Superheroes dies so commonly in modern comics that the shtick has lost its potency. Everyone dies, only to be be reborn, revived, or revised, or all three. When Bucky Barnes returned at the Winter Soldier, the notion that a comic book character could die for all time died with his revival. One of the most famous superhero sagas ever was the death of Superman from the 90's. So a humble one-issue story by Jerry Seigel, Curt Swan and Stan Kaye titled "The Death of Superman!" has little power today. But in the Silver Age maybe it might still carry some weight, although as an "Imaginary Novel" its impact is limited of course.
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| Not this death -- an earlier one. |
I liked this one a lot, but mostly because it vindicated Superman's scheme to hold Supergirl back as a secret reserve. She proved to be the unknowable element which Luthor could not account for and proved herself to be a worthy successor to her cousin. Seeing Supergirl as Earth's one and only Kryptonian defender (aside from the dog of course) at the story's end was a mighty satisfying sight, even if it was only for this one-shot imaginary tale. That's the kind of emotional punch these kinds of offbeat yarns were created for.
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I also remember a Wayne Boring illustrated tale of Superman dying. In fact, I think he died (or appeared to) a few times during the '50s & '60s. (Or am I imagining it?)
ReplyDeleteNot at all. One of the first Superman tales I actually bought to read had his elaborate funeral which ended with him being injected into the sun I think, which ended up curing him. I might have that wrong. But it was a commonplace.
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At the same time as this comic was being prepared, Adolph Eichmann was being tried for Nazi war crimes and it was televised to the point that Eichmann's calm demeanor, sitting in his bulletproof cubicle, became iconic. The image was duplicated when Luthor was listening to the testimony against him and I remember Eichmann's name being invoked when Lex got sentenced.
ReplyDeleteIt was quite a tear-jerker for a Superman comic; Seigel pushed every emotional button to convey a sense of heavy elegy. It felt monumental to me when I experienced it as a kid, and it must have been a huge hit, because about 6 issues later they published "The Last Days of Superman", which contrived a way for Superman to be convinced he was slowly dying, and did a good job of showing how heroic he could be, trying to do what he could for the world at his finish and facing death with a sober fatalism.
I wonder too if the writers at DC were facing their own mortality. The comics sometimes reflect what is going on in the lives of their creators, at least in the broad thematic way.
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Spoiler: Lex thinks that no one can stop him with Superman dead. But this was before Supergirl's assistance was known to the world. So Supergirl snatches Lex up and he is put on trial. This issue has stuck with me possibly like no other except possibly the stories Alan Moore wrote for conclusion of the original
ReplyDeleteseries that killed off most of Superman's enemies.
As to another death of Superman story that Kid September might have been referring to, there was an issue where Superman was snatched out of time before his death and shown clones of him that had also died over the centuries. They were about to send him back in time to die to preserve the time line and Superman didn't want to die and fought the process. The scientists started shouting facts about historical figures that had died and their facts were all screwed up. So Superman returns and survives then realizes that the reason the scientists were wrong about history was that he had been taken to a different dimension with a different time line and wasn't destined to die in his dimension at that time.