Dan Jurgens's 'Action Comics' #1000 Story Evokes 'The Death of Superman,' 'Lois & Clark'

Over the weekend, DC Comics released some pages from Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund's story from [...]

By Russ Burlingame

Over the weekend, DC Comics released some pages from Dan Jurgens and Norm Rapmund's story from Action Comics #1000 -- and longtime Super-fans might remember some of the imagery in the Jurgens-drawn pages from the writer's first stint on the series in the '90s.

In a trio of pages, Jurgens depicted Superman conducting a space rescue and then returning to Earth so that he (as Clark Kent) could go to a "Superman Day" celebration with his wife Lois and their son Jon.

Clark, raised to be modest and sometimes not overly comfortable with the adulation that being Superman brings, looks a bit uncomfortable as Lois Lane goes for her own version of Superman's iconic shirt-rip...but that is interesting is that both the "Superman Day" event and a statue seen in that panel are items that likely feel familiar to longtime DC Super-fans.

The celebration of the Man of Steel is apparently taking place in Centennial Park. That is where the statue pictured -- a bronze statue of Superman with a bald eagle on his forearm -- was erected after Superman died at the hands of Doomsday in Superman #75, a 1992 comic written and drawn by Jurgens (with inker Brett Breeding and colorist Glen Whitmore). While often destroyed, the statue would recur as a symbol of the city's abiding love for Superman long after it outlived its usefulness as a tomb when he came back to life.

The Superman Day celebration itself is a common enough trope in this kind of storytelling, but given that it was written and drawn by Jurgens, one has to wonder whether it is an intentional homage to an episode of Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman titled "I'm Seeing Through You."

In that episode, a Superman Day event is held in Metropolis shortly after the Man of Steel first arrives. Through the magic of cameos, Superman Day was attended by Jurgens, Breeding, Jon Bogdanove (and his son Kal-El, now an award-winning video game director), Mike Carlin, Louise Simonson, Jerry Ordway, and more.

Following "The Death of Superman" and its attendant media frenzy, the Superman writers and artists were superstars. Around that time, Lois & Clark debuted, and the whole creative team were brought out to Los Angeles to attend an episode filming.

...And now, 25 years later, a very similar setting can be spotted in Action Comics #1000.

Look out for cameos!

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