T.J. McLean Writes

A longtime showbiz journalist and fan's thoughts on comic books, movies and other cool stuff.

Category: Journalism

Covering the death of Superman

By

On September 6, 2026

In Bags and Boards, Journalism

It took only a few weeks on my first job before I did my first professional writing about comics. It was an article titled “Comic book enterprises take off,” and it appeared in the Feb. 15, 1992, edition of Sundial, which was the Arizona Daily Sun’s weekly entertainment section and TV listings.

This was pretty impressive, given I started the job less than a month before.

The article was about John Helmer, who opened a comic shop Beyond Comic Books at 10 S. San Francisco St. in Flagstaff. (If you’re out there reading this, John, hi!) At the time, this was the only comic shop in Flagstaff, though a few bookstores did carry some comics.

The article let me sound off on what was going on in comics. Remember, this was February 1992. Image had not yet put out any comics, though the initiative had been announced. I got in some mentions of mature reader comics like Hellblazer and The Sandman, manga like Akira, and the super-hot artists of the day like Todd McFarlane, Rob Liefeld, and Jim Lee that would soon launch Image Comics.

You can see those newspaper pages here, and you should be able to read them, if you like. Any faults in the copy or errors are entirely my own.

Arizona_Daily_Sun_1992_02_15_18Download

Skip ahead to the autumn of 1992, when there was one comics event everyone was talking about: the death of Superman.

I was not reading Superman at the time. I read Batman titles, Justice League titles and what would become Vertigo titles, but not Superman.

For those who don’t know where Superman was at the time: John Byrne relaunched Superman after Crisis on Infinite Earths reset the DC Universe. The Man of Steel six-issue series in 1986 led into a new Superman #1, while the original Superman series continued as The Adventures of Superman, and Action Comics became a Superman team-up title.

Superman’s 50th anniversary in 1988 got a lot of mainstream attention. There was a TV special hosted by Dana Carvey that featured a brief interview with Byrne. You can find it as a bonus feature on DVD or Blu-ray sets of the Superman movies, or here on YouTube:

Time magazine published a Byrne Superman cover for a story on the anniversary.

However, Byrne soon left and the Superman series continued uninterupted. Stories would begin in one title, continue in the next title, and conclude in the other. The effect was an almost-weekly comic.

This cadence was interrupted by a brief experiment called Action Comics Weekly. The series turned into a weekly 48-page anthology starring a variety of DC characters such as Green Lantern, Blackhawk, and Secret Six. A center-spread newspaper-style Superman strip was drawn by Curt Swan. The series didn’t even make it a year, running from issues 601-642, before reverting to a regular monthly comic format with art and story for several months by the late, great George Perez.

Around this time, Clark revealed his secret identity to Lois Lane. Shortly thereafter, they became engaged. In 1991, the titles adopted the triangle numbering that helped readers know the reading order of the three titles. A fourth title, Superman: The Man of Steel, was added to the schedule, bringing over writer Louise Simonson and artist Jon Bogdanove from Marvel.

On television, the series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman was a hit. And this conflicted with DC’s plans for Lois and Clark to marry in 1992. The TV show’s producers didn’t want conflicting stories, as Lois and Clark were not engaged on the show, which depended on the will-they-or-won’t-they tension.

With DC’s plans made moot by the series, a random suggestion for what to do instead came up: Let’s kill him! This somehow struck a nerve and the story began to develop, leading up to Superman #75, in which the Man of Steel would meet his final match.

The story hit the news and caught on, at least in part because this was in the midst of the speculator age. By autumn 1992, Image Comics had sparked a huge wave of interest — in both the stories and the in value these comic books might have. People bought multiple copies of everything Image, confident these books would one day be so valuable that selling them would put kids not yet born through college or fund lavish retirement plans abroad.

This was always silly, but there was real FOMO. No one wanted to miss the one issue that did take off, that would be worth real cash or an issue you really wanted for your collection, so the illusion kept everyone going for at least another year.

