Nope. The arm-severing episode I am referring to happened AFTER the “Death of Superman” series, when Superman was trying to take him to the end of Time and kill him.
The key word is “nearly.” Superman’s power is based on solar energy, which he stores like a battery. When he makes a super-effort, he expends energy, draining his solar resources. Doomsday was strong enough and hardy enough to cause Superman to expend almost all of his stored energy.
As we eventually found out, Superman was not dead, merely in an extremely deep coma. By a fortunate series of occurances, Superman was revived and had his powers restored.
To understand how absurd Doomsday’s power has gotten:
In the “Our Worlds at War” nonsense, Doomsday’s body was completely incinerated, leaving only a charred skeleton in its place.
Only a few issues later, Doomsday had been retrieved and completely healed–and oh yeah, he could talk now. :smack: They eventually shipped him off to Apokolips–Jeph Loeb’s role was to eliminate the character, although leave room for somebody to bring him back if necessary.
Quick question: What would happen if you dropped Doomsday in some godforsaken corner of space (say, in a galactic super-black hole) and left him there?
Someone would come by later and create some stupid reason for him to show up again.
It’s like that everytime you kill a character…eventually someone comes along and wants to do a story with him, so they make up some preposterous means of escape, or just don’t even discuss it.
Here’s a distinction that the OP depends on, but which has not been mentioned: Pre-Crisis and Post-Crisis.
It’s not important to get into, but in the mid-80’s many of DC’s heroes were revamped through a major story called Crisis On Infinite Earths. Prior to Crisis, nothing but kryptonite (and sometimes magic) could hurt Superman in any way, shape or form, while exposure to a red sun would drain his strength but cause no permanent damage. I seem to remember one early Legion of Super-Heroes story in whcih various Legion members were hypnotized by a trick camera – it was explained that teh camera had kryptonite in the lens or something so that the hypnosis worked on Superboy.
Post-Crisis, Superman is tremendously powerful, but he’s just a tremendously powerful dude. He can be killed any punishment that could kill a normal man, he just can take orders of magnitude more of it before he’s injured. (Kryptonite affects him as a powerful poison, but that’s just a regular weakness; no longer is it the only thing that can harm him.) Once you understand that Doomsday was facing the Post-Crisis Superman, you can understand that Doomsday didn’t need any kryptonite; he just kept beating on Superman until eventually Big Blue gave up the ghost, same as he could have anybody else – it just took a hell of a lot longer.
–Cliffy
The strength, agility, invulnerability, speed, and endurance of both Superman and Doomsday are roughly equal…though many orders of magnitude over that of mere humans.
Im sure if Lennox Lewis and Mike Tyson fought a bare knuckled street fight for several hours, one or both of them would end up dead, too.
slight hijack/
Have they ever explained Superman’s vulnerability to magic? or is it just something they stuck in to make certain villains (Shazam!) more of a threat?
/slight hijack
They’ve never really explained it, AFAIK, so much as remarked that his invulnerability doesn’t cover magic. It’s been that way for a very long time. Depending on who is writing, the vulnerability changes. Sometimes it seems that Superman has the exact same vulnerability to magic as a normal human (being Kryptonian doesn’t give him resistance against being turned into a frog, for example, but if a magician magics up a cage, and the only thing magical about the cage is that it just appeared out of thin air, Superman could still bend the bars and break free). I prefer this approach, myself.
Other times, it’s almost like he has a magic allergy. Magic weapons or mystically enhanced strength are more effective against him than you’d expect.
BTW, Shazam! isn’t a villain. It’s the code name they use on covers for Captain Marvel (and his family), or the Wizard (and magic word) from whom he derives his powers. He’s a hero, but you’re probably thinking of Kingdom Come, where he became a bit twisted (but ultimately did the best thing).
Superman’s vulnerability to magic mirrors any ordinary mortal’s vulnerability.
Only superheroes/supervillains whose powers are magical or divine in nature can handle a magical attack.
And just how is “magic” defined in the DC universe? Most of what goes on in comic books, Superman himself included, would qualify as “magic” by the standards of our world. It just seems like they would be able to say at any time, about any character or device, “Oh, yeah, Powerfulman’s powers come from magic, so they can affect Superman”.
(I presume that there isn’t actually a character named “Powerfulman”)
No, he was dead, but it was more of a “clinical death.” His body still had a charge of energy which actually healed some of his physical wounds even after he died, but his “spirit” was in the afterlife. His body didn’t decay because of the energy in it.
Think of it like this: A normal person can die and be revived within a certain amount of time. Superman just had a lot longer to go before it was too late.
Personally, I didn’t care for the whole death thing. The only good things to come out of it IMO were the characters Steel and Superboy.
Short answer: “Magic” is defined as the power used by people whose powers come from magic. It’s damn circular, sure, but the idea is that some specific people are magicians, some others have magical powers, and everyone else is (via definition by exclusion) not magical.
Incidentally, they’ve pulled your exact “Powerfulman” scenario more than once - what separates lameness from non-lameness in this regard is whether it’s used as a deus ex machina sort of thing, or whether it’s something that logically follows from the situation.
Incidentally (and yes, Fenris would be a big help here), does anyone know whether Kadabra has ever fought Superman? I can’t recall that he has, off hand, but it would be an interesting litmus test for the limits of his vulnerability.
Actually, they draw on the power of other dimensions. People in our dimension do not have any resistance to that power, including Superman.
Yes he has, latest with the JLA, but Kadabra has started using real magic, as opposed to the reliance on futuristic technology he used to have.
Wait, wait, wait…
Why didn’t anyone try to use magic on Doomsday?
JLA member: “Hey, that rampaging monster is tearing up Metropolis!”
Zatanna: “Nrut ot enots, retsnom!”
:smack:
you guys and MAGIC ok ok they didn’t try it but it proably wouldn’t work any way, and as far superman dead he was resurected by the other kryptonian, (the one with shades) “he was built to restorelife” in that last issue agienst the cyborg superman harvey whatever, and the kryptonite beam transfered the powers of on to the other. (come on it’s all in the return of superman series.
hey the going rate of the death of superman issue in mint is under$15 what a sham by DC maybe they should have left him dead it would be better to let it end, come on it was on the news and every thing, they had people realy going.
AFAIK Bloodwynd’s powers were/are mystical/magic-based and not particularly effective. But yeah, actual Zatanna/Dr Fate-type spell-casting might have worked but “The Embarrassment of Superman” just wouldn’t have sold the same number of copies.
Wasn’t Doomsday knocked unconcious and cabled to an asteroid before being flung onto a path that woudl never meet any celetial body by one of the several reincarnations of Supes?
Bloodwynd’s powers weren’t magical. He was actually… Martian Manhunter. Thats why Blue Beetle was surprised in that part where Bloodwynd gets set on fire.
Speaking of that, the real question is not how Superman got killed, but how Blue Beetle, a lame character with no powers survived the battle with Doomsday.
So Mr. Mxpddlhfeugbkuy (probably close enough to the real spelling) is magical, then? I take it that this is the reason why he’s able to affect Supes.