An intriguing side-effect of having children is that your sick days at work are more likely to be used to take care of the kid when HE’S sick than saved for yourself. Such was the case earlier this week when my son came down with a nasty stomach bug that sidelined him and had me calling in to take care of him. But on the plus side, in his illness all he wanted to do was lie around watching MeTV Toons, including Super Friends, which is how I happened to rewatch, for the first time in decades, the 1985 final-season episode “The Death of Superman.” 

The final season of the show was titled The Super Power Team: Galactic Guardians, as a tie-in to the then-running Super Powers toy line, and as such most of the characters were characters who had action figures in the line, including the then-new DC hero Firestorm, who is actually the focal character of this episode. It begins in medias res (just like all great children’s entertainment), with the world mourning the shocking death of the Man of Steel. There was a massive funeral procession, ceremonies at the United Nations, and people wearing black armbands just as they would when DC Comics would kill him “for real” seven years later. In fact, I’m wondering now if they were deliberately invoking this episode when the comic book storyline was planned.

Everyone is naturally distraught over Superman’s death, but no one more so than the Super Powers Team’s newest member, Firestorm, who considers himself personally responsible. Firestorm is captured by Darkseid (the Big Bad for the final two seasons) who purges the young hero’s memory of Superman’s death. The two of them were on a mission in space where Superman was seeking minerals to cure Kryptonite poisoning, but Firestorm was distracted and, upon returning to his partner, found Superman dead of exposure to a Kryptonite meteor that Firestorm could have saved him from had he listened to Superman and stayed where he was supposed to be. As Darkseid plans an assault on the heroes, Batman and some of the others go to the Fortress of Solitude, where a Superman robot reveals that Superman had the ability to place himself into a trance to stay alive while being afflicted by Kryptonite poisoning. Hawkman recognizes the posture of the trance as being the same way he was found lying by Firestorm, meaning that he placed himself in the trance and there’s still a chance to save him. The Super Friends recover Superman’s body and revive him just in time to return and save the team from Darkseid, who goes fleeing back to Apokalips.

This final season episode suffered from the same limited animation as most Hanna-Barbera cartoons (especially of the 80s). Not all of the voice acting is great either, with Darkseid sounding more like Toast from Histeria! than an actual menace. On the plus side, this was the era where they had Adam West voicing Batman, which was kind of cool, and Deep Space Nine’s Rene Auberjonois as Desaad was a treat. But the real surprise of the episode was the way they told the story. The world was legitimately mourning. Firestorm was an absolute WRECK. I watched this show faithfully as a child, and I have vague memories of this episode from back then, but I was surprised at just how DARK it was.

For all the silliness and camp that the Super Friends shows had, I’m actually impressed that with this episode (the second-to-last of the entire series, it should be noted) they told a real story with real emotional stakes. The ending is still a little pat, a little too easy to come by, but they did more with this than they did with 99 percent of the preceding Super Friends episodes, and that is greatly appreciated. 

Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!