Superman Returns (to newspapers)!

Looks like Captain America's been upstaged.

DC Comics and USA Today have announced that the Superman serial feature from DC's upcoming Wednesday Comics weekly series will also be published in USA Today, in print and then online. The first edition will appear in the print edition of USA Today on July 8, the day Wednesday Comics #1 arrives on store shelves.

The twelve subsequent Superman strips will appear on USA Today's website.

For the uninitiated, Wednesday Comics is a twelve-week anthology series on oversized newsprint, featuring fifteen different stories for $3.99 per issue. Other DC characters to be featured in the series include Batman, Wonder Woman, the Metal Men and Sgt. Rock.

The Superman feature will be written by John Arcudi with art by Lee Bermejo.

This marks the Man of Steel's return to serialized newspaper strips for the first time since the original Superman newspaper strip ended in May of 1966. While he isn't the only comic book superhero to have a newspaper strip (Spider-Man has been quietly trucking on in syndication since 1977), the deal does bring a lot of exposure to DC's weekly book, which USA Today seems committed to promoting.