Superman: The Earth Stealers (1988)
Superman: The Earth Stealers (1988)
In The Earth Stealers, some aliens come along and steal the Earth. When Superman goes over to their ship and tells them to cut that out and put the planet back in its place, the aliens (led by a pudgy yellow man with pointy ears and a magnificent mustache) read Superman’s mind and find out who his best friends are. Next they abduct Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen and Perry White and force Superman to wrestle a super-strong black giant for their amusement, otherwise they’ll incinerate the whole Earth and sell its natural resources.
Superman defeats the black giant with cleverness and also punches, and this causes the yellow dwarf to go “Fuck this! Fuck everything!” and press the self-destruct button on the giant planet-stealing ship. The aliens evacuate the vessel, but it’s stated that this was a dumb move because now they’ll all slowly starve to death in the middle of space. Meanwhile, Superman manages to prevent the ship’s self-destruction and then Jimmy, Lois and Perry drive it back to our solar system (on Superman’s impulse). Superman then asks Perry not to report this story because the people of Earth must never know how close they came to being tossed into a star-sized incinerator. He also fries Jimmy’s photo cartridge with his heat vision just to be on the safe side, and because he’s a dick.
Plotline-Watch:
Despite being a one-shot graphic novel (released on the occasion of Superman’s 50th birthday), this story actually contains some important plot developments. Lois mentions to Perry that she found out Clark Kent and Superman were raised as brothers (in Action #597), but she’s starting to think that’s hooey. Proving she’s not so dumb after all, Lois points out that Superman and Clark are never seen on the same place at the same time, and Perry says “You’re not suggesting…” but then they both get abducted by aliens, so they never finish the conversation.
But the most important (and erotic) moment comes later when Superman is about to risk his life to push the massive ship through space as his friends pilot it – Lois acknowledges that they’ve had some troubles lately (most recently, the Wonder Woman thing) but she still has feelings for him and they kiss for the first time. The Superman/Lois relatioship is gonna be a central part of the next ten years of stories, so that’s a huge moment, and it’s appropriate that it’s represented as a big panel drawn by Curt Swan and Jerry Ordway. I also think the whole situation parallels the big kiss before Superman goes off to get killed by Doomsday.
Anyway, I wonder what Lois’ long neglected boyfriend Jose Delgado was doing at that exact moment. Probably falling off his bed and becoming even more paralyzed for life.
Comments-Watch:
Some people have been leaving comments through various means and it pisses me off not to be able to reply back (even if just to say “You’re right, I totally forgot about that”) so I installed a comments thingy on the blog! You have to go to the actual page, though; I won’t be able to reply back if you leave a comment through the dashboard.
See comments on Tumblr: https://superman86to99.tumblr.com/post/68281214763/superman-the-earth-stealers-1988-in-the-earth#disqus_thread
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