Let's wrap up our discussion of the Death of Superman with a look back on the classic "Imaginary Story" that asked how the writer who co-created Superman would have killed the Man of Steel. Case and Jmike are joined by comics historian Alan Kistler for a conversation about the Silver Age tale.

AI meeting summary:

●      The meeting commenced by discussing the historical significance of the OG death story in **Superman 149**, touching upon its impact across DC Comics and even Marvel's Night Stalkers. Emphasis was placed on the massive ripples caused by the 90s event, including media coverage and marketing tactics like armbands, while exploring how the storyline affected various characters beyond just Superman. The narrative highlighted elements of comic storytelling, such as character depth and themes like heroism and legacy building.

●      Delving deeper, the discussion analyzed character interactions to explore deeper philosophical questions about hope, redemption, and mortality portrayed through Superman's final moments. Despite whimsical scenarios, underlying themes examined human nature under extraordinary circumstances. Siegel's approach to Superman's death defied conventional heroic deaths, providing a thought-provoking perspective on mortality and human frailty within a fantastical setting. This unconventional approach added depth to traditional superhero narratives challenging readers' expectations.

●      The conversation focused on the intense emotional impact of **Superman's death** in various adaptations, contrasted with traditional superhero stories. It touched upon the tragic and somewhat pathetic nature of Superman's demise, emphasizing **Lex Luthor's pettiness** in the events leading to Superman's death. Participants explored how the story delves into themes of mortality and loss, reflecting on real-life experiences and evolution from Silver Age comics to contemporary approaches.

●      In conclusion, participants expressed gratitude for exploring profound themes through fictional narratives like **"Men of Steel."** They encouraged engagement with works challenging conventional superhero tropes by offering poignant reflections on life, loss, and legacy amidst extraordinary circumstances. Personal anecdotes about related projects provided context for appreciating nuanced storytelling that transcends genre boundaries, with recommendations for further reading materials within comic book storytelling.

Notes:

●      📌 **Discussion on the story structure**

●      **Three act structure** behind the particular issue

●      Superhero stories as a perpetual second act

●      **Dense storytelling** with many layers and conveniences

●      🚀 **Exploration of the story elements**

●      Economy of storytelling

●      **Variety of individual tales** incorporated

●      **Rich world building** and quick pacing

●      💬 **Reflection on the writing style**

●      Evolution of the writer's style

●      **Challenges in identifying the writer** without prior knowledge

●      🎭 **Character and plot analysis**

●      Exploration of characters' reactions

●      **Human elements** in the story

●      **Open interpretation** of the story's tone

●      📚 **Recommendations and conclusions**

●      Quick read with **dialogue** and dense content

●      **Encouragement to check out** the issue

●      Appreciation for the engaging discussion

Action items:

●      **Case Aiken**

●      Get more element z for Luthor (01:19)

●      Glad about helping Luthor but with uncertainties (38:22)

●      **Alan**

●      Reflect on life and future plans with Lois Lane (42:02)

●      Check out the book "Voices of Krypton" by Ed Gross (1:12:48)

●      Read "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" by Gabriel or Gabrielle Zevin (1:12:44)

●      **Jmike**

●      Recommend reading the comic from the DC Universe Infinite app (1:07:08)

Outline:

●      Chapter 1: Overview of Superman Material (00:00 - 05:50)

●      Discussion on various Superman stories and their significance.

●      Highlighting the quality of storytelling and selection of tales.

●      Chapter 2: Analysis of Story Structure (11:08 - 18:51)

●      Examining the evolution of writing style and story elements.

●      Exploring the three-part structure and narrative economy.

●      Chapter 3: Progression of Storyline (22:50 - 34:46)

●      Detailing the events in the story, including interactions between characters.

●      Noting the pacing and intensity of key sequences.

●      Chapter 4: Reflections on Storytelling Techniques (38:34 - 49:42)

●      Observations on the impact of the story on storytelling norms.

●      Discussing the realism and character depth portrayed in the narrative.

●      Chapter 5: Closing Thoughts and Future Episodes (1:09:47 - 1:15:39)

●      Expressing overall enjoyment and positive feedback on the discussed story.

●      Teasing upcoming episodes and recommending other podcast content.

Transcription

(AI Generated. Subject to Error)

00:00
Case
Jmike, any closing thoughts?

00:03
Jmike
I had a joke, but it was another John. It was another Jonathan kitten joke. I was like, I'm just gonna let that go. I do that all the time, but just let that one go.

00:30
Case
Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Men of Steel podcast. I'm Case Aiken, and as always, I am joined by my co host, Jmike Folson.

00:37
Jmike
Welcome back, everybody. So happy to have you here with us.

00:40
Case
Yep, I am so glad to be back here. Although it feels like a dream or perhaps an imaginary story, an elseworld story. No, it's a little bit more retro than that. And because it's somewhat retro, we are discussing a thing that has some historical significance. So what better guest than to bring on an actual comics historian? So we've got Alan Kistler.

01:03
Alan Kistler
Hello, people of Earth.

01:06
Case
Alan, it's great to have you back on.

01:08
Alan Kistler
Absolutely. It's great to be back on. Good to see you, Case. Good to see you, J Mike.

01:13
Case
Yeah, so we are kind of sort of finishing up our conversation about the death and return of Superman by looking back at the OG death of Superman story. We're looking back at Superman 149, the imaginary story by Jerry Siegel and Kurt Swan. That was the death of Superman. The COVID is the death of Superman. We're not bearing the lead on this one. Like everyone knew. $0.10, you're getting the death of Superman.

01:39
Jmike
I wonder that people freak out about it as much as they did in the 90s.

01:42
Case
Well, they definitely didn't have armbands going.

01:45
Alan Kistler
Yeah, it definitely wasn't the media coverage that happened in the 90s, because, like, the 90s, you had local news talking about it, you had CNN talking about it. And yeah, I remember the little flimsy armbands that came with the comic, all the different covers, because you had the classic cover, and then you had the one that came, the black bag. You had the one that looked like a tombstone.

02:05
Jmike
There was one like a tombstone.

02:07
Alan Kistler
The COVID itself was all gray and looked almost engraved, the s shield and Earth's greatest hero printed on it. It was wild. It was also just wild, that being a quote, canon. Because what is canon with imagination, but intended canon story in the mean. The ripples were everywhere. It was all across DC Comics. It was even in Marvel Comics. There was actually in Night Stalkers, which some of you will recognize was a midnight Suns title and was part of the supernatural revival that Marvel did in the 90s, because ghostwriter had been doing well. So they did Midnight Suns, which brought titles like spirits of vengeance and Morbius, living vampire and Night Stalkers. And the darkhold in Night stalkers around the time of the 90s.

02:55
Alan Kistler
Death of Superman at the end of one of the issues, the vampire or quasi vampire character, Hannibal King, in a little epilogue that's totally separate from the rest of the story, visits a grave that just describes as the passing of a great hero. And you see that Hannibal, cynical jerk that he is overcome with grief about the death of such a noble person. And it gives you little details on the tombstone that you realize it's meant to be Clark Kent, it's meant to be Superman, that this vampire in Marvel comic somehow is also mourning Superman. And that was. Yeah, 90s was huge. 60s didn't have quite the same ripple.

03:38
Case
No. Well, and at the 60s, they very much upfront were like, could you imagine? Superman can't die, everyone. The end of the issue in question, it's very clear this is an imaginary story. Superman will be back next time. It would never happen that he would.

03:54
Alan Kistler
Actually never, ever.

03:58
Case
But it was still a fun experiment to see what Jerry Siegel, as one of the co creators of Superman, would do, telling the tale of how he would die and how would he wrap up that story. And it is very different from the publicity stunt of. The thing that was really interesting about looking at the death and return of Superman comics was that it kind of felt like, hey, this is kind of like a victory lap of everything that the writers had accomplished in the Superman books. Between the man of Steel relaunch of the series up until that point, there's a lot of characters that they're interacting with. There's a lot of supporting cast that they're seeing. There's a lot of stuff about Superman's world that we're going into.

04:36
Case
Like, it starts in Death of Superman, but then world without Superman is really dwelling on a lot of that. And then the impact of all the different stories that they had is where you get the reign of the Superman characters. So it was fun to sort of see this. Like, here's a roundup of all the Superman material that we'd gotten to by that point, which was, like, what? Like about seven years between man of Steel and the death of Superman, which is crazy to say out loud, like, where it's like, it feels. That's so small a time span. Yeah, but it wasn't that long. It was 93 and it was 86 when man of Steel came out. So, pretty quick race from that point to there.

