Superman: The Death and Return of Superman Compendium

by Dan Jurgens, Various (illustrator)

Genres: Comics, Dc Comics, Graphic Novels, Superman

1370 pages, Paperback

Published May 20, 2025

About the author

Dan Jurgens is an American comic book writer and artist. He is known for his work on the DC comic book storyline "The Death of Superman" and for creating characters such as Doomsday, Hank Henshaw, and Booster Gold. Jurgens had a lengthy run on the Superman comic books including The Adventures of Superman, Superman vol. 2 and Action Comics. At Marvel, Jurgens worked on series such as Captain America, The Sensational Spider-Man and was the writer on Thor for six years. He also had a brief run as writer and artist on Solar for Valiant Comics in 1995.

Reviews

[Adrian Sandoval · Rating 5 out of 5]

"La Muerte de Superman" fue el evento que me inició en el mundo de los Cómics. Por supuesto que sabía quienes eran los "Super Amigos" y claro que veía Cómics en los puestos de periódicos de la ahora finada Editorial Vid aquí en México, pero fue hasta que en principios de los 90s todo el mundo hablaba de eso que leí la dichosa Novela Gráfica.... luego "El Reino de los Supermanes" y finalmente el regreso de Superman... entonces... Hal Jordan se vuelve loco y lo demás es historia (de Cómics por supuesto).

Por eso es que este formato de Compendium, un poco mas económico que el Omnibus me llamó la tención, y definitivamente no me arrepiento. Regresé a los 90s y, aunque Superman nunca ha sido mi héroe favorito, recordé porque DC comics me atrajo al mundo de los Eventos y los Crossovers.

Una lectura indispensable para los que gustan del Cómic en general, necesaria para los fans de DC e imprescindible para los SuperFans ahora que el gusto está renaciendo.

[Shane Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

More 3.5. This one took quite some time to finish (mostly because of work). There are some legitimately fun stories in this. The Death of Superman at the beginning is great and then things take a nosedive until the Reign of the Superman where they level out, but it still doesn’t reach the excitement of some of those initial issues. The 90’s were a really rough time for comics and, while there are some things I appreciate them for trying to do, the quality of the story varies greatly. Everything going on with Lex and Supergirl feels very weird. This is an important story in comics history and worth reading for that, but just know that a lot of it will be a slog.

[Al McCarty · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn’t read this 32 years ago when I worked at a comic store, why read it now? I don’t know, but I will admit that I didn’t read all 1300-some pages. Skimmed through the wholly unnecessary Bloodlines crossover annuals.

[Connor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Starts great, the death itself and immediate aftermath is so engaging! Then it sucks for roughly 1000 pages... THEN SUPERMAN RETURNS! Then it slows down again...

I believe this would've been an amazing event to read in real time, but collected in this way it's a dated slog to work through.