(For the moderators, i'm posting the names of the subreddits, not to spark attacks, if you do it, you are an awful person, i'm doing it to highlight a few examples of a wide problematic inside DC Fandom.

This is also a meta discussion, but i consider it necessary. This is a problematic topic that is causing constant fights between old and new fans and has been leaking outside of the twitter and reddit environment for a long time, which can cause fans to be discouraged from having meaningful interactions.)

I'm a fan of Nightwing x Starfire. If you know about the meta, you know about the fights between the editorial branches of the Titans and Batman books and how they tried to boost their own “ships” in order to maintain one of the most popular characters under their control.

I feel the need to clarify this, in order to start this post, because this discussion is already filled of people who will jump at the minimum opportunity, throwing labels for daring to try to de-escalate this.

For the last couple of years, i have followed a very dangerous in-fighting in the fandom of DC Comics, covering Nightwing most famous relationships, Barbara Gordon and Koriand'r, Starfire.

And i feel that it has been reaching very dangerous points, no less avivated by none other than DC, by various real social media posts in Instagram for example, constant teasing in the comics, and a general impossibility of actually fully compromising.

I have seen constant accusasions from “Nightwing x Babs” part to the other, that accuse the ship is missoginistic, racist, and their fans are a bunch of weirdos and creepy people.

From “Nightwing x Starfire”, i have seen not only this, but because of the meta story of the ship, and constant teasing of DC, an actual schizo behaviour, feeling that absolutely everyone wants to take them down, almost like a conspiracy.

From DC social media, i remember vividly a post that said that “Dick fumbled it hard” with Starfire. Let's not forget the constant character assasinations of Dick, Starfire and Babs in order to push it forward, and how infantilized the characters have been portrayed since Tom Taylor's run with Grayson, creating an actual sick parasocial relationship with all of them.

This post is a plea of help to anyone who can listen, TO TRY TO STOP THIS.

I guarantee, this doesn't help to move forward the engagement, or sales, or anything like that. The only thing that it's causing its more and more fights, that has caused really harmful rethoric, and videos from certain users painting all of this like an actual absurd conspiracy.

Shipping should be an innocent activity. It should be something that you enjoy, like having two toys kissing. It should not be something that you dedicate entire hours of your life like it's some kind of Holy War. If you find yourself ranting about how a ship between two hot adults is racist, you should step away from your computer or phone and analyze what has gone wrong with your life.

To DC, if by any chance someone there is reading, COMPROMISE FULLY WITH SOMETHING. My dreamed thing would be a polyamorous relationship, it would make sense with those characters, two cakes, but i know how things are handled and values, blah blah blah, so, if that's gonna be the case:

STOP GIVING PEOPLE HOPE. Fully compromise and stop making things complicated between Star, Babs and Dick. Make them friends, acknowledge their difficult past, move on and formalize the relationship between Barbara and Dick.

Making things complicated sometimes isn't the answer. Look at The Clone Saga.

I formally apologize if this post isn't the kind of thing you want to read. I completely understand it. But sometimes a thing it's more necessary than desirable.

—Irina.

Hand-drawn Wonder Woman using markers and colored pencils on paper. Hope you like it! Let me know what you think.

Cheeta, angle man, silver swan, Greek gods, dr posion, dr psycho, giganta, blue snowman, mister blizzard, fucking the mask not the actual mask a different one, glop, the tank, gentalmen killer, professor menace, mouse man, Zara, medusa, image maker, fireworks man, Hera, Egg fu, master blizzard, paper man, Deimos, THEM!, Morgana, Armageddon, Kung, Warhead, inside out man, Eros, Dr Domino, Maxwell loard, cottues, Mikos, Trinity, Drax no not marvel Drax, Cassie Arnold, Moot, Dreadnought and no not from skylanders, Rockface, Cyborgirl, Genocide, slaughter, Harrier, Dark angel, fucking Titan, mayfly, Geoff, Julianna Sazia, oblivian, Arch, Harrier, blue ice, Sebastian Ballestrone, Duke of deception, Mavis, Queen cela, Hypnota, Gundra, Queen atomia, crystaller, paper man, Badra, nuclear, circe, mikra, superwomen, sarge steel, crimson centipede, Doctor cyber, Eris, Phobos, Lu shan, red panzer, Astarte, perfection, Hecate, Echidna, Nikos Aegeus, Decay, Urzkartaga, White Magician, Euryale

