How would YOU have done the Doomsday battle, death and return of Superman story?

[AnthonyO'Brien]

I would have made it more of a company wide event with nearly all the DCU heroes aiding but being defeated by Doomsday.

Funeral for a friend could have extended into the Batman books, with a sense of hopelessness spreading across the world... (needs work,I know)

Superboy NOT coming off a 90's fashion victim?

YOUR ideas on this?

[Bored at 3:00AM]

More mullets.

[Clark_Kent]

I would have made it more of a company wide event with nearly all the DCU heroes aiding but being defeated by Doomsday.

Funeral for a friend could have extended into the Batman books, with a sense of hopelessness spreading across the world... (needs work,I know)

Superboy NOT coming off a 90's fashion victim?

YOUR ideas on this?

How you describe it is pretty much how it would play out if it were being done for the first time today, in our modern industry. You'd have the main event book anda thousand tie-ins and specials. Looking at when it was made, it was done nearly perfectly imo. I'd have probably explained where Batman, WW, Flash, etc were during the fight...perhaps with Doomsday on the rampage, all their villains decide to strike in their respective cities and they are too busy to help until it's too late. I'd probably have introduced John Henry earlier in the series, to give his appearance as Steel more weight (obviously they couldn't then, because he didn't exist until they came up with the Steel concept). But really, that's about all I'd change. And I don't know about the other books, but Batman titles at the time did have him wearing the black armband while in costume, so it was reflected a little bit outside of the Triangle issues.

When Doomsday reappeared during "The Doomsday Wars", we saw him tear through Morrison's Justice League pretty quickly, I always felt that was some fan service for those who wanted to see it. But it's definitely a tale of two eras. If done in a modern context, it'd be pretty much like the animated movie, I'd think.

[Sacred Knight]

At this point I'd actually erase it altogether. DC has absolutely no willpower regarding it, so to solve that I'd take it away from them entirely.

But, if I could have wished anything was different at the time, in retrospect, I would have had the big 7 involved somehow. Whether directly involved in the fight or not, just being witness to the event unfold real-time as opposed to only seeing how it affected his closest comrades (and even then only somewhat) in Funeral For A Friend. Furthermore I would have had Superman utilize more of his intelligence during the fight. Its one huge slobberknocker that when you look at it, it really makes Superman look dense because he gets a taste very early on of Doomsday's raw strength but never makes any strong attempts to creatively fight the beast with distance. He fights Doomsday's fight the entire time pretty willfully. Something should have happened early on to actually prevent Superman from fighting creatively. Make up some reason he loses his ability to fly or something. Have his eyes harmed like Guy's were, so his heat vision doesn't work. Make the close combat that would eventually kill him an absolutely necessity to the discerning eye.

I wouldn't touch Reign. It was close to perfect.

[DragonPiece]

A lot of you are going for big and bombastic, but I would probably just do it as a small 4 or 5 issue mini series as if done right, could make for the most emotional impact. I wouldn't explain a lot of the backstory on Doomsday or show a lot of his fight withe other JL members, that action would happen off panel so viewers will realize this story isn't about action, but the drama behind it all.

The actual plot could be about Clark considering telling Lois about Superman and wanting to propose, similarly to how it was done in the animated film.

Have the story focus on Superman/Clark and how much the world loves and respects him since he has first appeared as Superman. It would be structured similarly to Heroes in Crisis, by having transition scenes from people explaining why they love Superman/Clark, and the last person talking about him would be Lois, which is when we find out the testimonials took place after he died.


My idea for this comes from the death of wolverine mini series, actually really loved how Charles Soule handled his death. While there were a lot of tie ins, none of them impacted them main story and was completely new reader friendly to understand the core of wolverine's character without having to read another book.

