The Death and Return of Superman was so epic it received not one but two novelizations. The first was written by Roger Stern and aimed at a more general audience. The second was written by Louise Simonson aimed at a younger crowd. Part of me wants to poke fun at the fact that there was a “young adult” version of Superman getting killed but I have a lot of good will in me at the moment and can’t bring myself to do so I’ll distract myself with the awesomely awesome cover to the “young adult” version.
That’s Alex Ross’ first mainstream Superman piece, by the way. In case you are interested in such things.
Anyway, in addition to having that awesomely awesome cover there were a handful of illustrations inside the books as well. To say that the art for these illustrations is amazing is a bit of an understatement. They are gorgeous, which makes sense considering the artists responsible are Dan Jurgens and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez. These are two men that defined Superman for two generations so it was great to see them provide the art for this book.
Jeff and I are heading into the home stretch of our coverage of Reign of the Supermen. In fact next week we’ll be covering Superman #82. It’s really weird to type that. Sure we have a few episodes after that to wrap up the Death and Return of Superman as a storyline but next week we’ll be talking about the book where Superman truly returned. To celebrate this I thought I would devote the next seven entries to the Jurgens/Garcia-Lopex fueled illustrations from the “young adult” novelization. I will be going two at a time and to start this series off we have a bunch of head shots of the most important players in the Death and Return of Superman.
Okay…maybe “most important players” might be a bit of an exaggeration in the case of Charlie and Mitch. Sure they are in the book and to be fair Mitch was present for a couple of key moments but when you compare them to Mongul or even Director Westfield they seem to be…less important. That’s just me though. Well, me and my snarkiness. Sometimes it is a beast I can’t slay.
On the other hand…BIBBO!
Because Bibbo is awesome. I will accept no arguments on this front. I am even willing to go out back and slug it out with whoever disagrees with me.
Bibbo’s my fav’rit. He really is.
Next time: Origins, Doomsday and even more Doomsday.
More to follow…