Five “Death of Superman” Stories

 

So as I’ve talked about a million times, The Death of Superman was part of an awesome storyline that I still love. The amazing thing was that not only did the death stick (for a time) but it wasn’t brought on by magic or Kryptonite. It was Superman literally fighting the monster to death! Nice to see the creators fight convention though you could argue that is even more preposterous.

Now of course, killing of Superman wasn’t THAT radical an idea. It’s been done before. What made this one work was the direction they took it. But I thought it would be fun today to talk about the other times in comics when Superman “died”. Now often it doesn’t get past a cover gag like these images :

Other times, the story will literally kill him. Only to either have it be undone or make it an “imaginary” story. But it seems real as we get a funeral and the works.

Here are five times Superman literally kicked the bucket (or at least seemed to).





Superman #149

I read this in the “Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told” trade and I have no idea why its there. Ok, let me start at the beginning. Back in the olden days DC would have “imaginary stories” where the creators did what they wanted with no ties to continuity. Sort of the precursor to Elseworld’s. In this Luthor appears to reform, until he double crosses Superman and literally kills him. We see him turn green from kryptonite poisoning and DIE. Man was this a depressing read! Of course it was fake, and written by Jerry Siegel himself so make of that what you will. Elsworld’s stories are famous for killing off as many regular characters they can, and Superman has died in lots of them from “Earth’s End” to “Kingdom”.








Justice League of America #145

Here’s a dark JLA issue, how else would you describe and issue beginning with Superman being killed on the JLA satellite! No funeral but we do get a seance. It’s The Phantom Stranger who is able to contact Superman’s spirit which tells they need to go to the Carnival of Souls in Vermont. Long story short the good guys win and Superman is brought back to life in the end. It’s a decent issue worth a read.





Superfriends, “The Death of Superman”

I talked before about the DC animated movie “Doomsday” where Superman is killed by Doomsday as he was in the comics. However, years before that we had another Superman death. Again by kryptonite poisoning. Though this one was a fake out in the end, we did think he was really dead in he episode there was even a funeral. After Darkseid confirms it he invades Earth, only for the back to life Superman to save the day. This is one of the few episodes you can still find on YouTube so check it out. There are other episodes from DC animated shows but I’m not familiar with those.






Action Comics #595

This is one of my favorite Superman comics ever. In this mystery team up we see Superman apparently killed by The Silver Banshee, and then appear to come back as a ghost! We get some good reactions (especially Luthor who is PISSED because Superman was to die by his hand) and even a funeral. This was the first appearance of the Banshee who has gone on to be a pretty popular Superman villain. In the end Superman wasn’t dead it was just a deep coma, but who was the mystery guest who saved the day? Nah, hunt down the issue and check it out. You can be as pleasantly surprised as I was.





Superman #52

So when the New 52 sucked one of the biggest things that sucked about it was the stupid version of Superman they created. What to do? Well DC decided the wises thing was to kill off the new version and replace him with the pre-New 52 version. Still with me? It gets more confusing. After he absorbed energy from the fire pits of Apokolips and exposed himself to massive amounts of Kryptonite to try and get his lost powers back, he suffered lethal Kryptonite poisoning and just…died. Yeah, no fanfare or anything it was pretty low key. How did the pre-Crisis Superman return? It had to do with the Convergence event and I still don’t really get it.







So here is an issue I have put of discussing, where he ALMOST died :

I’ve talked about Alan Moore but never really discussed this issue. In it, Superman is exposed to a rare spore and comes down with Scarlett Fever. He gets deathly sick and prepares for his final fate. That’s where Swamp Thing comes in, who nurses Superman back to health. It’s a fantastically written story (trust me it’s better than I am making it sound) as you’d expect from Moore. Who also did the “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow” but there his death his ambiguous so I decided not to mention it.





and of course I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the latest death of Superman on screen….

What can I say about Batman V Superman? Killing Superman so quick was lame and unnecessary. Especially so soon, and that Doomsday was awful. The funeral scene was pretty well handled however. At least he came back in Justice League.










Finally, a quick mention of a story I did not cover last month. Because it was mostly a giant miss for me. It wasn’t Superman who died this time…


Sort of. A former Smallvile friend discovers the secret and Superman abandons his identity as Clark to protect everyone. It was a bad story and better left forgotten.

 

There are more than these five, these are just the one’s I am familiar with. And yes I know about the Masters of the Universe crossover. Comment and let me know, did I miss one you think should be on here?