This angle helped sell the story to the media. People who hadn’t read or bought a comic in years wanted a copy of Superman #75, either because it was historic — DC was promising Superman wasn’t coming back — or because they thought it would be worth money.

DC amped up the stakes by planning a regular comic book version and a $2.50 deluxe version that would be shipped with a special cover, polybagged with a trading card, a full-size poster, a Daily Planet obit for Superman, a small sheet of stamps, and a black armband ribbon with a red Superman logo (no blood). Both versions featured a great three-page fold-out of the final moment when Superman died.

I was discussing all this with a colleague at the Arizona Daily Sun in Flagstaff who also liked comics. Sundial mostly focused on local arts and entertainment, but my friend said comics were entertainment, too, and if I wanted to do an article on this, I should. Thanks, Adam!

So, I called DC Comics in New York and asked for the PR department. I was connected with Martha Thomases, who handled PR at the time for DC, and she was kind enough to send me a package with press releases, a few of the comics that led into the Death of Superman storyline, and a copy of The Greatest Superman Stories Ever Told trade paperback.

I asked her if I could speak to editor Mike Carlin or any of the writers or artists on the comics, but she said they were unavailable because they were working on the stories that would come after the Death of Superman.

I went back to Beyond Comics and John Helmer. A friend of his who helped around at the shop was a student at NAU and connected to the owners of Atomic Comics in Mesa, Arizona. He had a lot to say as well, but didn’t want to be included in the article. He showed me some Golden Age Superman comics and was very up to date on comics history. He talked a lot about how great it was to go to San Diego Comic Con and meet all the creators.

I finally sat down to start cranking out the story, and it came quickly and fairly easily. I used the resources I had, which included “The Comic-Book Heroes,” as well as a few other bits and pieces I was able to find at the public and NAU libraries.

It turned out extremely long — more than 2,300 words! — and took up two full tabloid pages in Sundial, plus a jump. I had a couple other editors take a look at it and make suggestions and fix any typos or grammar errors I had made. (We worked on a now-archaic computer typesetting system that had orange monotype displays. They were not easy to read or work on.)

Re-reading this article after so many years, I think the first section covering the news part of the death of Superman is solid. The history stuff is disorganized and I got a few things wrong — though not intentionally. This was before the internet, so checking facts on something like comics history was not as easy as it is now. Any errors in the story are, again, my own.

Arizona_Daily_Sun_1992_11_14_24Download

I had decided to put the story on the cover of Sundial, which lead to a rather unpleasant confrontation. There was a woman, whose name I forget, who ran a very small dance company in Flagstaff. We had always covered their events and previous editors in my position had put those stories on the cover. This was a small town, remember, and there often was a bit of a struggle to find engaging local entertainment stories beyond whichever C-list country band was swinging through town that week. She expected her event would be featured on the cover and handed me what she wanted to be used as the image. I told her that the story would run in the issue but that the cover would be the death of Superman. She threw what I can only describe as a fit in the front office waiting area. It was my decision and I took it, waiting for her to finish and walk out. My friends in the newsroom tried to save me by poking a head out and saying I had an important call. But I stuck with my decision and let her run with her anger until she left, disappointed. You can’t make everyone happy.

The day Superman #75 came out, I headed to John’s shop at lunchtime to pick one up. Several people in the newsroom asked me to get a copy for them, if I could. When I got there, John was very effusive about the article and had a lot of nice things to say. He had already sold out of Superman #75, but he had set aside a copy of the deluxe version for me.

The frenzy that surrounded this release was incredible. The strangest story I heard was from a friend who worked at the local Hastings, which was a chain that sold books, music, videos, appliances, and had a comic book section. A friend who worked there had told me that one of the managers was a comics fan and really was trying to grow the comics section of the store. However, the store’s shipment of Superman #75 never arrived and the boxes containing them were never recovered or accounted for by the shipper or the store.

