Spoilers After The Break: The Final Days Of Superman

Unlike some of our readers who may not have been born yet, I was a regular in the comic book stores in 1992 when DC pulled the ultimate publicity stunt and killed off the Man of Steel.  His death in Superman #75 sold 3 million copies.  It was a perfect storm.  You had regular comic readers interested.  Former comic readers interested.  Non-comic readers.  The young and old.  Fans of the Superman movies or various TV shows.  Everyone was talking about it.  It was during a time when the death of a character seemed to actually mean something and didn’t happen every other day.  Especially to such an iconic character.   Sales were also boosted by occuring during the comic market boom as people were buying multiple copies as investments, hoping to cash in down the line.  Especially the variant black polybagged version which featured the logo above.  “Fans” were buying two copies.  One to open and read and one to lock away in a pressure sealed vault for safe keeping.

As we know, the market boom crashed not long after and this issue has often been attributed as having a major role in that.  But that’s a different column.  We’re here today to talk about the potential latest death of Superman.  More (including spoilers) after the break on the ongoing Final Days of Superman storyline in Superman #51, Batman/Superman #31 and Action Comics #51.

DC’s Rebirth: In Your Best Arnold Voice, “It’s Not A Reboot!”

DC gets a lot of flack from some for their various reboots of continuity.  Some of which is justified, like the mess that the New 52 left DC continuity in.  Marvel claims to have never rebooted their continuity.  Not on a grand scale like DC’s Crisis anyway.  But what do you call something like One More Day Marvel?  Besides a slap in the face to fans.  (IMO).

While Marvel seems to get a free pass on the whole “reboot” thing, they are constantly relaunching their line and doing soft reboots along the way.  How many of your favorite Marvel books have had new #1’s in the past couple of years?  I think Spider-Gwen which debuted in 2014 has already had 9 #1 issues!  (That’s possibly an exaggeration.)  The point is, Marvel is just as guilty in their own way.

And DC is hoping that by following the “Marvel model” with #1’s, a soft reboot and not a Crisis/Flashpoint/New 52 style reboot, fans will cut them some slack as well.

More on DC Rebirth’s “it’s not a reboot” after the cut.