I know what you’re thinking and you’re right. This is called My Marvel Life, so why mentioned the big red S? Well to be honest, as much as I have enjoyed my look into Marvel’s 90’s output, it wasn’t just Marvel that were doing interesting and fun things at the time. We have the Image explosion and DC’s attempts to grab attention as well. They took chances and went bold and as a result some really interesting and historic stories came out of it and one of them, was this one.
It all started with Superman. He was not the first paragon style hero (Doc Savage was already doing that and he too had a fortress of solitude) he wasn’t the first orphan who thrived as a hero (either John Carter or Tarzan were easily doing that) he wasn’t the first one with a secret identity (we can look at the Scarlet Pimpernell for that too) and comics had been around for a while too. But he was the first success at throwing all of it together and making it work. He was the everyman, he was the immigrant success story, he was a Moses allegory, he was a working class defender and an early social justice warrior, the symbol of a nation and the example of being a noble man in an ignoble world and dozens of other things beside, all while trying to make a circus strongman costume with a lengthened cape cool. He was there first and several times in his history, he was the best, arguably the 90’s were some of those times.
After waning success in the 80s, DC brought in Marvel wunderkind John Byrne to do a soup to nuts reboot after Crisis on Infinite Earths in 1986. His approach was to emphasise the identity of Clark Kent over Superman and to reduce his power levels to allow greater challenge. He also involved his supporting cast more, made his villains more intellectual threats than physical ones and kept Ma and Pa Kent alive, so that Clark was more well rounded, having family to call upon. He removed some of the silver age elements, like Superboy and Krypto the Super-Dog and this marvelised version of the Man of Steel was set off.
It worked, making Clark more of a character deepened the love-triangle element with Clark’s pursuit of Lois Lane being more realistic and the businessman version of Lex Luthor is still the standard today, nearly 40 years later. By 1990, there were 4 ongoing Super-titles, Action Comics, Adventures of Superman, Superman and Superman the Man of Steel. These titles formed an almost weekly ongoing Superman story and this format allowed the series to go from strength to strength. In 1992, the story had progressed quite a bit. Clark was a columnist as well as a novelist. Rather than being an overly mild-mannered milquetoast, Clark was successful and confident in his skills as a writer. He maintained good friendships with people and had a romantic life. He had won over and was now engaged to Lois Lane who loved him for Clark, not for Superman which was a huge departure for the story in it’s previous 50 years. Lex Luthor was gone, seemingly dying in a plane accident rather than die of the cancer that came from long term kryptonite exposure, but actually lived on, posing as his son in a cloned body. There was a new Supergirl and a variety of supporting heroes as well as regular people living their lives in the city that Superman called home.
Editorial had pulled the death of the hero story before, either ‘imaginary’ stories or twist in the tale fake-outs, but this time that wasn’t going to cut it. This time they needed something too big to outsmart, too strong to out muscle and something that could quite conceivably do real harm to the Man of Steel. They needed Doomsday. He didn’t talk, didn’t really emote, he was an engine of destruction that didn’t know, or more likely didn’t care about the harm he was doing. DC set this character up, aimed him at his adoptive home and the writers let him loose.
It’s not to be underplayed how important this comic was. Apart from the killing of a major character (a coin that would lose value the more often it was used) it was the precursor to the modern events that could change the course of the comics universe. It also had a knock on effect of other DC characters having massive status quo change/replacements. We got Artemis as Wonder Woman, the Return of Barry Allen, Emerald Twilight and of course Knightfall was around this time too. It was a massive event that added fuel to the fire of the speculator boom with people buying multiple copies of a comic to use as ‘investment’ opportunities in the future. I don’t have the time to write down all the ways that this was obvious stupidity, but it was the times we were in. Superman readers needed something to happen, DC needed column inches and a sales boost and comics in general needed the next big new thing.
But did it work? Were the comics good? Does it all stand up 30+ years later? I honestly don’t know, but I am going to go find out and enjoy doing it..
NEXT TIME – It wasn’t just the big 2 you know.
My Marvel Life 