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Post by jason on May 30, 2023 18:10:11 GMT -5
What did you think of the whole Death of Superman story? While I'll admit the initial Doomsday fight went on way too long, I did like the whole Funeral For A Friend arc, and Reign of the Supermen did have the epic feel that it needed and helped expand the DC Universe. On the other hand, I can also see where some saw it as a cynical cash-grab to get some more attention to a character (and arguably, a company) who was slowly sinking in popularity.
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Post by codystarbuck on May 30, 2023 20:54:41 GMT -5
I knew going into it he wasn't dead and the Death part was just a big slugfest, that got progressively worse. Funeral For a Friend was where the stories were at and most of that was very good. The only thing I liked about Reign of the Supermen was the new Superboy. That was good stuff. the rest was anti-climactic and I hated the damn mullet.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2023 21:05:50 GMT -5
It's what really got me into comics when I was small...I saw the promo on Sci-Fi channel and my dad took me to the comic store. He knew the owner well so I got a copy from the stash that was siphoned away.
But even as a little girl I thought Superman was a moron. You keep punching Doomsday with ineffective punches and hope to stop him? Why not just kick him in his Doomsday balls? Or take other drastic action....you don't play nice in a street fight. But then again we're dealing with Superdork.
Wow....it's been 30 years.....one of the first comics I ever ordered through the mail from East Coast Comics was the shiny green cover of Superman 82 (when he returns)....
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Post by DubipR on May 30, 2023 21:35:37 GMT -5
Yeah, I knew it was sales gimmick that the wouldn't kill Superman, but the event and press that brought in people to pick up comics to think they're going to sell it and give their kids college tuition was always amusing. I was 17 when the book came and was voraciously reading Superman since Crisis. The Triangle Era of Superman was some of the most fun Superman books and the best since the 60s.
The story was okay, but it was a great read. I'm happy that Kesel and Grummett created the new Superboy and spun that off into a fun run. Same with Louise Simonson and John Bogdanove with Steel. What should've been a terrible aftermath yielded positive characters and now legacy characters themselves. That's a win.
And yes, I liked the long hair Superman. At least they didn't change his costume *cough*JimLeesterribledesign*cough cough*
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Post by berkley on May 30, 2023 21:59:28 GMT -5
It pretty much passed me by, but I imagine it must have worked as a marketing gimmick because I somehow heard about it even though I wasn't aware of what was going on with superhero comics in general at the time, not reading any news or even looking at the covers on the stands.
Creatively, I'm not enough of a fan of the Superman character to have a strong opinion but I'd say it could have been a good idea in theory if, say, it had made Doomsday into an enemy Superman couldn't defeat, or at least not with his usual method of superior force - something like how Mangog or the Destroyer is for Thor, for instance. My impression is that that hasn't happened but I don't really know one way or the other from my own reading experience.
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2023 22:11:51 GMT -5
Yeah, I knew it was sales gimmick that the wouldn't kill Superman, but the event and press that brought in people to pick up comics to think they're going to sell it and give their kids college tuition was always amusing. I was 17 when the book came and was voraciously reading Superman since Crisis. The Triangle Era of Superman was some of the most fun Superman books and the best since the 60s. The story was okay, but it was a great read. I'm happy that Kesel and Grummett created the new Superboy and spun that off into a fun run. Same with Louise Simonson and John Bogdanove with Steel. What should've been a terrible aftermath yielded positive characters and now legacy characters themselves. That's a win. And yes, I liked the long hair Superman. At least they didn't change his costume *cough*JimLeesterribledesign*cough cough* I was freshly graduated university in '91 and had started picking up the Superman books again after I graduated, so I had been buying for about half a year when the hype started building for the Death. I liked the story well enough, but thought Doomsday a bit one note and boring, but I really liked what they did in Funeral for a Friend examining what Superman meant and in the Return of Superman storyline which I really enjoyed at the time. It had enough momentum that I kept up with the triangle era stuff until the Red/Blue storyline which is when I dropped it and that was the last time I read Superman regularly. I've dipped a toe in here and there since, but never stayed long. So for me, I enjoyed it at the time, have some fond memories of it, but don't have a real strong desire to revisit it at the moment (who knows I may someday). I also enjoyed the animated adaptation of it they did a couple years back, felt it captured a lot of what appealed to me in reading the story initially. Now, today, the idea of reading such a tightly wrapped continuity for one character over four books with rotating creative teams is dreadfully unappealing, but at the time, yeah I was on board. -M |
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Post by Slam_Bradley on May 30, 2023 22:14:40 GMT -5
I try not to think about it.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 30, 2023 22:17:42 GMT -5
I'm going to have a lot of thoughts on this when my review thread finally gets there (I'm planning on resuming it and making it top priority in July). I've never read Reign of the Superman, Funeral for a Friend, nor the return/mullet era, but I read the Doomsday storyline and, while it absolutely felt forced and silly (Prof. Emil should have been able to work out a solution in three issues or less), the ending to #75 brings water to my eyes every damn time. To quote myself discussing my #1 pick for the 2021 Classic Comics Christmas (favorite comic book couples): Three decades later, couples are still struggling to find this ideal balance that Ordway, Stern, and Jurgens seemed to write so effortlessly. If you were there, you couldn't help but feel it. And, if you weren't, then I can understand why the later Death of Superman felt only like the cheap stunt that it was, with no meaning nor resonance attached to it. For me, having been there in awe of this perfect couple, this final page can't help but induce profound pathos literally every time I see it (including now):  You knew he was coming back. We all knew he was coming back. But watching this moment, Lois comforting him and being his rock one last time, it was devastating. No one told her that this was only a stunt, after all, and I was more concerned for what would happen to her than for what a world without a Superman would look like. |
