With Hank Henshaw — the "real" Hank Henshaw — showing up on Supergirl as "Cyborg Superman" (which sounds a lot dorkier just picked out of the ether), I had to stop a moment and explain to the family about the Reign of the Supermen, the four individuals claiming the mantle who showed up after Superman "died" fighting Doomsday in 1992.
Which set me to gathering up some images of them, thus this collection, which I might as well post publicly as just flag for +Kay Hill.
The four were named (mostly) from other nicknames for Superman:
"The Man of Tomorrow" – Known more prosaically the Cyborg Superman, this was secretly previous Superman villain Hank Henshaw, a sort of weird variant on Reed Richards in the DCU, who blames Superman for the death of his wife and friends, and … is a cyborg … and … destroys a city … and it gets complicated. Anyway, this is the fellow who (sort of) showed up in Supergirl a few weeks ago. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Henshaw]
"The Man of Steel" – John Henry Irons, genius engineer and inventor who invents an armored super-suit and, inspired by Superman's legacy, tries to fill in for him. He is later known as just Steel, has had his own comics, and was one of the more successful characters to come out of all of this. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_(John_Henry_Irons)]
"The Metropolis Kid" – He hates being called Superboy, though everyone does, and eventually he goes along with it. He's actually a Cadmus-created clone mixing Superman's genes with … Lex Luthor's. (So, yeah, where they got that shtick for Young Justice.) Aside from having a very, very 90s look (which was eventually fixed of course), he's one of the few heroes ever to be based in Hawaii for a while. He was killed (by another Superboy, really long story), but, as universes have rebooted, got better. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superboy_(Kon-El)]
"The Last Son of Krypton" – A cold-blooded killing vigilante who's a Kryptonian alt-right type, kinda-sorta, and also an energy/robot construct called the Eradicator who shaped Kryptonian history, and, um, yeah, it's even more complicated than that. Anyway, he still shows up in the DCU on occasion (or did, at last, pre-New52). [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eradicator_(comics)]
The storyline ends with the real Superman coming back (of course) with stylish long hair (until it became unstylish), and leading three of the replacements against the fourth, the villainous Cyborg Superman, who just destroyed Green Lantern's home town of Coast City (leading to cross-over events to come).
Thus Endeth the Lesson.
More on the Reign of the Supermen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Superman#Reign_of_the_Supermen.21
http://superman.wikia.com/wiki/Reign_of_the_Supermen
http://dc.wikia.com/wiki/Reign_of_the_Supermen
I have a Superboy #1 and Steele #1 from this era. The Death (and Return) of Superman is one of the best TPBs a comic fan can pick up.
+Paul Scollon To be honest, it's been years since I read the Reign storyline. I have a TPB of the Death of Superman; it got me following the DCU again, at least for a while.
I finally caught up with that storyline last decade when I read it in trade paperbacks in the local library. I thought, considering, that it was the first set of stories after Superman's death, that they were brilliant! Like Superior Spiderman in Marvel much later, we all knew that the "real" Supes would return sometime, but the red herrings were well done.
And Hank Henshaw? Well I haven't got to season 2 yet, but the minute I heard that name in season 1 – well bells went off!!!!
I really like the Supergirl show. I didn't at first, but Supergirl, with the Flash, Green Lantern and the Atom, were my fave characters of the 60s.
+Laura Ess Yeah. I spotted the Hank Henshaw name when it was first floated. I had since written it up to "Guess the just grabbed a DCU name at random." Guess I was wrong.