Several classic Superman creative teams will return to the character for the 80-Page The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special #1. Celebrating the 30th anniversary of The Death of Superman event that ushered in a new, seemingly endless wave of event comics, the special will include new stories by Dan Jurgens, Brett Breeding, Roger Stern, Butch Guice, Jon Bogdanove, Louise Simonson, Jerry Ordway and more.
“It was great to be able to work with them and make sure that each team was back together again,” Jurgens said about the special. “It was Roger Stern and Butch Guice who were on Action Comics back at that time, and they could come back as a team. Louise Simonson and John Bogdanov were on Man of Steel, Tom Grummett and Jerry Ordway were working on Adventures of Superman, and Brett Breeding and I were on Superman. We realized we could get the full crew back together to do these stories.”
The four stories and creative teams for the special are:
- “The Life of Superman” by Dan Jurgens (W & A), Brett Breeding (A), Brad Anderson (C), and John Workman (L) – A young Jon Kent finds out in school that his dad had died years earlier, as his parents never told him about that fateful day. In the midst of dealing with this emotional news, Jon and Clark need to team up to fight a new villain connected to Doomsday called Doombreaker.
- “Standing Guard” by Roger Stern (W), Butch Guice (A), Glenn Whitmore (C), and Rob Leigh (L) – The epic battle between Superman and Doomsday from the Guardians’ perspective.
- “Time” by Louise Simonson (W), Jon Bogdanove (A), Glenn Whitmore (C), and Rob Leigh (L) – The story of how the death of Superman looked from John Henry Irons’s perspective.
- “Above and Beyond” by Jerry Ordway (W), Tom Grummett (P), Doug Hazlewood (I), Glenn Whitmore (C), and Rob Leigh (L) – A powerful story of Ma and Pa Kent watching their son fight Doomsday live on television and going through Clark’s photo albums with the feeling that their son always prevails.
DC provided a really long quote from Jurgens about the anniversary, which I’ll post here in its entirety:
Even now, thirty years after “The Death of Superman” first came out, every single convention or store appearance I do has at least one person who comes up to me with Superman #75 or the first “Death of Superman” collected edition and says, “This is the book that got me into comics. And I’m still here, reading, all these years later.” Most times, it’s more than one. Sometimes, multiple people arrive at my table at the same time and share their memories, which is always fun to experience.
Their tales are often quite similar. Typically, media coverage of Superman’s death compelled them or a parent to drop by a local store to pick the issue up. In some cases, their parents let them skip school the day of the book’s release so they could stand in line to get a copy. Some talk of how their store was sold out and they spent days looking all over town to find one.
I’m not alone in that experience. It’s common for the entire team of writers and artists who worked on Superman at the time. It was a singularly unique moment in comics, when a particular story was covered by every form of national and local media alike.
It’s hard to tell people what those days were like, but every comic shop in the country had long lines of people outside the door waiting to buy THAT BOOK.
All these years later, it’s a great pleasure to get back together with the story’s original creative teams to celebrate a truly exciting time in comics. For those of you who remember those days, The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary Special will reignite some memories. For those who weren’t around to experience it, well…we hope you get a hint of what it was like.
Most of all, we hope all of you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed putting it all together.
Above you can see all the variant covers for this issue, by Jim Lee and Scott Williams; Dan Mora; Ivan Reis and Danny Miki; Francesco Mattina; Dan Jurgens; and Brett Breeding. There’s also going to be “premium polybag variant that features a black armband with The Death of Superman 30th Anniversary logo and the main cover,” which of course ties into the original story and the 1990s tactic of polybagging comics and including something “extra” (I still have all my X-Force #1 trading cards).
Here are some preview pages:
Here’s the solicitation text:
THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN 30TH ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL #1
30 years ago, the unthinkable happened. The Man of Steel died. After sacrificing himself to stop the unstoppable global threat, Doomsday, Metropolis and the rest of the DC Universe mourned the loss of their greatest hero. To mark this monumental moment in comics, DC has reunited the complete creative team behind the original event for four brand-new stories. Led by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding, the special kicks off with a new Superman story and villain…DOOMBREAKER! Followed by a series of short stories revisiting some of Superman’s greatest allies and exclusive pinups done by some of comics’ greatest artistic talent including LEE WEEKS, GABRIEL RODRIGUEZ, BILL SIENKIEWICZ, and WALTER SIMONSON.
Written by DAN JURGENS, ROGER STERN, LOUISE SIMONSON, and JERRY ORDWAY
Art by DAN JURGENS, BRETT BREEDING, BUTCH GUICE, JON BOGDANOVE, TOM GRUMMETT, and more!
Cover by DAN JURGENS and BRETT BREEDING
Open Order Variant Cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
Jon Kent Variant Cover by DAN MORA
Funeral for a Friend Variant Cover by IVAN REIS and DANNY MIKI
Doomsday Die-Cut Variant Cover by FRANCESCO MATTINA
1:25 Doomsday Variant Cover by FRANCESCO MATTINA
1:50 Variant Cover by JIM LEE and SCOTT WILLIAMS
1:00 Foil Variant Cover by DAN JURGENS and BRETT BREEDING
Premium Polybag Variant (w/armband) featuring main cover by DAN JURGENS and BRETT BREEDING inside
$10.99 US | 80 PAGES
ON SALE 11/8/22
DC is also releasing a deluxe edition of the original Death of Superman tale, which will collect all the pertinent issues plus the Day of Doom miniseries:
THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN 30TH ANNIVERSARY DELUXE EDITION
It was a day that no one ever dreamed would arrive: the day an unstoppable force met an immovable object. In Doomsday, Superman met his ultimate match—and his death! Relive the monumental event in this 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of the Death of Superman saga, featuring a new introduction by Dan Jurgens and other extras. This volume collects Superman #73-75, Adventures of Superman #496-497, Justice League America #69, Action Comics #683-684, Superman: The Man of Steel #17-19, and Newstime: The Life and Death of Superman #1—plus Superman: Day of Doom #1-4 as a bonus tale!
Written by DAN JURGENS, JERRY ORDWAY, LOUISE SIMONSON, and ROGER STERN
Art by JON BOGDANOVE, TOM GRUMMETT, JACKSON GUICE, DAN JURGENS, and others
Cover by DAN JURGENS and BRETT BREEDING
$39.99 US | 328 pages | 7 1/16″ x 10 7/8″ | Hardcover
DIRECT MARKET EXCLUSIVE VARIANT
ON SALE 12/6/22
It comes out in December. Finally, if you missed the original Superman #75 by Dan Jurgens and Brett Bredding, where the deed gets done, DC will release a special edition of just that issue on Nov. 1.
And I’m guessing if this is the 30th anniversary of The Death of Superman, maybe we can expect some Reign of the Supermen love next year?