05:11
Case
But this one also is a chance to sort of reflect on all the things that had been introduced into the Silver Age Superman world for me, I've been very familiar with the story for a long time. It was included in the trade paperback, the greatest Superman stories ever told, which I got somewhere when I was like eleven or twelve, which was a pretty formative book for me in terms of getting used to the larger history of Superman, not just the material that had been coming out while I was alive, but, like, really going back to old books. Great trade paperback included that included the Superman Red versus blue imaginary story. It included all these crossovers with Batman. It had the futuro story, just great stuff. Like throughout the years, they were picking some of the finest individual tales that they could cram into it.

05:54
Case
First appearance of bizarro Lori Limeris story, like tons of fun stuff. So this issue had always been in that group of issues that I was just very familiar with. And it's pretty back to back with Superman Red and Superman Blue. And there's some kind of similar themes going on in the two of them, where there's like reformed villain curing all diseases going on and other stuff, although in this case it's more insidious. But for the two of you, when was your first interaction with this story?

06:20
Alan Kistler
So I think I've mentioned one of your podcasts before, or one of the many things that you've hosted, that one of my great introductions to superheroes in general was Jack Burnley, who was a golden age artist. My grandparents knew him. They were friends with him. When I was first getting a little bit into comics, they were making a road trip up to Pittsburgh to visit Jack and his wife, and I went with them, and Jack introduced me to the ideas of different ages of comics, silver Age, golden age. That canon had occasionally changed, and he had greatest Superman stories ever told, greatest Batman stories ever told, and lent me those volumes. So I wound up in one of those volumes coming across a story as well, because I had very limited information on Superman.

07:04
Alan Kistler
I had seen the Ruby Spears cartoon when I was a kid, and of course, I'd seen the Christopher Reeve movies. Comics wise. I had been delving more into Marvel at the time, but I had started reading the death of Superman event because it was a huge event, and I was curious about this. Otherwise, what I thought was a perfect being vulnerable and all. So that had come up in conversation, I remember. And Jack, who had drawn some Superman in the, had drawn some Batman in the 40s, drew some great covers, co created Star man, was the first guy to make a cover of Superman and Batman together, just offhandedly mentioned like, oh, yeah, Superman died before, and pointed out that it was in this collection. So, yeah, I wound up borrowing that book and reading over the weekend, and it was wild.

07:50
Alan Kistler
I was already familiar with the idea of what if comics from Marvel. So that was another thing that interested me. Multiverses interested me, even if it was called an imaginary story as opposed to a parallel universe story. That was cool. I guess I would have been ten or eleven at the time, so, yeah, long ago and far away.

08:09
Case
And j Mike, when did you first come across the story?

08:13
Jmike
I think it was right around the time that I listened to your play about the villain, and you mentioned this as your inspiration. And I was, And I read it over today again, and I was, interesting. I see where this came from now.

08:30
Case
So that means that you have been holding on to that trade of the greatest Superman stories ever told since before the pandemic.

08:40
Jmike
This nonsense you're seeking, sarah, what are you talking about?

08:43
Alan Kistler
You know, time's a construct. Yeah, it's a lake.

08:47
Jmike
What are you talking about?

08:51
Case
Why don't we talk a little bit about the actual story itself? Like we said, this is Superman 149. It came out in 1961. It was written by Jerry Siegel and drawn by Kurt Swan, which is a pretty heavy hitting team in terms of production. Like, Kurt Swan is infamously like the Silver Age artist for Superman, and Jerry Siegel is, of course, the co creator of Superman.

09:11
Alan Kistler
I remember when I was first getting very into the influence of the actual original creators and how much of characters were created by one force. But then a lot of what we knew about them and what we accept as the main qualities that make this character them came from later writers, later artists with Wolverine, who really created Wolverine? Was it Len Wean or was it Len Wean and Chris Claremont and Dave Cochrane? Was it Len Wean and Chris Claremont and Dave Cochrane and John Byrne, depending on what part of the canon that they added that we now think of as essential Wolverine like. Well, you can't have Wolverine without that element. And it was really interesting to me with Superman, as I was getting more into it, how many things were still Jerry Siegel influence?

09:57
Alan Kistler
Because even after it was no longer exactly, his baby didn't belong to him and Joe Schuster anymore because they'd sold the rights and all that jazz, but he stuck with DC Comics and kept making all these later stories that added all these things to the mythology. So I kind of love that this first true exploration of the death of Superman and its impact comes from the guy who thought of it, and he got to be the guy to decide who would be the one to kill Superman. Would it be this big bone monster who comes out of nowhere and digs himself out of the ground because someone dropped him there and forgot about him? Or is it Lex Luthor?

10:35
Case
Yeah, for a long time, I didn't process that this was written by Jerry Siegel because there's such a reputation of, like, oh, yeah, the Siegel and Schuster era, like, the golden Age Superman stuff. And then it was not as widely known that Siegel came back and was writing well into the right often because he was not credited as the writer on these books. Like, if you look at the issue, there's no credits in the issue for who's working on it. Kurt Swan. Very obvious when he's working on a Superman book. Kurt Swan looks like Kurt Swan. If you're familiar with what a Kurt Swan Superman looks like, you're like, oh, yeah, that's a Kurt Swan Superman. But it's harder to tell, necessarily, if you're not familiar with who the writer is, particularly because the writing style has evolved.

11:14
Case
There's a lot going on in this world. It's very cool seeing how Siegel, having created the character in the first place, has rolled with so many changes over the course of the 23 years since the creation of the character, 38 to 61. There have been so many parts of the canon added, so many things that came from the radio show that have become super important at this point in the series, and so many things that were just sort of, like, weirdly emphasized or mutated over time. To get to the state of the canon in 61 and to do a story that is like, this is the send off for the Superman at this snapshot of a moment. And I keep referencing that. It's looking at all these elements of it. So why don't we talk about the actual story itself?

11:56
Case
So it's set up in three parts. The first part is Lex Luthor hero, where we follow Lex Luthor, where he, let's be clear, this is a Silver Age Superman book. There is a lot of economy of storytelling, and there's a lot of conveniences of storytelling in terms of getting from point a to point b at any given point. So Lex Luthor just happens to be in prison, where he just happens to see what is clearly radioactive material in, like, the rock piles that people are breaking down with hammers. So he decides to punch a guard so that he gets moved from working the library to doing the manual labor of just generic. We're breaking rocks with hammers, and he pockets some of this clearly golden radioactive material that's glowing, and he's like, with this shit, I can cure cancer.

12:38
Alan Kistler
Perfectly reasonable premise. I don't see what we would mock about it. That makes sense. That stuff happens. That's how science happens, is from people punching other people and then digging stuff up that happened to fall into their laps. That is how the x ray was found. That's how we got the atom bomb. It completely makes sense to me.

12:58
Case
Yeah. Most genius breakthroughs come from people just working in quarries at prisons. Yeah.

13:02
Alan Kistler
Or, like, apples falling on their heads. There's always someone will get hit by something. And then science, right?

13:10
Case
So it's this material called element z, which is this golden, glowing stuff. And he convinces the warden to be like, yeah, just let me experiment. I swear I can cure cancer. Why not? To their credit, they're like, no, that's crazy. You're clearly a villain who has broken out so many times. Every time we've put you anywhere near any kind of science stuff. And he's like, but could you possibly give up the chance for me to cure cancer? And they're like, well, fuck, yeah, it's cancer. It's pretty bad. So with, like, guards holding guns to him while he's working on it, he comes up with a cure for cancer using this stuff that was just rocks that they had at the prison and gives it to them. They go and test it. They're like, holy shit. It cures cancer.

13:50
Jmike
Oh, my God.

13:53
Case
Everyone's excited about this. Superman's like, holy fuck. Lex Luthor cured cancer. So he flies into space and finds more of this meteor so that cancer is just cured. Carte blanche. Cancer's gone.

14:04
Alan Kistler
What I also love about this is a time in comics where a scientist meant a scientist of many disciplines, because, like, Jay Garrick could be a chemist initially as the flash, but then also have a secret lab. And Spider man can be a chemical expert who can create web fluid, but also an engineering genius who can make spider tracers and the mechanical aspect of the web shooter. And Reed Richards could make almost anything the story needed, whether it was more about physics or biology or chemistry. And right here, Luthor is. We don't have to learn what his phd is in if he has such a thing. We don't have to learn if he's ever had any experience in cancer research or medicine. He is just Luthor genius scientist.

15:00
Case
Cool.

15:01
Alan Kistler
So if it's science, he can figure something out. Yeah.

15:04
Case
Every scientist in comics is a multidisciplinarian polymath. Like, that's just the way it's going to be.

15:10
Alan Kistler
It's something to aspire to for all of us, honestly. Yeah.

15:13
Case
I mean, he never even encountered this stuff before. He's just like, oh, I see this stuff. And based on its description, it matches what I had read about this thing that people had hypothesized existed out in space. And apparently it crash landed here, which.

