Superman had an amazing year in 2025. The Man of Steel made his triumphant return to the big screen over the summer, with DC Comics taking advantage of this by putting out stories starring the character. The success of the hero played off some of the amazing stories of his past, which have built the character into the superstar he is today, especially one. Superman writer/director James Gunn told everyone the comic that truly inspired his take on Kal-El, and most long time Superman fans weren’t surprised by the one he picked: All-Star Superman, the 12-issue classic from the brilliant creative team of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. The story turns 20 this year, and even two decades later, it’s still integral to the character today.
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All-Star Superman is one of the best Superman stories ever. It took every era of the hero, picked and chose the best parts, and brought it all together to create something perfect. Even all those years ago, readers knew that they were getting something special, and since then the story has become the blueprint for everything fans love about Superman. It’s become one of the most important stories in comic history, telling a flawless tale that still stands up all these years later.
All-Star Superman Showed The Classics Never Go Out of Style
All-Star Superman is a simple story: Superman foils one of Lex Luthor’s plans, saving a group of scientists who took a trip to the sun, but learns that it was all a trick to get him to take a lethal dose of yellow sun radiation. The book sees the hero decide to leave the world a better place than it was, embarking on a quest that is meant to mirror the legendary 12 labors of Hercules. Over the course of the series, the Man of Steel does some of the most amazing thing imaginable, with Morrison and Quitely creating a captivating, emotional story that doesn’t skimp on superhero excellence.
A lot of people think of All-Star as more heavily influenced by the Silver Age sci-fi stories of the Man of Tomorrow, but it really uses ideas from every era of the character. There’s the man of the people spending his day saving the city and looking out for the populace. There’s Kryptonite shenanigans, mixed with ideas from the classic “Death of Superman”. We get some new Kryptonians and Bizarro. There’s relationship drama between Lois and Clark, and bullpen of The Daily Planet plays a huge role. Morrison homages their DC One Million story, incorporating Superman Prime and Solaris the Tyrant Sun. It’s a heady brew of ideas from different eras, all brought together by the world’s first superhero.
One of the problems with Superman in the modern era is that everyone thinks that they need to “modernize” the character. So many times, fans have read interviews with creators about how they want to bring the hero into the “modern day”. It’s led to some strange changes to the equation — making him a Reagan era yuppie conservative is one of the most out of character takes ever — but All-Star Superman shows that none of that is necessary. The Man of Steel doesn’t need to be modernized, because the character is already perfect.
Morrison and Quitely’s classic didn’t reinvent the wheel, it showed that with the right respect, everything about the character works. He doesn’t need to be brought into the modern day; he’s already the Man of Tomorrow. Society changes in a lot of ways, but the thing about Superman is that the ideas at his core are always fresh, as are the other more old school aspects of his world. Look at Bizarro World in the book; Morrison made it into a cosmic predator, moving in the shadows, but kept the humorous tone to the whole shebang. It was still basically the same thing it had always been, but the idea was modified. Lex Luthor’s outlandish schemes can be wild and out there, like they were decades ago, if they’re done right. Superman faces the biggest threats in comics, and All-Star Superman reminded people of what that could look like without completely changing everything about the hero.
All-Star Superman Showed the Limitless Potential of Superhero Comics
Looking at the greatest Superman tales of the last 20 years, all of them have borrowed from the DNA of All-Star Superman. Gunn told fans that he was going to be taking a lot from the book, and many thought he meant story beats, but instead he lifted the feeling of it. His Superman feels like the one in this 20-year old classic, and it made the movie that much better. He didn’t try to “bring the character into the 21st century” or make him more “serious”, he just took the god who believed us, the man whose strongest power was actually hope, and put him on the screen.
Superman is a very easy character to get wrong, as we’ve seen over the years, but the core of the character will always be perfect. There’s nothing about him that needs to be changed to make him more palatable for general audiences, and All-Star Superman reminded everyone of that. It showed that if you take the basics of the hero and put them on display, you can still tell an amazing story without making the character and his world darker. It’s a textbook for the best Man of Steel stories, and DC Comics would be very different if it hadn’t have came out all those years ago.
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