How did Superman die? A DC heros death in comics and movies, explained – Polygon

From batman v superman: dawn of justice to justice league and now the snyder cut, director zack snyder and his collaborators have been remixing one of the biggest superman stories to ever come to life. comic shops: the death of superman.

Bringing the end of the world to the big screen, Batman v Superman played out the first part of Superman’s legendary death in the comics, and with the resurrection of the Justice League, it brought him back in a way never seen before. so comical But with the final version of Snyder’s Justice League coming to HBO Max, the Resurrection could have its own Resurrection.

To explore how the justice league snyder cut could bring more comic details to the death of superman, we first need to explore what those details were. so get ready for a trip back to one of the boldest eras in superhero comics: the early 1990s.

how superman’s death happened

the death of superman was a 1992 crossover between various dc comics superman titles in which superman tragically died saving metropolis from an admittedly ingenious space monster called doomsday. but overall, it was a story that strove to be much more than a gimmick, both in story and visuals.

as doomsday and superman came closer to colliding, the reader’s window to the comics page literally grew larger. the arc’s penultimate comic had only three panels on each page; the penultimate, only two. In the final issue, Superman #75, Superman and Doomsday go toe-to-toe in the center of the metropolis in an entire issue composed only of full-page splash panels.

doomsday may have been mild, as a villain, but superman’s death succeeded in deepening what his death would mean for a dc universe he had been loved and depended on for years. superman #75 gives full pages to just jimmy and lois watching in horror, or ma and pa kent desperately embracing each other as they watch live television coverage, until the reader reaches two final double pages of lois lane cradling superman lifeless body in the rubble of his city, his tattered cloak flapping like a surrender flag from a nearby beam.

and the creators of dc did not stop there. The aftermath of Superman’s death was given enough time and space to really count, allowing the consequences of his absence to leave a gigantic mark on DC continuity. Most of the new characters invented just for the death of superman and their follow-ups remain prominent in DC today, and their reverberations were felt on entirely different mainstays of the stage. Hal Jordan’s heel turn, the greatest of the green lanterns, in the fear-based villain parallax is rooted in the events of the death of superman.

but why kill superman?

Fun fact: Superman probably wouldn’t have died in 1992 if Warner Bros. i hadn’t made lois and clark and a dc writer hadn’t made a joke.

Look, Superman hadn’t been selling particularly well in the early ’90s, since the departure of writer-artist John Byrne, who had successfully redefined the character for the modern age after Crisis on Infinite Earths. In an effort to stop that decline, Publisher had increased the romance in the book, but with a little twist: This time, Lois ultimately fell in love with Clark Kent instead of Superman. Clark proposed to her and then revealed that he was Superman.

but their wedding ended up being postponed editorially due to the synergy between companies. Warner Bros. was developing a new superman television series that would have the romance between lois and clark as its main element, and the temptation of a simultaneous wedding between the comic book versions of the characters and the television versions was just too tempting. (It wouldn’t actually happen until 1997).

Meanwhile, the comics had to do something instead of a wedding story: A year’s planning had just been put on hold in anticipation of the eternity of a TV production show. and the writer jerry ordway made a joke: “let’s kill him”. – That became less and less funny and more and more plausible as Lois and Clark’s success pushed their wedding further and further into the future.

finally, dc editorial relented. If superman couldn’t get married, he would have to die.

how did superman die?

Image: Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding/DC Comics

How Superman dies is actually pretty simple: A mysterious and terrible monster known only as Doomsday arrives on Earth, with the apparent goal of nothing but destroying everything in his path. He dispatches the entire Justice League in minutes, punching Booster Gold so hard he flies into space. Superman is the only force on Earth that can slow him down, and as the monster carves a swathe of destruction pointing directly to Metropolis, their showdown becomes inevitable.

The two meet in the middle of town, and with a powerful simultaneous punch that shatters windows for blocks around, they battle each other to mutual defeat. However, underneath all the drama, it’s fair to admit that what happens is a monster shows up and he and superman punch each other to death.

and how did superman come back from the dead?

After superman’s death, a few superman “simulators” sprang up in the metropolis, with varying success. two turned out to be villains and two good guys after all. one of them helped superman to resurrect himself in a very complicated and comic way.

this superman with granny glasses here? This is the Eradicator, an ancient Kryptonian killer robot who turned Krypto-supremacist after the destruction of the culture that invented him, and one of four possible supermen who appeared after Superman’s death. In the aftermath of Superman’s death, it is eventually revealed that the Eradicator stole Superman’s body from Superman’s crypt and placed it inside a Kryptonian device in the Fortress of Solitude called “The Regeneration Matrix”.

The regeneration matrix allowed the eradicator to siphon superman’s powers to himself in order to impersonate him while slowly reanimating him from death, or at least some sort of special death-like Kryptonian state. With Kryptonians, like in The Princess Bride, there’s apparently a big difference between most of the dead and all of the dead.

but upon superman’s resurrection, the eradicator made sure to note, as if a forward-thinking dc editor had taken over his body to speak directly through his mouth, that this didn’t mean man of steel was immune to death. “As a matter of fact,” he told Superman, “it’s safe to say this wouldn’t be possible anymore.”

Also, when he first came back, superman was wearing a black suit with a white ‘s’ symbol on it.

Which brings us back to Superman’s death and the black costume

while batman v superman: dawn of justice borrowed doomsday from superman’s death, the theatrical cut of justice league didn’t borrow much from his comic book resurrection, except it was in partly thanks to strange Kryptonian technology.

In the theatrical release of Justice League, Batman concocts a plan to use a camera on General Zod’s crashed Kryptonian ship and the mother box, along with some fast-going flash energy, to resurrect Batman. superman. When Zach Snyder’s remake of the movie hits HBO Max, it’s possible that plan will change or expand, and maybe even include more elements of the comic book version of the resurrection of Superman.

but there is one detail we know for sure.

before justice league hit theaters, henry cavill made a little instagram mockery of superman’s black suit. That costume didn’t end up in the theatrical cut of Justice League, but it’s guaranteed to be in Zack Snyder’s four-hour version of the film.

Looks like superman’s post-resurrection black and white costume will show up in snyder’s version of justice league after all.

but unfortunately not his post-resurrection mullet. and that is a real shame.