In Grant Morrison’s All-Star Superman, when we first see our hero, he is flying over the surface of the sun with arms outstretched and a sad but serene look upon his face. The image evokes the crucifixion of Christ. And indeed at that moment the Man of Steel is sacrificing himself to save mankind from its sins, so to speak.
Superman is rescuing the first manned mission to the sun, led by super-scientist and philanthropist Leo Quintum, but sabotaged by super-scientist and misanthrope Lex Luthor.
Lex’s crime is motivated by the deadly sins of pride, envy, and wrath, as he revealed when he said:
“…three months ago, I looked in the mirror at those nasty little spiderwebs of lines around my eyes, and I realized something. I’m getting older and… and he isn’t. So, if I want to die happy, it’s time to get serious about killing Superman. Don’t you think?”
And Leo’s Promethean attempt to “steal fire from the sun,” as he later remorsefully characterized it, is well-intentioned, but guilty of hubris: the same sin commited by Icarus when he also flew too close to the sun.
Yet the solar mission also represents humanity quite literally “reaching for the stars.” Leo later says that Superman inspired him to help humanity achieve a super-human future. And Superman calls his time “the dawn of the age of superheroes.” By saving Leo, Superman saves humanity from failing to reach its destiny.
But salvation requires sacrifice. To save mankind, the perfect man must make the ultimate sacrifice. To rescue Leo from Lex, Superman also flies too close to the sun, the source of his powers. This super-saturates his body with solar radiation, boosting his abilities but also mortally wounding him.
So, it was surely no accident that the first panel of the first scene of the first issue of this comic series makes Superman look like he is crucified upon the sun.
Indeed, in his book Supergods, Morrison characterized Superman as “a machine-age messiah” and “a sci-fi redeemer”:
“Superman was Christ, an unkillable champion sent down by his heavenly father (Jor-El) to redeem us by example and teach us how to solve our problems without killing one another.”
In a the final issue of All-Star Superman, as Superman is on the verge of death, Jor-El, Superman’s father from the stars, visits him in a vision and tells him:
“Your work is done. You have shown them the face of the Man of Tomorrow. You have given them an ideal to aspire to, embodied their highest aspirations. They will race, and stumble, and fall and crawl… and curse… and finally… they will join you in the sun, Kal-El.”
In the end, as his body is “converting to pure energy, pure information,” Superman performs one final feat. After telling Lois Lane that he loves her “until the end of time,” he flies into the damaged sun to repair it.
As Morrison wrote in Supergods, “We put the blazing sun at the very center of our tale and made All-Star Superman the story of a solar hero, a man who quite literally becomes a star.”
All-Superman ends with Superman becoming all star so that humanity can reach for the stars. Just as the Son of Man died so mankind could join him in heaven, the Man of Tomorrow died so the men and women of today could achieve their super-heroic destiny and “join him in the sun.”