15:26
Alan Kistler
Is a wild connection to make, because I think there's a lot of things that I could say. Oh, that sounds like that myth about the thing. I'm not going to say. Hey, I bet that's the exact same thing that myth was about. There are myths about a lot of things.

15:39
Case
Yeah.

15:40
Alan Kistler
And I mean, it's right up there. Honestly, with. Even as a kid, the original Superman movie with Christopher Reeve and Hackman.

15:47
Case
Oh, when he figures out kryptonite.

15:48
Alan Kistler
When he figures out kryptonite, I could never. Eight year old me could never understand. Wait, he just read a newspaper article about a meteor that was found? And just from Superman saying what galaxy he's from, Gene Hackman. Luthor thought, this rock can weaken and kill. What? How much was in that newspaper article about what the meteor was? And if other people know it's radioactive, why is that guy, the newspaper photo, just holding it?

16:18
Case
Yeah, it never quite makes sense. And I need to be clear when we're talking about the story. So, first of all, the story is 25 pages. We have cured cancer for everyone. And Lex Luthor is now a hero to millions, having saved countless lives. We are five pages in counting. The splash page on the front, which is just a. Can you believe the story that we're about to tell you about Lex Luthor being a hero and like, him having a victory parade before the actual story starts? So, in terms of actual story, we're four pages. All of cancer is gone forever. Today.

16:46
Alan Kistler
That would be eight issues.

16:48
Jmike
Yeah.

16:50
Case
Twelve of Hadis.

16:52
Alan Kistler
I wasn't going to say the name.

16:56
Case
So, Superman, having assisted with curing cancer, goes to prison. And, sorry, not goes to prison like goes to the prison, I should say, and appeals to the warden to say, like, look, Lex Luthor just cured cancer and I just brought a ton of material. That's pretty dope. We should let this guy go. It's exactly like the scene that they're parroting in mystery men when captain amazing shows up to talk out what's his face blanket on it, the main villain.

17:21
Alan Kistler
I know who you're talking about, but I've honestly not seen it.

17:24
Case
It's like Bossanova, Frankenstein or something like that. Doesn't matter. But the point is, we've seen this scene before, and this is literally, like, where that scene comes from, but played straight, where it's just Superman's like, yeah, Lex Lizard fuck, man. He saved so many people just now. We should give him a break. And so they're all like, well, a. Superman vouches for you. Okay, so Lex Luthor then shows him his secret layer, which is a little vague here, where it's inside the Metropolis museum, and it's got this wonderful comic book element of, there's a sign that says this section to be demoed at some point in the future. And so no one just ever goes back there. And in there, he's got his lab. To enter, you have to shake the hands of a statue of Caesar.

18:04
Case
And then inside, it's like all these infamous warlords from throughout history. And he has. Superman punched them all out because he's like, they discuss me now I'm going to sell this place and open up a real science lab. And at that point, I'm like, sell this place? I thought you just said it was like a secret layer inside the museum.

18:21
Alan Kistler
Yeah, you don't own this property, bro.

18:23
Case
You're squatting. Exactly. It's so weird. I'm like, wait. It's always fun. Especially now looking back where Lex Luther has been so entrenched in pop culture as being a billionaire mogul kind of character since the look back and be like, oh, right, yeah, no, he was just like, a dude who was smart, who would sneak around back in the day. But then every now and then, there'll be moments where, like, oh, I guess he also kind of was rich because he was smart, so he could figure out how to be rich too. I don't know. But here's where we get one of those elements of looking back on the history of Superman comics. They describe the times that Lex Luthor, quote, unquote, almost got him.

19:02
Case
And we actually see stories that had occurred back in the day, particularly the bizarro story, stuck out to me as being like, oh, yeah, that is exactly what happened. Obviously, it's not the first bizarro, but it was a bizarro. And that character has been a lingering threat for Superman at this point in the comics. And then the mob gets involved, and that's where the story breaks.

19:20
Alan Kistler
The museum thing, I kind of love it for two reasons. One, Luther, you're such a mean. And I'm not knocking it because I, too, would love to live in a museum, but, wow, you're such a nerd. But secondly, as ridiculous as it is, there is also a great character beat to see there. It's one of those wonderful things about writing. The author didn't necessarily intend it that way, but because it fits so nicely with the character, it comes off as layered, to me at least, that he is shaking Caesar's hand. So to enter his lair, he first demonstrates that an emperor and I are on equal footing. And I rather love that Luther has such an ego about that. I think that's great.

20:07
Case
Yeah. And I mean, the secret layer is definitely dope. Yeah, we can't knock it at all. I mean, I currently have a sarcophagus lid behind me while we're recording, left over from a production of Joseph in the amazing Technicolor dreamcoat.

20:22
Alan Kistler
Absolutely.

20:23
Case
Definitely my kind of place, but definitely an ego trip for him.

20:26
Jmike
This wasn't like rich Lex Luthor. This is like normal, everyday supervillain Lex Luthor. Right.

20:32
Alan Kistler
This is Luther. Yeah. As supervillain mad scientist, but also Luthor, who seems to have very specific wants of where he's going to spend his money because he needed to outfit that.

20:42
Jmike
Place because it says demolished at some future state. And I'm like, did he buy it? And just put the sign there so people wouldn't come around?

20:52
Alan Kistler
He just specifically bought that part of the museum and told people, don't worry about it.

20:57
Jmike
Don't worry about it. Nothing here. Don't worry about this place. Nothing to see here. It's been demolished. No supervillain hiding here.

21:05
Case
Yeah.

21:05
Alan Kistler
And then the money you spent to decorate that place and the tech that's in there, again, it's one of those wonderful things. About fifty s, forty s, sixty s. Supervillains, they're out robbing banks, but some of them are in such elaborate headquarters. It's like, bro, how much money did you spend on just making a penguin themed theme park for you to hang out in?

21:29
Jmike
You wouldn't want to hang out at a penguin themed theme park.

21:32
Alan Kistler
I think it depends on what the penguin are doing.

21:35
Case
That is, again, this is played straight, a thing that we would see commented on in later comics. In Astro City, Kurt busic had a great story where basically a character who was out of jail was seeing all the different secret layers that all of his friends had and wasted all this money. And their families were having trouble eating and destitute because they were putting all their money towards their supervillain hideouts, as opposed to actually being responsible for the families that they had started to accrue over their career as supervillains.

22:05
Alan Kistler
Yeah. And for some of them, that completely makes sense. I have no problem believing that. If the Joker robbed a million dollars out of a bank, he would immediately put two thirds of that into personalizing cars and vans and new. Ha, ha. That completely makes sense to me. Luthor. I was just thinking maybe invest some of. Yeah, maybe make a right. All right, maybe he did.

22:32
Case
But it's all undernelius. And so he's accruing money.

22:36
Alan Kistler
Sure, sure. It's there as Alex instead of Lex Luthor? Yeah.

22:42
Case
Some anagram of his name, but yeah. So then the mob shows up, and they're like, dude, what the fuck, man? You're now helping Superman?

22:48
Jmike
You were supposed to kill.

22:50
Case
Like, that's. That's not the deal. We're going to kill you now, man. And this goes into chapter two, which is Luther's super bodyguard, where, because these mobsters keep coming after Lex Luthor, Superman starts behaving with him like he does with Jimmy Olsen. Like, he gets him a signal watch at first, and the mob keeps coming after him. And it's like all these moments of, like, that guy in the shadow, he has, like, what's clearly a blow gun. Better hit the button immediately. And Superman flies in and eats the dart that's coming to poison him. Or it's like, oh, that's a grenade, savage. And we should note that the mob is legitimately trying to kill him here. And it's like, oh, wow, I just barely pressed the button in time.

23:27
Case
Which, honestly, this gets into that whole, like, with the speed of sound, regardless of what frequency, reached Superman in time for him to get there.

23:34
Alan Kistler
Yeah, I mean, space is curved. That's just an explanation for many things. Like, look, space is curved.

23:43
Case
Or, hey, man, the, you know, super hearing in this?

23:50
Alan Kistler
Yeah, yeah. It explains a lot.

23:52
Case
So Superman's doing his best to kind of keep Luther alive, but it's starting to get to him. He's like, I'm spending every minute just preventing this guy from being killed. And he's talking it out with Supergirl, and they're like, what could we possibly do? And he's like, aha. A satellite in space. And she's like, that's a great idea. So he builds a secret fortress in space for Luther to go to, flies him up to space, and it's like, yeah, this will be awesome. And then the mob, so dedicated to murdering Lex Luthor, arranges for a surface to air missile to fly at the satellite. And Superman has to stop it. And he's like, all right, well, the satellite's not reinforced enough. Let's put the thickest plexiglass shield that could stop even a hydrogen bomb around it so that won't occur.

