Posted in: Comics, DC Comics, Superman | Tagged: 9/11, joe casey

Joe Casey Remembers Superman And The Twin Towers On 9/11

Joe Casey remembers Superman and the Twin Towers of Metropolis on 9/11, twenty-four years ago

Joe Casey recalled on his Substack newsletter events of twenty-four years ago, on 9/11/2001, when DC Comics published his new issue of Superman with the damaged Lex Luthor Twin Towers of Metropolis, and the national news took notice.

"the very next day… Wednesday, September 12… ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN #596 was released in comicbook stores. It was written by yours truly and drawn by the late, great Mike Wieringo. It was just the eighth issue of a run that would end up lasting three years. The story we told in this issue depicted what was meant to be the somber aftermath of that summer's Superman event — titled "Our Worlds At War" — showing the sizeable toll that galactic conflict (which included Darkseid and Apokolips, Imperiex and Warworld, as well as the death of Aquaman) took on Earth specifically. Page One showed the destruction caused by the war in various cities around the globe. Page Two finally brings us to Metropolis and the damage done to the twin Lexcorp Towers…"

And this is how it looked in USA Today a couple of weeks later.

He also talked about the message of the comic book itself, with this cover underlining it (and recently appearing on the Filippo Loreti Superman watch boxes), that even though people might want a fictional entity to deal with life issues, in the end they have to just do it themselves.

As well as recalling "(by the way, let's not get into the unbelievable prescience of my fellow Superman writers installing billionaire corporate scumbag, Lex Luthor, as the goddamn President of the United States at that point in the DCU… I mean, jeezus…!)"

Joe Casey concludes, "Again, I stress that this issue was written and drawn much earlier in the calendar year (by my calculations, it was probably written in February or March and drawn not long after). It was conceived completely in the vacuum of pure creativity, not at all influenced by any real world events whatsoever. And yet, sometimes the real world intrudes… and it can intrude in ways that certainly make you stop and think." It does indeed…

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