This year is the 30th anniversary of The Death of Superman, a story that shocked the comics world and introduced a bevy of new characters and concepts to the DC Universe. 30 years later the ripple effects of Superman’s death and subsequent resurrection are still felt in the world of DC in a variety of ways, and now DC is celebrating the 30th anniversary of that monumental story with the Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special, which features four new stories from the original four creative teams, including Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding. Jurgens, Breeding, Brad Anderson, and John Workman’s story in the special is titled The Life of Superman, and ComicBook.com had the chance to speak to Jurgens and Breeding all about the story, seeing Superman’s death through the eyes of his son, the new villain Doombreaker, and more!
The Life of Superman brings Superman’s death into focus through several different points of view, including those who were there at the time and those who are just finding out about what happened. Jonathan is amongst the latter, and that opens up several important family conversations.
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“Yeah, and I think that’s why was part of what’s fun with Jon in general. It’s this idea that I think all of us in our own personal life, or even maybe with our own kids, have these instances where you get together at a family reunion, and one of the older cousins says, ‘Hey, did you know that?’ And the kid in question goes, ‘No, I didn’t know that.’ Or it happens in school somehow. So I thought this was a bit of a natural reaction and it also allowed us through the story to once again, bring in someone in Mitch Anderson who had been in the first story way back, who could definitely talk about this from the terms of being an anniversary,” Jurgens said.
Life of Superman also examines the mark that the original event left on Clark as a person. Sure he came back to the land of the living, but that doesn’t mean dying at the hands of Doomsday didn’t leave some trauma and baggage to process, and you can tell in how they won’t even refer to Doomsday by name.
“I think once you get into that … Well, let’s put it this way. I don’t know for sure, but I sort of suspect that once you die, you don’t forget it easily and don’t get past that, that it still ends up being kind of a thing,” Jurgens said. “And the other part of it was, this is something where we really did want to both combine something new with the idea of echoing the past. And that’s where it’s been so good to be able to have Brett work on this because it’s us doing our first interior work together in a whole long time. And I think having that look again is part of what also gives this a very special feel.”
The story also introduces a new villain named Doombreaker, and introducing a character so clearly inspired by such an iconic original can be tricky, but Jurgens and Breeding embraced the challenge in the hopes of changing things up a bit.
“Well, I think the idea is generally that there have been subsequent Doomsday stories over the years and we did want to do something a little different here and not just do another, ‘Gee, here’s Doomsday in Metropolis, 30 years later,’ kind of story,” Jurgens said. “So we wanted to give it a little bit of a twist and find something in the first story, which goes all the way back to Superman 75 as an Easter egg that we could use to create this particular version of Doombreaker. So that’s where the idea came from and it just makes the story a little bit different.”
“Well, the design and the look is all Dan’s. I’m just embellishing the thing. So I can’t take too much credit here,” Breeding said. “I mean, the story and the whole thing is being driven by Dan and I’m hopefully doing justice to the pencils that he’s been turning in. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it. I’ve been trying to think of ways to make him look different than Doomsday. It’s hard to do because there are so many cues that are the same, the bones and that kind thing. So really, there’s not a whole lot I can add to it, just try to keep what’s there and enhance as best that I can.”
Breeding knows there is a bit of confusion surrounding Doombreaker at the moment, but hopes fans will give the story and the new character a chance. “I’m trying to give it a feeling of what we did before. Although it’s been so long since we worked together, and both of us, our styles have changed a little bit, so it’s not going to look like just a continuation,” Breeding said. “Hopefully, the fans will respond to it and it’ll feel familiar and visually relate back to that original story, and hopefully people are going to look at this character and there’s enough there that it’s immediately going to say Doomsday, but there’s enough there that they’re going to know it’s something other than Doomsday and people won’t be confused. I know I see a lot of confusion right now on posts on the internet from pictures that have been posted and people saying, ‘Oh man, when did Doomsday get four arms?’ Well, read the title of the post. It’s Doombreaker. It’s something new.”