The best part of all this was that I was now on the press list for DC Comics. I began receiving press kits and releases, as well as press copies of some projects. This led to me doing a few more articles about comics in general and DC in particular at the Sun.

Inspired by my Flagstaff comics friends, I made plans to attend San Diego Comic-Con in 1993. At the DC booth, I ran into Martha Thomases who was happy to see me. She told me I had just missed a press conference on the return of Superman and gave me a press kit on it that included an advance copy of the collector’s edition of Superman #82 with the chromium cover, and the foil cover for Adventures of Superman #505.

Here’s what was in the press kit:

Superman Press KitDownload

DC had ongoing signings at the convention for Superman and Batman creators, and I managed to hit both. I walked away with a 1st print newsstand copy of Superman #75 and a Superman poster signed by Dan Jurgens, Denis Rodier, Glenn Whitmore, and Barry Kitson. Hot stuff!

The Superman titles of this era deserve a closer look. With four titles making Superman an essentially weekly comic book — and a damn entertaining one — is an underrated achievement. Ultimately, comics are entertainment — and the run of Superman comics from 1986 through the Triangle Era and well into the 21st century is as consistent and entertaining a run of comic books as has ever been published anywhere.

More next time.

Comics Letters Pages, Part 2

By

On September 13, 2021

In Bags and Boards, Journalism

Cover to Avengers #289
The cover to Avengers #289 (March 1988). Art by John Buscema and Tom Palmer.

It was 1985 when I returned to comics reading and collecting. I still dug the comics letters pages.

The letters in Marvel’s Star Wars series — the book that got me into the hobby — were solid. I remember seeing in issue #103 that the next issue was coming in 60 days, instead of the usual 30. I thought it was a typo. The two month wait revealed the book’s schedule had been demoted to bimonthly. Not long after that, the series was canceled.

  • Cover to Star Wars #103.
    Star Wars #103
    (Jan. 1986)
  • V #11 (Dec. 1985)
  • V #14 (March 1986)
Nice covers. Art on Star Wars #103 by Cynthia Martin and Steve Leialoha.
Both V covers are by Jerry Bingham.

I also read V, which DC published based on the TV miniseries and then regular series. The original miniseries was terrific, and the followup, V: The Final Battle, was five-sixths great — the ending left a lot to be desired. The weekly TV series was a disaster and put out of its misery after one season. But I really wanted the show to succeed and stuck with it. There was nothing else sci-fi related on TV. If you liked that stuff, V was it.

The comic book version ran 18 issues — long past the series’ cancellation. And it had its high points: The covers by Jerry Bingham were terrific. Carmine Infantino penciled the series and his art had many of the same qualities I had come to like from his Star Wars run. And the letters pages also were lively, with lots of fans writing in and good engagement from the editor, Bob Greenberger. More on him later.

Cover to X-Men Annual #10 (1986). Art by Arthur Adams.

I wrote one fannish letter to X-Men editor Ann Nocenti and writer Chris Claremont in autumn 1986, after we had moved to Arizona. I was trying to work out the continuity of the Mutant Massacre storyline, and where X-Men Annual #10 occurred in the run. I’m still not clear on that point, but I’m also glad they didn’t publish it.

A year later, I was a student at the University of Arizona. My initial major was general business, mostly because I had to pick something and had no idea what else to choose.

In Canada, I had been a strong science and math student. But my interest in those subjects was frustrated by the way they were taught at the Arizona high school where I finished my diploma, and in my freshman year at university.

I had intended to take calculus in high school in Alberta, but Arizona — to no one’s surprise — lacked that option. In university, it was taught in an auditorium with 600 freshmen. The weekly session with a teaching assistant was not helpful. Teaching my group was a thick accented man unskilled at — and apparently uninterested in — helping us make sense of the topic.

Buying a set of notes for the class from a local copy shop, I basically re-took the class at home in the last weeks before the final. I got an A, but none of it stuck, and I was already looking at other interests.

