The Big Picture: Dumbsday, Part 1 - The Death of Superman

[medv4380]

The Death of Superman, for me, painted everything that'd been wrong with Superman for a long time, and still is wrong.

He's designed to be so absurdly powerful that whatever's wrong can be fixed in an instant. However, when he doesn't do that it makes him out to ether be out right evil, or completely inept.

In the fight with Doomsday they draw his punches as they normally do. These weak, pathetic, haymakers that are easily dogged and show that big blue lacks any fighting skill. Given that he'd been the original Nightwing Big Blue really has no excuse to be such a poor fighter. But due to a lack of creativity, and an urge to just give him stupid level powers, the writers, and artists depict him as a bumbling over powered monstrosity.

What I did like about The Death of Superman is how stupid the writers deliberately showed Superman to be. Doomsday was always a non threat. He can't fly, and can't use energy blasts. So what does Evil Robot Superman do with Doomsday. Strap him to a rock and throw him into space. The only problem that had was Evil Robot was aiming him at something instead of just putting him into deep orbit. The Time Travel, and Teleporter solutions were over powered solutions that just putting him in orbit easily would solve. The Evil Superman who just fry Doomsdays brain are equally stupid since "just put him in orbit" was always a more graceful solution. He can adapt to the vacuum of space all he wants, and he'd still be just as stuck. He was always a non threat as long as you don't engage him in a fight.

Sups can, and has certainly been done better, but it requires powering him down. Like when he was in the Bottled City of Kandor, or going all out overpowered God a la All Star Superman. The Overpowered God doesn't work well in a shared universe so we're left with the Dunce Superman, or Secretly Evil Dunce Superman. Take your pick.

 

[JimB]

How was Doomsday prevented from just killing everyone ever if he managed to defeat what was, for all intents and purposes, the most powerful superhero on the planet?

They punched each other to death at exactly the same moment.

I am not kidding about that.

 

[schwegburt]

When your character is as black and white as superman, you're going to have a hard time putting him in a moral dilemma like Cap, and when you have a whole Justice League and team of superheroes, it would seem mad that Superman would die saving the planet or whatever. No one would accept that an existing foe could beat him, because that's not how the stories play out. It had to be someone new.

I'd beg to differ about Captain America. Captain America and Superman are more or less idealistically the same. Figures of such absolute good that their character arcs aren't about them changing but getting others to change thanks to them. Sure one's only human and the other THE Superman. But their ideological natures are remarkably similar.

 

[maninahat]

Excellent work!

I only watched the Doomsday cartoon the other week. I discovered I actually quite like watching DC super hero cartoons now.

But anyway, Bob's video reminded me to dust off one of my favourite documentaries:

 

[shirkbot]

They punched each other to death at exactly the same moment.

I am not kidding about that.

...

......

What? I... I don't even know what to say to that. Wikipedia says you speak the truth, but I have a difficult time believing that even Comics could come up with something so contrived. Thank all that is shiny and silver for DC Animated and its Marvel counterpart, or I'd never be able to actually enjoy superhero stories.

 

[Verlander]

When your character is as black and white as superman, you're going to have a hard time putting him in a moral dilemma like Cap, and when you have a whole Justice League and team of superheroes, it would seem mad that Superman would die saving the planet or whatever. No one would accept that an existing foe could beat him, because that's not how the stories play out. It had to be someone new.

I'd beg to differ about Captain America. Captain America and Superman are more or less idealistically the same. Figures of such absolute good that their character arcs aren't about them changing but getting others to change thanks to them. Sure one's only human and the other THE Superman. But their ideological natures are remarkably similar.

I don't think so. Cap is the embodiment of what the American ideal is... and as a result comes into conflict with the American government, or even America itself. As an American, that's where his conflict is. It's relatable to the conflict that the reader might have.

Superman is the embodiment of the God-on-earth, the ultimate human as it were. He's an unobtainable power for the reader, and as such that kind of conflict isn't as believable. I wrote in another thread about a similar subject, the Superman/Lex Luthor dynamic is a really really simplified left wing/right wing metaphor, which is made more complicated whenever Batman gets involved.

Also, there's the differences in the (then) DC universe and Marvel universe. Primarily, in the (old) DC universe, the heroes are almost uniformly loved and appreciated by the people, while the reverse is true in the Marvel universe - heroes are treated with caution, mistrust, and sometimes outright hostility. If Superman does something, the people will cheer for him; if Cap does it, he risks alienating those he fights to protect. This is seen in the Civil War event.