[SiegePerilous02]

Overhaul it completely, and use a gathering of Superman's greatest enemies (Brainiac and the PZ criminals alone are League level threats, so use them, Lex and a whole host of others to justify the main JL being involved). I would ditch Doomsday completely because he sucks. Superman dies going out in a blaze of glory to thwart the machinations of Lex and Brainiac. it is set up so that only he can resolve the final conflict, but make it so there are a variety of threats so that the other JL members aren't being stomped around by Doomsday until Clark shows up.

Also, absolutely no destruction of Coast City or Parallax.

[adkal]

In a version I wrote a long time ago, Billy was a central character and is wracked with guilt for not being there at the end of the battle (he's there earlier on, helping, but the range of destruction has him (and others) tied up in other parts of the world.

I had Doomsday target Atlantis first and then head for Themyscira before seeming to head back towards Salem - the general idea being that he could sense what/where had the potential for being dangerous to him and he would head there first, ignoring everything else (no squishing a bird or breaking a deer's neck - they're not threats).

That was a long time ago, though. Not sure how I would do it now or if I would change it much to the above outline.


The hopelessness element mentioned by the OP actually was brought into a number of the books in the DCU, including the Justice League (heck, Funeral had JLA tie-ins and Guy... well, I liked Guy in that arc (how Ice survived, though, I still don't know )).

[Superlad93]

I love what Death of Superman represents, but I'm apathetic at best when talking about the actual story. If I were to redo it then I'd have try my level best to hit at what that story represented, and draw out the feel of the air when that moment first hit by using the super power of 20/20 hindsight and re contextualization.

I'd do a 4 issue mini with 3 tie-in "where were you when" issues that bring the count up to about 7. Gary Frank, Alex Maleev, J. H. Williams III , and Evan Doc Shaner are on art. In the DCU, Death of Superman is basically 9/11 mixed with the world shifting devastation of category 5 hurricane. Doomsday isn't a character. He's a superhero world's natural disaster in the same randomness that spawns meteors, supernovas, or black holes. This is an event the DCU will talk and debate about forever. The bootleg video of the incident will pirated all across the internet, and kids (like Jon) not even born around that time will grow up with the idea of it as the backmatter of their life. One day Superman just...died...and we all had to watch.

* We'd open with Frank's issue. The idea being the strange atmosphere of Clark having just told Lois about him being Superman. The iconic shirt rip is replaced with to adults sitting on a sofa trying desperately not to look at the other. We'd more or less follow Clark's life as he racks his brain over what he's just done. Office politics, Jimmy being Jimmy, Perry being Perry, but the volume is turned way down, and the color of it all seems to be muted. It's almost like the last episode of a sitcom where all of the established rules of the world you've been watching are being broken while they still try their best to work. There's an unease. All the while there's there's seismic activity going on that everyone can feel, but no one seems to be able to pinpoint. Clark wants to go investigate, but his mind is scattered and his stomach is knots. Just as Clark wants to ask to talk to Lois--it happens! Like an actual hurricane...

We'd actually follow Superman stopping the destruction Doomsday has caused escaping the Earth's core. This rescue is unlike any other we've ever seen out of Clark. It's messy, dirty, and he's on the back foot in an almost disorienting way. We're literally and figuratively watching him try and hold his whole carefully constructed world together, and it feels like he doesn't know what way is up. By this point he doesn't actually know that Doomsday is even a thing let alone the reason for the mess, but the JL have engaged the creature, and it doesn't go well at all (see "where were you when" JL for an actual look at that). We only show Superman's first meeting with the monster and we cut it there

* Maleev's issue is an interesting one because it never directly shows Superman, Clark, or the creature, and it would use an approximation of a film technique known as the "tracking shot." It's about everything else. Lois and Jimmy on the ground trying to get as close as possible and catching glimpse of absolutely brutalized heroes who tried to help out. Then using the tracking shot technique (in this case we have Lois' pov introduce another character in the back or foreground, and then we follow them, and we continue this throughout the issue) we're now following a low level A.R.G.U.S. EMT first-responder. We follow about 5 people in total getting back to Lois at the end, and all the while we're seeing video footage of the Superman/Doomsday fight--feeling the shock waves, seeing the ground ripple and warp, and catching far of glances at the two before the heat and wind kick up hard and obscure our vision. We essentially get the whole fight without getting the fight. Things like Lois and Jimmy in the chopper are happening while we're focused on other people. And the final kiss between Superman and Lois is obscured from our vision (we follow up with it in issue 4, so it 100% gets it's time).

