20 Years Ago Today: The Death of Superman

[The Toyroom]

All this Same Crap Didn't sit well with me with Bane Too. That 1 was worse for me. I really took that Hard, And Never really bought a Batman Book again , outside of The Elseworld Graphic Novels , Till Jim Lee and Loeb Did Hush.

Yeah I felt that "Knightfall" wasn't as good as "The Death of Superman"....I didn't care for Bane either (still don't to this day) and the Azrael/Az-Bats follow-up was just horrible IMO. Batman had previously taken down a slew of rogues twice before in "Detective" #526 and then again in "Batman" #400 and didn't (pardon the pun) bat an eye. But because Bane breaks open Arkham and Blackgate were supposed to believe that he's too exhausted to defend himself against a back-breaker?

[palitoy]

I went to a "special midnight event" with a friend to pick up copies of Knightfall. That time I just went along for company. I went from 7 books a month in 1990/1991 to zero in 1993/94.

[ctc]

Hmmmm.... "Knightfall."

Another non-event. I remember that one too. Again; it's not a bad story.... and the kind of thing that'd been done before.... but the hype WAY outpaced the comic. The late 80's/early 90's designer comic fad had played out by then, as the zillion holo-chrome covers scared off the speculators. I think the non-events did in a lot of the actual readers of the time. (All three of them! *rimshot*) We'd seen the death of.... retirement of.... discreditiong of.... superheroes a LOT over the years; and the guilty secret the long term fans kept was that NONE of it was permanent. You read it, moved on, etc. (Did anyone REALLY think Steve was gonna give up being Cap? Maybe in the 70's with Nomad, maybe even in the 80's with the USAgent thing, probably not in the 00's when he "died"....) But the hype over the non-events seemed.... insulting, maybe? "No! This time Batman REALLY IS going away!!!!"

I can't think of a single person at the time who COULDN'T guess the ENTIRE plot, just from the ad.

I think during that time comics stooped being fun, and were becoming a chore; considering all the tie-in books you needed to snag to get the whole story. Crisis (the original one *sigh*) kinda started that, but you didn't NEED those tie-ins to get the basic story, whereas starting with the Death of Superman thing you needed to pick up three or four different series just for the core story. I think that turned off a lot of readers too; especially those who reserved books at the comic shop, since they might not know which books to reserve ahead of time.

Don C.

[Earth 2 Chris]

Knightfall had it's moments, but it depended on the faulty notion of Batman being too stupidly stubborn to accept help, or come up with a better plan of rounding up his foes, other than meeting them issue to issue. It was kind of the beginning of the completely out of character Batman, until that evolved INTO his character. How many of those mega cross-overs hinged on Batman's unwillingness to lean on his allies for help, only to come around in the end after something horrible occurred?

I liked Denny's run on the Bat-titles best in the quiet moments. Bruce's return as Batman in Knightsend was cool, but the resolution between him and Azbats was one of the most anti-climatic in fiction.

Chris

[dr_cyclops]

I loved the "Elseworlds" of the 90s. Did you see that? I went so off topic. Die Superman! DIE! lol ... Oh, he's back?...never mind.

[Figuremod73]

I think during that time comics stooped being fun, and were becoming a chore; considering all the tie-in books you needed to snag to get the whole story. Crisis (the original one *sigh*) kinda started that, but you didn't NEED those tie-ins to get the basic story, whereas starting with the Death of Superman thing you needed to pick up three or four different series just for the core story. I think that turned off a lot of readers too; especially those who reserved books at the comic shop, since they might not know which books to reserve ahead of time.

Absolutely. It was worse with the Xmen books. Around the time Claremont left Xmen it had become so complex missing an issue made some of the stories incomprehensible.

It got to the point either you read multiple books or the senseless pictures books.

I decided to just read novels.

[jds1911a1]

Wow, you guys make me feel old. Just like others here, I was working a Seattle U-district comic shop when this came out. We ordered high on the 'Death issue', knowing it would sell. We sold out. Within a week, a commission sale appeared in our display counter for $50.
I tried to warn my fellow workers to avoid ordering too large on the issues to follow. Sadly, the sales/interest of this one issue, convinced them otherwise.
My favorite 'Death of Superman story' will always be, "Whatever Happen To The Man Of Tomorrow?"

that one is a classic

I was a subscriber to all the superman titles at that point and I hated this story line. I let my subscriptions lapse I was so mad so I only read the first few months of the reign never did ret around to reading them later either. This turned me off new comics for a long time. later I got into a few titles but never the way was in the 70's and 80's (even post crisis) like sports cards it was just too gimicky

[Earth 2 Chris]

As much as I love "Whatever Happend..." I do have to agree with some who take Moore to task for having Superman walk away from his powers (and responsibilities) for killing Mxy. The actual ending with the wink is priceless, but I'd rather had Superman accidentally exposed to the Gold K, or lost his powers for other reasons. The Earth One Superman wasn't the whiner his Post-Crisis counterpart turned out to be. He did what he had to do, although he never wanted to take a life, he did on occasion, make exceptions.

Chris

[ctc]

>Around the time Claremont left Xmen it had become so complex missing an issue made some of the stories incomprehensible

Even if you DIDN'T miss an issue some of them stories were incomprehensible. ("X-Cutioner's Song" is when I left....)

Don C.

[bleit1701]

20 years. Wow. Who wants to meet me at the diner for the early bird special?

[Apositive]

I remember all of the non-comics people(college jocks, businessmen, frat boys, etc) who flooded into my comics shop in Pittsburgh to buy this issue thinking that this would be worth something in 20 years.......ha!

[Apositive]

I also remember explaining to my relatives at Thanksgiving that Superman wouldn't stay dead and that this issue was pure hype.

[Mego Milk]

D O O M S D A Y !

is COMING!

[Cosmicman]

I remember all those people that were picking up these books thinking they were going to be worth money. It was crazy. They were packaged in black covers. Even Superman's "Rebirth" book was in a white cover. People really made a fool out of the comic collecting business back then with this storyline (Though I liked it.)