Superman: Funeral for a Friend

If you read my last review for Death of Superman, or just read that comic, then you know that story just suddenly ended with the title being realized. Literally the moment that Superman collapsed, dead, the comic ended.

That left the four Superman titles running at the time, which, again, were Adventures of Superman, Action Comics, Man of Steel, and no adjectives Superman, without their title character for the foreseeable future. And with almost any other character, that would probably mean the end of the titles, but that wasn’t the plan for DC.

The main plan would be coming, as what would essentially be four pretenders to the throne would rise up to fill in the void left by Superman. But before we got there, DC decided that an event like The Death of Superman needed some breathing room. So between these two major events was a unique event of its own as all the titles took a step back and took some time to grieve the loss of the world’s most powerful hero and try to find someone who could possibly be the hero Metropolis needed without its great guardian.

So all the creative teams already working on those four titles would continue through into this story, so come see how they chose to grieve for the Man of Steel and check out the video above.

Breakdown

I always think it’s interesting when a comic company has the guts to run an issue of a series without its title character (or at the least a clear approximation of the title character). But this is basically nine issues of DC doing exactly that. Superman’s presence practically haunts every one of these stories, at one point quite literally, and that lets these issues hit differently than you would really expect from superhero comics at the time. It gives us a chance to really feel just how much Superman meant to the various characters in his life, as we spend time witnessing how each of them grieves in their own way. It lets us see how Metropolis reacts to not having its guardian angel, and the answer is not well. It’s such an interesting tonal shift for comic books of the time period that it’s hard to not see this as a necessary companion to The Death of Superman. But it’s not without problems. Honestly, a lot of this comic is just… boring. And not for the reasons DC clearly worried it would be. While I give DC credit for taking a risk, they clearly weren’t willing to risk it all. Several of these issues, like the issue with the actual funeral, should have taken more time to step back and let the events happen. Instead, DC simply couldn’t let an entire issue go by without forcing some superhero action into it. Which was all pointless anyway, because every single one of these replacement heroes vanishes from the main story following this series. And a lot of this does end up filling like filler, like they just didn’t want to get to the next part of the story too quickly.

Series Recommendation Level: High

While it can feel like it’s dragging, for the most part Funeral continues the trend DC started with Death of Superman of telling unique and powerful stories that challenged the concept of what a superhero comic could be, and that alone might make it worth reading before you even take into consideration that it’s a pretty good story in its own right.

Collected Edition

Superman: Funeral for a Friend gets (1) Golden Superman Statue. Even though that’s basically his grave marker I’m still going to count that as a good thing. Because this collection is nine regular issues, a tenth issue that’s the giant-sized issue 500 of Adventures of Superman, and two double-length specials, and still includes a little bonus art gallery in the back. It may not be the single greatest comic book collection in existence, but it’s hard to fault what it delivers.