 

[Boogie Knight]

This is a dumb question, but if it was all one big dumb punching contest why couldn't they have gone all DBZ and been punching each other into different continents or parts of the solar system? If they were gonna take the dumb route, they may as well have gone all out.

 

[medv4380]

This is a dumb question, but if it was all one big dumb punching contest why couldn't they have gone all DBZ and been punching each other into different continents or parts of the solar system? If they were gonna take the dumb route, they may as well have gone all out.

Doomsday can't fly. Superman figures this out and does do a punching juggle with Doomsday in the first fight.

 

[JimB]

I have a difficult time believing that even comics could come up with something so contrived.

It's about all you can do if you're committed to the only-splash-pages format, though. Something considerably less dumb would have been for Superman to expend all his stores of solar energy in the fight with Doomsday, only to drop dead moments later from either the expenditure of power or maybe from the strain of channeling that much power at once overloading his system,* but that requires more depth than the format they chose. Also it doesn't really tackle the underlying problems of the story being a pointless money-grab and Doomsday being a boring fuck, but I doubt that was on anyone's mind.

*Which now that I have typed it I realize I basically stole it from Grant Morrison, but oh well, there are worse people to rip off.

 

[Therumancer]

Hmmm, honestly Bob I think your missing something in your Analysis. The whole "If Superman died, people would be sad" angle is in of itself meaningful, especially in the scope of "Extreme" comics characters of the 1990s which were dominating the market. One of the big criticisms of Superman nowadays is that he's boring, too powerful, and too much of a boy scout... all things which fans can refute, but they are things Superman has dealt with for a long time now and was at it's peak when comics were taking that turn. Even now you sort of see a demand which writers are giving into, to change Superman into something less than he has been.

The thing is that a lot of people were knocking Superman, until they killed him off, then all of a sudden people realized they liked the character better than they thought they did, and a lot of those more extreme heroes were less cool when you didn't have the obvious guys like Superman to compare them to. People genuinely wanted him back, and I think a lot of them realized they took comfort, even in a comics content, in there being a sort of paragon that could always be relied on to save the world and maintain the moral high ground. No matter how bad it might get, or how powerful the enemies, Superman always saves the day... that's kind of his thing above and beyond anything else. They even poked a bit of fun in the process of bringing him back by having the actual Superman (who was depowered) wearing all black and using machine guns in a sort of intentional satire of the guys he was antithetical to, sort of showing "see, isn't extreme-Superman goes Punisher kind of silly?" not that it lasted very long.

Now granted, Kingdom Come probably did a better version of the whole "Extreme Heroes Vs. Classic Heroes" schtick with of course villains thrown in for good measure, but I think to some extent this was sort of the point. As far as "Rise Of The Supermen" goes, I think saying that was dumb is an understatement, but that was kind of the point, each of the variant "Supermen" represented a sort of take on what an "extreme" Superman might be during the era, and sort of showing that at the end of the day we wouldn't want any of those Bozos... Steel being the major standout, very intentionally, as he best embodied the ideals of Superman and was of course worthy of being a true hero, and he has stuck around today. That version of Superboy was also enduring, and mostly lasted because it was a way of having "Superboy" and "Superman" in the same continuity without having to result on weird time travel and transdimensional gimmicks. Of course that image of Superboy didn't age all that well as he was a combination of some of the worst tropes of exaggerated 1990s youth, but they did at least give him a unique power set with it's own advantages and disadvantages even if they overdid it (Tactile Telekinesis).

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I remember reading the novelization of the Death and Return of Superman, and while I also remember enjoying the story and wondering what could possibly kill Superman, they probably could've done a hell of a lot more with the premise than just introducing some previously unknown villain.

 

[nightmare_gorilla]

For as "Dumb" as the death of superman was i'm glad for a few reasons it happened the first being john henry irons or STEEL. this guy has taken up an almost luke cage meats tony stark position in the DC universe and he's a great hero so i'm way happy he's around. his arc in 52, that's just 53 not "new 52". with his niece Natasha and him going up against luther was amazing. steel is really one of those characters that demonstrates the love of superman most fans have he's a regular joe who's life was saved by superman and when he asks superman what he can do to repay him supes just says "make it a life worth saving" so he builds an iron man style suit of armor and becomes a super hero. yeah, that's why superman is a bad ass because he can say one sentence and create a new super hero through inspiration. doomsday and hank henshaw have to a lesser extent been used in interesting ways through the years so their creation might be a little dumb they have become a lot better. I think doomsday should be reserved for the criticism bane always gets he's nothing but a big strong guy who hits hard. bane at least if you read knight fall pushed batman to his limits and wore him down before fighting him one on one while he was at his most weakest and now everyone thinks he's a match for batman, the few times batman fought bane at full strength he punks the guy out pretty handily. but they have developed a certain respect for each other over the years and bane now is used as an anti-hero at times. he for a while spent serious energy and even worked in tandem with batman on destroying the venom distribution ring. that to me is interesting that they tried to in essence "reform" him only to have fans say "nah we just want him to break stuff and be evil" so he's now a full villain again.

