captain_slinky | Alan Moore ain't got NUTHIN' on Steve Gerber!

I, like most of the Comics Fandom, always assumed that Alan Moore's "What Ever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow" story was the end-all-be-all final word on the Pre-Crisis Superman. It's a brilliant little story that really helped close the book on the whole Superman Universe before John Byrne went and rebooted the whole thing. Moore's story had more than a few knowing winks and nods to every bit of continuity that ever happened since Superman's incarnation, and it was all so lovingly crafted that it's just about the most well-respected Superman story ever written.

...But I think Steve Gerber did it better.

In DC Comics Presents #97 (the final issue of that series), Steve Gerber wrote a horrific end for the "Pre-Crisis" Superman that, instead of being a super-accessible farewell love note to an icon, was a terrible destruction of Superman himself.

Part "Origin Story" for The Phantom Zone, this story has Myxyzptlk *merging* with the Phantom Zone itself and all the hatred stored there. It first destroys The Bizarro Earth and beheads Bizarro himself in order to send a message to Superman, that the end is coming. The Myxyzptlk/Phantom Zone God-Creature then reveals itself to Superman and tosses a chunk of Kryptonite "...the size of Manhattan" at Metropolis. Superman musters all his strength and courage, fighting off the effects of the giant green Kryptonite meteor, and smashes it to dust before it can hit the Earth. He then discovers that the meteor was Argo City, home of Supergirl and thousands of non-powered Kryptonian survivors.

Now stranded on the moon, Superman is nearly powerless and mourning the fact that he just murdered the entire population of Argo City to save The Earth, a planet he will never be able to return to because the Green Kryptonite dust has completely saturated the Earths atmosphere. The last thing he sees as he dies is the Myxyzptlk God-creature gloating about how it'll start by recreating the universe just so it can destroy it again, or maybe just rule it for a while as a despotic tyrant.

THE END.

Hard core, mister Gerber... HARD. CORE.