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Extra pressure to be wild in your headlines when Atlantis is an actual, real thing.

§ November 25th, 2019 § Filed under death of superman, promo § 6 Comments

So Customer Andrew gave me a copy of this Superman promo flyer from 1993, featuring supposed pages from the in-universe tabloid newspaper National Whisper on the front and back:

…which then opens up into this poster promoting the debuts of all these replacement Supermen:

While I’m sure we had this at the previous place of employment way back when, I can’t directly recall this particular piece of marketing, at least in this format. The center “poster” existed in similar form in a much-larger color poster (one of which I believe I have in my stacks of ancient promo stuff at the store now). I do have to wonder about the phrasing “your local club location” — that’s throwing me off a bit.

Plus, I feel like the “National Whisper” segments appeared as pages within the actual Superman comics theselves as part of an issue’s story pages. Could be wrong, and didn’t think to check to remind myself. I know those pages look familiar, but apparently the flyer itself isn’t one I recall well, if at all, so that’s why I”m guessing those pages showed up in one of the comics. I’m sure one of you can tell me, else it’s off to the salt mines to haul out my Superman comics to look into the matter.

On a related note, in response to last week’s discussion about the new Death of Superman: The Wake trade paperback, Dario had this to say:

“FYI that particular Death of Superman series has its own continuity. It’s a tie-in to an animated film, which uses the New 52-style outfit.”

You know, despite my watching all the direct-to-DVD/BluRay movies DC puts out, with their new shared quasi-New 52 continuity, it never crossed my mind that the comic was connected to these. But, it makes perfect sense, and DC had done it for their Suicide Squad cartoon, with a digital-first mini-to-trade written by Jeff Parker and Cat Staggs.

Still haven’t read The Wake yet. I’M GETTIN’ TO IT

Anyway, I like these in-story peeks at what journalism (or “journalism”) is like in a superhero universe. Of course superheroes would be the primary focus of these things, with gossip and rumors and such, since superheroes would likely be the ultimate celebrities…I mean, sure, [Your Favorite Performer]’s pretty cool ‘n’ all, but can s/he fly? (Newstime was another little more thorough, presenting a full magazine in the style of Time and Newsweek…you know, hence the name “Newstime”).

There are more comments to that post I want to address…but that’ll wait ’til next time, pals.