From: Superman #156 (October 1962)
Not a dream. Not an imaginary story. Superman is dying in the three-part "novel" "The Last Days of Superman". What is a loyal dog to do?
Some context: A chest made of kryptonite crashes to Earth bearing samples of Virus X, a germ lethal to Kryptonians. Superman reads all about it from afar as trusty cub reporter and photographer Jimmy Olsen opens the thing. Before it's too late, Superman smashes a boulder on the chest so hard it's buried in the center of the Earth. But no, it WAS too late, because Superman feels faint, and a doctor soon tells him he has less than a month to live. So to prevent Supergirl and the Kandorians from catching this super-flu, he makes himself a glass tank and gives all his friends - Superman robots, Supergirl, the Superman Emergency Squad, the Legion of Super-Heroes, Kryto and, uhm, mermaids...
...various tasks he wanted to accomplish in life, but now can't. Superman's plans for Earth are pretty freaky. They include digging canals for when we need them just like Mars did, destroying a rogue planet on a collision course with ours "some day", terraforming Antarctica to solve our overpopulation problem, and more immediate stuff like destroying killer space fungus with electrified iron bars...
...and shrinking down a giant sea monster who would eventually kaiju it up on the surface world.
On his last day, Superman carves his farewell and that he was also Clark Kent in giant letters on the Moon surface with his heat vision. Boy won't we all be surprised when the clouds part later that night! Well, turns out he HADN'T contracted Virus X, cuz those samples were dead. Mon-El's ghost appears to reveal there's been a green K pebble jammed in Jimmy's camera since the chest got struck by the boulder. Haha. Silver Age yucks! So Krypto's got ONE LAST JOB TO DO.
Erase his master's stupid mistake - like, this would have been up there FOREVER, can't you just write a postcard and mail it to Lois or something?! - before the weather changes. Thank God for puppers.
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