From the Rental Vault (2007): Superman: Doomsday

So 20 years ago Dan Jurgens killed Superman. He had help in the form of the writers of several other Superman comic books, but Jurgens was the author of Superman #75, in which the big blue boy scout died saving Metropolis from the rampaging monster Doomsday. From October 1992 to October 1993, DC Comics killed Superman, showed his funeral and what a comic-book world without him would be like, detailed the rise of four seeming claimants to his cape and the eventual return of the One and Only himself, featuring trendy 90s long hair.

That same year, DC and Warner Bros. animation started airing Batman: The Animated Series and kicked off what became the multi-character, multi-show DC Animated Universe, which lasted through 2006. Having brought that project to an end and facing the reality of some seriously underwhelming box office from Superman Returns, DC decided to aim at the direct-to-video market with animated features distinct from the earlier DCAU characters and stories. Superman: Doomsday was the first of these, released in 2007 as an adaptation of the Death of Superman storyline.

Though longtime DCAU guides Bruce Timm and Duane Capizzi co-wrote and helped direct the new movie and Warner voice director extraordinaire Andrea Romano again captained the microphone booths, there are some significant differences between Superman: Doomsday and the earlier animated universe. For one, this movie is rated PG-13, which means that characters actually die -- even if most of the carnage is just out of frame. It also means that Superman and Lois Lane are shown in a couple of afterglow moments that imply some, shall we say, un-caped action sequences.

Lexcorp CEO Lex Luthor has a scientific team drilling deep into the Earth to tap a power source that will allow him to supply Metropolis with unlimited energy (and thus make himself look good). The team finds a strange alien artifact that produces a killing monster, a super-soldier that an alien race designed but had to discard when it was unable to distinguish friend from foe. This Doomsday beast has one aim -- kill everything -- and it's headed for Metropolis. Can Superman defeat it? What will his victory cost him? What will it cost those who care for him, both as Superman and as Clark Kent? 

Superman: Doomsday takes on some of those weightier story issues and also offers a possibility of seeing what absolute power might do in the hands of someone for whom the ends are more important than the means. Main voice cast Adam Baldwin as Superman, Anne Heche as Lois and James Marsters as Luthor do a decent job, but they frequently remind just how good Tim Daly and George Newbern, Dana Delany and Clancy Brown were in those same roles in the DCAU. Baldwin and Marsters seem like Triple-A subs compared with the sendoff performances from Newbern and Brown in the finale of Justice League Unlimited, and Heche just can't match Delany's vocal swagger.

The character design is also unsatisfying -- it's very similar to the DCAU with tweaks that seem to be there just to show the differences. Luthor is slimmed down and Superman/Clark Kent has odd lines on his face meant to represent cheekbones that render him simultaneously gaunt and bulky. Lois and other female characters' chins come to a weird sharp point, and Lois is still wearing skirts that would in real life remove the need for X-ray vision to determine the color of her undergarments.

Add in the relatively brief screentime of the titular antagonist himself, and Superman: Doomsday was not a promising start to this new era of DC animated work. Fortunately, things looked up in a significant way by the time that Justice League: The New Frontier was released a few months later.