The second part of Morrison and Quietly's love-letter to Superman is a bright, beautiful, colorful and deeply moving comic. Superman is dying, exposed to too much solar radiation thanks to Lex Luthor's trickery. He has twelve might tasks to perform before he dies, and to get his adopted planet ready for a world without a Superman. The strange and backward Bizarro World attacks, replacement supermen try to supplant his role, and of course Lex Luthor is waiting for his chance to strike.

This is gorgeous, epic, mad, oddly gentle in parts, and sometimes came about as damn close to moving me to tears as anything I've ever read. Morrison makes the myth of the alien who protects his world, saving it while at the same time urging us to save ourselves, into a celebration of all that's amazing about superhero comics, of the past, the present and the future, with typical Morrisonian simultaneity. Of course, there are precious few comics - or books or films or anything - as lovely as this, so get it and enjoy it and surreptitiously wipe away the odd tear of joy.