By Joe George|July 12, 2026
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This article contains spoilers for My Adventures with Superman season 3 episode 5
The fifth episode of My Adventures with Superman‘s third season makes its aims known right at the start. The episode begins with a title screen that displays the words “The Death of Superman,” with blood dripping down the iconic “S” shield. Even those who weren’t reading comics back in 1992 recognize the iconography. DC heavily promoted the storyline that saw Superman sacrifice himself to stop the monstrous Doomsday, so that newspapers, local broadcasts, and mainstream magazines disseminated the picture.
As one would expect, My Adventures With Superman takes a unique approach to the story. As in the comic, jealousy drives astronaut Hank Henshaw to become the Cyborg Superman, and Superman gets help from Superboy to stop him. But the cartoon skips over Doomsday entirely in this telling, leaves Steel off the board, and only gestures toward the Eradicator in Henshaw’s design. By playing with the concept while changing even important details, My Adventures With Superman shows that The Death of Superman has transcended its original intentions to be a defining quality of the Man of Steel as a character.
The Death of Superman stems from a problem faced by the editors in DC Comics’s Superman division back in the early ’90s. They may be in charge of the first and most important superhero, but he was also a superhero that had grown unfashionable
The ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman gave the Man of Steel a hip prime-time makeover, with Teri Hatcher playing a modern Lois Lane and a then-unproblematic Dean Cain as a Clark Kent who shopped at Mervyn’s. DC Comics had postponed its plans to join Lois and Clark in holy matrimony until the TV show counterparts did the same, hoping to generate some synergistic buzz. But nothing worked, and Superman comic sales sagged, so writer Jerry Ordway proposed drastic measures: “Why don’t we just kill him?”
Even back when Superman finally died fighting the monster Doomsday in 1992’s Superman #25, nobody thought it would last. The Death of Superman immediately gave way to Funeral For a Friend, which in turn led into Reign of the Superman. By the time that story closed in October of 1993, the original Superman was back, albeit with a period-appropriate mullet. More importantly, from DC’s standpoint, the readers were back, and Superman comics spiked in sales
Such stunts are hardly new to comics. The first company-wide crossover (something discussed in this week’s comics newsletter), Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, was designed explicitly to help sell action figures. Characters are redesigned and changed to match the actors who play them in film and television, as seen when Marvel changed Nick Fury from a grizzled old white guy to a hip bald Black man or Agatha Harkness was transformed from a crone to a sassy middle-aged woman. And The Death of Superman worked so well that DC started killing or removing all of its major characters to replace them with different versions: Batman‘s back was broken, Green Lantern turned evil, Artemis became the new Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow blew up in a plane.
In short, these are cash grabs, marketing techniques driving stories. But My Adventures with Superman proves that it’s not all they are. However craven the original intentions, these stories have sparked something in the audience, making them worthy of revisiting and adapting
My Adventures With Superman is a perfect example. In the show’s telling, the battle is about who belongs on Earth: The foreigner Superman? Or the human Hank Henshaw?
The fight speaks to our time, when xenophobia and nationalism have been encouraged and legitimatized by those in power, while staying true to Superman’s core as an immigrant story. By swapping the clone Superboy of the original story with the modern Superboy Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois, the story also becomes about overcoming fear, letting the next generation succeed you, and fighting for a better tomorrow
My Adventures with Superman is hardly the only series to revisit The Death of Superman. In addition to various animated movies that adapted the story, it appears in season eight of Smallville, the Justice League cartoon episode “Hereafter,” Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Justice League (both the Joss Whedon and Zack Snyder varieties), the CW Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, and the third and fourth seasons of Superman & Lois. Infamously, it was going to be the main plot in the Tim Burton-helmed, Nicolas Cage-starring Superman Lives. And even the comics have revisited the storyline, most famously in the way it killed off the New 52 Superman.
Why do storytellers keep coming back to The Death of Superman? It’s not to boost sales or ratings anymore. Instead, it’s because the story gets at the fundamental truth of Superman. He’s good not because he’s the strongest or because he’s got nothing to fear. He’s good because he wants to help and protect others, even when those powers fail him. He continues to stand by his values and save other people, to the moment of his death. And, like all great fantasies, not even death is the end, as the story always ends with Superman coming back to life to continue his never-ending battle.
My Adventures With Superman recreates those principles in its unique, anime-influenced style. And even though the episode ends with Superman revealing that his powers are gone, the blue electricity manifested during the fight with Henshaw suggests that another big change is coming, one that also stems from a comic book story intended to spike sales… but that’s a story for another time
My Adventures with Superman releases new episodes every Saturday at midnight on Adult Swim and HBO Max
