DC Comics released a comic book 25 years ago today, and the timing couldn’t have been worse for the company. It is important to understand that comic books are written and penciled in advance, and then they are printed out and shipped to stores. This means there are often times that a comic can hit that seems extremely topical, but it actually was written and drawn before whatever happened that bears a similarity occurred. This happened in the worst possible way 25 years ago, when DC released The Adventures of Superman #596 by Joe Casey and Mike Wieringo. The second page of this comic hit a little too close to home at the time.
The Adventures of Superman #596 went on sale on September 12, 2001, one day after 9/11 brought the United States to its knees. The second page of this comic book had a terrifying image that remains almost too coincidental for many people to believe.
In The Adventures of Superman #596, the Imperiex War had just finished, and the people around the world were attempting to rebuild after the damage. The Imperiex War, also known as “Our Worlds at War,” is a cosmic conflict started by Imperiex after he attacked Earth to use it as a staging ground for hollowing out the entire universe. Superman was able to help win the war when he pushed Warworld through a temporal boom tube, which sent Imperiex’s and Brainiac’s consciousness back to the time of the Big Bang. This ended the war, and this issue showed the fallout.
However, the second page of this issue left anything else that happened in the comic to fall flat. The first page showed a sunken ship in Sydney, Australia, a crater in Frankfurt, Germany, and the White House damaged in Washington, D.C. Then the second page had the shocking scene that took most people out of the issue. One day after a terrorist attack leveled the World Trade Center, a Superman issue showed the twin LexCorp Towers in Metropolis damaged and smoking. Superman floated in the sky and watched the city below him.
DC Comics rushed to make amends and offered to let anyone return the issues if they offended readers, although reportedly very few were actually returned. However, when breaking the issue down, if readers can get past the visuals of the twin LexCorp Towers smoking, a clear reminder of the World Trade Center in real life, this is a story that seems almost perfect for that time period. It showed Superman dealing with the devastation and wondering what use fighting would be if his own parents could die. In a world that was wondering what came next, this issue was a nice lesson in that. However, it still caused a major controversy.
Artist Wieringo said he was saddened when he saw the coincidence. He said in an interview just two days after the comic book was released that he didn’t make a connection between the comic and the terrorist attacks until people started discussing it on message boards. He said the artwork was completed months earlier, and the timing was coincidental, but he understood fans who considered it “tasteless and creepy.”
While DC’s connection with 9/11 was coincidental and unfortunate, Marvel Comics decided it wanted to raise awareness and honor the first responders who worked to save lives on that tragic day 25 years ago. The cover of The Amazing Spider-Man #36 (2001) by J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr. was black with no image. In the issue, Spider-Man looked on in horror at what used to be the World Trade Center. All the city’s heroes worked to help save lives, and even the villains looked on, with Doctor Doom even shedding a tear. However, the issue pivoted and showed that the real heroes were the first responders. It was a beautiful and touching story.
Interestingly, DC’s Dan DiDio said in a 2008 interview that DC never addressed the events of 9/11 in its comics after it happened. He claimed the reason was that adding in real-world events would date the stories, even if the tragedies influenced certain stories for the comic book line. While the company was not comfortable addressing the attacks, its subsidiary imprints didn’t have the same qualms, with Ex Machina and The Boys as two good examples. That said, while DC didn’t want to date its comics, the smoking LexCorp Towers were a little too close to comfort for many readers after 9/11.
