DC Comics continues to celebrate Superman’s 80th birthday with another animated adaptation of THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN, out later this year!
The first DC Direct-to-Video Animated movie was 2007’s Superman/Doomsday, a very loose adaptation of the Death of Superman story from 1992. Later this summer, Warner Bros. will release the first of a two-part adaptation of the iconic story arc, which was said to be closer to the comics than the first animated feature.
Yesterday, we got a first look at the movie.
From the glimpses of the movie we got here, it’s pretty clear that the Death of Superman is getting a modern update to fit within the continuity of the Justice League animated features dating back to JUSTICE LEAGUE: WAR from 2014. And that means when Doomsday tears through the Justice League to get to Superman (which I assume he will), it’s the big guns, not the line-up of c- and d-listers Doomsday beat within an inch of their lives in 1992.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Booster Gold and Blue Beetle and Guy Gardner, but they’re not in the same league (pardon the pun) as Batman, Hal Jordan and The Flash.
Also, it looks like they’re including Superman debating whether he should tell Lois about his secret identity, which happened in the comics almost two years before the Doomsday battle. That’s fine, this is clearly a new continuity, but it seems like it just throws some extra unnecessary parts to the movie that could have been given to the battle if Lois clearly already knew. The pathos of losing her fiancee doesn’t go away.
With the retelling of his battle with Doomsday, the second part of the adaptation – THE REIGN OF THE SUPERMAN – will be released in early 2019, which will cover the four replacement Supermen and the real deal’s return. I’m actually looking forward to that one more than this, since it’ll be the first opportunity to see that part of the story adapted more closely to the source material.
THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN is due for release of Blu-Ray, DVD and digital this summer.