* Williams and Shaner would share this issue, and it's maybe the strangest of them all given how experimental it would be. Basically the issue is talking about the idea of story and how myths are manufactured from embellishments, faulty memory, and rose-tinted glasses. In our story the fight, death, funeral, Reign, Return, and a sizable chunk of stories are in the rear view minor. It's actually the day of remembrance for the incident and the toll it took on the world. Again, we don't directly follow Clark or Superman the person, but he's all over this issue. The gimmick here is that everyone is turning into an Investigation Discovery Channel style breakdown, retelling, scientific analysis, and partial reenactment of the incident with censored found footage of the actual incident. You've got your host walking us through, Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson (old friend of Superman's) providing a scientific breakdown of how the physics of the fight and how the Earth didn't split in two at the first punch, and some interviews with people who were there. But that's just the framing device.

The whole issue won't actually be us watching the Death of Superman TV Memorial Special. Ordinary people around the city will weigh in, and they'll actually give their version of what happened. Religious groups will give an almost biblical retelling of the incident as they find meaning in the chaos. Bibbo tells it like he feels it went. And all these stories will be totally inconsistent. Each story picks up where the other leaves off with wildly shifting tone and art style. This is what myth is. And we know why we tells myths to begin with: it's to comfort us, and to explain and explainable situation. So this is how people explained SUPERMAN dying. But by the end, find Mitch Anderson, one of the first people Superman saved directly from Doomsday--one of the few people who saw them fight fairly up close, is in earshot of one of the stories, and all he can think to say is "that's freakin' stupid." Mitch, formally the short lived hero Outburst, has a mic drop moment and say that it lasted 8 minutes and 32 seconds (that's how long issue 2 was in real time and why I framed it that way), and it was just a guy fighting for his life.

* The last issue of the main book we're not only back to Frank, but we're also back to the actual day of the incident. The whole thing is in the first-person camera view of Superman/Clark. It's intimate as hell. We'd use tricks like Clark's vision blurring, or going dark thus obscuring or warping the whole panel. He even gets hit hard enough that his eyes go x-ray for a shot or two before snapping back. Clark passing out at moments we'd use for skips in time or cut aways. His eyes would blur with tears from time to time (looking at Lois for the last time, when he knows it's the end, and when it just hurts like hell). You'd get a front row seat to Doomsday's fist as the impact from them seem to rattle and shake the very foundation of the panels. This is also where we get the internal thoughts of Clark. And as the issue goes on you see them change from long from an coherent like "calculate the momentum of its arm and use it against it. Maybe fly it out of here." to "hurt. Blood? My blood. Third flood. Family. Point 3 seconds. Go." and all the way down to "scared. Run. Gotta run. Can't. It won't stop. So scared. But I can't stop. Hurt. Scared." as reason takes as much of a beating as Clark's body does in the face of this walking natural disaster. Clark is also getting hit so hard that he starts to see things. Shamelessly ripped from Superman: Secret Identity, Clark pictures his opponent as something simpler and more explainable, and this is characterized by him seeing things as if they were in the Golden or Silver age, but then a punch knocks things back to the grit, reality, and randomness of the situation at hand.