I enjoyed being a university student, and liked taking classes on topics as diverse as psychology, world literature, and military history. Few of the other students in my classes, however, seemed to have any real interest in learning about these things. They loved the social scene, but classes were merely tolerated. They were something to get through on the way to the degree and job that would afford them the flashy car they wanted. It was disheartening to see so many people just going through the motions and failing to take an interest of any kind in the amazing world we live in and the opportunity we had as students to learn so much about it.

I also had always liked current affairs, history, and politics. In school, we had studied the history and culture of Canada, obviously, but also places like Africa, India and China. We also studied the industrial revolution, the Reformation, the Renaissance, and the Russian Revolution. Given the threat of global thermonuclear war, the latter fascinated me as much as it scared me. For more than a year after watching “The Day After,” I had to distract my mind with the radio to fall asleep each night.

At university, I took advantage of being a student to read lots of newspapers, magazines and books I had never had access to before. I often stayed up late to watch Nightline, with Ted Koppel. That was a great show, though I always wished he had more time to discuss things — an hour instead of a half.

All this inspired me to put more effort into my writing at college and the results were immediate — good grades and some very flattering compliments from teachers. That had never happened before. I also was really enjoying it, following topics down a rabbit hole and using the power of revision to refine ideas. It was at minimum very satisfying, and more often than not a lot of fun.

I also was reading as many comics as I could get my hands on. I was particularly fond of the X-Men titles and the writing of Chris Claremont. He had a strong style, but he also told complicated stories and defined his characters in ways other comics and books did not. I was a fan. It made me think that one day I could do something related to comics. Maybe.

I would read the Writer’s Market — a guide to publications that buy freelance work — in the university bookstore. It reported at the time that top talent at Marvel earned six-figure incomes. That seemed unreal to me.

But a career related to comics just didn’t seem like a viable goal. And certainly not a serious one you could confess in Tucson, Arizona, in 1987.

All of this came together in the pages of Avengers #289, which came out in November 1987. The book’s editor, Mark Gruenwald, had a series of columns he wrote, called Mark’s Remarks, that ran in the titles he edited. And in this one, he was talking about what it takes to be an editor at a company like Marvel. He wrote that comics require highly structured writing, like journalism. So knowing something about journalism was helpful. Read the whole thing here, especially section 3:

The Mark’s Remarks column from the letters page of Avengers #289.

That stuck with me. It definitely played a role in my decision to switch my major to journalism. It wasn’t the biggest or most important reason. I had noticed in reading so many publications of all types that the people who worked on them seemed to really enjoy what they did, and that they felt it was important and worthy work. And that seemed like the right reason to point myself in that direction.

That choice was the right one for me. And I’ll never forget that moment of clarity, of the fuse that led to that decision being lit by reading that column.

I never had a chance to meet Mark Gruenwald, who died unexpectedly at the age of 43, in 1996. But I owe him at least a thanks for some simple words of encouragement. It’s amazing what a little of that can do — most people hear so little of it.

Next: Writing letters that actually got printed!

Ways to stay atop the news in the social media era

By

On September 7, 2017

In Internet, Journalism, News

I used to love to read newspapers, the bigger the better. As a journalism student in the late 1980s and early 1990s — before the internet — each newspaper was different in some way or another. The big guns, like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, were thick, juicy sources of knowledge. And they were produced daily, each with hundreds of original articles written by professional journalists who had to work hard for the opportunity to write for those papers. It was always too much information to absorb — even a college-age brain can absorb only so much — but it was inspiring and exciting to know that this knowledge was out there and available for the reasonable price of 50 cents or maybe a dollar a day.