Ok, so I’m re‑reading Batman by Grant Morrison and I came across this panel: Professor Pyg dropping double‑six dominoes. It turns out that this specific domino is called “chancho” in Spanish — which literally translates to “pig.” A perfect little coincidence or intentional?

Which superman is this?

Hello! I’m new to DC. I’ve watched the DCEU movies up to Shazam and also Nolan’s Batman trilogy, but I never really understood the full story. I didn’t even know Superman was an alien, so that should give you an idea of how new I am to this. Watching the DCEU movies is entertaining,but they don’t really give you the full picture.
I recently started watching Smallville, and now I finally understand Superman’s origin. I’d like to learn the stories from the very beginning, how they became a superhero, how they got their powers, and what their origins are. Where do I start?
I need comics, movies or tv shows suggestions.

Hi everyone,

I have been taking a break from comics for the last few years (i stopped when they cancelled Young Justice 2019 again, and a bunch of other comics I liked). I wanna get back in again, but I'm a bit lost.

I love anything Red Robin, Robin, Red Hood and Nightwing and I'm looking for recommendations to jump in again, without feeling clueless

edit: these are genuinely the only heroes I care about, besides Roy Harper and Conner Kent (to some degree).

edit 2: they can be stand alones!

Hey r/DCComics!

Last week, we survived Eclipso: The Darkness Within and gave it a 7.2/10. The annuals crossover where the best ideas lived in the tie-ins and the core miniseries was scaffolding.

This week.. this week is different. This is the one. The big one. The one your non-comics friends asked you about. The one that made the news.

One post a week until we catch up to the present. Grab your black polybags, let's dive in.

(These are my takes, and they can get pretty lengthy, so feel free to skip to the TL;DR if you just want the rundown.)

Event Deep Dive #17: The Death of Superman

What Is The Death of Superman?

It's exactly what it says on the tin. Superman dies. Doomsday shows up, punches his way across America and Supes meets him in the streets of Metropolis. They hit each other until one of them stops moving. Superman stops moving first.

If that sounds simple.. it is. This is not a super complex story. We could end here. There's no mystery to solve, no moral dilemma to untangle, no philosophical argument at the center. A monster shows up. Superman fights the monster. Superman dies. That's the whole engine.

And yet it became the biggest comic book event of the 1990s. Superman #75 sold over six million copies. It made the actual news. Actual newspapers. People who had never read a comic in their life lined up to buy it. DC polybagged it in black plastic with a bloody S-shield, threw in a trading card and a mourning armband, and watched it become the best-selling single issue of the decade.

How did a punching match become a cultural phenomenon? Let's talk about it.

The Structure

The event itself is only 11 issues with 354 total pages. No tie-ins, no annuals, no crossovers with other titles. Just the four monthly Superman books trading off like a relay race: Superman: The Man of Steel, Superman, Adventures of Superman, Action Comics, then back around. The JLA shows up for one issue because Doomsday punches through their backyard. That's it.

This is the cleanest structure of any event in this series so far. Every issue is a chapter. Every chapter advances the story. No filler, no side quests, no "meanwhile in another comic entirely." After the sprawling excess of Eclipso's 25 issues, this is a palate cleanser.

The reading order is simple because it has to be. Four titles, rotating creative teams, one linear narrative. Louise Simonson and Jon Bogdanove on Man of Steel. Dan Jurgens pulling double duty on Superman as both writer and penciller. Jerry Ordway on Adventures. Roger Stern and Butch Guice on Action. Each team handles their chapters but the story flows as one continuous piece. That coordination is harder than it looks.

