When DC Comics Killed Off Superman

In November 1992, Mike Kennedy, the co-owner of Planet Comics in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, rented a casket. Before the store opened, he arranged it inside the store and covered it in a homemade red cape. Outside, more than 80 customers lingered, hoping for a chance to participate in what had become a pop culture event.

Inside the store were hundreds of copies of Superman #75, the conclusion of which featured the death of the Man of Steel.

For months, DC Comics had enjoyed unprecedented media attention over their culling of the most famous character in comics. Some believed Superman was gone for good; others started to consider the possibility that the event hastened the collapse of a once-hot comic book industry. Not since Spock slumped over from radiation poisoning in 1982’s Star Trek II had there been this much fervor over a fictional character’s demise.

But why kill him in the first place?

1. Panel Discussion
2. Super Salesmanship

Panel Discussion

Superman’s demise had been hinted at many times prior to Planet Comics rolling out his casket. The cover of Superman #92 from September 1954 teased that a group of thugs with Kryptonite would lead to “Superman’s last hour.” Superman #149 from November 1961 depicted the character strapped to a table at the mercy of Lex Luthor, promising readers they could “see what happens when Superman dies!”

Of course, his mortality was never really in question. (Even the cover of #149 tempered reader expectations by describing the story inside as “imaginary.”) Superman was an institution; the character was introduced by creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in 1938 and became the template for thousands of 20th-century costumed superheroes to come.

But by the early 1990s, the character had grown pale in contrast to the increasingly violent world of antiheroes. The Punisher and Venom, both from Marvel, had little compunction about murdering foes. Young artists like Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane were branching off to create more provocative characters like Deadpool and Spawn, wielding oversized guns and battling the forces of hell. Superman was the John Denver of comics in comparison.

“Superman is really stupid, jumping around in his little red leotards,” one 13-year-old told a reporter idling in an Albuquerque comic shop in 1992. “He’s too old. Nobody cares about him anymore.”

“He looks like a sissy,” a 9-year-old chimed in. “He needs a gun… I think I’d like him to die.”

That's an alarming sentiment coming from a child, but DC Comics didn’t disagree. After a bump in interest thanks to John Byrne’s 1986 limited series The Man of Steel and a relaunch of the main Superman title, the character was on the decline again. Byrne had left, and sales hit a low of 150,000, just a fraction of what Marvel’s Spider-Man sold. There was a feeling it was time for another radical left turn.

In 1992, the editors, writers, and illustrators of the various Superman comics—four titles in all—convened for their annual work consortium, which they had dubbed the “super summit.” It was a time to discuss plans for the character and to make sure stories were consistent across the books. One key topic was the pending marriage of Clark Kent and Lois Lane, which had been in the works for years. But there was a new wrinkle: DC and parent company Warner Bros. were closer to getting a greenlight for Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, a live-action series that would likely marry the two off in the future. It made more sense to wait until their primetime union was scheduled and then plan a comic to take advantage of the exposure.

That left the Superman team without an event. As he had done in the past, writer Jerry Ordway joked, “Let’s just kill him.” It was usually said in jest: Superman, after all, was virtually invulnerable. But given the modest sales and a canceled wedding, it suddenly seemed worth talking about.

DC had trafficked in death before. In 1988, they invited readers to dial a 900 number and cast a vote on whether they wanted the second Robin, a one-time juvenile delinquent named Jason Todd, to be beaten to death by the Joker. Fans opted for his demise via crowbar. Two years earlier, they offed Superman’s cousin, Supergirl, in the massive crossover event Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Ordway wasn’t the only one with the idea: Superman artist Dan Jurgens broached the topic as well and married it to an idea he had about a rampaging beast that might be Superman’s physical equal. (Perennial threats Lex Luthor and Kryptonite were dismissed as too predictable.)

A plan quickly came together. For several months over the summer and fall of 1992, Superman would be occupied with the typical cosmic and domestic threats. But slowly, a mysterious creature emerged from the margins of the pages. In issue after issue, he came closer to freeing himself from a prison. The Justice League assembled but could do nothing. Come Superman #75, the character, Doomsday, would be locked in combat with Superman after stampeding through Metropolis.

Each page by Jurgens was a splash, meaning it had no panels—just pure bombast. In the closing pages, the two would exchange vicious blows, each succumbing to the punishment. Superman lay dying in the arms of Lois in a rare triple-splash page illustration. By unfolding the image, it was as though Superman was dying in the arms of the reader, too.

