The is how that question was answered on the D.C. message board.
regularguy
Posts: 3,719
Registered: 12/19/03
Re: How did Superman come back to life???
Posted: Sep 6, 2005 6:29 PM Reply
Superman had pretty much depleted his extensive solar reserves in the fight against Doomsday (which also involved Doomsday pounding on him pretty damn badly). At the end of it, Supes went into a coma (and then some). If he'd been left out on a rooftop with sunshine beating down on him, maybe he would've recuperated -- but stupid humans that we are, we sealed him into a coffin and sealed the coffin up in a crypt and otherwise cut him off from the stuff that powers his abilities.
So, instead, he eventually died; his soul left the weakening comatose body and everything. As it happens, though, Jonathan Kent was having an out-of-body experience right about then as well, and convinced his adopted son not to go into the light, and so the soul went back in, and --
-- well, that would've been useless *too*, in the long run; if his body had been left there much longer, it would've gradually gotten worse and that would've been it. But that's when the robot from Krypton hauled Superman's body down to the Antarctic, right under the hole in the ozone layer where intense yellow sunlight comes streaming in *unfiltered*, and, man, Supes started recuperating. It took time, sure, and when he finally regained consciousness his powers still had a lot of recharging to do. But he was on his way back.
Now, if things had gone a little differently, forget about it. If he'd exhausted his solar reserves *without* defeating Doomsday, and then had his head ripped off his powerless body -- dead. If his soul had just gone on to the afterlife, or if his body had remained cut off from the rays of a yellow sun just a little longer -- dead. But he got lucky.