10 Terrible Mistakes That Almost Ruined Superman For Everyone

1. The Death And Return

We're not sure if we've brought thisup before, but The Death And Return Of Superman can go die in a fire. It caused the media circus that DC wanted, raising the flagging sales of their comic books by attaining worldwide attention from news outlets that probably had much more important things to be reporting on, and it certainly shook up the status quo, albeit briefly. Doesn't mean it wasn't a totally bad, flawed concept to begin with that evolved in a bad, flawed comic book where a titan of modern culture gets bludgeoned to death by a big grey alien who represented everything wrong with grimdark nineties comic books, along with that same titan breaking his previously sacrosanct "no killing" rule in order to bring said alien down.

Also the alien was called Doomsday. Yeah, it was kinda stupid. It also totally mucked things up for a period of several months as the Man Of Steel was totally missing from the newsstands and the pages of his own title, replaced instead by the Reign Of The Supermen! storyline which saw an evil alien, a robot, Superboy and a dude in a suit of armour trying to replace the dead hero. That was also not good. Nobody sincerely believed that Superman was gone forever, because this is comic books, but DC tried their level best to convince us.

That isn't what nearly ruined Superman, though. What his Death And Inevitable Return almost ruined was in bringing the infallible, trustworthy Man Of Steel down to the level of other superheroes, who were killed off and almost instantaneously resurrected all the time, without consequence. It also started the trend for Superman's ultimate enemies not being, like, those who manipulate him or put him in sticky situations (ie Luthor) but dudes who are just as big as him who he can punch with impunity. Both of which are terrible things and have, mostly, been avoided since. They very nearly ruined Superman for everyone, though. Selfish jerks.