In a previous episode, the third part of the " Last Son of Krypton " arc, Jonathan " Pa " Kent assures his adoptive son that he will " always be Clark Kent " and that " Superman just helps out every now and then.

" Although none of his attempts to kill Superman work permanently ( though a classic non-canonical story from 1961 entitled " The Death of Superman " has Luthor finally killing Superman after lulling him by pretending to go straight, although Supergirl then arrests him and he is exiled to the Phantom Zone ), Luthor routinely manages to escape from prison and threaten the world again.

With Superboy's aid, Luthor manages to cure Lena, allowing her to walk and think logically again for a brief moment, before he then quickly reverses the process, leaving Lena completely catatonic, and informs Superboy that so long as Superman is alive, he will never reveal how he did it.

Lex even goes so far as to cure Lena's illness, and then immediately undoes the process, leaving her completely catatonic, solely in order to make a mocking point to Superboy and Superman.

He then devises a trap for Superman that almost kills him, but Superman narrowly escapes when Luthor leaves him to his fate.

Lois is then kidnapped after meeting her double, bound and gagged by Arianna, and drugged before Superman arrives.

After Superman diverts a Russian nuclear warhead which then detonates in a desert, Gotham is hit by an electromagnetic pulse, and descends into chaos during the resulting blackout.

After being stabbed and falling into the sea, Superman uses his heat vision to get under the crust of the island and he then throws it into space, nearly killing himself in the process.

The characters of Superman and Batman were then spun off into a new animated series, Justice League, which also featured other popular DC Comics characters, including Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, Hawkgirl and The Flash.

Superman finds the Blue Kryptonite and is aged back to normal, then goes on his quest to rescue the other Super Friends and ultimately send the three villains back into the Phantom Zone.

Since then various iterations of Bizarro have appeared — often, but not always, as an antagonist to Superman.

Bizarro eventually visits the grave of a deceased Jonathan Kent, and is then sent ( by rogue Kryptonians ) with other Superman foes to the inter-dimensional prison, the Phantom Zone.

Kent then rushed offstage to return as Superman, who came to the rescue and fought with the bad guy.

Despite the Riddler showing a set of playing cards with ( from left to right ) Gleek, Zan, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Robin, Batman, and Superman he then burns to ashes in his introduction in " Wanted: The Super Friends ", the Wonder Twins and Gleek did not appear in Challenge.

After the Legion took over Superboy, the Superboy feature was nearly moribund until the late 1970s, when it appeared in two short runs, first in Adventure Comics ( again ) and then in Superman Family.

He meets the Legion of Super-Heroes, counsels Jor-El, father of Superman, and then helps Adam Strange fight an invading empire.

Just then, Krypto emerges vowing to " hurt this one " because he " loves man " ( Superman ).

In 1965, Thomas moved to New York City to take a job at DC Comics as assistant to Mort Weisinger, then the editor of the Superman titles.

" Superman uses super-breath to blow the food all over the imp and then chortles to the voters, " Like he said, folks-the food is on him!

Superman attempts to help him, but the two are then attacked by the villain Ruin.

Thanks to Jimmy's help, Lois manages to escape to help Superman.

Superman manages to destroy the Kryptonite-powered ship and recover the crystal-simultaneously confronting Lex with the fact that, despite his claims that Superman has been ' holding him back ' from helping humanity, the only thing he accomplished with Superman being absent for a year was to find a large robot that he used to try to destroy everything -, but Lex manages to escape custody yet again.

He tortures Superman until the latter manages to escape.

After Superman manages to rescue the Kryptonian bottled city of Kandor from Brainiac, Kara is reunited with her parents.

Fortunately, Mxyzptlk is able to reveal the truth about the world to Superman, who, despite his current lack of faith in himself — caused mainly by the fact that not even Lois Lane believes in him in this world — manages to find the power to break the cycle and defeat the Joker.

Superman tries to get Mxyzptlk to say his name backwards at different attempts ( one of them in his Clark Kent guise ) and finally manages to trick Mxyzptlk into saying his name backwards by messing up the pronunciation of his name.

Superman manages to throw the " New Krypton " island out of the atmosphere and into space.

Superman manages to enter Brainiac's ship after penetrating its force field.

Ultimately, Superman manages to convince Gog of the error of his ways.

While Superman was attending to Batman's wounds, Jonah ambushed him and manages to kill Superman using Kryptonite bullets, and blowing his head off in the end.

The Furies capture Superman and take him to Apokolips, followed by Supergirl, who manages to trounce Lashina, Mad Harriet, Stompa, and Granny herself.

During a battle with Lex in his LexCorp office, Superman manages to witness the trapping of his friends Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Professor Emil Hamilton within the virtual realm.

Johnny manages to summon Superman, and the would-be conquerors ' plans are defeated.

The second wave included action figure representations of the Flash ( Barry Allen ), Earth-2 Superman, the Anti-Monitor, Lex Luthor, and Brainiac.

Only as the series progressed did Superman become the wholesome, morally upright figure of modern times.

However, the crystal, once inserted into the console, instead opens up a vortex in which another black square is seen, with a figure resembling General Zod as portrayed in the Superman movies.

Six Flags's nominal expansion into Europe saw a similar refurbishment of the Belgian Walibi attraction, both parks benefiting from the group's rights to use Warner Brothers characters within them, leading to the creation of a Looney Tunes-themed area and a powered-launch coaster themed around popular comic figure Superman, later changed to the Xpress.

In these cases, the Fleischer lead animators, many of whom were not trained in figure drawing, animated roughly and depended upon their assistants, many of whom were inexperienced with animation but were trained in figure drawing, to keep Superman " on model " during his action sequences.

The cost of this progress is an increased infringement on individual liberties, with Superman fast becoming a Big Brother-like figure.

As of February 2010, the figures of He-Man and Skeletor are available as Toys R Us exclusives packed in two-packs with Superman and Lex Luthor respectively, from Mattel's DC Universe Classics action figure line.

" In that issue, Superman fights the Underworlders while a hulking figure in a green suit rampages through a pastoral field.

* In 1994, Kenner released an action figure series based on the Death of Superman era.

He attempts to convince the Martian Manhunter ( now an aged, bitter, near-powerless figure with his mind filled with Luthor's nanotechnology ) to stand up against Superman and the powers that be.

As one of the wealthiest men in Metropolis, Edge was a major political figure in the city and frequently encountered Superman, the subject of many of his network's news stories, whom he, like most others, failed to realize was also Clark Kent.

In this movie, Perry has a nephew, Richard White, who is engaged to Lois and serves as a father figure to her son Jason, although it is implied over the course of the film that Jason's biological father is Superman himself.

Captain Action was an action figure created in 1966, equipped with a wardrobe of costumes allowing him to become Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, Captain America, Aquaman, the Phantom, The Lone Ranger ( and Tonto ), Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, Sgt.

A precursor to his role as the kindly father figure came in Adventures of Superman.

A further retcon plays on this sentiment, introducing Lord as distrusting of every authoritative figure and pressured by his mother at first and by the dramatic event of the Death of Superman later, to shift his mistrust and hatred on the metahuman community, guilty of being distant and uncaring about human suffering.

* DC Direct released a Composite Superman action figure in 2005, and a second one ( based on the Superman / Batman vengance 5 version ) in 2008.

More abstract allusions appear in " The Man of Metropolis Steals Our Hearts ", which utilizes Superman as a Christ figure and " The Seer's Tower ", which references the Book of Revelation and the Second Coming of Christ.

If you look in the background of the Bizarro apartment you will see a Bizarro figure on a shelf, just as a Superman figure sits on a shelf in Jerry's apartment.