Welcome to The Doomsday Archives, a website dedicated to the Superman storyline The Death and Return of Superman, which began in November 1992 and finished in September of 1993.
SUPERMAN VS DOOMSDAY – SUPERMAN AND LOIS SEASON 4 PREVIEW
San Diego Comic-Con was held this past weekend and, for what I believe is the first time, the television series Superman and Lois got a panel in Hall H. During that panel, which I didn’t attend because I wasn’t at SDCC, they showed a three minute preview of the first episode of season four. That clip features a fight between Superman and a character that is germaine to this blog.
This looks amazing. To be fair, I am a mark for Superman and Lois. It has become my favorite live action version of Lois and Superman and I am going to miss it terribly, but the fact that they are going out starting with Doomsday and that this fight is so well done softens the blow. At one point they do an homage to the cover of Superman: The Man of Steel #19, which made me literally yell, “Yes!” as I was watching it.
I can’t express how much I am looking forward to October.
More to follow…
HOUSE AD – ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #502
DIRECT CURRENTS #75
The Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey ride refuses to close.
To be fair, Hunter/Prey doesn’t take up much real estate because Action Comics #700 was also coming out that month, so I threw those pages in as well even though they aren’t Death and Return related.
More to follow…
DAN JURGENS INTERVIEW FROM WIZARD #27
There isn’t much to add to this post beyond the title. Below is an interview published in Wizard: The Guide to Comics #27 (November 1993). For those that have either blocked it out or weren’t around at the time, Wizard was the leading magazine about comics for the bulk of the nineties and when they first burst on the scene their focus was on Marvel and then Image. Their coverage of DC was spotty and their coverage of The Death of Superman was intially non-existant. By 1993 they were more on the ball with DC and this interview was a good example of that.
HERO ILLUSTRATED ARTICLE ABOUT SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY HUNTER/PREY
Carrying on from yesterday, here’s an article from Hero Illustrated #12 (June 1994) about Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey.
Hero Illustrated was one of the magazines that popped up circa 1993 because Wizard: The Guide to Comics proved to be successful. Compared to the other magazines at the time Hero Illustrated came closest to being a real competitor, mainly because it emulated Wizard‘s look and feel. Where it fell down was how jumbled its articles looked and this Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey article is a good There are too many graphics shoved on each page, which makes reading the article difficult. I get that space was probably at a premium, but the layout doesn’t work.
The article itself is fine, but doesn’t have any big revelations. It brings the reader up to speed on what has been going on in the Superman books and has some quotes from Dan Jurgens, but doesn’t do anything more than that.
Still…it’s an artifact, this is an archive, so here we are.
More to follow…
DOOMSDAY IS RETURNING…AGAIN
I’m going to be honest with you…I never thought that I would ever write a post for a new or upcoming comic that wasn’t a collected edition. This site was conceived as an…well…archive for Doomsday. It’s right in the name. However, DC Comics made a big announcement recently for it’s new All In initiative that is launching in October of 2024 and Doomsday is part of the plan.
Here’s the solicitation for Superman #19.
SUPERMAN #19
Written by JOSHUA WILLIAMSON
Art and cover by DAN MORA
Variant covers by SIMONE DI MEO, CARLA COHEN, and CHRIS SAMNEE
1:25 variant cover by BEN OLIVER
Trick or Treat variant cover by KELLEY JONES
All In foil variant by DANIEL SAMPERE ($7.99)
$4.99 US | 32 pages | Variant $5.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 10/23/24
THE MANY DEATHS OF DOOMSDAY!
Superman and Superwoman must deal with the return of the rampaging Doomsday and…wait…Superwoman?! After the events of Absolute Power, Lois Lane has new powers…but how long can they last?! And waiting in the shadows is one of Superman’s greatest enemies…the Time Trapper.
Jump on to a new exciting story arc that will shape the future of Superman!
This is literally all the information we have on this storyline, but I’ve been reading Joshua Williamson’s Superman run since it began and while he is definitely writing a Superman that is set in the present and for a contemporary audience one of the foundations of his run is rooted in the Triangle Era. During the live stream that he and Scott Snyder did to announce the All In initiative that this storyline is a part of, Williamson mentioned how much he liked Doomsday, so when you add all of that to the fact that Williamson is writing one of the best runs of Superman in this century (up there with Jeph Loeb’s, Greg Rucka’s, Dan Jurgens’s, Peter Tomasi’s, and Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s) the sum of that equation means that I am excited to see where this story goes.
More than that, this All In thing seems to have Superman as one of the main movers and shakers, which feels weird because for the longest time DC seemed hesitant to put any effort into Superman as a character, so seeing them do so now is welcome, but there’s this little voice in my head that is saying, “It could all go away tomorrow, so enjoy it now!”
Anyway, more on this as it develops and when the issues start coming out in October I’ll write reviews for them as they happen.
As ever…more to follow…
COLLECTED EDITIONS – SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY: THE COLLECTED EDITION (2006)
Superman/Doomsday: The Collected Edition (2006)
Release Date: June 7, 2006
Page Count: 416
Reprints: Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey #1-3, Doomsday Annual #1, Superman: The Doomsday Wars #1-3, Adventures of Superman #594, Superman #175
There is a black cicle on the cover of this book with copy that reads, “The sequel to the best-selling DC Comics story of all time…The Death of Superman!” And that’s mostly true. This book does reprint Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey, which was a sequel to The Death of Superman. But, it reprints a whole lot more and at the time it came out was a fantastic value with a selling price of $19.99
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COLLECTED EDITIONS – SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY HUNTER/PREY (1995)
Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey
Release Date: August 10, 1995
Page Count: 160
Reprints: Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey Issues 1-3
Here’s where I do my obligatory “things were different in the nineties and collected editions weren’t as common and the fact that this series got a collected edition was a big deal” spiel because I love sounding old.
(Did I mention that I used to wear an onion on my belt?)
Continue reading “COLLECTED EDITIONS – SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY HUNTER/PREY (1995)”
SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY HUNTER/PREY WEEK DAY THREE – ACTION FIGURES
In 1995 Kenner toys began releasing a series of action figures and vehicles under the name Superman: The Man of Steel. It was an amazing line of figures that was both surprising and not surprising. Suprising in that Superman got a line of figures based on the comics and not an animated series. Not surprising because the Superman books were incredibly popular at the time.
It also had a great television commericial.
I’m not being ironic when I say, “Don’t mess with the S!” is a great catch phrase for a ninties era action figure line.
The line featured both single figures and two-packs, and one of those two-packs contained the very first Doomsday action figure paired with a Superman figure in the Hunter/Prey suit.
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SUPERMAN/DOOMSDAY HUNTER/PREY WEEK DAY 2 – THE MERCHANDISE
In the last post I went on and on about how big of a deal Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey was in 1994. Now, I will fully cop to the fact that I am extremely biased when it comes to the story, but I can make an actual case for how big of a deal it was based on the merchandise that was released based on the mini-series.
To quote Spaceballs, “Merchandise. Where the real money from the movie is made!”
One piece of that merchandise was the Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey poster featuring art by Dan Jurgens and Brett Breeding.
The image above is a screenshot from the 2016 Superman: The Return of Superman trade paperback. The text calls it a Return of Superman poster, but as the solictation I posted yesterday shows it was tied to Hunter/Prey. I bought this poster back in 1995 but it got lost in my move from Pennsylvania to Georgia. Thankfully eBay is a thing and I managed to get one for a reasonable price a few years ago.
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