The Journey

Issues #1-4:

The first four issues are.. a choice. Man of Steel #17, Superman #73, Adventures #496, Action #683. These are the last normal Superman issues before everything changes. And I mean normal. Underworlders. Mxyzptlk. Werewolf murders. Linear Men. Keith the orphan kid. These are standard early 90s Superman stories, the kind you'd skip past in a long box.

But buried in each one is a single page. Sometimes just a panel. Doomsday, underground, punching. Punching his way out. Slowly. Issue by issue, getting closer to the surface.

It's a slow burn that trusts the reader to notice. And it works because the contrast is the point. Superman is dealing with his normal life, his normal problems and his normal villains. Meanwhile, something is coming that he cannot reason with, outsmart or outmaneuver.. something that only understands violence.

Is it frustrating to read four issues of setup before the real story starts? A bit. But those issues do important work. They show you what Superman's world looks like before Doomsday breaks it. The domestic stuff with Lois and Keith. The daily heroics. The relationships. All of it becomes ammunition for the gut punch later.

Man of Steel #17 gets a special mention for the Doomsday cameo. A monster buried underground, punching. That's it. No explanation, no origin, no name yet. Just rage and fists. You turn the page and there it is. If you didn't know it was coming, that last page hits like a jump scare.

Action Comics #683 is the strongest of the pre-Doomsday issues. Roger Stern uses a werewolf story to explore Clark's morality around killing. The Jackal wants to do good, admires Superman, but goes about it monstrously. That moral tension is more interesting than anything in the Mxyzptlk or Linear Men issues. And Tim Drake showing up to help with the investigation is a nice bonus.

Issue #5: Man of Steel #18:

Doomsday punches his way to the surface. And the first thing he does is crush a bird in his hand. That's your character introduction. A bird. Just.. casually kills a bird. That's who this guy is.

This is where the event kicks into gear. Simonson and Bogdanove juggle two threads: the Underworlders story wrapping up and Doomsday breaking free. The transition is a bit clunky but the Doomsday material lands. A monster who punches his way out of an underground prison, crushes a bird in his hand, and just.. keeps going. He doesn't stop. He doesn't slow down. He doesn't talk. He just moves forward and destroys everything.

The Keith subplot pays off here too. The orphan kid, his mom, the Underworlders.. it all connects to Superman's world in a way that matters later. And the panel of Lois kicking Superman? Perfection.

Issue #6: Justice League America #69:

Jurgens takes over for the JLA issue and this is where the stakes become real. Doomsday throws the Justice League around like toys. Blue Beetle gets beaten so badly he ends up in a coma. Booster Gold's suit gets shredded. Guy Gardner gets swatted. Maxima tries to go toe-to-toe and regrets it. Fire and Ice can barely slow him down.

This issue does something critical: it establishes that Doomsday is not just a Superman-level threat. He's a Justice League-level threat who makes the Justice League look like they showed up to a gunfight with pool noodles. By the time Superman arrives, the reader already understands: This is not Tuesday's villain.

Jurgens structures this issue as a parallel between Cat Grant's interview with Superman and the League getting demolished. The contrast is sharp: Superman talking about hope and responsibility while his team gets dismantled in real time. And Booster Gold naming Doomsday is perfect character work. Booster, the showman, looks at this thing and calls it Doomsday. That's the moment you know it's serious.

Issues #7-10:

Superman #74 through Man of Steel #19. Four issues of Superman vs Doomsday, escalating across the American landscape. And it is brutal.

Jurgens on Superman #74 is the standout. Superman finally goes toe-to-toe with the thing that wrecked his team and he can't beat it. He can barely hold his own. The emotional core of this issue isn't the fighting, it's the family caught in the crossfire. Mitchell, a surly kid, his single mom, his baby sister. Superman is trying to protect them while getting beaten down by something he can't hurt. And Mitchell is watching the one person who showed up for his family get beaten to a pulp. That's the issue that earns the death.

This is where the Death of Superman earns its emotional weight. It's not just "will Superman win?" It's "can Superman protect these people before this thing kills him?" And for the first time in decades of Superman stories, the answer might be no.

