Today, we head back 30 years ago, when DC had a secret "countdown," of sorts, to the Death of Superman in Superman #75

This is "Look Back," where every four weeks of a month, I will spotlight a single issue of a comic book that came out in the past and talk about that issue (often in terms of a larger scale, like the series overall, etc.). Each spotlight will be a look at a comic book from a different year that came out the same month X amount of years ago. The first spotlight of the month looks at a book that came out this month ten years ago. The second spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 25 years ago. The third spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 50 years ago. The fourth spotlight looks at a book that came out this month 75 years ago. The occasional fifth week (we look at weeks broadly, so if a month has either five Sundays or five Saturdays, it counts as having a fifth week) looks at books from 20/30/40/60/70/80 years ago.

This is a fifth week month, so I'm naturally going to choose 30 years this time around to look at November 1992's Superman #75, by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, featuring the death of Superman (as well as the other two November Superman titles that led into Superman #75)

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WHAT WAS THE "SECRET COUNTDOWN" OF THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN?

Last month, I did the October 1992 Superman books (luckily for me, October and November were both five-week months this year), and so I discussed how Doomsday was introduced. After the September 1992 Superman books all featured final pages showing a mysterious being punching a wall, he eventually broke through in October 1992's Superman: The Man of Steel #18, and went on a rampage.

The Justice League tried to stop him, and they were flattened, with Booster Gold coining the term "Doomsday" to describe him. The final book of October was Adventures of Superman #497 (by Jerry Ordway, Tom Grummett and Doug Hazlewood). That is the issue that started the sort of hidden "countdown" to the death of Superman.

You see, in that issue, every page of the comic had four panels on it...

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As November started, Action Comics #684 (by Roger Stern, Jackson Guice and Denis Rodier) had, you guessed it, three panels on each page...

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Doomsday, meanwhile, is slowly but surely making his way to Metropolis, leaving destruction in his wake, like a tsunami of murder. Superman has allies, but they are dropping like flies, with even the powerful alien, Maxima, no longer able to continue the fight.

In Superman: The Man of Steel #19 (by Louise Simonson, Jon Bogdanove and Dennis Janke), it is now one month since Doomsday has been on the loose, and this issue was done with two panels per page, even on double-page splashes like this one...

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That, then, brought us to Superman #75, where Doomsday is now in the heart of Metropolis and the countdown has hit ONE, with every page a splash page...

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HOW DID SUPERMAN DIE?

If you're a bit unfamiliar with comic book storytelling, let me just note that telling a comic book story using ONLY splash pages is extremely difficult, but we were greatly helped by the fact that Jurgens was a successful artist before he was a writer, so he knows better than most how to tell a story visually, and boy, did he do a wonderful job with this epic finale (Breeding's finishes were exquisite, as well).

The main way that Jurgens pulled it off was to layer each image. You can't see it as well on this page, but there were a few moments that I had to share, so just note how Jimmy is having his own little scene in the background of the imagw while Superman is in the foreground, sharing one last kiss with Lois...

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Note, too, how the backgrounds almost get surrealistic behind this EPIC shot of Superman heading off to his final fight...

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One of the major artistic changes that John Byrne did to Superman when he rebooted the character in The Man of Steel was to give Superman a protective "aura" around him that allowed his skintight clothes to avoid burning up when he flies into fire (and also gives a measure of protection to people who are close to Superman's body, like if he was carrying someone). However, this aura wasn't great with his cape, so that led to lots of cool shots of Superman's cape being messed up, and Jurgens follows suit with this story, as Superman's costume gets progressively more messed up the more he fights.

This is just an outstanding action shot...

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Superman realizes that the sharp sort of claws that Doomsday has are actually part of his skeleton, so he finds a way to finally really injure the villain. It comes down to Superman, almost drained of all of his energy, puts everything he has into one last punch at the same time Doomsday is doing the same to him, and they basically kill each otehr with their final punches. Check out this sweet page design by Jurgens here...

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and there's the moment of Lois cradling the dying Man of Steel. One of the jokes, of course, is that the two remaining standing Justice Leaguers are Ice and Bloodwynd, a "new" character that Jurgens had recently introduced (he was writing/drawing Justice League America, as well, at the time), so for a generation of fans, it'll be, "Who the heck are those two superheroes in the background of this major moment?"

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In a clever move to keep it all one page, this was a fold-out image, leading to the final image of the book, which has Superman collapsed from Lois' arm, dead. DARK! But memorable!

Wow, what a well handled final issue by Jurgens and Breeding. Rest in Peace, Superman. I haven't read a comic book since this was released in November 1992, so I assume you're still dead.

If you folks have any suggestions for December (or any other later months) 2012, 1997, 1972 and 1947 comic books for me to spotlight, drop me a line at brianc@cbr.com! Here is the guide, though, for the cover dates of books so that you can make suggestions for books that actually came out in the correct month. Generally speaking, the traditional amount of time between the cover date and the release date of a comic book throughout most of comic history has been two months (it was three months at times, but not during the times we're discussing here). So the comic books will have a cover date that is two months ahead of the actual release date (so October for a book that came out in August). Obviously, it is easier to tell when a book from 10 years ago was released, since there was internet coverage of books back then.