Superman #149 (1961) Comic Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well for a Sunday morning. Today I decided to do a quick comic book review. For this review we're going back to 1961 to talk about a Superman comic. Let's get into it!

Superman #149 tells the tale of "The Death of Superman". No, not THAT "Death of Superman", a different one. These stories would be called "Elseworlds" these days, but in the '50s and '60s, DC would occasionally publish what they referred to as "imaginary stories" for Superman and Batman. I think they did it for their other characters too, but Superman and Batman are the two that I know of for sure. For Superman, they put him in all kinds of situations, from being married to Lois Lane to being split into Superman Red and Superman Blue, to being killed (this issue). Oddly enough they actually did all three of these things in the regular Superman stories in the '90s, with Superman Red/Superman Blue being the most notorious storyline that they did in the late '90s (apart from giving him the mullet when he came back from the dead in 1994).

This story, written by Superman's co-creator, Jerry Siegel, takes place on an Earth where Luthor discovers the cure for cancer as a ploy to trick Superman into believing that he'd turned over a new leaf and wanted to do good, instead of evil. Remember, this isn't businessman, Lex Luthor, this is the mad scientist/evil genius Luthor. So everything we know about him now was different back then. Obviously, he's still evil since he'd use the cure for cancer in a scheme to kill Superman. I mean, he didn't use the cure to kill Superman, he used lethal doses of Kryptonite for that, but the cure for cancer was developed with the intention of being put into a position where he could kill Superman. After Superman is killed, Supergirl takes over his job of protecting Metropolis and the world, having been kept as Superman's secret weapon up to this point. This is the original Kara Zor-El version of Supergirl, though her secret identity is Linda Lee rather than Kara Danvers or Linda Danvers or whatever she is called in different periods of her publication history.

What's interesting is that when Doomsday killed Superman in Superman #75 in 1993, people thought that Supergirl was going to replace him. It was the Matrix Supergirl at that point, but I'm wondering if readers who'd been around 32 years earlier, when this issue came out, got that idea from this issue, because there are a few things that Dan Jurgens and the other Superman writers took from this issue for the "Funeral for a Friend" story arc. Namely the size of Superman's funeral. Batman, Robin, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash, and Green Arrow are present as are Lois Lane, Perry White, Jimmy Olsen, Lana Lang, and Superman's Mermaid ex-girlfriend, Lori Lemaris. Lori is a character that hasn't been used much since the '60s, so modern readers might not know who she is. I definitely didn't until about twelve years ago. More on that later.

The only thing that confuses me is how Luthor managed to kidnap Lois, Perry, and Jimmy without Superman noticing that they're missing. Mostly because he works at The Daily Planet with them as Clark Kent, but there's no panel showing Clark seeing that his three friends aren't at work or him flying around, looking around for them as Superman. He just sees Luthor's distress signal as other criminals had been gunning for Luthor thinking he'd turned his back on crime, not realizing it was a ruse to kill Superman. 

There's one other panel that I'd like to discuss. During Superman's funeral, Lana thinks about how she'd been Superman's childhood friend in Smallville. I know all about the Superboy comics and how Clark had been Superboy before he became Superman in the comics of the '40s to the '80s, but Lana's thought dialogue doesn't specify if she's talking about Superboy or Clark Kent. In the regular stories during this time, neither Lana nor Lois know that Superman is really mild mannered reporter, Clark Kent, and Lana never discovered that Clark and Superboy were one and the same. But this story takes place on another Earth within the pre-Crisis Multiverse, so could the Lana of this story know that Clark/Superboy/Superman were the same person? There's no way to tell, because Clark Kent isn't even mentioned by the other characters after Superman dies.

The art in this issue was done by Curt Swan, who was the definitive Superman artist from 1948 until 1986. Other artists worked on the book naturally, but Swan was THE Superman artist of the '60s and '70s. I really like his art style, and when I think of Superman in the '60s, that's the version I think of, because even his cartoon version from the 1966 Filmation series, The New Adventures of Superman, looks like the Curt Swan version.

Obviously this issue is really hard to find nowadays, even in back issue long boxes at cons. It was collected in a few collected editions, the most recent being in Superman: A Celebration of 75 Years, which is a hardcover collection that DC published in 2013. I don't think it's still in print being that it's been 12 years since it was published, but that's how I read this issue, as I got that book back in either 2013 or early 2014 with Chapters gift cards that I got for my birthday and Christmas in 2013. It's still a fun read though and an interesting one given what we got in the '90s with The Death of Superman.

That's it for me for today. I'll be back soon with more fun posts throughout the week. Until then have a great rest of the day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.