If there is an afterlife that rewards a life well lived, I'd say he's more than earned that eternal cape in lieu of angel's wings.
I was there on the day Superman died. It doesn't really matter where there was, because I was no where near him. That didn't really matter. For as long as I could remember, Superman was the hero. There was nothing that he couldn't do, and nothing that he wouldn't do to help someone. And then he died. It wasn't noble, or even particularly brave, but one moment he was there, with us, the symbol of everything we hoped we could be, and the next, he was just another lifeless lump of flesh, with no more meaning and no more heroism. Not one more time would the day be saved.
And I looked around at recent events, and really thought about things, and I realized what killed Superman. It wasn't Kryptonite, or a madman's weapon. It wasn't a group of supervillains that just happened to be stronger than him. Superman died when we finally realized that we weren't safe, and that the best we could do would never be good enough. Superman died when we lost hope, when we lost faith, and unlike fairies, no amount of clapping would bring him back.
We killed Superman, with our fear, with our pettyness and with our hate. Superman died when we didn't bother to drop change in the bum's cup, and when we decided that hitting first was better than ever getting hurt ourselves.
"Sometimes, when was Supe was stopping crimes, I'll bet he was tempted to just quit, turn his back on man, and join Tarzan in the forest. But he stayed in the city, kept on changing clothes in dirty old phone booths, until his work was through- nothing to do but go on..... Sometimes I despair that the world will never see another man like him." - The Crash Test Dummies
