WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE MAN OF TOMORROW? 695
“heart’s desire” to live a normal life on his native planet Krypton, married with chil-
dren. Moore’s only other Superman story, “Th e Jungle Line,” appeared in DC Comics
Presents 85 (1985), and featured Swamp Th ing , the character who elevated the Brit-
ish Moore to fame as a writer in the United States. (Otherwise, Moore has explored
the Superman mythos extensively through surrogates, including Miracleman, Supreme,
and To m S t r o n g , all stand-ins for the Man of Steel.) Although Moore would soon be
most famous for his “deconstruction” of the superhero in Watchmen (1986–87), his
Superman stories are aff ectionate tributes, even as they end an era in the character’s fi c-
tional life. It is therefore especially appropriate that Curt Swan (with inking by George
Pérez in Superman and Kurt Schaff enberger in Action ), the character’s defi nitive Silver
Age artist, penciled this “swan song” for Superman. (Th e cover of Action #583, depict-
ing Superman leaving the characters in the series behind on the roof of the Daily Planet
building, also includes cameo drawings of Swan, as well as editors Julius Schwartz and
DC President Jenette Kahn.) In Swan’s seasoned hands this last story looks like a clas-
sic DC comic, in contrast to the more experimental visual styles then accompanying
other revamps of superheroes ; the easy collaboration of Moore and Swan thus avoids
the generational confl ict one might have expected in the meeting of a young Turk and
old pro.
Set in the future year of 1997, former reporter Lois Lane (now Lois Elliot, mar-
ried with a baby boy) is interviewed for a “Superman Memorial Edition” of the Daily
Planet, her old employer: she recounts a series of traumatic events, beginning with
the logically illogical “genocide, homicide, and fi nally suicide” performed by Bizarro,
Superman’s “perfect imperfect duplicate.” Th is is soon followed by Superman’s “un-
masking,” the long delayed revelation to the world that Superman’s secret identity has
been mild mannered reporter Clark Kent. As the story continues, piece after piece
of the accumulated Superman mythology is brought to a conclusion with a fi nality
that the ongoing, serial production of Superman stories had persistently withheld.
Th e longstanding rivalry between Lois Lane and Lana Lang, the repetitive cycle that
allowed Superman’s villains to be endlessly captured and to escape or be released, and
even the often vague status of Superman’s pet dog Krypto are all resolved without the
open-endedness readers had learned to expect from decades of previous comics. In the
story’s most delicate moment, the arrival of Supergirl from the future upsets Super-
man, who had recently mourned her dramatic death in Crisis on Infi nite Earths and
Superman #414: in Moore’s story, at least, Superman respects DC’s enforced continuity
(misleading Supergirl as to her fate), even as Moore tugs at one of its many loopholes.
Rather than just an aside for DC fans, the scene hinges on the free- wheeling devices
of time-travel and multiple dimensions that DC now sought to control, turning the
narrative puzzles raised by DC’s recalibration of its stories into an ethical dilemma,
one of the remarkable ways in which Moore breathes new life into established conven-
tions.
In eff ect, the entire story is both a tribute to and work of mourning for the often
silly but fun Superman legacy then being rejected for greater realism and seriousness.