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Post by chadwilliam on May 30, 2023 23:08:34 GMT -5
I was 13 and bought these as they came out. I liked the build up to issue 75 - the decision to have the final four (?) issues of the story (not that it really was much of a story - more of a prolonged wrestling match) feature progressively less panels on each page (three panels for the third last issue, two for the second) was a clever and, I think, effective one, but man, was issue 75 a letdown. One of the first times that I realized that a comic could be bad (yeah, I was easily pleased in those days). Other than Todd McFarlane's Spider-Man #1, I don't think I had ever read a comic where I didn't get something out of it, but this was just splash page after splash page of Superman punching Doomsday, Doomsday punching Superman, until finally, Doomsday and Superman punch each other simultaneously and they fall down dead. I genuinely suspect that that ending wasn't thought of until the storyline had begun and at some point, someone said, "So Doomsday's going to kill Superman, right?" "That's right." "OK, but... what happens next?", "Nothing - Superman's dead. What do you mean happens next?" "Well, I mean... who stops Doomsday then?" "...aw crap". That whole "They just coincidentally happen to deliver the killing blow at the exact same moment" ending probably got me out of buying new comics at least five years earlier than I otherwise would have - it was just so dumb.
I did like Funeral for a Friend, but lost interest when the four Supermen showed up pretty fast. The Mullet era has got to be the absolute nadir of the character - as hideous and stupid then as it would be today.
I still feel that Superman #75 was a turning point - three million copies sold (what I heard at the time) and you couldn't even read it unless you wanted to tear open your soon to be most valuable comic in the universe. Could you imagine if DC had put their top writers on this and skipped the sealed bag gimmick? People who hadn't read a comic in years would be reading this thing and you've got to imagine that more than a few would have been saying, "Heeyyyy, you know this is actually pretty intelligently written. Maybe comics isn't just dumb entertainment for kids." Isn't that what DC had been attempting since Watchmen? Convince adults that comics could be for them too? Here DC finally had adults scooping up this comic and all they were getting was "RRAAAAGGHHHHH!!", "UNGH!!", "RRRAAAAAGGGHHHH!!!"
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Post by Deleted on May 30, 2023 23:22:59 GMT -5
I missed out on the actual "Death of" issues when they came out but did buy the trade paperback at Barnes & Noble. They had put a small sports card shop in the local grocery store and the manager had started stocking comics. It was nice because I could browse while my mom did the shopping. I wasn't 100% back into collecting comics full time yet but I grabbed all four first Reign of Supermen issues and read them. I never got around to buying or reading the follow-up issues though. A couple years later, when I was fully back into collecting and reading comics, I bought the Reign of the Supermen trade at a used bookstore and finally finished that particular story. The local library did get the audiobook of Roger Stern's Life and Death of Superman novel, so that was the first place where I probably got the complete story. Someday I will get back around to re-reading the whole thing, I got the nice new trade paperback of the Death of Superman from DC Universe for subscribing to the Ultra Infinite tier. I really want to read the lead up this time instead of going in cold.
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Post by Deleted on May 31, 2023 4:57:02 GMT -5
I did enjoy Funeral for a Friend.
I know DC wasn’t making comics for me, but in an ideal world, a 4-issue story would have sufficed. I did like 95% of the art, though.
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Post by Icctrombone on May 31, 2023 5:43:20 GMT -5
That event got me back into seriously buying comics again. I was still getting a hand full of titles but my interest was waining. I'll admit to thinking that they might really kill Superman and keep him dead. It was an exciting time. What followed was the explosion of Superhero titles from every publisher and I was totally in , buying every universe from Malibu to Dark Horses Comics greatest world.
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Post by badwolf on May 31, 2023 5:54:02 GMT -5
I knew it wasn't going to be "real" so I ignored it entirely.
I wasn't buying superheroes then, anyway.
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Post by zaku on May 31, 2023 7:03:26 GMT -5
How long was he "dead"? Both in real life and "in-universe"? (I know that this last one is more complicated to establish...)
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 31, 2023 7:06:15 GMT -5
Could you imagine if DC had put their top writers on this and skipped the sealed bag gimmick? People who hadn't read a comic in years would be reading this thing and you've got to imagine that more than a few would have been saying, "Heeyyyy, you know this is actually pretty intelligently written. Maybe comics isn't just dumb entertainment for kids." I would argue that Stern, Ordway, and Jurgens were some of DC's top writers at the time, and certainly the ones most qualified to tackle the death of Superman. They'd been churning out unbagged quality product for three years by this point, but the readers were slipping away in favor of flashy, gimmicky, big splash page comics without substance, so they finally decided to try playing the same game. I agree that the ending was convenient, but I still found it immensely touching. Maybe the death was tacky, but the implications of the death were handled with immense taste. |
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