Superman: The Death Of Superman TPB Review

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Reviewer: Jesse Baker
Story Title: Doomsday: The Death of Superman

Written by: Dan Jurgens, Jerry Ordway, Roger Stern, Louise Simonson
Penciled by: Dan Jurgens, Jon Bogdanove, Tom Grummett, Jackson Guice
Inked by: Brett Breeding, Rick Burchett, Doug Hazlewood, Dennis Janke, and Denis Rodier
Colored by: NA
Lettered by: NA
Editor: NA
Publisher: DC Comics

In the early 1990s, Marvel had the double juggernaut of The X-Men and Spiderman leading them to record breaking sales and Image Comics, with it’s stable of top Marvel Artists, were revolutionizing the comic industry in terms of bringing in new readers with their slick, eye candy artwork and bigger than life named talent. DC on the other hand was in the creative toilet. Their top titles from the 1980s (New Teen Titans and Swamp Thing) had fallen from grace do to idiotic editorial actions. The Justice League had been handed over to Dan Jurgens, who promptly alienated the book’s entire fanbase by dropping the humor aspect of the book and playing the characters straight with disastrous results. The Legion of Super-Heroes was caught in a nasty war between Keith Giffen and his editor over the direction of the book. And Lobo was being rammed down everyone’s throats to the point that whatever coolness the character had was long gone.

The only books DC had that were going anywhere was the Batman books, which were still riding high do to the success of the Batman film franchise and the introduction of Tim Drake as the new Robin, and Sandman, which was bringing in ton of legitimate press praise. DC had nothing else going for them, even when they launched their much hyped “Mature Audience” line of comics called Vertigo (which was DC simply slapping a new label on their existing “Mature Audience” comic series). However they had one ace in the hole, so to speak: the long awaited marriage of Lois Lane and Clark Kent.

In Superman #50, Clark Kent finally proposed to longtime girlfriend Lois Lane and in Action Comics #662, Clark revealed to Lois the fact that he was Superman at long last. The overall plan was for Superman #75 to be the long awaited marriage that was over 50 years in the making with it getting a massive promotional push.

That was until fate stepped in.

The Big Three network ABC had announced that they signed the deal to air a new live-action Superman series called “Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman”. This new series would chronicle the relationship between Lois and Clark as they first meet, fall in love, and deal with Clark’s secret identity of Superman hampering their relationship. DC Comics were told that the planned wedding storyline had to be halted, because of a strangely illogical belief that such an event would hurt the television show’s success and turn off potential viewers. So the wedding was delayed (but not aborted) and a new storyline was needed. The solution to their problem was cold and brutal and would set off a chain of events that would revitalize Superman and set off a chain of events that would revolutionize DC Comics in the process.

The Story

A creature wearing a full body garbage bag-type suit, arm restraint, and goggles has escaped from an underground prison and has gone onto a killing spree the likes of which no one has seen in ages. The Justice League (consisting of third-stringers Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, Fire, Ice, Guy Gardner, Maxima, and a disguised Martian Manhunter) arrive to stop him only to be beaten to an inch of their collective lives. When they call upon Superman to save them, the murderous monster (named “Doomsday” by Booster Gold) takes the fight to Superman and engages Superman in a brawl-to-end-all-brawls that rages across country and ends in Metropolis. In his home city, Superman must make a last desperate stand against the murderous force of nature that is Doomsday.

Boiled down to it’s basics, “The Death of Superman” is essentially one big brawl to the death between Superman and Doomsday, a villain created to provide the Superman writers with a physical equal for Superman to fight in his mostly intellectual-themed Rogue Gallery. If you are looking for a deep philosophical “death of a titan”-type story, you should go pick up Alan Moore’s “Miracleman” or Jim Starlin’s “The Life and Death of Captain Marvel” trade paperback. This is mindless death and violence in the same vein as Warren Ellis’s “Authority” but without the pseudo-intellectual posturing that Ellis’s “Authority” had.