The Death and Return of Superman
"I'm not drunk in the video, I only get about three cups in. The original rant was 45 minutes long, so of course we had to cut a bunch of stuff out for time, and because it was just too stupid. Like for instance the part where Pa Kent dies of a heart attack and literally GOES TO HEAVEN. AND SEES SUPERMAN."
This is an entertaining rant, even though I never read "The Death of Superman", having already been squarely in the "who gives a flying fuck" camp at the time, so I didn't realize just how stupid it was. Apparently it was even stupider than I had imagined. And I can imagine quite a bit. I do disagree with his conclusion, though, that this craven stunt "broke" death in comics. It was already broken when they got there. Characters were dying and coming back all the time long before that, and anyone who thought Superman would stay dead was a fucking idiot.
00:13:05 "Meanwhile, back on Earth..."
Hell, in the aftermath of him coming back, they killed Hal Jordan something like three times before it stuck, and then brought him back a few years later, so Superman's whole pointless death wasn't even by a good margin the silliest bit.
But usually they only come back once per death, rather than three times!
I would say that Marvel dropped the ball first by bringing back Jean Grey after being successfully dead for six years.
And here I thought death in comics was ruined by the resurrection of Captain America back in Avengers #4 (1964).
But wiki says it was Jean Grey in 1980: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_comics
Who am I to care?
Every once in awhile something convinces me to watch a YouTube video all the way through, and suddenly I'm rewarded, instead of bored.
How, how got they all these actors to play in this, for once, highly entertaining thing? Also, Mandy Moore got cute in kinda The Graduate-bride way. (as opposed to just being cute before, or is it just this kind of jacket?)
The guy who made the video is the son of John Landis and just released a widely-available feature film. So he's not your average hipster with a video camera. That's not to take away from the quality of the piece, just that there's a concrete reason he got Ron Howard, Simon Pegg, Mandy Moore, and Elijah Wood to work for free.
Not only did Superman #75 come in a sealed black plastic bag with a bloody 'S' symbol on it, inside the bag there was also mini copy of the Daily Planet announcing Superman's death and a black armband with 'S' logo on it.
The alleged reason they did this: "because it's dramatic and shit."
The real reason they did this: "now you'll have to buy two copies: one so you can actually read the story and another for your collection, since the comic will cease to be in mint condition the moment you open the sealed bag -- take *that*, fanboy!"
They pulled the same crap later with the "Johnathan Kent's ghost meets Superman's ghost in heaven" comic (Adventrues of Superman #500? I don't remember for sure...), except that one had a white bag instead of a black one.
Oh yeah, and let's not forget there were something like 4 different Superman comics and the story was split up across all of them. The ones where they introduced the 4 "new" Supermen (one in each) also had variant covers. ("Now you've gotta buy two of those too, fanboy!")
It also wasn't until months after the whole thing was over that they finally got around to telling Doomsday's origin story, in a premium format 3-issue mini-series, of course. (Probably because it wasn't until then that they even bothered to think one up.) That's where the "killing the baby over and over again" part comes from. The video doesn't mention that the story also involved Darkseid and time travel, and un-killed Hank Henshaw too.
Oh, and at about this same time, Lex Luthor had his brain transplanted into a new cloned body -- with hair -- and was pretending to be his own philanthropist billionaire son.
Yep, Good times.