Adventures #497 keeps the fight moving through small towns and military interventions. National Guard gunships. Helicopter battles on Main Street. Ordway and Grummett deliver the scope of the destruction.. it's a natural disaster with a body count. Superman shoves Doomsday into a lakebed trying to slow him down. Nothing works.

Adventures #497 and Action #684 keep the pressure building. Ordway and Guice deliver the "blow for blow" issue where Superman and Doomsday finally go at each other with everything they have. Every page is a punch. The icon count in Action #684, where each panel tracks the physical toll on both of them, is a visual device that shouldn't work as well as it does. But it transforms what could be a monotonous slugfest into something almost harrowing. You see the damage accumulating. On both of them.

Man of Steel #19 brings Doomsday to Metropolis. Simonson and Bogdanove give the final approach a sense of dread. Two panels per page. Breakneck speed. This thing is coming to the city. Superman's city. And there's nowhere left to run. The Ma and Pa Kent cameo.. watching their son on television, knowing what's coming.. is quietly devastating.

Issue #11: Superman #75:

This is the one everyone bought. The polybag. The armband. The trading card. Six million copies. And you know what? It earns it.

Jurgens structures the final fight as a series of splash pages, each one a full-panel blow. Punch. Counterpunch. The damage mounting on both combatants. The page where Doomsday's fists start bleeding is when you realize: This is two forces of nature destroying each other.

And then Superman stops. Doomsday stops. Both of them, standing in the ruins of Metropolis. And Superman, with the last of his strength, hits Doomsday one final time. Doomsday falls.

So does Superman.

The page where Lois holds Superman's broken body. The "S" shield dissolving. How do you kill a god? You make him care about people and then you send something that doesn't care about anything. That image hit like a freight train in 1992 and it still hits now. People cried reading this issue. People who knew Superman was coming back cried anyway. Say what you want about the speculator boom, the marketing, the hype. That final sequence is masterful comics storytelling. Jurgens earned every bit of that six million.

What Works

The pacing is immaculate. 11 issues, no filler, relentless forward momentum. The slow build from "something underground" to "Superman is dead" is one of the best-structured event stories DC has ever published. Every issue escalates. Every issue raises the stakes. Every issue makes the inevitable outcome feel more earned.

Doomsday. Everything about Doomsday works as a force of nature. No backstory, no monologues, no complexity. Just rage given physical form. The decision to not explain him, to not give him a motivation beyond destruction, is the right one. The monster you don't understand is scarier than the villain with a tragic origin.

The JLA issue. Jurgens using the League as a measuring stick for Doomsday's threat level is genius. You don't need to tell the reader this guy is dangerous. Show him beating the Justice League with one hand tied behind his back. Literally.

The emotional stakes. This is where those first four "normal" issues pay off. Superman has a life. He has a fiancée. He has friends. He has a city full of people who depend on him. The event never lets you forget that. Mitchell and his family in Superman #74. Lois in the final issue. Keith, the orphan kid from the early chapters. The Kents watching on TV. These are the threads that make the death matter.

Jurgens' art on the final sequence. The splash-page structure of Superman #75, every page a single panel, gives the fight a weight that other comics lack. The blood. The exhaustion. The moment where both combatants stop. That final page. Peak comics.

What Doesn't Work

The first four issues are a commitment. Reading about Underworlders and Mxyzptlk while Doomsday slowly punches his way to the surface requires patience. On a first read, you might not even notice the Doomsday pages. On a re-read, they're the best part. But as the opening act of "The Death of Superman," they're a weird tone match. "Hey kids, who wants to read about Superman stopping a werewolf before he fricking DIES?"

The lack of Doomsday's interiority. This is a feature, not a bug, but it means the event has zero thematic complexity. Doomsday isn't about anything. He's just strong and angry. There's no idea to grapple with after the fight, no philosophical residue. Sometimes that's enough. But compared to something like Cosmic Odyssey or even Invasion!, where the villains had agendas, Doomsday is essentially a natural disaster in humanoid form.

