Annotated 31-18
There was a small artistic flourish in the Death of Superman comics event, which I am definitely not recommending you read. For the last four issues of it, the panel-counts of each page formed a countdown. There was one story where every page had four panels, then one where every page had three, then two, and finally one. Something a bit similar is playing out here, with these two unusually large panels building up to a big splash on the next page.
I’m mulling over how everyone figured out not only that Gravedust was here, but what he was upset about and what to do about it. And I guess the conclusion I have to reach is that E-Merl’s the one who explained the situation, and maybe Fr’Nj told them how it went or maybe the discussion was just loud enough that they needed no interpreter.
This “right to side-questing” is a great idea. Sure wish we’d planted it in Chapter 24 instead of kind of pulling it out of our butts here, but at least it’s pretty consistent with the Adventurer’s Guild as we established it.
“There was a small artistic flourish in the Death of Superman comics event, which I am definitely not recommending you read. “
Wait what? Why not?
Apologies in advance if I’m trampling on your favorite! But in my view, “The Death of Superman” has the greatest hype-to-story-quality ratio of any superhero comic arc ever printed, and that’s saying something. A giant elephant-man breaks out of some prison somewhere and starts hitting Superman, who hits back until they both die. The end. The rest is filler. “Funeral for a Friend” was somewhat better and “The Return of Superman” was genuinely fun, but I feel like most people who remember “Death” fondly are remembering how it felt to have mass culture paying attention to an actual comic book, or maybe the excited feeling that Superman could actually die, rather than anything about the tale’s execution.
The only kinda cool idea in the story itself was the decision to keep Doomsday half-restrained for a while, a sort of pugilistic striptease that sends the same message as “THIS ISN’T EVEN MY FINAL FORM!,” but more effectively. And maybe you could count the knock-knock joke that ran on the last pages of the four issues leading up to the big event, but even that was just a refinement of an old Lee-Ditko Hulk sequence, and more hype for the story than story itself.
See, personally, I wouldn’t call The Death of Superman an actual arc in itself – it’s act one of the (very long, to be sure) complete arc of Death/Reign/Return.
Oh no no, I had not read it at all. I somehow interpreted it as something very serious or politically incorrect or something had gone wrong regarding that story when I read “definitely not recommending” rather than really not liked it. I read too much into it!
Well, it’s just Not Very Good, either as a Superman story in particular, or as an important event in DC Comics -and pop culture- history (it is the death of an enormously famous character, so I guess it qualifies as “important”) Not only is it a sub-par plot, but a sub-par marketing gimmick, as well. I think no one actually believed DC was going to kill Superman for good, but I don’t think we were expecting a “psyche! I was only sort of dead”, either. In any event, The Death Of Superman has been widely accused of being one of the reasons for the comic book crash of the mid 90’s, from which the comic book industry has yet to recover.
This is basically right, except a lot of people who bought those “Death of Superman” comics did think Superman was going to be gone for good. I remember waiting in line with some of ’em. They weren’t fans, hadn’t done much research, and were stuck on that old narrative of “remember those old comics your mom threw out? Well, now they’re worth thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars!” Anyone who’d been faithfully reading comic books for more than a year could’ve told those people that the chances of Superman staying dead for good were almost zero. But they usually didn’t. From retailers to publishers, they were perfectly happy to profit from these gold-rush speculators’ ignorance. Other comics of this era also targeted speculators, but maybe none did so as blatantly. At least Marvel’s #1s of the period and the early Image Comics were driven by the prospect of seeing popular creative people doing their own thing.
In any case, speculator-baiting is not a sustainable model. Eventually, the “greater fool” wises up.
Yeah. The crash was a good old-fashioned Market Bubble.
The two big publishing houses had had a long run duopoly, for better or for worse.
Then EVERYBODY started publishing (my guess is some sort of new printer made it cheaper).
And soon the big houses were 1) Not able to hire people with new ideas and 2) all out of ideas, because all the idea-people had gone indie
Also it was an extremely exploitative period: Those indie houses mainly published cheap, superficial cheesecake.
That crash didn’t happen because of any particular arc, but rather because of ALL the arcs.
It was an age of cheap garbage.
So cheap it made even Frank Miller look even halfway worthwhile, but only by comparison.
Haha, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with it on that level, thank goodness.
Reign was kinda fun for the four intro comics that had “[Superman nickname] is back!” and a window for the emblem, then open up for a splash cover of the featured character. Neat gimmick. And I got to discover Steel, that shot of him in the burning building with the sledgehammer has stuck with me.
Next time I got out to the comics shop (grew up in the middle of nowhere) everything was over and the Bad One did a bit of taunting before being dumped into a black hole.
Minor issue, but “global threat” is a little weird in that context – more suited to the world-ending nature of adventurers’ quests than to a formal legal military-adjacent document. You’d think Ardaic, reading that proposed language, assuming he’d already been finagled into accepting side-quests in principle, would say “If one of you is aware of a threat to the security of Gastonia, you will do the bare fucking minimum of reporting it in first before haring off.” (If he swore.)
Even if that was a requirement, Gravedust already fulfilled it and it was summarily dismissed as something for the military to bother with.
Finding Gravedust and realizing he’s upset are pretty straightforward, since he just smashed a giant glass statue (which was probably loud) and is now sitting next to it weeping. As to how they know why he’s upset, maybe Byron knew. He strikes me as the type to have been hovering around outside the hospital room where Syr’Nj is staying.
Plus, Gravy stormed out of the hospital, across a large square and to the place where that statue was standing. Stands to reason that pretty much all the others saw him. Especially since they knew he was going to talk to Syr’N’j about something very important (and E-Merl actually know what it’s about and has probably told the others in the meantime), so if I was them, I’d have gathered outside the hospital to talk to Gravedust when he comes out.
So … Gravedust’s face in the first panel. Does anyone else think the black line right in front of his ear looks like a string holding his beard in place?