Twenty years into the internet age, that experience is much harder to come by. Each of those big papers has shrunk — some significantly — as more and more data has gone online. And even though it’s easier than ever to find any particular article or report, knowing what to search for has become harder than ever. Even skimming headlines in a newspaper, the editorial choices affected what you saw. What was on the front page and got big play mattered, all the way down to the smallest brief. Each article was chosen as the best way to fill the available space, and those choices affected the experience of everyone reading the paper. When a major event happened, you couldn’t miss it. And if you browsed through the whole paper, you usually got a very solid and interesting overview of what’s going on in the world.

I’ve found myself missing this experience of late. Like many, I’m sure, I was getting too much of my news from Facebook and other social media, or websites of my choosing that covered various topics. This is how bubbles are formed. My social media connections often are my connections because of shared experiences or viewpoints, meaning the same messages get reinforced as the same story — often from different sites — gets posted and reposted and commented on again and again. I found myself increasingly disconnecting from Facebook for that reason. I like the Trump jokes, but the cynicism that comes from seeing important news events through snarky commentary or overly earnest pleas for honesty became unsatisfying.

So I’ve been looking for ways to recreate a more focused and objective way to follow the news — both the big picture stuff we all should care about and the more specific stuff that I am personally interested in: movies, comics and guitars. Resubscribing to print seemed impractical, as I knew how often the papers delivered to my driveway went unread. So here are some of the digital tools I’ve found to develop a well-rounded news diet.

  • E-newspapers: It’s nothing new that newspapers have been making PDF versions of each day’s edition (or at least their front pages) on their website. But the new e-newspaper editions at the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times are a welcome evolution. The L.A. Times‘ e-newspaper appears to be a work in progress because it’s not the smoothest or most polished presentation. But it is an app that launches within your browser that lets you page through PDFs of each day’s paper, with links to jump to each section. But best of all, if you click on a story, it opens up in an easy-to-read window that clearly shows the photos and text in a continuous display that’s very easy to read. Better yet, there’s a “Next Article” link through which you can browse through every article in that day’s paper. Today’s edition has 128 articles over 46 pages, and each article can be shared, highlighted, printed, translated or read aloud. Again, it’s not perfect: Sometimes stories show up twice (once on the cover and once on the jump) and there’s the occasional formatting error that surely occurred when the copy was exported from the print production system to whatever is used for the e-newspaper. But it still is a focused way to read the paper and its content. The New York Times‘ version of this is similar but more polished in its function and presentation. Its e-newspaper allows you to scroll through all the articles in that day’s edition, with a sidebar listing headlines so you can jump to a specific story or section. I typically will scroll through all the articles in the Front Section, and then skim the World, Nation and Arts section. I can read through both papers in about a half hour, without generating trash, or getting ink on my hands, seeing all the photos and graphics in color with captions, and I can feel confident that I’ve got a basic idea of what’s going on in the world.
  • Email newsletters: These aren’t new either, but good ones are increasingly hard to find. My personal favorite is from The Week, which sends out a daily “10 things you need to know today” newsletter each morning. Like the magazine version, this is an extremely well edited summary of what’s going on, gathered from the best web sources all over the globe, and you can read it in a couple minutes. The New York Times (them again!) also have an excellent Daily Briefing email that goes out each morning and summarizes the day’s event and highlights some of the feature reporting in that day’s newspaper. There’s a fair bit of overlap, but I find reading The Week first allows me to avoid duplication and scroll through the Times‘ briefing to get the stories unique to that e-letter, backing up what I’ve already read.
  • RSS feeds: I used to rely heavily on a solid list of feeds and a good RSS reader. But in the era of social media, it seems like no one really talks any more about this simple but useful technology. I use Feedly, but I’m always on the lookout for a good, free (or very cheap) RSS reader for Mac, so if you have suggestions, let me know. One of the problems with feeds is they can be tough to manage. Smaller sites in particular can dry up and stop posting, leaving you with a dead link that has to be remembered to be routed out and deleted.

I’d love to hear how you keep up on the news, so please leave a comment or drop me a note at thomasjmclean@gmail.com. Thanks!

Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén