The death and return of Superman

I hope to have a new post up tomorrow, and this one will not be one of those study in evil ones where I take a fictional villain and dissect them.  In the mean time my friend Dave Zyn turned me on to this video about the death and return of Superman (Comments to follow after the video).  I promise this will not become one of those web sites where it is reduced to me just posting stuff I like from other web sites.



It is an awesome video and in watching it, it made me change my mind regarding what I thought was the real culprit in destroying death in comic books.  For me it had always been Jean Grey's return in '86.  By the way, her return led to some horrific consequences.  It turned Cyclops into a total bastard, a man who would leave his wife to return to Jean Grey (a wife, incidentally, who looked exactly like her), necessitating in writer Chris Claremont writing said wife, Madelyne Pryor, out of the picture by turning her into a super villain.  Okay, granted, there were other ways he could have gotten rid of Madelyne and I think making her The Goblyn Queen, evil clone of Jean Grey was a bad idea, but this was the era of Mister Sinister so I am not really surprised Chris Claremont had done some really stupid things in this time period.  Other writers and editors had basically come in and wrecked all his plans for his comic but the dude seemed to forget the X-Men was part of a larger universe and man, these things happen.  The X-Men had been his private sandbox for so long he forgot that other writers and editors could sometimes play in it.

Where was I?  Oh, yeah, Jean Grey's return.  Jean Grey was a fluke, an anomaly.  Heroes and villains coming back from the dead between '87 and '93?  Rare.  Very rare.  But after Superman's return?  Death meant Nothing.  Look at this list of dead heroes who returned and look at the dates when they returned.  A vast majority of them came back after '93.  You would be hard pressed to find many that came back after Jean Grey's return but before Supermans death/rebirth.  Heck, hers was not the first death/rebirth: Iris West Allen, The Flash's wife, came back from the dead in '85!

So, excellent video, a lot of fun to watch. Thanks, Dave!