Superman Solved Marvel’s Biggest Crisis In A Single Page

Superman is more than just another comic book hero – he is arguably the most influential superhero in the medium’s history. Since his initial publication in Action Comics #1, the Last Son of Krypton has become the template for dozens of future superheroes that came after him. As a character, Superman is best understood as the archetypal good samaritan and a kindhearted boy scout who tirelessly fights for truth justice, and the American way. But sometimes Superman can be so nice that people sometimes forget just how ridiculously powerful he is. In fact, Superman is actually so strong that he once single-handedly fixed the biggest crisis in Marvel history- and it was so easy for him that it wasn’t even the main focus of the issue.

From 2013-15, the biggest event going on in Marvel comics was the incursions, a cosmic disaster that first started in the pages of Jonathan Hickman’s New Avengers but soon ballooned in size to encompass the entire Marvel Universe in scope. The incursions was the name given to an unexplained natural disaster where different, parallel versions of Marvel’s Earth would start to crash into one another for unexplained reasons, causing a ripple effect that would destroy them and the universes they inhabit. For over a year Marvel’s Illuminati worked in secret to try and understand this crisis and find a solution. But while they tried to solve it, the Illuminati ultimately failed.

The Illuminati tries almost every solution imaginable to stop the parallel worlds from colliding, including at one point using the Infinity Gauntlet to try and move the earth somewhere else. Unable to stop the incursions from happening, Namor the Sub-Mariner resolves to simply start destroying the alternate earths to save his own, a move that causes a rift in the Illuminati and causes the other members to turn against him. Yet mysteriously nothing seemed to work, and the Illuminati finally settle on having to destroy the other realities to save their own.

Over the course of Hickman’s run, the increasingly desperate and immoral measures the Illuminati took to save their universe led the group to become wanted criminals and would ultimately cause Captain America and Iron Man to fight to the death over whether the Illuminati was even justified in the first place. The entire New Avengers storyline – and Hickman’s follow-up event to conclude the story Secret Wars – was an intricate and ambitious storyline three years in the making meant to showcase hope in the face of hopelessness and the lengths that some people would go to save their world. But for DC’s Superman, a crisis like this can be fixed in just one page, with no moral dilemma or sacrifice required.

While the incursions in Hickman’s New Avengers began in 2013, Superman had already confronted a near-identical threat ten years earlier. In Adventures of Superman #617, written by Joe Casey and penned by Charlie Adlard, Superman receives word that a parallel version of Earth has just entered his universe and is on a collision course with the planet. But unlike New Avengers this isn’t the start of a grand ambitious Superman story for the fate of the universe – it’s just part of a cold open to set up the plot of the rest of the issue. While Black Panther and Iron Man are forced to make the impossible decision to possibly sacrifice one world to save another, all Superman needs to do to stop an incursion is move really fast.

Like in New Avengers, the opening pages of Adventures of Superman #617 explain that the parallel “phantom” planet entering his universe will collide with the earth and that the resulting explosion will cause the universe to destabilize and, according to one scientist, destroy the universe itself. To stop this from happening Superman flies out to space and begins vibrating himself at the same frequency as the phantom earth, turning it intangible and making the two planets harmlessly pass through one another. This allows the phantom earth to return to its home universe, saving the world. And what’s more impressive is that all of this happens in just one page.

Superman stopping an incursion is impressive, but it’s made even better because Hickman’s New Avengers actually acknowledges how effective Superman would be during a crisis like this. Among the many Superman clones in Marvel New Avengers introduces a parody of the Justice League in the form of Sun God and his hero team The Great Society. When the Illuminati first encounters the Great Society in New Avengers #16, they are stunned that a parallel universe is able to handle the Incursions so effectively when every other world they found was destroyed. Sun God and his Great Society were portrayed in New Avengers as being ideal moral paragons for refusing to compromise other people’s lives to save their own universe.

The Illuminati would later be forced to fight (and kill!) the Great Society in New Avengers #19-21, and this fight is meant to be the final moment where the Illuminati (sans Namor of course) realizes they’ve crossed the line and can no longer endanger other worlds to save their own. All of the desperate measures the Illuminati took to fight the incursions were portrayed as inferior to Sun God and his optimism, and after the fight, only Namor is willing to continue destroying worlds while the rest of the Illuminati abandons him to look for other solutions.

It’s especially ironic that the Illuminati fought a version of  Superman in New Avengers considering the real Superman solved DC’s incursion so easily. But it also shows one of the major philosophical differences between DC and Marvel heroes. The incursions in Marvel represent a tragedy that brings out the best and the worst in its characters and was meant to test their flaws and the face of adversity. Meanwhile, DC’s Adventures of Superman shows how the optimism and the desire to do good that is at the core of Superman’s character can triumph over seemingly impossible odds no matter what.