The Immortal Superman is a 1970 Superman storyline published in Action Comics #385-387. Written, illustrated and inked by Cary Bates, Curt Swan and George Roussos, respectively, it was the last storyline edited by Mort Weisinger, and his Superman's swan song before Julius Schwartz's took over and greenlighted Kryptonite Nevermore, the storyline which defined the next era for the character.
Superman needs to travel to the far future to answer a distress call, but he cannot fly into the timestream because he would be disrupting an important scientific experiment. Unwilling to wait until the next day, Superman uses a defective Legion Time Bubble to travel to the year 101,970. When he arrives in the future, he realizes that the defective time machine has caused him to grow old.
After helping the people who sent the call, Superman tries to go back to the past, but something is blocking the timestream. Superman cannot return to his own time, so he is forced to go on towards the future, finding increasingly strange worlds as feeling the burden and the loneliness of having outlived everyone he loved.
Tropes found in this storyline:
- Adam and Eve Plot: Superman travels to the far future and discovers Earth has become a lifeless rock after eons of wars and pollution. After terraforming Earth back into a habitable world, Superman brings one couple of humanoid aliens and their offspring to Earth so they can repopulate it.
- After the End: When Superman visits the incredibly far future, he finds out hundreds of thousands of years of war and environmental damage have turned Earth into a lifeless husk of rock.Superman: "After a million of years of pollution, war, and untold abuses from man— Earth has been simply used up! It's just a contaminated globe of waste material now!"
- And I Must Scream:
- In the year 801,970, Superman finds five astronauts floating in space, frozen in life-support spheres. When Superman revives and takes the astronauts to safety, they reveal they have spent five thousand years encased in their preservo-spheres since their spaceship broke down.
- Superman sees his own situation as this, having outlived everything he cares about but completely unable to die. When he's finally hit by something capable of killing him and has his life saved, he's furious, and desperately seeks out Lex's hate missile in the hope it can finish the job.
- Apocalypse How: Hundreds of thousands of years of wars, pollution and environmental damage eventually render Earth into a toxic, lifeless world.
- Bad Future: In the year 121,970, the Earth's surface has been ravaged by a nuclear war, and people dwell in the upper levels of five-mile-high skyscrapers which tower over the poisoned atmosphere. One million years later, Earth is a lifeless, contaminated and barren rock.
- Beware the Superman: In the ninety-thousandth century, three aliens named Naurons arrived in Earth and used their powers to help people. Unfortunately, two of them were overwhelmed by their jealousy and started a fight over their female teammate (completely oblivious to her shouting at them to stop). Their war lasted two days and turned the Earth's surface into a poisonous wasteland. Afterwards, they declared a truce and left Earth, but the damage was done, prompting Metropolis to ban the use of any super-power. Thirty thousand years later, the use of super-powers is still banned in Metropolis because of the Naurons.
- Breaking the Bonds: In the cover
◊ of issue #385, Superman is shown breaking Kryptonite chains easily. - But Now I Must Go: After saving Metropolis in the year 121,970, Superman finds he has no reason to stay in that era, so he jumps back into the timestream.
- Card-Carrying Villain: Lex Luthor explicitly refers to his weapon as being powered by Evil Energy.
- Casual Time Travel: Superman cannot time-travel because he would disrupt an important experiment, but he believes he can circumvent the issue if he uses a Legion of Super-Heroes' defective Time Bubble instead of flying into the time-stream.
- Chekhov's Skill: In the year 121,970, Superman runs afoul of the law, and is sent to a retirement home for old-superheroes, in where he makes acquaintance with a retired Green Lantern, a hero with telekinetic powers, and another who can shoot lightning bolts. Later, when the Metropolis government begs the retired heroes save them from a silo storing explosive material which is about to blow up, the three old heroes use their powers to gather the hardest substances in the galaxy so Superman can forge an alloy to coat the building in.
- Cock Fight: Deconstructed. In the ninety-thousandth century, three aliens named Naurons arrived in Earth and used their vast super-powers to help people... until the male Naurons started a jealousy-driven fight over their female teammate. Their war lasted two days, turned the Earth's surface into a poisonous wasteland, and prompted Metropolis to ban the use of any super-power for thirty thousand years.
- Complete Immortality: The Multiple-Men bestow this on Kal-El as a reward for his good deeds, removing all his weaknesses and rendering him unable to die by seemingly any means. He's not particularly grateful.
- Crystal Spires and Togas: In the one-hundred-and-first millennium and beyond, Earth people live in five-mile-high skyscrapers, wear garish robes and drive flying cars on tube-like floating freeways.
