Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

Death in comic books, especially superhero comics, is a joke. Is there a character you like? Well he or she better be really popular or not fall into the hands of a writer who needs a “shock death” in their story and has no opinion or outright hates your character. Then all you can hope for is someone who does like the character coming around and reversing that death somehow because continuity gets in the way of their writing. Death holds no weight, no meaning. Forget having your hero go down fighting or having that death serve a greater purpose. “Stuff got real in the epic tale that will make me famous” is reason enough.

When Supergirl died pre-Crisis it meant something. While I disagree with the reasoning (since they just rebooted the Superman arm of the DCU anyway right after…and gave us the bad Alan Moore Superman story…she died trying to save the multiverse from a great evil. When Superman died, he went down fighting a monster in every sense of the word, a reversal of everything Superman stood for. He died protecting the city he loved and the friends he fought alongside. It was a battle to end all battles if ending battles didn’t also mean the end of crimefighting stories. It may have been a gimmick to sell comics, but it was one thought out and with purpose.

Tonight we get to the chapter where Superman died. This is the battle with Doomsday that we thought would be the last until they kept bringing him back and diluting him as a threat. And while we all knew they weren’t going to drop their flagship character for long, the way the story and the aftermath were handled was worthy of such an epic storyline. But how well was it translated in this novelization?

Chapter 10: Doomsday finale

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