Adventures of Superman 0, 517 - 531, 578, 582 - 583

There’s a scene in Adventures of Superman #583 where Batman, having been killed (again) by The Joker, revives and claws his way out of the grave Superman dug for him. It’s a splash page with two inset panels. The two panels show Batman’s gloved hand breaking out of the surface, in true horror movie fashion. The splash page itself shows a Batman, free from the waist up, continuing to claw his way out. His face is mostly in shadow, and with the pointed “ears” of his cowl, along with the agape mouth, he looks feral, driven by instinct as much as madness. The panel is both awesome and terrifying. At the same time, it took me out of the story completely because it reminded of a very similar scene, one written by the same man who wrote #583, J.M. DeMatteis. That other scene was written 13 years earlier, and was a Spider-Man story. That story, like this one, featured the apparent death of a hero, Spider-Man, who of course wasn’t really dead and who also had to claw his way out from his own grave while the rain pours down. Here are the two images, for comparison’s sake: