With the success of The Death and Return of Superman in general and Superman (Vol. 2) #75 in specific the idea of a rematch between Superman and Doomsday seemed like a foregone conclusion. And lo Dan Jurgens verily wrote and drew Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey, a three issue prestige format series that started coming out in April of 1994. Jeffrey Taylor and I covered this series in Episode 173 of From Crisis to Crisis and in the post for that show I added a bunch of fun bits of business related to that story. One of those bits was this cover.
That’s the cover to the February 1994 edition of Previews, the catalog for Diamond Distribution. I did not have a copy of that edition handy back when Jeff and I did our episode so my good friend Scott Gardner sent a scan my way. The image you see above is one I scanned after finally managing to secure my own copy of said edition. Back in October my wife and I were driving up to Pennsylvania to attend my 20 year high school reunion. Along the way we stopped in Virginia and visited with my friend and fellow Superman podcaster Bob Fisher (Bob hosts Superman Forever Radio and you should listen to it) and his lovely wife. When we were saying our good-byes Bob handed me a small bag of comics in addition to this issue of Previews. I really appreciated that because it turned out to be a treasure trove of Superman marketing as well as a time capsule to the Superman books of twenty years ago, starting with the back cover.
I could make some snarky comments about how it looks like Doomsday is eating the cape and Darkseid looks like he’s napping but holy crap is this image awesome. When combined with the cover it is an amazing piece of Superman artwork and really sells the series.
As it turns out Hunter/Prey was more than just the cover feature and took up a lot of real estate in the rest of the issue. Not only was it one of the Gems of the Month it was also featured prominently in the Table of Contents.
There was also an article about some other great battles fought by the Man of Steel.
As I previously mentioned Hunter/Prey was one of Preview’s Gems of the Month, which was a play on the fact that this was the solicitation catalog for Diamond Distribution.
There was also a really neat black and white ad that ran in the DC section of Previews. I have since found that these sorts of ads were a common thing for the big projects that DC were pushing around this time period.
Finally there were the actual solicitations for not only the first two issues of the series but also a poster that was released to tie into the story.
I had that poster at one point. I still may. I’m not sure. I will admit that while it is a very dynamic image there is something about the composition that I didn’t care for. I am by no means saying it is bad because it’s Jurgens and Breeding with painted color by Jerry Ordway but it’s not my favorite.
And that is pretty much that for Previews‘ coverage of Superman/Doomsday Hunter/Prey. There is something fun about the over-the-top nature of the copy for the solicits and the other bits of advertising. The lead up and release of this story was huge for me back in 1994 and to see elements of it that I haven’t seen before is just fantastic. I have scanned more fun stuff from this issue but that will have to wait until another post. Until then I will again shamelessly plug the episode of From Crisis to Crisis where Jeff and I covered this because that was a real fun episode to record and I think it comes through in the final product.