The ABC series Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman gave the Man of Steel a hip prime-time makeover, with Teri Hatcher playing a modern Lois Lane and a then-unproblematic Dean Cain as a Clark Kent who shopped at Mervyn’s. DC Comics had postponed its plans to join Lois and Clark in holy matrimony until the TV show counterparts did the same, hoping to generate some synergistic buzz. But nothing worked, and Superman comic sales sagged, so writer Jerry Ordway proposed drastic measures: “Why don’t we just kill him?”

Even back when Superman finally died fighting the monster Doomsday in 1992’s Superman #25, nobody thought it would last. The Death of Superman immediately gave way to Funeral For a Friend, which in turn led into Reign of the Superman. By the time that story closed in October of 1993, the original Superman was back, albeit with a period-appropriate mullet. More importantly, from DC’s standpoint, the readers were back, and Superman comics spiked in sales.

Such stunts are hardly new to comics. The first company-wide crossover (something discussed in this week’s comics newsletter), Marvel Super Heroes Secret Wars, was designed explicitly to help sell action figures. Characters are redesigned and changed to match the actors who play them in film and television, as seen when Marvel changed Nick Fury from a grizzled old white guy to a hip bald Black man or Agatha Harkness was transformed from a crone to a sassy middle-aged woman. And The Death of Superman worked so well that DC started killing or removing all of its major characters to replace them with different versions: Batman‘s back was broken, Green Lantern turned evil, Artemis became the new Wonder Woman, and Green Arrow blew up in a plane.

In short, these are cash grabs, marketing techniques driving stories. But My Adventures with Superman proves that it’s not all they are. However craven the original intentions, these stories have sparked something in the audience, making them worthy of revisiting and adapting.

My Adventures With Superman is a perfect example. In the show’s telling, the battle is about who belongs on Earth: The foreigner Superman? Or the human Hank Henshaw?

The fight speaks to our time, when xenophobia and nationalism have been encouraged and legitimatized by those in power, while staying true to Superman’s core as an immigrant story. By swapping the clone Superboy of the original story with the modern Superboy Jon Kent, the son of Clark and Lois, the story also becomes about overcoming fear, letting the next generation succeed you, and fighting for a better tomorrow.