I guess).
This is a great labor of love by all involved and I’m glad it exists. However, I do have one major complaint: no Bibbo. 0/10.
And now, WAY more commentary from the great Don Sparrow after the jump!
Art-Watch (by @donsparrow):
We start with the cover, and while I grabbed a few different covers, I think the most standard cover was the one with Jonathan Kent gripping Superman's old cape with an image of Superman grappling with Doomsday set behind him (with further callback scenes on the foldout image). This centre image is a callback to a couple of famous images--of course, this scene is the very first image in the original Superman #75, but also reminded me of the (excessively airbrushed) cover of the Wizard Magazine Tribute Edition. Speaking of colouring, the colour throughout this issue is absolutely stunning, and the combination of the 90s style of art with the three-dimensionality of Brent Anderson's colour is really really appealing.
THE LIFE OF SUPERMAN:
As we move into the story itself, I'm struck with how well the Jurgens/Breeding team can draw these kids looking like actual kids. We've covered it quite a bit in the Byrne era that comic artists can drawn young people as tiny adults, but here, all the students' dimensions and faces seem accurate. There's also a quiet effort at greater diversity among the Metropolis classmates, which is nice to see.
A few pages on, we see the modern Superman for the first time, and it's wild seeing the Super-team of the 90s drawing the costume of the present age. Granted, the changes are small, just the movie-style cuffs, the three-dimensional s-shield, and slightly more angular belt-loops, but it's interesting how familiar and new it feels. I also think Jurgens is drawing Superman to look a little bit older now that he's a father.
A few pages after that, we see Lois for the first time, and unsurprisingly, Dan and Brett draw a great looking Lois Lane. Her outfit in particular says "urban working mom" in a stylish way, and I dig it. I've already mentioned Anderson's colouring, but I can't praise it enough--he treads a fine line, by ameliorating the underlying inks, without over-rendering. He uses largely flat planes of colour, rather than airbrushing every curve, and it's a really nice marriage, the panel of Lois' stray hairs leaving a shadow on her cheek is a great example.
As we intercut between Lois' retelling of the Doomsday storyline, and Superman investigating the new "monster", the fear in Superman's eyes as he recognizes his assailant is really well done. So too is the emotion on Lois' face as she retells the iconic "cape at half-mast" moment.
It's a small thing, but I also like the sartorial choices they make for Clark, when he meets up with his family after Doomsday (somehow) scampers away off camera. Our first glimpse at Doombreaker is a very close recall of a drawing from this same team in the Superman/Doomsday mini (that we should be getting to soon on this very blog!). Superman taking flight to battle Doombreaker is a poster-worthy image (hurt a little bit in my opinion by the random Superman logo dropped in behind him for no reason). There's not a wrong note in this entire portion of the story, so it's hard--I want to highlight all the art! But the final panel of Superman flying away is an all-time great.
And to analyze the story a bit--it's everything I was hoping for. I was surprised to see the young Jonathan in this book, as the near-adult Jonathan has been so front and centre in the modern stories. I'll admit, I missed the dynamic between he and his parents that was done so well by Jurgens, and later Patrick Gleason, so to show this story as a flashback to when Jon learned about what happened to his dad was a really smart way to go. It also seemed like an antidote to the 1990s that brought us the Death storyline. This wasn't a mindless slugfest, and despite the 90s-ness of the name "Doombreaker", Superman didn't solve this fight with brute strength. It took compassion, and investigative reporting on the part of Lois to solve that day's dilemma. Right down to the title, it was an uplifting and hopeful story.
ABOVE AND BEYOND:
We are instantly transported back to the original 1993 story as we see the Kents holding each other in front of the television set. Grummett and Hazlewood certainly have not lost a step, as their art looks as crisp and detailed as all those decades ago. Glenn Whitmore's colours are a bit of a comedown after the Brent Anderson chapter, but not distractingly so. It's fascinating to see Tom's interpretation of so many iconic moments of Superman's career (the Gladiator costume is always a particular highlight because it was such a departure at the time!).
