Originally posted by Ultra Lucille:
Wow. Dark (thanks for the advance warning!), but very well thought out. I've been sitting looking at my monitor with my mouth open for almost a minute.
Yes. Tragic and dark. I took as my inspiration Superman #149. The original death of Superman comic book story and by far the best and saddest -Superman doesn't come back in #149 as he did in Doomsday.
That classic story by Superman creator Siegel painted a dark future for Superman and the world. It was how the creator saw the never-ending battle ending. It was called an imaginary story as they needed to get the next week's Superman book out.
In those days the story was done as a single enlarged issue. Today it would have been an event spanning months of comic book stories a la Doomsday.
Ironically, speculation in recent years was that if, as seemed likely, WB/DC lost the rights to Superman they were going to kill him off and loosely base it on #149. In somewhat of a surprise, however, WB/DC have apparently won the full rights to Superman (pending a possible appeal to the SCOTUS by the heirs which many legal analysts say the SCOTUS won't even take up) and, in the past month, to Superboy. So that may be moot now.
Being short in length #149 left more than a few plot holes. In my story - which is ongoing yet, I fill in the kind of details I would liked to have seen addressed in #149.
- it's a stark story. Superman's belief in the goodness of everyone ultimately leads to his death as that belief is false. Luthor in indeed the devil incarnate and can't be redeemed as Superman thought he had been.
BTW, this is the John Shea L&C Luthor/Michael Rosenbaum Luthor of Smallville - not the buffoonish Luthor played by Spacey in SR or the comical Luthor played by Hackman in STM.