24:32
Case
And also because you still might need my help. But the hypersonic waves, and so we know it's sound. It's not like something else will not be able to pass through space. Here is a signal flare rocket that is designed to look like you, Lex Luthor. Like, literally, the rocket is in the shape of Lex Luthor. Like, it's a statue of Lex Luthor with, like, fins at the bottom and an exhaust area fired into our atmosphere. It will explode. And that will be my signal for me to come rescue you. And he's like, all like, you do science. You keep helping people, Lex Luthor. This is great. And he goes back to Earth, and then really the rocket goes up, and it's like, oh, shit, there must be something. The hatch is open for me to enter.

25:11
Case
And so he comes in, and it's like, luther, what's going on? What's going on? And he's like, nothing's wrong here, Superman, for me. At which point, he activates a kryptonite beam.

25:20
Jmike
All the police, but not for me.

25:24
Case
He activates his kryptonite beam, and Superman goes down. And then in the next panel, he's then scrapped Superman to a stretcher of some kind and is blasting him with more kryptonite. And that's when he reveals that he has kidnapped all of Superman's friends and they're forced to watch in like this.

25:40
Jmike
How did he do that, though? Because he's trapped in that spaceship, or he was on that spaceship.

25:47
Case
He is a man of means, apparently. I don't know how he got the kryptonite exactly when Superman built the satellite. Like, how did he get any of that?

25:53
Jmike
Superman built all his tech for him. He built, like, the rocket, the spaceship. Like, you see him actually building the rocket one of those panels? Spaceship. He outfits the spaceship with a shield, and Lucas just kind of standing, like, oh, thanks, dude. Really appreciate it.

26:06
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

26:07
Case
So Harry, Lois, and Jimmy are all forced to watch inside this glass chamber as Superman just dies.

26:13
Alan Kistler
Like, it's fucking brutal.

26:15
Case
Whereas were joking about how fast the story moved, the actual death process goes for, like, four pages of just him being bombarded with kryptonite radiation. And then that's it. He dies. And Luther confirms that it's not a robot. And he checks, and it's like, yep, he's actually dead. And then he takes the satellite rocket ship that Superman built for him, drops everyone off on Earth, and it's just like, here's the body. I win. Bye. And the mob celebrates, and Luther is victorious, like, she announces to the world, like, yep, I killed Superman, everyone.

26:48
Alan Kistler
Ha.

26:50
Case
And that's the end of part two.

26:52
Jmike
So much kryptonite radiation that he turned him green.

26:55
Case
Yeah, I mean, it's brutal. He's lying there in pain, getting sicker and sicker over the course of panel after panel. And in addition to the kryptonite beam, the buckles strapping him in appear to be kryptonite as well. They're, like green, independently glowing units. So he's, like, getting poisoned from all sides. And there's no special thing that occurs, no interruption, just, he's out there in space. No one can hear. Like, Supergirl's in the story. She couldn't hear. She's on earth. She couldn't hear what's going on. He's in, like, a lead lined room. So it's not like anyone could look up. And they're off in space, and that's it. The death trap worked. The scenes that we've seen a billion times at this point just worked. There was no getting around it. There was no, aha, MacGuffin kind of moment. It was just, he's dead.

27:37
Case
And it's a pretty brutal sequence. And then we get the actual death of Superman's stuff. The morning of Superman, there's this huge public funeral with a glass coffin that everyone comes and pays respects for, like he's fucking linen or something. And this is where we get more, this appreciation of everything that has been done in the Superman world at this know. We see Batman. We see the Justice League in general in the line for everyone. We see Lois with Lucy. We see all these aliens who've come for him. We see Linda Lee, Supergirl's secret identity, show up. We get some heartbreaking moments with crypto where it's just like, I'll never have a master as good as you anymore.

28:16
Alan Kistler
True.

28:16
Case
We get Lana, we get Lori Limerick. The legion of superheroes come back from the future to pay their respects. The Superman robots in the fortress of Solitude are, Any of us would have given our lives for him instead. And in candor, as an adult reading this, I was, huh, this is actually really fucked. Kandor pays tribute to him. They have the flag at half masked. Superman's never going to come visit anymore. And I'm like, for a moment when I was rereading this today, I forgot that Supergirl would be able to pop in on them. But I'm like, are they going to die? Are they just like. It's like you die and your fishbowl just is like, eventually we're going to run out of air?

28:55
Alan Kistler
Yeah. I mean, it is this community that is basically quite literally under glass. And they must have some form of agriculture or something in there, in their artificial environment. But, yeah, if the power bill runs out, the fortress, does the oxygen just go off? Does the artificial sun die?

29:16
Case
Yeah.

29:17
Alan Kistler
What happens there?

29:17
Case
And clearly not really going to be an issue, but it was a funny moment there. And we get stuff like, for example, the flag that they lower is the Krypton flag. So it's just we have built up all this lore about Superman at this point that we are paying some kind of tribute to. And then we see that Lex Luthor has a new base where he has commissioned artists, and he even says that he paid artists to hustle and make a statue of Superman dying and a painting of Superman being subjected to the kryptonite beam. Getting back to Lex Luthor, the egotistical man cave user. He commissioned people within days to fill out his new place with just art decorating. Him murdering a guy.

30:01
Alan Kistler
Yeah.

30:02
Case
Fucking wild man.

30:04
Alan Kistler
At one point. What's the line between obscene and just self satire? At a certain point, it's so insane. But again, goes to that this whole thing is an ego trip, and ego is eventually what does defeat him, even without Superman.

30:20
Case
Yeah. And then bursting through the walls, apparently, is Superman. I don't know why this sequence happens the way it does.

30:27
Alan Kistler
Apparently it's Superman.

30:28
Case
They're all like, oh, my God, it's Superman. And then immediately, the person rips off what is a disguise? And it's revealed to be Supergirl wearing a Superman disguise. And I'm like, why did she do it? Right.

30:39
Alan Kistler
Like, if she's trying to throw them off psychologically, then let it go longer. Or I have expected it to be a Superman robot.

30:51
Jmike
Exactly.

30:52
Alan Kistler
That was a distraction while Supergirl comes up behind them and does a thing. But it's just like, I'll wear disguise to freak them out and hide my identity. And then immediately, before they even register it, show. No, it's someone you don't know. Right.

31:10
Case
And she does it for all of them. All the criminals see this whole thing. She's like, ha. No, your bullets won't do anything. I have all of Superman's amazing powers. I arrest. Like, it would make sense to me if she had shown up disguised as Superman. Scares all the mob people there, takes Lex Luthor away and reveals to Lex Luthor that she's Supergirl and not someone else. And also, we should note at this time, Supergirl was not a public figure. This is during the phase where she was, like, Superman's secret weapon. She was training in secret. She was having private adventures with Superman and not known to the public as being a character. She would have her own debutante ball later on where she would become unveiled to the public.

31:51
Case
But this is a story where it's, like, being sped up a little bit because of Superman's death. He misses her quinceignera. So Supergirl takes Luthor, takes him to Kandor, where he is then put on trial for the murder of Superman. And he thinks that he's going to get off by making a deal to have them resized. I will say this is a spot where I'm like, wait, so they can just kind of freely go back and forth?

32:16
Jmike
Yeah, that was my whole beef with this section, because Lois shows up, Perry White and Jimmy show up. I'm like, okay, so how did they get there? We skipped a lot of stuff.

32:25
Case
Yeah.

32:26
Jmike
In person, we skipped a lot of steps.

32:29
Case
Like, on a screen I could buy.

32:31
Jmike
But they're in there at the courthouse.

32:33
Case
Like, wait, could they have always left? Is it Roger Rabbit with the mean?

32:39
Alan Kistler
And that was the thing that it got dressed with some stories later about. Well, because Superman could shrink himself temporarily and visit Kandor. And it was this idea of, there are forms of being able to shrink people to visit Kandor, but the Candorians, because either how long they were shrunken or the different style of technology brainiac used, whatever, were permanently locked here until you found some secret. But at the time, it's not even referenced in this story.

33:09
Case
Right.

33:10
Alan Kistler
Yeah, we're going to hang out with them and then simultaneously remind you that they're trapped here as tiny people in a bottle. And so surely we'll agree to Luther's terms of let me go and I'll free all of you to be normal sized people who know colonize a new world. Yeah.

33:29
Case
There is one random panel in here where it confused me at the time. It very much looks like mon pa Kent are watching a news broadcast about it. It's not mon pa kent. It's just random people who are just like, oh, it's good that Superman's murderer is being convicted, but it seems like such a non sequitur if it's not. Yeah, if it's not characters. Exactly.

33:50
Jmike
I was like, oh, shoot his parents in two. Get them.

