With the new Superman movie pretty much around the corner, I thought I would do some Superman centric recommendations.
First up, is what I consider to probably be one of the best Superman storylines of all time: The Death of Superman.
This one gets overlooked because when we talk about the Death of Superman, we then talk about the insane hype around it, as well as the comic book crash that occurred shortly thereafter. But let that not deter you, because when you get into this thing, it is an incredible story that is absolutely action packed.
And when you look inside, every artist, and I do mean EVERY artist was flexing hard. Jon Bogdanove, inked by Dennis Janke; Dan Jurgen, inked by Rick Burchett (on Justice League America) and inked by Brett Breeding (on Superman); Tom Grummett inked by Doug Hazlewood; Jackson Guice inked by Denis Rodier. The whole thing is incredibly beautiful.
And even though it is a Superman centric title and probably the most famous Superman events of all time, the impact of this would not have been possible without the other super-heroes who make an apperance.
Doomsday basically destroys Justice League International. In particular he absolutely pummels Guy Gardner, Booster Gold, and Blue Beetle. It was the latter that made my heart skip a beat when I read it for the first time.
With Doomsday wiping out the Justice League, you know he was a threat. And each artist could depict those epic punches and hits that were thrown by Superman and Doomsday. Jurgens made the windows on the Daily Planet shatter in the concluding issue, Superman #75. And I always cry when I reach the last page. Seriously. Every. Single. Time. This thing brought everyone’s A-game and it still holds up.
As of today you can find literally thousands of iterations of this. The best way of course is to collect all 8 issues that also crossed over in Justice League America at the time. But you can also find tons of collected versions in both trade paperback and hardcover format.
Seriously, I love this epic event and so far, in my honest opinion, it has yet to be faithfully adopted into television, movie, or video form.
Tschüss,
Franka