This is also Clark talking to Lois (who is also stands in for the reader). He's really opening up to her about this insanely traumatic incident in his life. Just them sitting and talking (no first-person view) is inserted into parts of the issue to break things up and act as direct resolution to issue #1's emotional conflict. We find out that the Lois and Clark portions of the issue takes place maybe months after his return to life. In that time he was never able to put what happened to him into words for himself let alone anyone else, and this was finally him doing it for Lois. And through the now unfortunate power of a nearly perfect memory he's able to recall each and every thought he had during the longest 8 minutes and 32 seconds of his life. It's one of the hardest things he'll ever have to do in his life. He has to even stop a few times (of the pauses is transitioned in by the aforementioned first person tears during the fight blurring the panel, and now cutting to us watching Clark, in third person, tearing up on Lois' sofa while she helps him though it.) Death of Superman was very much about variability in a lot of respects, so when Clark is telling the actual first-hand recounting of the incident it has to be from a place of vulnerability.

Myths are manufactured from embellishments, faulty memory, and rose-tinted glasses. As we end off, it's clear that Death of Superman was never that--never a myth, but rather the story about a man trying and dying.

* I didn't try to out do or even change Death of Superman (too much) as if I'd written it for the first time ever. It's in the collective cultural lexicon, and I can't, nor do I really want to, change that. So I'd write around the story and find the new angles inside that would hopefully give a new reader and in, and validate an old fan of the original work.

Appreciate you reading.

[Miles To Go]

I'd have Lois finding out she's pregnant near the end of it, or at the very end takes a pregnancy test.

[Flash Gordon]

I'd drop it, honestly.

It hasn't aged well, and I'd like to focus on new stories and ideas. It was a big deal when it happened but I don't see the point in having it an event that happened in the past. Keeping everything beholden to these stories lessens the weight of new concepts.

Doomsday is also...terribly uninteresting.

[Jon Clark]

The question is vague enough that I can't tell if it's asking me to put myself in 1992 and replace the original or for something like the post-52 retelling/animated.

I'm going with the "it's 1992 and I've been asked to organize the original".

Doomsday #1: Begins with Doomsday's escape from where he was buried and details his first battle with the then current Justice League. The team would have been egged on by Guy Gardner into responding without calling in/waiting for Superman. The heroes actually are sort of effective for a few pages. Mostly it is Guy and Maxima tag teaming Doomsday (who isn't really paying them any attention but is slowed down). Ice, Fire and Booster are trying to deal with the destruction where Doomsday has passed (fires, collapsed buildings, downed electrical lines) while Beetle and Bloodwynd work to get people out of the creature's path.

Everything changes when Guy tries to contain Doomsday in a bubble and the creature smashes it causing Guy to lose focus. Booster swoops in to shield Guy from an attack and his force-field actually stops Doomsday's blow. Suddenly Doomsday actually notices Booster and Maxima (who at this point is trying to hold back Doomsday's fist). Maxima suddenly finds herself being slammed into Booster's force field several times in a row before being flung several blocks as Doomsday shakes her loose while pounding on Booster. Guy has recovered enough to attempt a new attack using his ring to grab two damaged vehicles and slam then down on Doomsday. The resulting shrapnel hits the other Leaguers. Fire manages to melt what is aimed at her and Bloodwynd seems to have avoided getting hit at all. Ice suffers some abrasions but is still on her feet. Beetle, unfortunately, is pinned through an arm or leg.

Seeing Ice harmed Fire charges at Doomsday blasting an almost white flame as Guy hits from the other side actually stunning him momentarily. Taking advantage of this Bloodwynd tries to phase through the creature only to fall back with blood flowing from his eyes and nose. Ice now begins to freeze the creature inside of a block of ice. She is taken out when Doomsday breaks out of the frozen shield. Maxima comes back slightly bloodied and furious. We see Guy, Maxima and Booster facing off with Doomsday. The creature throws a punch which shatters Booster's forcefield and is about to connect with him when another fist strikes Doomsday and send the creature flying backwards … SUPERMAN.