Jurgens and Breeding wanted to bring something new and fresh to the Death of Superman, but also embraced the nostalgia and original tone that will strike chords with longtime fans, including an intent to deliver homages to iconic moments without recreating them exactly.
“The closest that we have gotten on a couple of instances, one would be on the cover because there was a deliberate effort to hearken back to a couple of the scenes on the cover. And that’s our three-panel foldout cover. The other one would be, even as we relate to certain scenes that happened before as a memory, I always find it helpful to really approximate those scenes rather closely without making them an exact duplicate because you want people to really know that you’re referring to something. So it’s like when we have a flashback to Lois holding Superman’s body, for example, is not exactly the same, but yeah, it’s obviously Brett and me going back to what we did before. Because the whole trick in this book I think is to, we want to draw out those fond memories that people have of the past and hearken back to the cool stuff that was in that book and still do something new. And I think it’s a balancing act that I actually feel pretty good about. I think we hit it,” Jurgens said.
“Yeah. I think that from my perspective, when the pages come in, there’s a lot of familiarity, especially the certain panels like, ‘Oh, I remember this.’ And I don’t know if it’s in the first 20, but that there’s a shot with Superman getting a knee to the chin. Of course, done very differently. It’s not a full-page splash, but it’s very similar. And there are little things that I’ve picked up on, even in the fight as the issue goes on, that are reminiscent without copying,” Breeding said. “So it really does put you in mind of that old stuff. It’s hard not to have fun with it because it is related. It’s not doing something over again, but it’s so clearly connected, even visually, to a lot of what we did before. It’s almost like a re-imagining of, from an artist standpoint. Now we’re doing the same story 30 years later, except it’s not because the Daily Planet building was not in nearly as many pages back then.”
While the Death of Superman is a touchstone for a generation of comics fans, there are many who are aware of the story but perhaps haven’t read the story or the stories that followed like Funeral for a Friend and Reign of the Supermen. The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special aims to be a perfect place for those fans as well, giving a broad rundown of what happened with some added depth, and in the process enticing them enough to go back and read the original story as well.
“And I think along with that, this is where Brett and I do feel pretty much like we’re responsible for the existence of the industry today because of that fact. Just kidding. But I think what’s key about this book is, and this gets back to that sort of balancing act that we, I think wanted to walk on this with all the stories and the pinups and everything. And it is that if you were there, when this book came out 30 years ago, I think you’re going to read this and just get that sort of charge again, that hopefully you got way back then, that it will bring back some very fond and nostalgic memories for you. But by the same token, if you weren’t there, if you’re picking this stuff up for the first time or maybe you just bought The Death of Superman graphic novels and read them somewhere 10 years ago, that this will be fun for you as well because there’s some new stuff and that’s a lot of what John Kent represents in this story,” Jurgens said.
“One of the things that occurred to me when I first started working on the pages started coming in and I’m seeing the story, and then certainly after I read the plot, that was really kind of interesting. I didn’t really anticipate, but there are so many people out there that are familiar with Death of Superman, but there’s got to be a lot of readers that aren’t,” Breeding said. “And when they read this story, if they aren’t aware of it, the story stands on its own. But the whole beginning of the story with John is going to be an introduction to them. Wait a minute, they’re going to be finding out just like John is Superman died before, something else maybe they’ve got to go back and look into.”
“I can’t imagine there’s anybody on the planet that is interested in comics that isn’t familiar with the Death of Superman because it was such a big thing and it continues to be everywhere I go, but I’m sure there are people out there that are going to buy this book to check it out. And they may not be familiar and maybe this will get them to buy the original issue as well and find out what that was all about,” Breeding said.
The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special hits comic stores on November 8th, and the special and collected editions go on sale on December 6th.
What did the Death of Superman mean to you and are you excited for the 30th Anniversary Special? Let us know in the comments or as always you can talk all things comics with me on Twitter @MattAguilarCB!