33:53
Case
Right. They're dead. They're dead at this point. But, yeah. So Luther tries to appeal to the Candorian, saying, like, hey, I am so smart. I just cured cancer, guys. What do you think I could do for you? And they're like, we don't make deals with murderers, dude. We're putting you in the phantom zone. And put them in the phantom zone. And that's basically the end of the story. Supergirl is then flying around. They're like, well, we miss Superman, but it's nice that at least there's Supergirl out there. Crypto is just like, Supergirl's my master now. Which is just, like, a weird way of, he's so smart, but so not a human at the same time. And then, Alan, I was curious about this one. So they have the statue of, like, here lies Superman.

34:35
Case
And I was curious because were talking about this when were looking at the world without Superman, which is that statue of Superman in Metropolis just keeps showing up in Superman comics. And clearly it's in. Whatever happened to the man of tomorrow?

34:46
Alan Kistler
It's there.

34:47
Case
It's obviously in the Justice League movie.

34:48
Jmike
He just keeps dying.

34:50
Case
Do you remember where this appears? Is this the first appearance of that Superman tribute statue?

34:55
Alan Kistler
I think there might have been one earlier appearance of a statue in a 50s sort of story where Superman sees it as a possible memorial and turns out to be a trick. But in terms of it actually being a signifier of Superman, whenever he does truly die, will have this statue that's in some kind of a park. This is the first time that sort of enters the canon. And it is fascinating that it keeps coming up in different ways. I mean, I would almost argue this is a better statue than what happens in the 90s when he dies, because the 90s statue is great because you've got Superman with the eagle, and I get it. And also just a bird of flight. That's beautiful to look at, but can also mess you up if it needs to.

35:43
Alan Kistler
That all is poetic and, of course, americana. But I think it's interesting to have this statue, have the globe behind Superman, because he is not just an american hero in the universe, he's a hero of the world, of every world they establish.

35:59
Case
In this one, all these aliens come to pay respect because he saves planet after planet. He's gone to all these wild adventures in the done good deeds for. Yeah, but he is a symbol of Earth specifically. Like, even if he's kryptonian, he is a hero from Earth who has gone out and saved this world and saved so many others so many times.

36:18
Alan Kistler
Yeah. And in the 70s, there were a couple of comics, such as the first Spiderman Superman crossover comic, which reinterpreted his slogan to say, truth, justice, and the terran way. He's representing Earth as a whole and not necessarily their way of living, but the ideals of different earth cultures.

36:37
Case
Yeah, and then we get, like, a little bit of a mufasa moment at the very end, as Supergirl is flying through the clouds and she sees Superman in the clouds waving to her as she takes up his legacy. And that could be seen as kind of like an in story to the canon of Superman. And then there's this whole disclaimer at the bottom where it's, can you believe that Superman will never die? Totally imaginary story. We'll come back next time. More Superman. Superman's the good stuff.

37:00
Alan Kistler
And it's interesting that, to me, in the context of the comic book series at the time. The next story has anniversary story of Supermand Supergirl, considering the death of Krypton. So the next story, like, you have Superman's death followed by an issue then that reminds you of his beginning rather than his end, and of what the whole heritage is. They go through the origin of Superman and Supergirl and crypto. It ends, bizarrely, with the two of them creating a memorial planet that's inhabited by robot duplicates of lost loves. And they decided they'll visit that every year, which just sounds so strange to me. But sure. And there's also in that same issue, one and story where mixies Pitlick makes everyone forget who Superman is.

37:51
Alan Kistler
And of course, it's just this weird thing of, like, he's trying to help people, and everyone's like, well, who's this guy? And eventually he realizes what happened, and he tricks the imp into reversing everything and going back home. But just that concept, I thought was so interesting that you have a world without Superman in one way, in one, four nine, with the death of Superman, and then in 150, you have a world without Superman. They're not even aware if he died. They wouldn't be aware to mourn him. He's forgotten. I find it interesting that they had two of those stories quite so close together.

38:27
Case
Yeah, I mean, certainly stuff that Siegel is playing with, because he's the writer on the next issue as well. We're just kind of wrestling with it. And I wonder, looking at the timetable again, it's 23 years in. Superman has been such a huge pop culture phenomenon at that point that if there is kind of a question of like, well, what would the world look like without this thing? Because it's changed the nature of the medium of comics. It's changed the nature of storytelling. We're getting into the height of the silver age at this point. The rise of Marvel Comics. The radio show is long dead. The live action show is still running at this point.

38:59
Alan Kistler
Right.

38:59
Case
It was like, late 50s wrapping up.

39:02
Alan Kistler
Yeah. And now you're right. So we've got the Fantastic Four coming out this year. We've got the Hulk coming out next year, Spider Man's next year, closely followed by Iron man and the X Men and the Avengers. Superman had already been, in the past few years, being restructured for a more science fiction atmosphere for the space race audience that were hoping that America would make it to the moon, make it to the stars. And it was, even though Superman wasn't dying and wasn't necessarily in danger of being forgotten by the real world, there was a cultural shift that people were feeling.

39:46
Case
Yeah. So it's interesting to think of what the writer is ruminating on when he's the creator of Superman, and there's so much happening that's a direct result of Superman's existence and how much that has changed since those early. Like, what's interesting looking at this, is that it's this big celebration of the status quo of Superman at the time. Like, this very dense, rich world of stuff that was going on. It's not other DC stuff. It's Superman stuff. And the other DC characters just kind of live in it. Like, the Justice League shows up in the background, but they're not even important enough to have any lines at the funeral. It's just, I think Batman has one, but that's it. No one else does. Superman has such a huge, rich world, but it's not a tribute to older Superman stuff.

40:31
Case
I mean, I guess when we get to mix a spit, like, in the next issue, there is something there. And Luthor is also an old character, but kryptonite is a newer concept. It comes from the radio show. It's not even a thing seagull came up with, although there is the whole k metal story that never actually got printed. So there are elements there. But there's so much of this larger world that had been introduced not entirely because of Siegel's intent, that had sort of, like, fleshed out the Superman world. And he is doing a tribute to all of that, like, all of that creativity that had gone into this character.

41:02
Alan Kistler
One of the interesting things that sparks out to me, there is very little in the story that sort of reminds you of Superman's necessarily, like, his effect in the world until he's dead. They don't show you him doing a great thing or some other death of Superman stories will have him do an interview before high school kids or talk to certain people whose lives he's clearly inspired for the better and sort of remind you of that. And then he dies and it's like, oh, God. We just looked at all these people who are proof that Superman makes the world better. And now he's gone. And here he's actually doing sort of an average thing. His life is a little more busy because Luthor's situation, but he's just doing his thing.

41:46
Alan Kistler
It's only until after he's dead that people stop to consider, oh, but he was so special. And that's actually perhaps more realistic, sadly, about all of us. Along with that, there's no foreshadowing in terms of him reflecting on life or anything beforehand. There's certainly know, Lois, I think it's time we got married or maybe I'll retire and we'll buy that houseboat that says everything will be fine. There's nothing like that. And then it happens. And I find all that very interesting.

42:17
Alan Kistler
And I think even if that was not a deliberate decision of Siegel to approach death this way, I think completely makes sense for a man whose father died suddenly during an armed robbery when he was 17, which clearly had an effect on him and in part led to him changing, along with Joe Schuster, the idea of Superman being in the initial proto story a sort of villain into a bulletproof man who protects people from bullies. Yeah. So I think there's something to also, I find Superman in certain Silver Age stories, as much as I love them. Superman can be on this pedestal of either being so good or also just being sort of your dad who just knows better. You might trick him here and there with something, but he's pretty wise. He gets the better of, you know, you use robots or something.

43:09
Alan Kistler
And here there is a very human reaction. I find in two parts of the story where when Luthor is being publicized as having cured cancer, Superman goes off to get him more of the element z because obviously he wants to help him out. He wants to get these resources for more cancer treatments. At the same time, Superman, in his thought bubbles, is sort of know. They say anyone can change. I guess that's true of Luthor too. I like that it introduces that although he, Superman sees the capacity of everyone for good, he doesn't necessarily expect it. And he is surprised and perhaps still on the fence about Luther. Depending on the tone of what does he mean by, I guess Luther can change, too? I think that tone is open to interpretation.

43:58
Alan Kistler
And then later, when he makes this secret laboratory, which is kind of nuts, and I love that this secret like space laboratory that completely isolates Luthor from the world he's trying to now help, apparently, and Luthor's thanking him and shaking his hand. And this is all so happy. Superman doesn't just say, I'm glad. The dialogue of Superman is, I'm dot, dot glad. And I just find that so interesting that Siegel doesn't further explain Superman's thoughts there. Is he still curious if he's just given Luthor what he wants as part of some greater plan? Because this has happened before. Is he thinking, oh, well, that's great. I guess I am glad. I'm so used to being on the fence about you. But, yeah, I'm glad that we're here. I'm glad that I can help you with this.

