Saddest Superman

[TELLE]

According to Fred Hembeck in his "Hembeck Show":

The single saddest story I've ever read in a comic book?



That'd have to be the tragic saga of Chester King, aka Hyper-Man, sole surviving inhabitant of the planet Zoron, and mighty champion of his adopted world, Oceania.

   
Huh?

I suppose not very many of you out there in the "Fred Hembeck Show" audience have actually even HEARD of this maroon-suited super hero, as his one and only appearance came within the pages of 1960's Action Comics #265 (reprinted eight years later in the giant 30th anniversary edition of Superman, #265). The 13 page story was entitled "The Superman From Outer Space", and the Grand Comic Book Database credits Otto Binder as its author, with the artwork provided by Curt Swan and Stan Kaye (though to my eyes, it appears that John Forte was actually the tale's inker, but that's really neither here nor there...). And yeah, it was edited under the auspices of Mort Weisinger, often the target of gleeful mockery from these quarters...

But not today.

http://comics.ign.com/articles/644/644443p1.html

Other nominations?

[Klar Ken T5477]

I think I was gonna die from total despair when first reading "the Last Days of Superman" when I was wee one.  I just start reading and now Superman's dying!!!  And even his friends from the future know it and help out in his greatest deeds to save Earth???

When he wobbles off to Smallville one last time and Mort actually let Curt draw both Lois and Lana (who never looked more gorgeous BTW)...sob....
choke... AUGH!!!

And as the cover plainly stated REAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!


no wonder Im a mess today! :wink:

[Gangbuster]

Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?- Very sad, yet also one of the greatest Superman stories I've ever read:

[MatterEaterLad]

It seems too obvious to agree with "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow" but I have to...BUT, I will say it traded on the fact that it was an ending story and played on over 30 years of directly built up storyline...

I stopped reading comics in 1972, but that story still makes me choke up...

[Uncle Mxy]

It's hard for me to disassociate the sadness of the "Whatever Happened..."' story itself from the sadness in knowing it's the last we'd see of Curt Swan and Julius Schwartz Superman.

I think I was gonna die from total despair when first reading "the Last Days of Superman" when I was wee one.  I just start reading and now Superman's dying!!!  And even his friends from the future know it and help out in his greatest deeds to save Earth???

There were two big "Virus X" plotlines in Superman (plus a lesser one where Supergirl also gets it).  There's the much-anthologized "The Last Days Of Superman", where it doesn't turn out to be Virus X after all, and "The Leper Of Krypton", where it is indeed Virus X.  The latter is arguably a sadder tale.  Superman is put in a coffin and gets thrown into the heart of a sun to be cremated.  Poof!  Ahh...  someone did a writeup on it:

http://www.fortunecity.com/tatooine/niven/142/profiles/pro05.html

As an aside, when I read the Alan Moore Superman-Swamp Thing story when it came out, I went into a Snit Supreme thinking "Why doesn't Superman solve this virus the same way he did with Virus X?  Alan Moore must not really grok Superman".  <laughs>

[Klar Ken T5477]

yeah MXy the 2nd Virus X played out as a serial in the pages of Action for months (but wasnt addressed anywheres else so we knew he'd get out of it - somehow!)

White K anyone? Those whacky Bizarros!

[Super Monkey]

poor Hyper-Man such a tragic hero, I went ahead and finished his entry at the Supermanica, I even added Hyper-Boy

[Genis Vell]

"Whatever happened to the Man of Tomorrow?".

I could add SUPERMAN Vol. II #85 (death of Cat Grant's son).