A certain dramatic flaw is inherent in superhero stories appearing in ongoing commercial magazines like pulps and comic books. They have a beginning, middle, and end.
But for Superman, Alan Moore and Curt Swan’s 1986 story Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow? Corrected that flaw, giving the superhuman his götterdämmerung and a final glimmer of human hope.
Moore used the opportunity of a pending reboot of Superman, intended to eliminate many elements from the character’s 48-year history, to provide the hero with an artful and heartfelt climax.
Suddenly and inexplicably turned absolutely ruthless, all of Superman’s enemies attack him in force, beginning with Toyman and the Prankster. In a wink at the Superman Emergency Squad of the 1960s, the pair deploys small Superman dolls to burn away Clark Kent’s suit and expose his secret identity in the Daily Planet newsroom. Under siege, Superman gathers his threatened loved ones for a last stand in the Fortress of Solitude.
Things don’t turn out so peachy for the villains, however. The Legion of Super-Villains runs for cover when Saturn Queen’s telepathy warns them that they’ve made Superman angry enough to kill them. Brainiac seizes Lex Luthor’s mind, prompting Luthor to beg for death. He gets his wish, but to no avail, because Brainiac reanimates his corpse.
“Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow delights in every aspect of Superman’s chaotic continuity, however absurd, that is about to be erased and even manages to feature a moment with Krypto the Superdog, doomed not to make it out of Crisis (on Infinite Earths), that is one of the few genuinely poignant Superman moments,” observed literary critic Geoff Klock in his book How to Read Superhero Comics.
Moore knew that the best dog stories are about selfless loyalty, and played that note to misty-eyed, throat-tightening perfection.
Moore also flatteringly spotlights secondary characters like Lana Lang and Jimmy Olsen, who revive the temporary superpowers they’d acquired decades before to defend Superman from his enemies.
Touchingly and sadly, Lana’s super-hearing permits her to overhear Superman telling Perry White that it’s Lois Lane that he loves, just as Lana is going to her death for him.
But she doesn’t hesitate.
“Nobody loved him better than us,” Lana tells Jimmy, as they spring forth to battle. “Nobody!”
Superman finally prevails but at a tremendous cost. Like many endings, Superman’s turns out to be a beginning. An ordinary man now, he can retire anonymously with Lois as “Jordan Elliott.”
“His powers removed forever, he lives happily ever after with Lois Lane and lets the world believe Superman is dead,” Klock noted. “Moore’s ‘last Superman story,’ while nostalgic about the rich (if sometimes ridiculous) continuity about to be wiped out, achieves a premature melancholy.”
Moore’s story reminds one of Robert Mayer’s Superman parody from a decade before, the brilliant comic novel Super Folks. In both, the sinister hero-destroying plot is revealed to be the secret scheme of an omnipotent trickster imp turned pure evil (Mxyztplk in Moore’s, Pxyzsyzygy in Meyer’s). And both stories sound a final note of hope in the same way, by suggesting that a son will eventually carry on his father’s work. But despite those echoes, Moore’s story remains an original tour de force.
For my money, Moore’s Superman swan song was superior to the resurrected and revamped version of the character, which ended up reintroducing all the elements of the character concept that had been jettisoned to “improve” it.
“Crisis would fail miserably as an attempt at simplification, giving the world a DC universe that made even less sense than before,” Klock noted. “What would change in the next 15 years … is the perspective that saw unwieldy chaos as a bad thing.”
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