44:52
Alan Kistler
I'm glad that we're on this footing, is that I'm glad. And I don't know what to feel about this. I don't know what to feel about shaking the hand of a man who for decades has tortured or attacked me and my friends, who's tried to conquer the world and turned people against me and gone after my budy Batman and stuff. I find it so interesting that they don't tell you flat out what that means. Maybe he has doubts about Luthor, but he believes in hope. And so he's going to carry this through on the basis of hope. He's going to give Luthor that benefit of a doubt, because that chance is worth chasing. And it turns out he's wrong about Luthor. Everyone was wrong about Luthor. This is a death trap.

45:39
Alan Kistler
This was always a path that Luthor was hoping, if he could get it to the end, would end in Superman's death. But does that make him wrong to hope so? Yeah. On one hand, it's a silly, ridiculous, lots of holes to poke through, story from the Silver Age. But on the other hand, there are those little moments that I find really fascinating and open to deeper thought. Yeah.

46:02
Case
And the thing I want to really hit on is how mundane the death itself is. Like, it's brutal, but like you said, it's a death trap. Just like a billion he's gone through. This exact scenario has occurred countless times with Luthor or with anyone else, and it just happened to work this time. And I think what you said about Siegel in terms of like, yeah, death can just surprise you. And it's not a thing that's like. It's not an earned death. It's not a good death. It's not a death you've built up to. It didn't go right this time. And just, like, up and now he's dead. I think that's that tragedy where at the end of the story, they're all like, holy shit. We never even thought that was possible. He didn't think it was possible.

46:41
Case
He thought he was going to come out on top, because he's Superman and he always has.

46:44
Alan Kistler
And he doesn't die fighting. He's not getting a kid out of some nuclear holocaust. And he was able to protect the kid, but he died in the process. He's not throwing himself between a kryptonite laser and Supergirl and taking the bullet for her. He walks into a room and he's there to ask, how can I help? And he's killed for it. Yeah, like I said, this is not a good death. This is a death that should be, in many narratives, would beneath our main character. This is just walking to a trap, and boom. And then, as you pointed out earlier, it's not even a fast death. It's not. Luthor hits him with a kryptonite ray that instantly kills him. It's not even a kryptonite bullet through the heart, and he's dead instantly. The man who just cured cancer is killing him through radiation.

47:35
Alan Kistler
Radiation through a cancer like thing that's destroying his cells. And it takes him a while to die. And so he's aware of it. He's aware this is the end and I can do nothing. It's absolutely dreadful. And, man, you talk about later stories or later movies about how groundbreaking they might seem for, like, yeah, went dark there. We went total, like, dark edge lord with Superman. So, like, no one ever, this isn't your daddy's, like, look at this. This is effing dark. For all the stuff that we're joking about, for the Caesar statues and the museum layers, and the fact that mobsters would take it as a personal offense that Luthor would help Superman. As if know, a union brotherhood of criminals know you're supposed to be loyal to or something.

48:26
Jmike
How dare he cure cancer?

48:28
Alan Kistler
Yeah, they're annoyed he's curing cancer. One of those mobsters has a sick aunt. Are you kidding me? Or a sick brother or something. Or has been sick, but you've got all that ridiculousness. You have the Candorians, who are delightfully tragic and silly themselves. This bottle city of survivors from Krypton. But, yeah, it is a simple death, and its simplicity is part of the brutality because it's also not a clever death. On first glance, it almost looks like a bond villain death. I've strapped you to a table and there's a weapon above you that's classic Goldfinger. But there's no elaborate thinking behind it. There's no Rube Goldberg machine. There's no multi phase thing. And even Luthor's plan actually isn't that layered. He didn't hire the mobsters, as you pointed out, to attack him. Those actually delayed his plan.

49:22
Alan Kistler
His plan was just, I will do good things for a while to be let out. And when I am let out, I'm going to have a room with the right equipment. I'm going to invite him over and he dies. That's kind of the plan.

49:38
Case
And then the death we get again, it takes a long time, but Superman doesn't get to say anything.

49:42
Alan Kistler
No.

49:43
Case
During this all, he's so weak. It's not like he gets to profess his love to Lois or say goodbye to Jimmy or like it's just a painful watching of death in all its brutality. Again, it's not a good death. If you were playing A-D-D character and you had this happen to you would hit your dm.

50:00
Jmike
Yeah, don't get any ideas, case.

50:04
Case
I mean, we've looked at Superman die a lot recently. We looked at Superman Doomsday. We looked at the death of Superman animated. We looked at the death of Superman comics in terms of feeling like an earned death. Like, man, the animated death of Superman does a really good job there. You feel like, yeah, man, he got to stand up to it. He got to tell Lois that he loves her right before he dies. He got to save her. And he dies making a last stand to protect the woman he loves and the city he loves. And all of that feels really earned. And the monster is truly terrifying there. This is none of that. This is a dude. And in this timeline, it's a dude who he's known since childhood. He made the smallest of wronging in trying to do right.

50:40
Case
He tried to save him and destroyed his hair. The most petty of reasons for all of this. And this person who he then takes that extra leap for, he gets him out of prison, he does all this stuff, then he saves his life like crazy, and he's betrayed for it. And it's so terrible. And the tragedy is in almost how pathetic it is at the end. I don't mean pathetic in the sense of like, man, Superman sucks. It's just this was going to happen to someone at some point. And the fact that is that it's a comic book, and so usually we get the hero to win and we don't get it here. And it's being allowed to move past act two in the perpetual second act of comics. And I think that's what's also really.

51:18
Alan Kistler
Cool about this particular issue, the three act structure behind it.

51:22
Case
Well, not just the three act structure of this issue. If superhero stories are a perpetual second act, where you've done your origin story, and then they just keep on having more adventures, where the fun and game section of the save the cat like clipboard structure is still going on, like, every single issue. This, we're actually allowed to have the story where, yeah, they didn't just win because he happens to be the main character of the book. Well, yeah, eventually, either you're going to deal with all your villains, or your villains will deal with you. And in this case, the villain dealt with him.

51:52
Case
And we get to see that version of that story, and we get to see the, like, I make comparisons with the Superman red and Superman Blue story a lot, in part because that trade where I was first introduced are like back to back stories. And there's some shades of similarities, but that's one where he just wins. Like, he saves the world, and he reforms all the criminals and sets candor free, destroys all diseases, gets to marry both Lois and Lana and start families with both of them. And it's not weird.

52:17
Alan Kistler
No, it's not. That's the dream.

52:19
Jmike
Not weird at all.

52:20
Case
He gets to be two people. So that's like the happy ending version of this. But this is the sad ending. This is where it's just sad and where it's just painful and annoying and there's not even glory.

52:31
Alan Kistler
Yeah, and there's not even a. We discovered a vault of these things Superman discovered right before death. And with them, we can do this, or with them now, we can make rockets for Earth. Or there's no, like. Well, in death, Superman was still able to do one last good. Nope.

52:49
Jmike
He saved the sun.

52:51
Alan Kistler
Yeah. He's gone and he's left us. And Supergirl's here, and that's great. And other heroes are here, and that's great. But Superman's gone. And it's, again, that pettiness, also of Luthor, because it's not even. He convinced people he could cure cancer to get out of prison. He cured cancer. So Luthor can do amazing things to help the earth and if he truly wanted to, could have been renowned, could have been wealthy beyond his dreams. But he doesn't want to, or he wants it on such specific terms, he's not going to get the way he wants it. I'll cure cancer, but also I have to be in charge. I'll cure cancer and take us to the stars with rocket ships I've created. But also, you have to love me and never tell me I'm wrong. And he couldn't move the needle on that.

53:48
Alan Kistler
So he does this, his brilliant mind, and it just comes down to my greatest accomplishment was making a guy who thought I needed help die. It's actually not a very creative thing. It's actually like the most petty thing you could do. And also, I'm going to make your friends watch so that there's no possible way I don't get credit for this. It's also, though, that pettiness I love that it does limit him. There are other stories where he would have then gone on like a conquest and possibly been unrivaled. There are other storytellers who would have had, like Batman, the Justice League try to stop him, but they didn't have Superman, so they just couldn't beat his robots or something. And he conquers America and whatever. Or like, they get Superman from time travel or an alternate planet to come over.

54:37
Alan Kistler
And that's what he stops him. Instead, what stops him is, again, his ego. I thought I could blackmail people because I would give up my loyalty for survival. So clearly people must think the same way. No. Candor says no. Yeah, we want to get out of our bottle city, but you killed our friend. And he's genuinely surprised.

54:56
Case
Yeah, he's incapable of seeing the nobility in others in that regard. While he correctly played Superman in that scenario, he didn't even see, really what was special about Superman.

