It was 1992. People actually waited in line at comic shops. I mean, hundreds of people, standing on cracked sidewalks, clutching five-dollar bills for a black polybag with a red bleeding "S" on the front. It’s hard to explain to someone who wasn't there how much The Death and Return of Superman felt like a legitimate cultural funeral. We didn't have the MCU back then. We didn't have a new superhero movie every six months. We had Clark Kent, and DC Comics decided to kill him.
Honestly, the whole thing started because of a TV show. The writers in the "Super-room"—which included legends like Mike Carlin, Dan Jurgens, Roger Stern, Louise Simonson, and Jerry Ordway—were planning the wedding of Clark Kent and Lois Lane. But over at ABC, the show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was just getting started. The producers there wanted the TV wedding to coincide with the comic wedding. DC had to stall. So, Jerry Ordway jokingly suggested, "Let's just kill him."
They did. And it changed everything.
The Day the Man of Steel Fell
Doomsday wasn't some complex Shakespearean villain with a tragic backstory. Not at first, anyway. He was just a force of nature. A grey, bony monster that punched its way out of an underground vault and started walking toward Metropolis. He didn't talk. He didn't have a master plan. He just destroyed. The Justice League—a weirdly B-list roster at the time including Guy Gardner and Blue Beetle—got absolutely wrecked.
The pacing of Superman #75 was a masterclass in tension. Dan Jurgens wrote and drew that issue using only splash pages. One panel per page. It made the fight feel heavy. Slow. Brutal. When Superman and Doomsday finally traded those last blows in front of the Daily Planet, it wasn't a "cool" comic book moment. It felt desperate. You’ve got Lois Lane crying over a broken man in a tattered cape, and for a few months in 1993, the world actually believed he was gone.
News outlets like CNN and The New York Times treated it like real news. My neighbor, who didn't know a Batarang from a Green Lantern ring, bought ten copies of the "memorial" issue because he thought it would pay for his kid's college. It didn't, obviously. You can find those black-bagged issues in dollar bins now. But the sheer scale of the event was something the industry had never seen.
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The Reign of the Supermen: Who’s Who?
After "Funeral for a Friend"—a long, somber arc about how the world grieves—DC didn't just bring Clark back. They gave us four replacements. This was the "Reign of the Supermen" era, and it was brilliant marketing. It played on the mystery: Is one of these guys actually him?
First, there was the Man of Tomorrow, better known as the Cyborg Superman. He looked like Clark but with Terminator parts. He had the DNA. He had the memories. People really wanted to believe it was him. Then you had the Last Son of Krypton, a cold, visor-wearing vigilante who dealt out lethal justice. He was basically Superman if he were written by the guys who made The Punisher.
The other two were more distinct. Steel (John Henry Irons) never claimed to be the real deal; he was just a man inspired by the hero’s sacrifice, building a suit of armor to protect Metropolis. And then, of course, the Metropolis Kid—the clone who eventually became Superboy. He had the leather jacket, the round glasses, and an attitude that screamed 1993.
The genius of this stretch was how it deconstructed what Superman represents. Is he the power? Is he the symbol? Is he the alien heritage? Or is he just a guy from Kansas who wants to do the right thing?
The Return and the Mullet
When the real Superman finally came back, he emerged from a Kryptonian Regeneration Matrix. He was wearing a black suit with silver accents and, most controversially, a mullet. Look, it was the 90s. We all make mistakes. But the black suit (the "Solar Suit") became an instant icon. It was designed to help his cells soak up more yellow sun radiation because he was basically at zero percent battery.
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The return wasn't just a "poof, I'm back" moment. It involved the Cyborg Superman revealing himself as a massive villain, teaming up with Mongul, and nuking Coast City. This was dark stuff. It led to Green Lantern (Hal Jordan) losing his mind and becoming Parallax. The Death and Return of Superman wasn't just a self-contained story; it was the domino that knocked over the entire DC Universe for the next decade.
Why People Still Complain About It
If you talk to comic purists, some will tell you this story ruined the medium. They argue it "broke" death. Once you kill the most unkillable man in fiction and bring him back six months later, stakes start to feel fake. If Superman can't stay dead, why should we care when a B-list hero bites the dust?
There's some truth to that. It kickstarted an era of "event" comics where killing a character became a cheap way to boost sales for a quarter. But looking back, the execution of the Superman saga was actually pretty tight. The writers weren't trying to trick people forever; they were trying to tell a story about why the world needs a Superman. By removing him, they showed the void he left behind.
The Legacy in Modern Media
You see the fingerprints of this story everywhere. Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman and Justice League tried to cram this entire epic into about forty minutes of screentime. It didn't quite have the same impact because we hadn't spent enough time with that version of the character yet. The 1992 comic worked because Clark had been "our" Superman for decades.
Even the recent animated adaptations and the various "Death of Superman" tributes in shows like Superman & Lois prove the story's staying power. It’s the ultimate superhero myth. The hero falls, the world mourns, the pretenders rise, and the true king returns to reclaim the throne.
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How to Experience the Saga Today
If you’re looking to dive into this, don’t just read the fight. The fight is the least interesting part.
- Start with "The Death of Superman" TPB: This collects the Doomsday brawl. It’s fast, visceral, and still holds up as a technical achievement in comic art.
- Don't skip "Funeral for a Friend": This is where the heart is. It covers the perspective of the Kents, who can't even publicly mourn their son because the world doesn't know Clark is Superman. It's heartbreaking.
- The "Reign of the Supermen" is the fun part: This is where the sci-fi goes off the rails. You get Engine City, alien invasions, and the mystery of the four contenders.
- Check out the "Omnibus": If you have wrists strong enough to hold a five-pound book, the 30th Anniversary Omnibus is the definitive way to see the colors as they were intended.
The reality is that The Death and Return of Superman was the last time the entire world looked at a comic book page and gasped. It was a moment of shared cultural shock. Even if the "death" was temporary, the impact on the industry was permanent. It taught publishers that events sell, but it also taught fans that even the strongest among us can fall—and that the recovery is usually more interesting than the injury.
If you're hunting for these issues in the wild, check the condition of the polybags. A sealed "Black Bag" Superman #75 is a cool piece of history, but the real value is in the pages inside. Specifically, look for the Adventures of Superman #500—that’s where the "Supermen" first start appearing, and the art by Tom Grummett is some of the best of that era.
Don't buy into the hype that these are worth thousands of dollars. They aren't. They were printed by the millions. Buy them because you want to see a group of creators at the top of their game trying to do the impossible: making us care about a god who finally met something he couldn't beat.