TITLE: Superman vol. 2, issue #22
YEAR: October 1988
COMPANY: DC Comics
STORY & ART: John Byrne
LETTERER: John Costanza
COLORIST: Petra Scotese
ASSISTANT EDITOR: Renee Witterstaetter
EDITOR: Mike Carlin
SUPERMAN created by Siegel and Shuster
Back in 1989, a crossover arc known as “Superman: Exile” was featured in “Superman”, “The Adventures of Superman” and “Action Comics”.
And the issue that kicked things off into full gear was issue #22.
The Time Trapper stole a split second of Eternity to create the Pocket Universe and while different from Superman’s world, the story revolved around Superman, Supergirl and the remaining humans living on what is left of Earth that survived trying to fight back against General Zod, Quex-Uk and Zaora.
Unfortunately, everyone who’s tried to fight back has been killed by the powerful Kryptonians General Zod, Quex-Uk and Zaora.
Unfortunately, Super Girl human form was blasted up and all that’s left is a shriveled but burnt lifeform, Bruce Wayne and others were killed leaving only two people left…Superman and Lex Luthor.
In this Pocket Universe, the world’s hero was Superboy who the three had killed.
Lex Luthor convinces Superman to go find Superboy’s lab to find the only weapon that can beat the three, while he tries to distract them.
As Superman looks for the lab, he is attacked by Quex-Uk and uses the one of the weapons Superboy had and that is golden Kryptonite, which doesn’t affect Superman but in this Pocket Universe, it takes away all their power.
Unfortunately for Lex, he risked his life trying to buy Superman time and dies. But before dying, he admits to letting the three out of the Phantom Zone, wanting to crush the three and defeat them. And in the process, his world was destroyed.
As Superman imprisons the three, General Zod tells him that they will get their powers back and they will go to Superman’s reality and destroy his world. And he can’t return them back to the Phantom Zone.
Superman saw what happened to the Earth in the Pocket Universe and that he can’t allow it to happen to his Earth. So, Superman uses green Kryptonite on them and executes the three, despite the three trying to plead for their lives.
It was the first time in a comic book that Superman had to kill and the fact that he did it so save his Earth, he feels there is no way and because of this decision, it will haunt Superman and thus he brings the battered alien body of what was known as his Super Girl to his timeline and has the Kent’s and Lana Lang take care of her. Meanwhile, Superman would exile himself away from Earth and would kick off the arc known as “Superman: Exiled”.
A great story nonetheless!