55:07
Alan Kistler
Yeah, he's the genius who's so limited in his ideas. There's something that you do see with, again, there's a weird realism in this story because we see it all the time with actual criminals and corrupt politicians and such, who actually can be geniuses with certain things or can know how to, even if they're not smart, they can know how to game a system. They can know how to game people, but keep betraying how limited their scope is. That limited empathy really traps them in things. There's a great Colombo episode where many episodes he tricks someone into showing that they're guilty, but when in particular because a person tried to blackmail someone else, thinking that they would shut up in exchange for money. And the Colombo brings up. That was your mistake, thinking that other people thought like you.

55:57
Alan Kistler
Because actually, very few people think this. You know, we see that all the time. And it's, again, even with the death of Superman, you would think that there would be some operatic defeat of Luthor. There isn't. He's put on trial, he tries to negotiate, and they say no, and they throw him in not just any prison where we know he would escape again. They throw him in a phantom zone, a twilight dimension discovered by Superman's own father. So Superman's legacy maybe doesn't bring Luthor's to justice. Exactly, but it does keep him from harming anyone again. The house of l legacy now makes sure Luthor can never harm anyone again. Yeah.

56:36
Case
And when the Kandorians sentence him, they say executioner. And you think about it, where it's like, it's a very comics code approved way of making a person a, like, oh, it's the Phantom Zone.

56:46
Alan Kistler
And also think about that. Like, the Phantom Zone is kind of a hell. We refer to it as limbo and such. But it's really a hell because in the traditional idea of the Phantom Zone, you are still able to see and hear the real world, the main universe, but you're just moving through it like a phantom, unable touch and able to interact. So Luthor is going to wander around Earth's dimension, and for God knows how long, we'll see. People continue to mourn Superman while he becomes perhaps forgotten over time. The legion of superheroes are here, heroes from the 30th century who are partly a team because of Superman. So at least for the next millennia, Luthor, as a spirit, is going to see people remember Superman and try to follow his legacy, and no one's following his.

57:40
Alan Kistler
And in 1000 years, because of time travel, he's going to see Superman again. When Superman, as a younger man, visits the legion of superheroes in 30th century, he's going to see him again. Right there.

57:51
Case
He's going to be tortured.

57:52
Alan Kistler
Absolutely. What a hellish thing. Because of what? For ego, for pettiness, for needing love on your terms? Yeah. Like I said before, we've all been saying it's a ridiculous story, but, man, it's actually got so many layers to it that whether you intended that or not, whether Jerry Siegel thought about it that deeply or not, it's there. It's really there. It's fascinating. Yeah.

58:15
Case
I mean, it's a sprint. It's 25 pages from COVID to the end of the story. But there's so much going on. It's crazy looking at it and seeing how dense a story could be and how many things that they could layer in there, even if there's so many contrivances and just conveniences of how this thing is going to move quickly from this point to this point. But when it's time to linger on a thing like the death of Superman itself, it lingers, and it gives that space to breathe and be pretty painful. And that's why it's always stuck with me.

58:42
Case
I'm really glad for us to look back at this one, because, again, last episode, were talking about the villain, which is a monologue I wrote, which part of the thought experiment there was that we don't really see what happens between Superman dying and Luther dropping off his body on Earth. And in my head, I was like, well, what would he say? And if he's the hero of his own story? And so I wanted to sort of explore that. And again, this is the issue that really was in my mind when I was working on it. It was a lot of just exposition about what I was thinking about with Luthor in general. But specifically, this issue had always been on my mind. And I'd always thought about that sort of experiment right there. What is Luther's monologue in that moment between those panels?

59:18
Case
Because there's so much that happens so quickly. It's crazy that there isn't more room to breathe in all those know, again, we've seen those kind of monologues since then. We get her sweet Lex Luthor Jr. Giving the gotcha speech during the world without Superman arc when he returned superman to his tomb. But it was fun to sort of explore that. And it's fun to look back on this comic now, because it's been a couple of years since the last time I looked at it, particularly because my copy is in the possession of one J. Mike Fulton.

59:48
Jmike
What are you talking about, man?

59:52
Case
But I'm glad to look back on it. So, J. Mike, since you hadn't actually read this before, did you have any big takeaways that we haven't kind of addressed? Like, you've been characteristically quiet.

01:00:01
Jmike
My head cannon is that was Martha and Jonathan Kent. And he wasn't the dad that told Superman not to save him from the tornado. That's my head cannon. And I'm going with very, like you said, a very short but very dense story. I was not expecting this from this. I was like, how he get all of that entire wonderfully done monologue by Jeff, by Lex Luthor, part two. It goes animated series Lex. And then Jeff is next. But how did he get that entire monologue mess? And I was like, oh, now it makes sense.

01:00:46
Alan Kistler
Cool.

01:00:46
Jmike
I understand it. I get it now. But yeah, this was a good story. This is a very good story. I still don't understand why she took the costume off, though. Yeah, 5 seconds. Introducing herself.

01:00:58
Alan Kistler
Hi, Luther.

01:00:58
Jmike
Away.

01:00:59
Case
And then take the costume off. It's so weird.

01:01:01
Jmike
Artists have the robots come bust down the doors while everyone's distracted. You stash Luther and you're like, oh, God, what happened? He was gone.

01:01:08
Case
And also, they all know about the robots. So it's not like the robots are going to be a surprising quant like Superman busting through the wall is not a surprising quantity when they all know that he has robots flying all over the place. But this is all nitpicky stuff because it's just man fucking 60. Superman was weird. And if he died in the most mundane and painful way possible, what would that story look like? And that's this.

01:01:30
Jmike
This is such a boring death.

01:01:32
Case
The person who invented the genre of superheroes gets to tell the least epic, but ultimately the most tragic death that you could.

01:01:40
Alan Kistler
Yeah, absolutely. And again, it's just wild that you compare that with what he wrote over two decades before with action comics one. And it's fast paced, saving somebody from execution, going from one thing to another, like we're opening up on. Here's a quick one page origin of Superman and why he can do what he can do. And second page, hey, we're going into the governor's mansion because the wrong person is about to get executed for that crime. And a couple of pages later, hey, you're beating up your wife. You stop that. And a couple pages, you know, lois, come on, let's dance. Oh, no, mobsters. And then throw in the mobster's car into the ha. And then, war profiteering in Washington, DC. I'm going to mess with that guy. And then we're out.

01:02:28
Alan Kistler
And it's like that high flying, high speed, but such grounded thing. And to fast forward decades of, it's also densely packed, but feels like a slower burn. And there's wilder ideas there, like as you. It's. Some of those ideas came from Jerry, some came from other writers, but he's welcoming them all. This is the Superman that is here now. This is not the character Joe and I made in the Depression era. This is a space age, truly deeper science fiction Superman. And I as the architect who later also fleshed out some of his backstory and who later figured out some things about where he came from and the culture he came from and who raised him. Da, da.

01:03:15
Alan Kistler
I'm now going to picture that if he died, it would be what perhaps most of us experience of death, of just unexpected, not truly heroic, tragic, but still isn't diminished the value that person had up to that.

01:03:31
Case
Yeah.

01:03:31
Alan Kistler
And what an opportunity to be able to do that even as an imaginary story. Stan Lee never really wrote like a Death of Spiderman story with Steve Ditko and Jack Kirby. Sort of got to end the new gods, but not really on his terms. Certainly never did like a last Fantastic Four story. Yeah. It's wild that this story happened. Yeah.

01:03:52
Case
I mean, we're recording this. It's now may of 2023. The last couple of years have been.

01:03:57
Alan Kistler
What are you talking about? The economy is great. People are being paid what they deserve, especially writers. Writers have never had it better. The country is unified in a love of reasonable discussion, and people are treated for. No, I'm sorry. It's all terrible. It's 1938 again. It's time for Superman again.

01:04:23
Case
Right? I mean, this is a day after the Jordan Neely death on the subway. We are seeing gun violence. There's so many stories about shooters going off. And some of it, sure, the news gets sensationalized, but it's being reinforced. And we just came off of years of terrible tons of death that we've had to witness. Like, so many people that have not had glorious deaths, have not had noble deaths, have not had deaths that meant something. It was just someone got sick in the wrong space and maybe they didn't have symptoms and went out somewhere and got someone else sick, and then that person died. And we all know someone who lost their life in the last couple of years because it's just been fucking gross. Like, death is not a glorious thing. Death is not a noble thing.

01:05:09
Case
Death is a sad thing that oftentimes doesn't have a thing that you can take meaning from. And it's interesting that this is a story that they're trying to wrestle with kind of similar tones. It's very easy to have, like, here's the heroic last stand of someone. It's very easy to do the 300 Spartans at thermopoly kind of thing. And to have a death where it's honestly truer to life in the most bombastic, crazy comic concept world out there is really interesting to look at. And it resonates in a way that's different than all these other ones that we've looked at. It was a long time ago, we looked at whatever happened to the man of tomorrow. And obviously there's a bit of a fake out in that all. But there are some pretty savage deaths that occurred that are kind of meaningless.

