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Old 04-09-2021, 09:57 PM   #1
Leo656
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Greatest Superman Stories

So, a Good Brother asked me for some of my favorite Superman stories to read. He's more of a Batman guy, and only kinda/sorta a comic book fan, and never cared much for Superman until the "Man of Steel" movie. He'd recently read "Superman For All Seasons" - which is great - and asked me for some of my recommendations.

I gave him a really long list of stuff from post-Crisis in 1986 through "Infinite Crisis", and it ended up being such a long reply that it seemed like it was too good not to share and turn into a thread. I figure this has probably come up before but I can't be assed to look for an old thread, so Deal With It.

Again, some stories from pre-1986 and post-2006 definitely warrant mention, but I purposely excluded them from this list because I wanted to focus strictly on my preferred era of Superman comics, the 1986-2006 run. So while "For The Man Who Has Everything" is indeed one of the All-Time Greats and belongs on any list, I don't have it here. I'm also sticking to canon stories for this list, so no Elseworlds or stuff like "All-Star Superman". Don't @ me.

So, here's My List, along with a description/synopsis for each. Most of these stories have been collected, but in cases where I'm not sure if they were I included the issue numbers.

- Byrne's "Man of Steel", obviously. That should be the Very First Thing you read, as everything comes from that and later stories make more sense in-context since so many are borrowing heavily from it.

- Action Comics Annual #1. Superman and Batman team up to fight vampires in Louisiana. EPIC.

- Adventures of Superman Annual #1. An entire town abruptly goes missing and the government calls Superman in to investigate. VERY dark stuff with a shocking twist ending.

- "The Supergirl Saga", from Superman #21, Adventures of Superman #444, and Superman #22 (the infamous issue where Superman kills the Phantom Zone villains). I *believe* this has been collected in TPB. A Supergirl from an alternate dimension enlists Superman to come to her world to stop Zod and his allies from killing everyone on her Earth. Spoiler Alert: They're too late, and so Superman has a Very Difficult Choice to make once Zod promises to come to Superman's Earth and kill everyone there, too...

- "Superman: Exile". Superman's guilt over killing Zod has him ultimately decide to exile himself into space. Along the way, he encounters Mongul on Warworld, reconnects with his Kryptonian heritage, forgives himself for his "sins" and recommits himself to being the hero the universe needs him to be. Most of this stuff becomes important during "Reign of the Supermen" and the "Return" storyline.

- "Day of the Krypton Man" (Action Comics #650, Superman #41, Adventures of Superman #464, Action Comics #651, Superman #42, Adventures of Superman #465, and Action Comics #652). An ancient Kryptonian relic known as The Eradicator starts influencing Superman's mind and trying to turn him to embrace his Kryptonian heritage and turn away from Earth. Introduces the Fortress of Solitude, and The Eradicator would later be VERY important to the Death and Return of Superman story.

- "Krisis of the Krimson Kryptonite". Clark has to learn to live without his powers for the first time in his adult life after a prank by Mr. Mxyzptlk goes awry. Along the way we see that with or without his powers, Clark has a compulsive need to be "Superman", and we also get the reveal that Lex is dying of cancer.

- "Red Glass" (Superman #56, Adventures of Superman #479, Action Comics #666). Superman returns from a mission in space to find out that he's murdered all of his villains and the entire world hates him. He has no memory of these events and has to somehow figure out what the hell is going on. A really good exploration of how losing control is his greatest fear.

- "Panic in the Sky". Brainiac invades Earth and Superman leads an army of heroes (and Anti-heroes) in the planet's defense. One of the last big "event" stories before the Death and Return saga, it ties up several lingering plot threads from the "Exile" arc. It also sets up Superman joining the Justice League for the first time in post-1986 continuity; after the Byrne reboot Superman had never "officially" joined the JLA and had only assisted them periodically, as he was uncomfortable working with a team and especially being put into any sort of "leadership" position. But after leading the planet's heroes against Brainiac in this story he had a change of heart and became the official leader of the JLA. Both Superman and the JLA books were being written by Dan Jurgens at this point so there was some very tight continuity between them.

- The Death of Superman/Funeral For A Friend/Reign of the Superman. I could do a whole novel just about this saga.

- "Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey". The official sequel to "Death of Superman". Superman has recurring nightmares about Doomsday and realizes several things: First of all, for the very first time in his life, he's afraid of something, and secondly, he still knows NOTHING about the beast that killed him and is afraid that either Doomsday isn't really dead OR, even worse, that there could be more Doomsdays out there somewhere. So he goes into space to get answers once and for all, and in addition to finding out the official origin story for Doomsday himself, we of course get the inevitable rematch: Superman is bigger, stronger, and more powerful than ever after coming back from the dead... BUT, so is Doomsday, who'd already killed Superman once before and has now "evolved" to the point where he's going to be even harder to stop. As a bonus, we get a knock-down drag-out slugfest between Doomsday and motherf*cking DARKSEID... and it turns out that even Darkseid himself already knows of, and is in fearful awe of, the creature we know as "Doomsday". This is great, GREAT stuff.

- "Bizarro's World". Set after Superman comes back from the dead; Luthor's clone body is deteriorating - Long story short, he faked his death when he had cancer and had his brain put into a younger, healthier clone body to give himself a "clean slate"; he spent years posing as his own long-lost son, pretending to be a super-nice guy while rebuilding his empire without anyone the wiser. Superman and "Lex Luthor Jr." were even pretty close friends and allies; it ended up being one of Lex's most diabolical schemes in how he played the long con and everybody, even Superman, fell for it. Anyway, so now his clone body is deteriorating, he's dying, and in his desperation he's trying to find a way to fix things, and he goes all the way back to one of his earliest schemes, from Byrne's "Man of Steel" mini-series, and recreates that version of Bizarro. This was only the second Bizarro story post-1986; once again, SO MANY of these stories require reading Byrne's "Man of Steel" to get the full effect, as This Story is a direct sequel to an issue from That Story. One of the best Bizarro stories ever, as it avoided the stereotypical "backwards-speak" and "Me Bizarro Am Dumb" nonsense; here, he's more of a well-meaning but imperfect Frankenstein's Monter type of creature, and it altogether works much better. It's a pretty heartfelt and tragic story.

- "Dead Again". Superman's corpse turns up, and Superman has to figure out what's going on since he's... y'know... alive and everything. He slowly starts to unravel as he finds more and more evidence that he may in fact be just another imposter, a possibility he isn't at all willing to accept.

- "Superman: Arkham/The Reign of Emperor Joker". Superman wakes up in a world where he's imprisoned and the Joker rules all reality. Turns out Joker has outfoxed Mr. Mxyzptlk and became all-powerful, re-shaping the entire universe in his image. It's pretty batshit crazy, but it's a lot of fun.

- "Superman: Y2K". A hyper-evolved Brainiac from the future manifests on New Year's Eve 1999.

- "What's So Funny About Truth, Justice, and the American Way?" (Action Comics #775). Superman is confronted by The Elite, a team of bloodthirsty super-beings who try and convince him that he's out of touch and that he needs to step aside and let "heroes" who are willing to kill off the bad guys take over... or else. This was the basis for the very faithful "Superman Vs. The Elite" animated movie, and also won tons of awards when it came out. It's often cited as possibly the best single-issue Superman story of all time.

(Cont.)
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