Batman V Superman: Doomsday Featurette Released

While it took them until the movie was already in theaters to acknowledge it, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice's big third-act villain was in fact Doomsday, the monster who killed the Man of Steel in the comics.

But who or what is the beast? A newly-released Batman v Superman featurette from DC All Access answers for the fans of the movie. Check it out:

...I think the most interesting thing about that video is the fact that Jason Inman became the first official representative of DC Comics in a long while to acknowledge that Superman was "really dead." For years now, there has been some debate as to whether he was just essentially hibernating -- a logic offered up by subsequent writers but for a long time rejected by the creative teams who actually helmed the Death and Return of Superman stories.

For those of us who have read the comics, a while back I asked Doomday's creator, Action Comics writer Dan Jurgens, to describe the monster. Here are the bullet points he gave me:

• Creature of rage.
• Virtually unkillable. Able to come back to life, evolving past previous means used to kill him.
• Very much a force of nature. Fighting him would be like fighting a forrest fire, hurricane or tornado.
• Died over and over and over again as an infant as "Forced Evolution" was programmed into him. Ended up with a hate for all life, particularly Kryptonian.

Jurgens's take on the creature is significant not only because it was The Death of Superman that was adapted for a chunk of the movie, but because he's still writing Doomsday now. The creature is appearing as the primary antagonist in Action Comics, the next issue of which will be on the stands next week.