The Death of Superman Revisited

David Michael Newstead | The Philosophy of Shaving
For the last six months, I’ve been letting it sink in and trying to really process the passage of time and everything that means. In a saga that played out throughout 1992 and 1993, Superman died. It seemed monumental then. There were long lines and a surprising amount of news coverage. This was before superheroes achieved the same cultural status they have today. Still, The Death of Superman felt like a viral moment before the internet, leaving a big imprint on my childhood. The artwork. The story. The significance. My Dad and I parked the car on a side street lined with trees and walked from a nearby doctor’s office to our local comic book store to pick up the latest release. In the aftermath of Superman’s death, there were funerals, conspiracies, and imposters. The action practically leapt off the page, all leading to the hero’s glorious and inevitable return. Today, it would be easy enough to flip through those issues and maybe lose sight of that moment in time and what it meant to people. Isn’t this just another comic book after all? I’ve spent six months thinking through that, how 30 years went by. Last fall, I went back to my hometown and parked for a minute where the comic book store used to be. I reminded myself that time passes and things change. But if there’s a deeper moral to The Death of Superman, it might be this. What if the things you take for granted were suddenly gone? What would you do? How would you feel? And how do you move forward in their absence?