I’ve got such mixed feelings about that story. Rereading it just now, having been triggered by Tegan’s tweet, it still choked me up, as it does every time. But I’m also fully aware of how schmalzy it is, how dependent on having feelings for Silver Age Superman with all its silliness already.
27 Action Comics #583
I wonder what it must have been like for Swan to draw such a profoundly odd but also indelibly sad last story.
Still contains the saddest scene Alan Moore ever wrote, and he wrote From Hell. pic.twitter.com/phvys6gm6F
— It's TEGAN! (@tegan_oneil5000) February 5, 2018
To start with, the creative staff for what was to be the very last story to be ever told about the classic, Silver Age Superman and his world, was pretty much stunt casting. There’s Curt Swan, the classic Silver Age Superman artist, brought back to team up with two of the hottest flavours of eighties DC: Alan Moore and George Perez. It makes sense to have Swan there, but not have him being inked by e.g. Murphy Anderson, not having Cary Bates or Elliot S! Maggin or any of the other long term Superman writers write the last ever Superman story feels a bit sad.
The real problem is the context in which Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow was published. DC had decided that it didn’t want to be saddled with its fifty year history anymore, that all that old stuff was dumb and embarrassing, that they needed somebody modern like John Byrne to come around and give Superman a make-over. Even with Alan Moore being quite fond of Silver Age Superman, he was still in his make superheroes edgy phase and that same mood pervades Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow. Imaginary stories (“aren’t they all”) were always much more bloodthirsty than mainstream Superman, but Moore turns it up to eleven. Just because Lois and Clark survive and get a superbaby doesn’t make this a happy ending.
Everybody dies: friends, villains, lovers, superdogs. Bizarro destroys his own planet before attacking Metropolis. The Toyman and the Prankster murder Pete Ross and reveal Clark Kent is Superman. Metallo attacks the Daily Planet to murder Superman’s friends. The Legion of Supervillains murder Lana Lang and Jimmy Olsen when they’re defending the Fortress of Solitude. The Kryptonite Man takes out Krypto but not before he’s bitten to death by him. Brainiac usurp’s Lex Luthor’s body. And the one responsible for the carnage turns out to be a bored Mister Mxyzptlk, because “a funny little man in a derby hat” doesn’t work in the eighties anymore. Next issue Byrne would come and reboot Superman as Superyuppie.
Thirtyplus years on it’s all just as silly as the Silver Age Supes it was saying farewell too and a darn sight more offensive. The combination of nostalgia and carnage would be a prelude of some of DC’s worst instincts during the next three decades, constantly killing off, rebooting and killing off again. In hindsight, I like the imaginary stories of Mr and Mrs Superman much better.
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