by Grant Morrison, Frank Quitely and Jamie Grant
Everybody rightly remembers the gorgeous emotional efficiency of that scene on the ledge from earlier in the series, where Superman stops a young woman from killing herself, but I always found the emotional heart of All-Star Superman in the final issue, when Luthor finally sees the world like his most hated enemy does.
Quitely is a master of the hyper-tableaus, capturing static moments of brilliance, but the emotional heft of the moment on Lex Luthor's face when he sees how the universe really works - and Superman was right all along! - has more power than a million exploding suns.
Luthor is the biggest dipshit in the DC universe, whatever continuity it is, his base jealousness so terribly petty, when he could change the world any time he can. Instead, he tries to beat up the one guy in the world who just wants to help everybody, and it's only when he siphons off enough of Kal-El's abilities that he sees the world on some metaphysical spectrum.
For all the good it does him - Superman flies off to be some kind of gnostic god in the sun at the end, but Luthor is just a punk with a broken jaw, lying the street, full of regrets and missed opportunities, as the guy he hates more than anything tells him that he could have saved the world years ago, if it really mattered to him.
But if even a shithead like Luthor can see beyond the pettiness of his immediate concerns, there is hope for all of us. This version of Superman - the ultimate ideal of the character, created by a writer who isn't afraid to let the snark slide away and embrace the ideological purity of the big man - has many lessons to teach us, and they're all so super.
And maybe there is just a giant thought behind everything, that connects us all, and has the universe sitting up and admiring itself, and it's properly nice to know that this thought is probably 'be excellent to each other'.
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