01:05:53
Case
And then there's also some noble ones, like, crypto gets a really noble death in that story and it hits you in a specific way. Like, you feel moved, but also inspired. This one's not an inspiring death. This is just looking back and being like, man, it sucks to have lost this person. And I think that's a feeling that in this modern era, we're very acutely familiar with. And it's wild to look back on this story from. Now, I'm doing the math, and it's 62 years ago. It's wild, but I'm really glad to look at this. If you're listening to this episode and you've never read it before it is available on the DC Universe Infinite app. However, don't look for the issue. You will not find it because there's frustratingly this big old gap of Superman comics from the Silver Age.

01:06:40
Case
On the DC Universe app, it's got a bunch of golden age and then you jump over to the Bronze Age. It is, however, on the Superman 75th anniversary collection that is available on the app. I don't know why they don't just have the fucking issues, but it's there. It's in several trades at this point. So the Superman 75th anniversary collection. The greatest Superman stories ever told. Not Superman. The greatest stories ever told. Those are two different books that have different issues in them as we have been forced to reckon with on this show. But it's readily available. I've seen a bunch of videos recently that have discussed it, which is cool in part because we are right now at the 30th anniversary of the death of Superman. Like the doomsday fight story.

01:07:18
Case
So people have been looking at all these stories and that's kind of why we're talking about this anyway. But it's available. It's definitely worth checking out. It's a quick read. Again, it's 25 issues from the COVID to the end. And I count the COVID here because the COVID and the first page effectively are both doing two different versions of, like, this is what you're in for, guys. There's dialogue. There's a description of, like, in this issue, superman dies. And you see, like, the actual scene of Superman dying on the COVID which is wild. That was just the issue. And it has the price. It's $0.10. Here's 25 pages of Superman being murdered in a pretty robust story. But it's, I would say, check it out.

01:07:56
Case
Even if you have listened to this episode, have never read it, and you're like, oh, I know all the story beats because they talked for an hour and some minutes about it.

01:08:01
Alan Kistler
Still check it out.

01:08:02
Case
I think it's a really good read. Alan, again, thank you for coming on. Sure. Do you have any closing thoughts about this that we didn't touch?

01:08:08
Alan Kistler
I mean, I think you touched on it very nicely. I mean, that's the remarkable thing about good science fiction, good science fantasy, of the stories that used to be called scientific romance, it's a great thing about fantasy and fairy tales and superhero comics in general, is that you can have absurd seeming ideas and wrap your ideas up in all this lore of imaginary things, and even straight up say, this story will not have consequences because it is, even in the context of our fictional universe, an imaginary story.

01:08:44
Alan Kistler
You can say that and yet still talk about human things or show human things and maybe be more human than he expected to be when penning this, the fact that it is simultaneously of the Silver Age of comics and yet feels timeless because of how it approaches death and pettiness and villainy is remarkable to me. And, yeah, you're right. A lot of us have lost someone in ways that we can't take any noble sacrifice from or any noble lesson from. It's just, they were here and then they weren't. And I appreciate a story that can remind us about that and that it doesn't have necessarily an inspirational message at the end, because Supergirl isn't standing proudly on some mountaintop with crypto saying, I'm going to be this amazing hero, and I'm going to teach others how to be a superhero.

01:09:35
Alan Kistler
She's not creating a school for superheroes with the lessons Superman taught her. She's just, I'm going to try to keep going. And it's a very lovely, quiet ending of like, yeah, that's what we all have to do sometimes. It was great to chat about this jamaican.

01:09:50
Case
Any closing thoughts?

01:09:52
Alan Kistler
This is a great story.

01:09:53
Jmike
I really enjoyed it. Great to see another piece of some good Superman literature without people hating on me so much. But, yeah, this is a good read. Everyone should go read this as another piece of Superman literature to enjoy. He saved his father. Zack Snyder hates fathers. That's all.

01:10:11
Case
You got, that kryptonite axe? Yeah. So next time. We are finally moving past the death and return of Superman cycle and all of our ruminations about that, so we are moving on. I think the next time we actually have a pop quiz episode coming up. We recorded a bunch of episodes before I had a baby, and now it's about a month after that being the birth of my daughter. My brain is mush right now, guys. So I'm sorry if the schedule has been a little bit weird, but we've got a bunch of stuff banked, so that should not have any real interruptions, even if they're going to be coming out at weird times, because I'm just getting these out when I can. But thank you, everyone, for listening. Thanks everyone on the call for being here to talk about this story.

01:10:55
Case
We've got more stuff coming, and if you are looking for other good podcast material, you can find stuff over@certainpov.com where you can find other great shows such as another pass, which I work on, or all kinds of other great shows like Screensnark, which is a wonderful conversation about media that, alan, you've been on, former editor of this show, Matt Storm and their co host Rachel Quirky Shank, do a great job interviewing people and having a great time. So that's a really fun show. Definitely check that out again. You can find it@certainpov.com where you can also find a link to our discord server where you can come interact with us directly. Alan, do you have any plugs that you want to give while you're here?

01:11:31
Alan Kistler
I'm working on a few projects I can't really talk about right now, but for those of you who don't know, and most of you wouldn't, I'm also now working with a great company, Darkburn Creative. We make trailers for video games. If you've liked any of the Star Wars Jedi survivor trailers, we made those. All but one of them. Basically the reveal trailer at TGA, the story trailer that came later, the last launch trailer, the gameplay trailer. It's a great game. Also, you can play it without having played Jedi Fallen order. It's the sequel, but they give a little video at the top that you can understand everything and just jump right into it.

01:12:07
Alan Kistler
I just work with great people, Tanner and Vincent and sky and Sam, plus great folks such as Grant and Kyle and Hunter and Tally and Colin, Nick and Patrick, Ariana, Rhea, Maricel, Antonio, Matthias, Brooke, Danielle, Tony, Warren, Gus, my boy, Serrano, Chris, Rockriver, Pete Ski, Charis, Jennifer Chen, other Nick, Ian, Dylan, Susan, other Susan, everyone that I've maybe forgotten, I apologize for that. But yeah, it's a great operation. I'm lucky to be a part of it. And because I like plugging other people's work, I would suggest reading tomorrow and tomorrow by Gabriel or Gabrielle Zevin. I don't know how they pronounce their name, but it's great.

01:13:01
Case
Speaking of reading, I should plug this one since it just dropped the book Voices of Krypton, which is an oral history of the history of Superman by Ed Gross, who has previously done all kinds of ones. The one that I was most familiar with was the 50 year mission, which was an oral history of Star Trek that just came out. And I am referenced in there as one of the sources, which was pretty dope to see my name along this whole list. Like, I'm right above Kirk Allen, the first actor to ever play Superman, which is like, so fucking cool because alphabetical order in terms of the list of people contributing. But I was really happy that I'm actually in a decent amount. I was like, fuck yeah. Nice.

01:13:37
Case
So if you want to see my words written, they're there, along with way smarter people who actually know what they're talking about. And not just all that. So again, voices from Krypton. It's out. There's actually a lot of podcasters on there. So if you're just a fan of Superman podcasts, a lot of people who have been in the fan community got a chance to speak up about the character. So check that out. It just came out this week that we're recording, and theoretically, the week that this episode is dropping. We'll find out how that goes. We'll see. But check all that out. And until next time, stay super man.

01:14:17
Jmike
Men of steel is a certain POV production. Our hosts are J. Mike Folson and case Aiken. The show is scored and edited by Jeff Moonin, and our logo and episode art is by case Aiken.

01:14:35
Case
Hey there, screen beans. Have you heard about screen snark? Rachel, this is an ad break.

01:14:40
Alan Kistler
They aren't screen beans until they listen to the show.

01:14:43
Case
Fine. Potential screen beans. You like movies and tv shows, right? I mean, who doesn't?

01:14:48
Alan Kistler
Screen Snark is a casual conversation about the movies and television shows that are.

01:14:52
Case
Shaping us as we live our everyday lives. That's right, Matt. We have a chat with at least one incredible guest every episode, hailing from all walks.

01:15:00
Alan Kistler
We've interviewed chefs, writers, costumers, musicians, yoga.

01:15:04
Case
Teachers, comedians, burlesque dancers, folks in the.

01:15:07
Alan Kistler
Film and tv industry, and more. We'd be delighted for you to join.

01:15:11
Case
Us every other Monday on the Certain POV podcast network or wherever you get your podcasts. Fresh and tasty.

01:15:17
Alan Kistler
Off the that's not.

01:15:20
Case
Can I call them screen beans now? Fine, screen beans.

01:15:30
Alan Kistler
So tune in and we'll see you.

01:15:32
Case
At the movies or on a couch somewhere, because you're a whole screen beans.

01:15:37
Alan Kistler
Now she will be mine. Aurora CpOv certainpov.com close.