DOOMSDAY SCENARIO
By 1992, Superman had hit Super-doldrums. The film franchise was dead, the comics bubble of the 1980s was bursting, and such revisionist superhero titles as Alan Moore's Watchmen and Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns had made Superman seem conventional and dull. So DC decided to kill him. The ''Death of Superman'' storyline (he was killed by a genetically engineered villain named Doomsday) proved controversial outside comics circles (though DC had had success a few years earlier with a similar story inspired by a readers' poll urging the writers to kill off Robin the Boy Wonder), but the issues were a hit. Of course, Clark Kent's death proved less than permanent, as is apparent from the many Superman titles still on sale today.