 

[faefrost]

I like that Bib mentions this bit of comics stunt writing cousin Batman Knightfall. Which is both better and far far worse than Death of Superman. In Batman the lead up to the Knightfall event works. The massive breakout at Arkham and Batman is rapidly ground down over a period of days trying to get them all back off the streets, before meeting Bane. It's at that point that the suck age begins and we get IronBatmanverineisher dude.

The Death of Superman the actual Death story arc is just not a story. It's nothing. There is no there there. The follow up Funeral and Mourning stuff just dragged on and on and on. And then came Rise of the Supermen, well not to spoil Bobs next show, but weird and inconsistent and mostly just stupid best describes it. About the only good thing to come out of it was the Kon El Superboy. And even then it took the writers almost a decade to find a way to make him anything less than abrasive.

Not saying everything from the big 2 in the 90's was bad. Thunderbolts was great back then and just gets better with age.

 

[VonBrewskie]

Congratulations Bob! You're right. You are good at this, and your hard work shows through in every episode. I'm a fellow Gen-Xer in his early 30s and I relate well to the topics you discuss and love how you approach the various subjects you touch upon. Here's to many more episodes and success for you buddy! Cheers!

-Jarod

 

[ace_of_something]

The thing I remember most about 'death of superman' which occurred when I was about 11 or 12. Was the super mega amount of chest/body hair that superman had in a lot of panels. That and all but one of his replacements turned evil eventually.

 

[Saltyk]

Man, today suddenly became a good day. Bob does an episode on the Death of Superman, and I'm interested to hear this whole story. It's just such a interesting idea, but I know it was sort of executed poorly and that's what I wanna know about.

Meanwhile, Linkara has a new History of Power Rangers up. FINALLY! Man, I'm gonna be busy all night, now.

Anyway, Congrats on 200 episodes, Bob. I've been watching The Big Picture since you started it I think. And I've enjoyed the ride. Keep up the good work.

 

[jnericsonx]

I was suprised you didn't use the Superman 1 Reeves scream for that moment. That was always a chilling moment for me. Cause in that, Reeves showed how God help you if you ever got Superman that upset.

 

[PedroSteckecilo]

Happy 200th Episode Mr. Bob.

Also, there IS a good death of Superman story for those unaware, I think someone already mentioned it but Allstar Superman by Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely is a story about the slow death of Superman... and it is amazing.

 

[FPLOON]

I still find it funny, to this day, that the death of Superman was the first official comic I ever read about Superman in general... The way the version I read ended made me laugh at how much it seemed "too good to be true", even from a story-telling perspective... Regardless, I didn't continue to see how they would replace him, so I'll be awaiting the next episode for sure...

Also, 200? *thinks about it* Huh... I didn't even know beforehand...

 

[SAMAS]

Bob, you missed a few things, both in-universe and meta, about Superman during that time period that I think shed some light on the whole event. It's amazing, in retrospect, just how 90's even DC Comics was at the time.

Doomsday actually first appeared in an issue of Justice League of America. The JLA lineup at the time was Blue Beetle (still Ted Kord), Booster Gold, Bloodwynd (A black superhero who later turned out to be an amnesiac Martian Manhunter), and Maxima, an alien princess and occasional Superman villainess.

Lex Luthor had a massive head of bright red hair, having taken on a younger cloned body and passing himself off as his own son, Lex Luthor II.

Supergirl was actually Matrix, a shape-shifting alien. She was also working for Luthor (though still a hero) for reasons that escape me.

Superman himself had revealed his identity to Lois, and they were pretty much a couple by that point. In fact, they were planning on having them get married around then, but at the same time was airing the live-action series Lois and Clark, starring Dean Cain as the Man of Steel. They were gonna get hitched on L&S too, but they needed to give the show time to catch up and film the episodes. One of the guys at DC, whenever they had a meeting on what to do with Superman next, would inevitably suggest "Let's kill him!" Well, this time, they decided to do it. So basically, the Death and Return of Superman was done to buy time to do a combined tie-in with the TV series.