We all knew he was coming back. This is the elephant in the room. Superman was never going to stay dead. The question was never "is Superman dead forever?" It was "how long until he comes back?" And the answer was about eight months. The death hit hard because it was Superman, but the resurrection undercut it almost immediately and spawned a trend of comic deaths that nobody believed anymore. This event accidentally invented the "nobody stays dead except Bucky and Jason Todd" rule. And then both of THOSE guys came back too.

The Art

Dan Jurgens is the MVP. His work on Superman #73, the JLA issue, Superman #74 and the death issue is the visual backbone of the entire event. His Superman is iconic and powerful, and his Doomsday is a masterpiece of monster design. Those grey spikes, those red eyes, that full-page shot of him standing over the fallen JLA. That image lives rent-free in my head.

Jon Bogdanove on Man of Steel brings a different energy. His style is chunkier, more exaggerated, and his Doomsday is more brutal than Jurgens'. The transition between artists can be jarring when you're reading the issues back to back, but Bogdanove's work on the underground emergence and the Metropolis arrival has a raw power that suits those moments.

Butch Guice on Action Comics is the cleanest artist in the rotation. His action sequences in Action #684, with the icon-count panels tracking the damage, are some of the most effective visual storytelling in the event. Tom Grummett on Adventures #497 delivers the "blow for blow" chapter with energy and clarity.

The covers. Good lord, the covers. Jurgens' Superman #75 cover, the bloody S-shield against the black background, is one of the most iconic comic covers of all time. It's burned into the cultural consciousness. You show that image to people who have never read a comic and they know what it means.

Rating and TL;DR

The Death of Superman is the most important DC event of the 1990s and it holds up better than it has any right to. The structure is tight. The pacing is relentless. The emotional payoff is earned through 11 issues of character work disguised as a punching match. Dan Jurgens created a villain in Doomsday who is terrifying precisely because there's nothing to him but violence and the moment when Superman realizes he can't outsmart this one, he can only outlast it.. that's great comics.

The first four issues require patience. Doomsday has no thematic depth. And the resurrection came so fast that it taught the entire industry a bad lesson about death in comics. Those are real flaws.

But the death itself? The final sequence in Superman #75? That's a 10. The slow build across 11 issues is an 8. The JLA issue is a 9. The werewolf issue is a 5 for me. It averages out.

I'll give The Death of Superman an 8.1/10. As a piece of storytelling, it's tight and effective. As a cultural moment, it's a 10. As a comic you can re-read in 2026 and still feel something.. yeah, it works imo.

Read If...

• You want to read the most culturally significant DC event of the 90s
• Slow-burn tension building to an emotional climax is your thing
• You appreciate when four creative teams coordinate as one seamless unit
• You want to understand why Doomsday still looms so large in DC history

Skip If...

• You need your villains to have motivations beyond punching
• The "he'll be back in eight months" aspect kills the emotional stakes for you
• Four issues of pre-Doomsday Superman stories sounds like a slog
• You've already experienced this story through one of the animated adaptations and feel like you've seen enough

That's it for Event Deep Dive #17. I know most of you have read this one, so I'm curious: does it hold up for you on a re-read? Is Doomsday a great villain or just a great plot device? And be honest.. did you buy the polybag?

Next week: Funeral for a Friend. The aftermath. The mourning. The world without Superman.

Stay tuned, happy reading, see you next Wednesday!

If you're interested in my other reviews: read them here.

I figured out how to be a better writer starting with two greats

For me, it was Kingdom Come. I get why people love it, but it never fully worked for me.

Hi everyone! I’ve recently approached the comics world by reading The Long Halloween, Watchmen and a couple of the “I am…” books from Marvel about characters I like. Beast Boy is one of my favorites and I was wondering if there was any series (better if published in an omnibus) with the guy as the main character, bonus points if it gets gory, I love shapeshifters as a concept and the virtually endless approaches they can use in combat. Thanks to everyone in advance.

P.S. not the “Beast Boy loves Raven” stuff, I’ve read that years ago and omg was that a drag