It's a testament to both Jerry Ordway's writing, and Tom Grummett's rendering that this story featuring an elderly couple, and very little non-flashback action threatens to steal the whole book. The performances on the Kents faces tell a story as compelling as any action-adventure yarn, and it's wonderful to read, and a very nice little PSA for organ donation, which is a legitimate way we can save lives through our own death, as Superman did.
STANDING GUARD:
Jackson "Butch" Guice inking himself here, and it's a little scratchier and more textured than we're used to seeing. Still has the long limbed, leanly muscled figures we know from his work, but it's perhaps not as sharp as the work he did on Action Comics, or more recently when he teamed up with Bryan Hitch on a Captain American mini-series, which was some of the best work I've ever seen of his. The faces in particular seem under-drawn a bit, apart from the clearly-based-on-Tommy-Lee-Jones drawing of Dan Turpin.
And as Max pointed out, it seems like an odd choice to leave Bibbo out of a story in which he originally appeared.
TIME:
In a way, this was one of the most essential stories of the book, chronicling the exact first moments after Steel burst out of the ground in the wake of Doomsday's rampage. I had always thought he was under the rubble for days, and only emerged after Superman was already dead, but this new story reveals his full actions that day.
The art is a bit inconsistent, but very Bogdanove. He copies older panels directly, which is effective, but sometimes jarring when they come before and after panels which are inked very differently than Dennis Janke's hatching would have done.
The linework here reminded me of Kyle Baker, with its thin, precise minimalist line. As usual with Simonson and Bogdanove, it's a more ethnically diverse corner of Metropolis, and Bogdanove excels at drawing a variety of facial types. At times the hulking John Henry looks a little wan, which again can be jarring with what we know of Bog's version of the character.
STRAY OBSERVATIONS:
Jurgens' story is just about perfect, in the way that it calls back almost every element of the original Doomsday storyline, starting--as it did in the 90s--with a classroom setting, and students arguing about who's the greatest hero. And how much do you love that Jon isn't embarrassed of his dad, but rather argues he's the greatest? What a kid.
I love Jurgens' writing of Superman and Lois as parents. It's a great moment when Jon voices his displeasure of having to learn about his own father's death, even temporarily, in a classroom. To her credit, Lois immediately cops to the fact that they didn't handle that properly, and apologizes. It's the right move, and it's great to see.
If I have one quibble about the art in the Jurgens' story, it would be the lettering. I found the clearly-computerized font for the word "Doombreaker" to not look great in the panel, especially how often it was repeated, and some sound effects are handled better than others. The "Brakka-chak!" when Doombreaker shoves Superman into a building looks ok, but the "swit swit swit" earlier in the story where Doombreaker spins Superman by his cape just looks so computer-y and tacked on (besides being an odd transliteration--I kinda want to believe that it's an excited USO show awaiting MASH star Loretta, chanting in anticipation). But seriously, I do miss the feel of hand-lettered sound effects.
My personal favourite moment is perhaps a weird one, but I'll explain! My son's name is Donovan, and since he was a little tyke, we have always called him "Dono" for short. So it was very cool to see Jimmy Olsen calling Jonathan Kent "Jonno" for short.
Not to nerd out, but honestly, what do you expect at this point?--there are a couple factual errors within this issue. One is in the first story, where Superman says it's new for Doomsday to "speed-evolve" as Doombreaker does. But Doomsday did the exact same thing in 1994's Hunter/Prey mini-series, as he speed-grew new bones to cover his ear canals, and also his knuckle bone spurs became weird ropes at one point. What gives, man? Also, in the John Henry Irons story, they erroneously have John giving Lois credit for naming Doomsday. But the first person to call him Doomsday was Booster Gold. Maybe John means she first used it in print? [Max: I took it as John simply not knowing Booster used the name first… though, if Lois used it in print and didn't specifically credit its creator, knowing Booster, she's got a lawsuit in her hands.]