It was a perfect comic book image: melodramatic, operatic, with a hint of Greek myth. DC believed it would stir interest. They had little idea of just how much.

Super Salesmanship

In September 1992, Superman group editor Mike Carlin had let slip in a trade publication, Advance Comics, that Superman was due to meet his end in November. That was all the mainstream press needed to pounce. For months, newspapers and television ran early obituaries for the character, analyzing his place in pop culture and why DC would dare kill off a lucrative asset. Others pointed out the grim coincidence that Superman was perishing the same year one of his co-creators, Joe Shuster, had passed.

“By taking Superman away, we could really explore his importance to the world at large,” Jurgens told SyFy Wire in 2018. “What worked great is that reality seemed to fuse with our storyline for a while, as any number of columnists wrote pieces that addressed the question of Superman’s importance to the world.”

Comic fans were savvy enough to realize that few characters stayed dead. Others were more credulous. DC’s offices in New York reportedly received death threats; adults who hadn’t read comics in years sobbed in front of news reporters. Some expressed concern kids would be rattled: Carlin waved them off. “I was a kid when I saw Bambi’s mother die, and I turned out OK,” he said.

DC rallied around the morbidity. According to comic writer Louise Simonson, DC asked the creative team to sign non-disclosure agreements that prevented them from explaining the temporary nature of death in comics. For Superman #75, the issue depicting his death, the publisher printed 3 million collector’s copies sealed in a polybag and accompanied by a black armband with his S emblem and Daily Planet obituary.

It was more attention than comics and comic shops had received in years. Shops that normally ordered 12 copies of a Superman title were ordering hundreds or thousands of his death rattle. Lines ran out the door; some owners took to answering their phones by announcing they were sold out of the issue. The 3 million copies were quickly cleared from shelves, leading DC into second, third, and fourth printings. By some estimates, over 6 million copies were sold. At $2.50 each, it was a lucrative wake.

“The demand for this book has been outrageous,” Mike Kennedy of Planet Comics (and its coffin) told The Oklahoman of the frenzy. “We’ve got housewives, businessmen and grandmothers coming in. I’ve got secretaries being sent out by their bosses to get this.”

The pathos experienced only one major hiccup. In an interview, Carlin speculated that Doomsday could conceivably be an “escapee from a cosmic lunatic asylum.” Mental health advocates bristled at the idea, insisting it contributed to a stereotype that associates mental illness with violence. (Carlin apologized.)

For Superman’s creative caretakers, death wasn’t the end. Superman’s demise opened up a number of story possibilities. Superman’s peers, including Batman, mourned his loss; a frail Pa Kent suffered a heart attack. (He recovered.) Soon, four new characters emerged, each claiming to be the resurrected Superman: Steel, a new Superboy, Cyborg Superman, and the Eradicator. (Steel was later turned into a Shaquille O’Neal movie vehicle.)

None of them were the real deal: Superman returned in Adventures of Superman #500 in 1993. He had been convalescing in a “Kryptonian regeneration matrix,” a kind of alien ICU that also allowed him to grow out a mullet. He emerged wearing a new black costume, a possible nod to the edgier comics of the era. Clark Kent, who was believed to have perished during the Doomsday battle, resurfaced, claiming he had been trapped in a basement while buried under rubble. No one seemed to wonder why he and Superman tended to disappear and reappear at the same time.

The death of Superman was impermanent, but it still had long-term consequences for the comics industry. After a few speculator-driven years that saw collectors snap up buzzy issues of X-Men and Spider-Man, the polybagged Superman #75 was one of the final lessons of an over-leveraged market. There were millions of copies to meet demand, which meant values never had any long-term potential to move beyond their cover price.

By the mid-1990s, industry sales were dwindling. A resulting market crash drove investors out of the game, leaving a comparatively smaller number of genuine readers to prop up the medium. Even mighty Marvel was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1996.

As a marketing gimmick, Superman #75 may have been an affront to comics purists. However, artists saw it as an opportunity to have a more existential conversation about a hero everyone had long taken for granted.

“That’s one of the problems in working on Superman, is that he’s too much of a good guy to the public today,” editor Mike Carlin said at the time. “One of the reactions I’m getting from people is, ‘How can you kill Superman?’ Well, where were you when he was alive?”

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