Justice League America #69: Picks up with Superman's arrival along with Wonder Woman. The battle continues with Superman joining Fire, Booster, Maxima and Guy. Diana takes the wounded using her lasso to secure the unconscious Bloodwynd to her back and carrying Beetle and Ice under each arm. Seeing Diana fly off Doomsday goes to leap after her only for Superman to grab the creature's leg. Superman pulls his hand back and we see a small cut on his palm as Doomsday falls to the ground. The rest of the issue intersperses the battle with scenes of other heroes. We see Diana arrive at a hospital with the wounded heroes. News reports of the battle are playing in the Batcave . We see Hal being called away by the Guardians just before a similar newscast plays on the TV at Ferris Air. Justice League Europe is shown returning from an adventure at the end of the issue to be informed of the battle.

Booster and Fire are both taken out by Doomsday early on. Fire simply exhausts herself. Booster is struck by Doomsday and without his force field is badly injured. Guy's ring begins to peter out as the charge is depleted. By the end of the issue only Superman and Maxima are left standing.


to be continued

[JAK]

I would have made it more of a company wide event with nearly all the DCU heroes aiding but being defeated by Doomsday.

Funeral for a friend could have extended into the Batman books, with a sense of hopelessness spreading across the world... (needs work,I know)

Superboy NOT coming off a 90's fashion victim?

YOUR ideas on this?

Honestly? Not a whole lot.

The Death of Superman was such a HUGE event, such a massive thing, and for it's time it was amazing. It made at least some world-wide headlines, and definitely national ones. Comics have been shaped by that to such a degree that no answer here can properly be given that isn't somehow affected by the existence of the current version. In some way, any idea given will always be an "answer/response" to the original and not a real "what if" replacement. And it took away (for a short bit, anyway) a character people were taking for granted, and shot him back into the limelight for years after that. DC may have no idea what to do with almost any asset it has, but that was very important for Superman. A generation of readers, myself included, became dedicated era-long readers from that.

Doomsday was one-note, sure, but it was exactly the point that he wasn't one of Clark's regular rogues or "made by" any of them. Doomsday was the closest thing for Superman to "you never know when your time is up or how it'll come," connecting him in yet another way to the people he protects on his adopted world (even if they don't have a means of coming back).

We also have to remember the timing. Earlier that year, the plan was for Superman to be married in Dec of '92. That was the original plan. The Lois & Clark TV show nixed that, and caused the reaction that now lives in history.

Having said all of that, it's too bad more of DC's book teams hadn't gotten on board. That really could have been amazing. For Doomsday to just about be the "Doomsday" of a LOT of the DC heroes, only for Superman to be the only one left that's able to stop him. If Jurgens had been on JL, we wouldn't have even had *that* tie-in.

Superlad93, I love that idea a lot! As for who should say that, I'd say Mitch Anderson (he and his family were saved from Doomsday by Superman) would be good for that moment. "just a guy, fighting for his life. .... and ours."

[Superlad93]

Superlad93, I love that idea a lot! As for who should say that, I'd say Mitch Anderson (he and his family were saved from Doomsday by Superman) would be good for that moment. "just a guy, fighting for his life. .... and ours."

Thank you so much! And that's a fantastic idea. I'll add that immediately. There won't be a flashback to him getting saved from Doomsday, or his time as Outburst, but he'll mention one and someone else will mention the other. Once again man, really great addition.

[stargazer01]

I think the main idea of the Death of Superman story arc is to show why Superman is a beacon of hope and the greatest superhero ever.

In that respect, I think the new movie did a solid job at showing why the world needs Superman. Hopefully, the upcoming Reign of the Supermen movie also show why others can try but nobody is Superman w/ his values and his deep compassion for the world and what a great friend he was to all.

Fans can complain this story is overrated and over played. But it has become an iconic story in the Superman myth. He died and came back to life.

[Kon93]

This is the story that brought me into comics,the Reign made me love all 4 of the fake supermen,so NO I do not think it in anyway is flawed,and not at all by 1992-1993 standards.ita easy to pick things apart decades later and be smug about it,it was rightfully the comic event of the last century easily.