GODWATCH: Been a while since I've focused on the faith elements in these stories, but this issue has plenty. First, when Lois tries to warn Superman, she invokes prayer. Then in the story with the Kents, their mention of sacrificial love read to me like a Christian concept, and Lee Weeks pinup literally references the cross.
CLAY MANN PINUP:
Anyone who reads this blog even semi-regularly knows I'm something of a connoisseur of "Lois-looking-great" art. As he showed in the Tom King Batman run, when Superman and Lois went on a double date with Catwoman and Batman (one of the best comics of the last ten years, if you haven't read it!), Clay Mann draws a stunning, but realistically proportioned, Lois Lane. Clark's tailoring is decidedly 90s, but it's a corker of an image, and my second favourite of the bunch.
LEE WEEKS PINUP:
An absolute stunner from one of my favourite artists and comic people. The big red cape reminds me of a Bill Sienkiewicz piece, but it has that naturalistic, brushy feel of all of Lee Weeks work. Great concept, great layout and great drawing. My favourite of the bunch, actually.
WALT SIMONSON PINUP:
Unmistakably Simonson's linework, with Laura Martin's colours just lending a little bit of extra texture. While Simonson's looking a bit looser than other days, it's still a strong piece, even if I've never liked the ram-horned look on Doomsday.
FABIO MOON PINUP:
Naturally, Moon's quirky style is going to be a departure from the dynamic realism we expect from Superman comics, but the style matches the mood very well, here. The concept of Jimmy using his signal watch for a Superman who will never come is a great and sad idea. I do find the unidentified extra Planet staffers a bit distracting, though. That might be Ron Troupe with his blazer over his shoulder (I guess his "JAM" sweatshirt was in the laundry), and the mustachioed fellow could be Steve Lombard, as drawn in Superman stories from much later than the death storyline. The other two ladies? Not sure. Maybe Alice and Cat Grant? Or is it Daphne and Velma. But the fact that I'm debating about it shows that maybe they could have been left out. [Max: That's definitely Alice for me, and therefore Cat next to hear because it's just be weird to have an extra random person.]
BILL SEINKIWEICZ PINUP:
There's Bill himself! He is such a master of energetic and photorealistic artwork that I have to wonder if he had someone dress up as Doomsday for this shot. Another interesting artistic take.
GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ PINUP:
A great circular layout, bringing the eye into the centre (and Superman's face) both with the framing of Doomsday, and also the muted colours at the edges. Managing to include Jimmy and Lois is just the icing on the cake. Great.
JAMAL CAMPBELL PINUP:
Another powerful, if simple image, with Lois' grief front and centre, and the "Reign" storyline that followed behind her. My only quibble is I prefer drawn lettering rather than computer fonts, but that's a minor one.
CARMINE DI GIANDOMENICO PINUP:
I quite like the Superman movie inspired crystals as a motif, and the layout is well designed. Doomsday looks frightening, which is a strange contrast from the placid expression on Superman's face. Buuuuuut, I have a few issues here. Generally, I think computer artwork can make an artist a bit lazier, and we see that here. The arms are literal mirrors of each other, which just feels a bit unnecessarily hurried. And one of my major pet peeves of the modern era is artists refusing to draw the actual Superman logo onto the figure. Here it is slapped on (with at least some colouring to denote his chest muscles) in my opinion too high onto the uniform. Lastly the planet Earth behind him (another thing modern artists often skip drawing) is not even a high-resolution image, and you can see the jagginess even in print.
CULLY HAMNER PINUP:
In my top three of these pinups easily, it's exactly what I want from a pinup--seeing familiar and beloved characters from the story, looking as they did in the original story, but interpreted in the signature style of the artist. Terrific sense of motion here with unique, blocky colours in that Hamner style. Love it.
On the whole, I was surprised and pleased with how worthwhile the issue was.