He Lives.

The Superman books resume publication with not just one, but four different Supermen.  It kicks off in a 64-page anniversary issue and continues in the four titles, each featuring a die-cut cover to conceal its new Superman.

Adventures of Superman #500

The long-awaited 500th issue of Superman doesn't disappoint.  Picking up immediately where we left off at the end of Funeral for a Friend, Jonathan Kent flatlines at the hospital while his spirit follows his dead son into the afterlife. While searching for Clark he encounters supernatural beings Blaze and Kismet.  He eventually finds his son in an afterlife resembling Krypton with demons leading a funeral procession disguised as Kryptonians and the Cleric.  Jonathan helps his son fight off the demons, including an imposter of Jor El, and they both escape into a dark black hole.  Jonathan wakes up in the hospital convinced that Clark must have made it back too.  Back in Metropolis, there are reports of Superman sightings, but unlike anything ever seen before.  Lois and Inspector Henderson go back to Superman's tomb and find it empty again.

Gangbuster may regret not taking Inspector Henderson's offer to leave town.  He breaks up a drug deal, but finds out he really just interfered in a sting operation and finds himself on the run from the police.  He narrowly escapes with a minor gunshot wound.  At GBS, Vincent Edge takes advantage of Cat Grant's recent break-up with Jose Delgado to ask her out.  On the next page, the Prankster kills his cellmate in prison.

Lastly, we get introductions of the four new Supermen by the creative teams of all four series.  As a gang war ravages Suicide Slum, a mysterious black man emerges from the rubble of a building demolished by Doomsday.  A carjacker is brutally executed by a more vengeful Superman with an apparently different power set.  The Newsboy Legion clones help an experiment escape from Cadmus who really doesn't like being called Superboy.  And as mourners gather at the spot where Superman died in front of the Daily Planet, a Cyborg Superman shows up and destroys the memorial plaque, proclaiming he's back.

Action Comics #687

The Last Son of Krypton is Back!

A disoriented energy being awakens in the Fortress of Solitude, trying to remember how he got there while the Kryptonian robots attend to him.  It goes to Superman's tomb in Metropolis and takes over the body, bringing it back to the Arctic with him.  The robots try to convince this Superman to rest after his ordeal, but instead he puts on a new costume and returns to Metropolis to fight crime using strange new powers and more violent tactics than we're accustomed to seeing.  At LexCorp recovering with his broken leg, Luthor II is furious at the news that Superman's body has gone missing again.  Lois Lane gets this new Superman alone to talk and he starts to remember that she knows Superman's secret identity.  But instead of confirming that he's her fiance returned to life, he apologizes that Clark Kent is gone now.  He flies off and Lois despairs that either he's lying and someone learned Clark was Superman, or that Superman has indeed returned but she's lost Clark all over again.

Superman: The Man of Steel #22

The Man of Steel is Back!

John Henry Irons was a steelworker and inventor whose life was once saved by Superman.  Rescued from the rubble of Doomsday, John Henry creates a suit of armor that allows him to fight crime as a literal Man of Steel.  Prototype weapons invented by John Henry are inflaming the gang war in Suicide Slum and he's determined to find out who's behind it, as is Lex Luthor II.

Jeb, who we last saw causing trouble during the Daily Planet strike, comes back into Lois' life and offers her a shoulder to cry on and romantic interest in a world without Clark Kent.

A fortune teller tries to explain that Superman's spirit has taken over another person's body, but there's really not much of an effort to pass him off as a Superman imposter like most of the others.  This is the only one that doesn't have a meeting with Lois Lane to try to convince us he could be the real one.  John Henry was clearly intended to be an original character from the beginning, and after the Reign of the Supermen he would take the name Steel.

Bogdanove and Janke's art has noticeably evolved into its own signature style since the first issue of this series.  While it's often messier than I would like, the line techniques they used to depict metallic textures on John Henry's armor would be this book's trademark and would to some extent define 90's Superman art.

Superman #78

The Man of Tomorrow is Back!

The Cyborg Superman forces his way into Cadmus in search of the body of Doomsday.  He takes Doomsday to space and ties him to an asteroid, then propels him into space away from Earth.  Cyborg Superman seeks out Lois Lane, but this Superman hazy memory too.  He seems to remember being from Kansas and the name Kent, so Lois starts to trust him.  She takes him to Professor Hamilton to analyze his body, who discovers the metal is definitely Kryptonian and his DNA perfectly matches with Superman's.  In the vacuum of space, we see Doomsday very much alive again and laughing!

Adventures of Superman #501

The Metropolis Kid is Back!

The teenage Superman goes to the Daily Planet to talk to Lois, but she's less convinced by this Superman than any of the others.  Feeling rejected, Superboy finds a GBS reporter named Tana Moon to give an exclusive interview to.  Superboy reveals that he's a clone of the original Superman but without his memories.  GBS decides not to cover the four Supermen equally, but to try to maintain exclusive rights to Superboy, even staging news for them to cover and giving him a new leather jacket with a Superman "S" patch on the back.  Lex Luthor II interrogates his mole from Cadmus, Packard, who starts to explain to Lex how they were able to make a Superman clone after all.  To be continued.

Reign of the Supermen began with many of the elements that would define the next Act of post-Crisis Superman.  Five enhanced covers in a single month is a lot, but in reality most of the cover enhancements we'll see in Superman will be during this period.  Like Superman #75, the collector's edition of Adventures of Superman #500 also came sealed in a plastic bag.  There were regular editions without the card stock die-cut gimmicks too, but those were actually made for more practical reasons than simply to sell more comics by getting collectors to buy both covers (although there was also plenty of that).  At the time, there were still newsstand editions that were returnable, so DC wasn't going to spend more on editions that could potentially be returned and destroyed.

This was such an exciting time to first get into Superman.  The characters introduced this month are a radical departure from anything seen before in Superman, and when most people think of post-Crisis Superman this is the period that comes to mind first.  Without spoiling anything, two of the heroes introduced this month would become longtime allies in a new Superman family, and another would become one of Superman's deadliest enemies.  The concept of a Superboy isn't anything new, but it was a brand new idea to have a Superboy who wasn't just a younger version of Superman.  While Reign of the Supermen isn't a line-wide crossover, it will have wide-reaching effects on the rest of the DC Universe, particularly Green Lantern.