- Death Seeker: After living one million years and outliving everyone and everything he cared for, Kal-El wants to die, but he is nearly completely unkillable. So, he dives right into the trajectory of Comet Magnor when he is told nobody can survive that.
- Distress Call: The plot is kicked off when Superman gets a distress call from the year 101,970.
- Dramatic Space Drifting: In the year 801,970, Superman finds five astronauts floating in life-preserving spheres in deep space. After rescuing them, they explain their "preservo-spheres" are emergency safety devices which turned on when their spaceship broke down.
- The End of the World as We Know It: In the distant future, years of war and environmental abuse have turned Earth into a barren, lifeless rock.
- Energy Beings: In the year 101,970, Superman faces a synthetic electrical life-form spawned by a strange kind of pulsating energy.
- Eternal English: Everyone whom Superman meets during his journey across time and space speak English with apparently zero Language Drift. Even astronauts stranded in deep space, whom Superman rescues when he drops by the year 801,970, can communicate with him in twentieth century English.
- Expo Label: As Superman is observing the lifeless rock which Earth has become in the far future, two impossibly massive robots arrive and start towing the planet away. Superman spots a label on their front sides that says "Galactic Sanitation Dept."
- Exty Years from Publication: In this 1970 storyline, Superman travels to the year 101,970; and later to the year 121,970; and still later, to the year 801,970.
- Eye Beams: The Nauron aliens have a power called proto-vision: they can shoot optical beams whose energy is highly radioactive.
- Flat World: Superman discovers Earth has become uninhabitable due to catastrophic environmental damage in the far future. As terraforming Earth in order to make it habitable again, he changes its shape into a flat, semispherical world.
- Flying Car: In the year 121,970, everyone in Metropolis uses flying cars. The vehicles are equipped with a device which turns them intangible in case that the vehicle is about to crash into a building.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: Nobody ever learns Superman traveled to the far, far future and restored a post-apocalyptic dead Earth.
- Humongous Mecha: As Superman is observing the empty, future Earth, he notices two giant robots which have been sent to carry the planet off.Superman: The size of those monster-robots staggers even my mind! They're carrying the Earth... As if it were a basketball!
- Jet Pack: While flying over Future Metropolis, Superman is spotted by onlookers who mistakenly think he is a regular man wearing a jetpack. It must be noted it is apparently illegal to use a jetpack during rush hour.
- Karma Houdini: The Time Trapper gets away with preventing Superman from going back to his own time, since Superman does not even figure out someone is messing with him.
- Kryptonite Factor: Subverted. After aging several thousands of years, Superman cannot be harmed by Kryptonite any more.
- Meanwhile, in the Future…: Used as a plot device. The President asks Superman not to fly into the past or future for the next 24 hours to avoid disrupting a military experiment. No sooner has he agreed this than Superman receives an urgent distress call from the year 101,970. Instead of simply waiting until the next day before setting off (especially since this involves time travel, so no matter when he leaves, he would arrive at the correct moment anyway), Superman uses a defective time-bubble belonging to the Legion. It takes him to his destination, but the defect causes him to age every year along the way, leaving him trapped in the future and over a hundred thousand years old.
- Multiple Head Case: One old super-hero who Superman runs into fought a weird four-headed monster called Kono-Beast.
- No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Superman travels to the year 121,970 and learns Metropolis has banned the use of super-powers. Later, Superman decides to ignore the ban when he sees a vehicle about to collide with a building, and he is arrested for attempting to save lives (although the patrol points out nobody was in real danger because flying cars are equipped to prevent such crashes).
- Noodle Incident: In the year 801,970, five astronauts are rescued by Superman, who disappeared eight hundred thousand years ago, and who looks old and wizened. The astronauts right away ask what happened to him, but Superman is not in the mood for answering questions and flies off.
- No-Sell: Superman tries to shoulder-tackle one of the robots carrying Earth off, but the automaton is so huge it does not even feel the impact.
- Not Enough to Bury: An energy beast's body disintegrates when it is exposed to harmful materials.
- Older Than They Look: After using the defective Time Bubble, Superman looks like a seventy-year-old, but he is over 100,000 years old.
- Old Superhero:
- Superman flies to the far future but using a defective Time Bubble which causes him to get older until he looks like an octogenarian (albeit his power has not been diminished at all).
- Superman also discovers a planet named Diodn which works as a retirement home for old heroes.
- People Jars: In the year 101,970, three super-heroes who tried to apprehend an energy beast were put in cryo-freezing crystal pods when the monster's attacks put them in a coma.
- Planet Destroyer: In the far-flung future, Earth is a toxic, lifeless planet; so two robots are deployed by the "Galactic Sanitation Dept." to carry the dead world off and tear it apart safely.
- The Power of Hate: When Superman disappears in the twentieth century, Lex Luthor knows his despised enemy is alive somewhere/somewhen, so he builds a space drone, controlled by an A.I. modeled after his brain patterns and powered by the energy of Lex and other criminals' hatred and negative emotions. The hatred-powered Luthor's drone spends one million of years looking for Superman across the galaxy, long after its creator's passing.
- Rousing Speech: Superman travels to the year 121,970, and learns the use of super-powers has been banned in Earth, and old super-heroes are dumped in a retirement home off-world. Hence, when the Metropolis governor asks for their help, the retired heroes are unwilling to listen him out until Superman makes a passionate speech:Superman: Don't throw away this chance, men... We can prove to Earth that super-powers shouldn't be taboo... and that we're not has-beens who've forgotten how to use them!
- San Dimas Time: Superman receives an urgent distress call from the year 101,970, and instead of simply waiting until the next day to fly into the timestream without disrupting an important scientific experiment, he gets into a defective Time Bubble.
- Shooting Superman: Subverted. When he arrives at Future Metropolis, someone fires several energy bolts at Superman. Superman thinks their ray gun will not probably hurt him, but he dodges the shots anyway because he is not taking the chance to be hurt by a weapon that he knows nothing about.
- Tempting Fate: The President asks Superman to not time-travel during 24 hours in order to not disrupt a government experiment, and Superman reassures it will not be a problem because he was not planning to time-travel anyway. One page later, one emergency forces him to fly into the time-stream, and Superman gets stranded in the far future.
- Terraform: When Superman discovers the dead Earth in the far-flung future, he decides to make Earth inhabitable again with his own hands.
- Time Abyss: By the end, Kal-El is over one million years old.
- Time Loop: Subverted. Superman starts reliving his life after getting hit by the Comet Magnor and thrown into the timestream and back into the past, he fears he has become stuck into an unbreakable Stable Time Loop. Nonetheless, when Superman reaches the day when he was supposed to use the defective Time bubble, the loop gets broken.
- Time Travel: Superman using a Legion's Time Bubble to travel to the year 101,970 kicks off the plot.
- To Be Lawful or Good: In the year 121,970, Superman lets himself be arrested when he breaks the law forbidding the use of super-powers in Metropolis, since he wants to be law-abiding. He is let go because he did not know about the anti-powers directive, but then he ignores it when he sees a car about to crash into a building. In a nutshell: he will obey the law if it only inconveniences him, but he will disregard him if it stops him from helping someone else.Superman: Listen, violation patrol! Forget Directive A-7— I'm trying to save lives!
- To the Future, and Beyond: Superman has travelled to the 1,020th century but he is unable to go back to the past because the Time Trapper has blocked the timestream. Superman's only resource is propelling further and further into the future until he stumbles upon a way back to his era.
- Tornado Move: In the year 121,970, Superman diverts an explosion by spiraling around the exploding building, so preventing the explosion from spreading and channeling the explosive force upwards.
- Unfinished, Untested, Used Anyway: Superman uses a defective Time Bubble, and although he reaches his destination, the defect causes him to age over a hundred thousand years.
- The Unfought: The Time Trapper prevents Superman from time-traveling back to his own time. Superman eventually makes his way back from the far-flung future, but he never fights the Time Trapper; in fact, he does not even find out who puts him through that ordeal.
- Untrusting Community: When Superman arrives in the far future Metropolis, he finds out that super-heroes are not welcome in the city due to a grudge between two super-powerful aliens devolving into a battle which ravaged the Earth's surface.
- Weaksauce Weakness:In the year 101,970, Superman faces an energy creature who is eating the contents of a bank's vault. The monster seems invulnerable, but Superman notices it only eats currency which is colored red, yellow or orange— warm colors. Guessing the creature may be allergic to the cool side of the color spectrum, he hides blue coins among the piles of yellow currency. When the creature is tricked into eating them, the physical reaction causes its energy body to fall apart and dissolve.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Supergirl is not seen anywhere in the future, even though she should be just as long-lived as her cousin.
- What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Superman intentionally sets a trap which kills a synthetic mindless energy being.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Superman cannot die of old age, and he has become all but indestructible because of several well-meaning aliens removing his usual weaknesses. By the end of the story, Superman has lived one million of years, and everybody who he has cared for has been dead for a very long time.Master Healer Robot: At last... You nearly died... But I saved your life!
Superman: What? Why did you do a fool thing like that? I'm over a million years old... I've outlived everything and everybody I cared for! I wanted to die!
