Here is the latest in our year-long look at one cool comic (whether it be a self-contained work, an ongoing comic or a run on a long-running title that featured multiple creative teams on it over the years) a day (in no particular order whatsoever)! Here's the archive of the moments posted so far!

Today we look at one of the greatest Superman stories ever told - the Death of Superman!!!

Enjoy!

While his later work is quite familiar to most Superman fans, Jerry Siegel's later work on Superman often gets overlooked. I mean, when you compare it to, you know, CREATING the guy, that's fairly natural. But still, during the late 1950s and early 1960s, Jerry Siegel contributed a number of excellent Superman stories.

One such story is the one we're looking at today - Superman #149's "The Death of Superman" (an imaginary story, dontchaknow).

Siegel and the great Curt Swan told the story in three chapters.

In the initial chapter, Lex Luthor appears to have renounced his life of crime!!!

Some criminals then ask Luthor to help them kill Superman, he says no, that he is Superman's friend now (naturally, Luthor figures Superman is keeping an eye on him, and he is correct)...

Superman gives Luthor a signal watch like Jimmy Olsen's....

and later, a private space lab...

but one day, Luthor's signal watch calls out to Superman...

Brutal, huh?

Superman's funeral is well-attended, including Supergirl, who at this point in time was Superman's "secret weapon." So when Luthor is celebrating Superman's death, he never took her into consideration...

His trial in Kandor was very well handled, ESPECIALLY this little insight into Luthor's soul that we get her at the end, where he cannot believe that anyone would not be moved by their own self-interests like him...

and we end with a bittersweet ending...

Wow, what a well-told story. Like I said before, I don't think Siegel's later work gets nearly the acclaim that it deserves - he was an excellent story writer (for Superman, at least - adapting his style to other characters never seemed to work as well).