SILVER AGE SUPERMAN SEMI-REALISTICALLY MAKES THE EARTH MOVE (and not for Lois or Diana...)

[alschroeder3]

DC heroes tended towards the near-omnipotent; Flash routinely exceeded lightspeed; Green Lantern has the mightiest weapon in the universe, one that can move worlds; and Superman--partly because of Golden Age competition with the even-more popular Captain Marvel--went from Hulk-level strength, leaping ability, and Quicksilver-like speed--to able to bathe in the sun's core, exceed lightspeed, travel through time--and move worlds, by sheer strength and his powers of flight.(Captain Marvel may have moved worlds first.)

It was ridiculous, but it also made for some interesting food for speculation, for fun thought experiments, for trying to figure if he had ANY limts.

And once...JUST once...they made it quasi-believable.

Sometimes they made it too ridiculous, like in the story that introduced the Legion of Super-Pets (would I kid you?) where alien Brain-Globes built a machine to move Earth to their solar system. After the super-pets flew off, Superboy noticed something a little...off.

Blew the earth back in position. Oy. Maybe it was off by just a few millimeters?

In an even more ridiculous story, Superboy is showed supposedly dragging a long chain of worlds out of a "dying galaxy".

Personally, I choose to believe the planets invented an inertialess, reactionless drive (like the one that moved the Puppeteer worlds in Ringworld) and just needed Superboy to steer the planets to the next galaxy. That's my story/rationalization and I'm sticking to it.

Because when Superman does move the Earth, it's more often shown as to be near the limits of his strength. Even a few inches...as shown in an Adam Strange team-up in DC COMICS PRESENTS when Rann and Earth exchanged solar systems.

The Silver Age Superman was so powerful, that when Superman was being tortured by a supersonic siren that was filling his super-hearing, he flew to a white dwarf/neutron star and...

...assistant editor E.Nelson Bridwell had to EXPLAIN why Superman was straining to lift MILLIONS of tons--because the Earth weighs SEXTILLIONS of tons. (ENB explained the huge gravity of the white dwarf made it all the more difficult.)

(One has to marvel at Superman's control. Walking around the Daily Planet, with millions of tons in his ears, he most have been "flying" enough to offset the weight. Too much flight, and he would have gone through the ceiling. If he had relaxed the flight at all, he would have immediately fallen through the floor, the foundation, and probably most of the earth's mantle, doubltess taking a sizable chunk of the Daily Planet with it.)

There was also a Justice League where Superman had to stop Hawkman's Thanagarian ship from crashing into a neutron star, lifting it from its gravity well before the crash, and he said, "I never felt so exhausted." He has limits.

They're just ridiculous ones.

I'd like to say this was only a facet of the Silver Age Superman, and that the Nu52 Superman had more realistic, saner limits. But that...would be a lie.

That's Dr. Veritas talking. Where she got machines that could simulate the pull of the entire Earth I've yet to figure out. She did make Superman sweat a little, though.

Of course, anyone who thinks about this realizes how impossible this is. Superman in the DC COMICS PRESENTS might have flattened the mountaintop he was pushing on, or even pushed it right through the earth, but there's no way he could move the entire Earth, right? It doesn't matter if he has the power. A bacteria as strong as a grown human being could punch through a human being, making a pinpoint puncture, but wouldn't have the sheer size to push the entire human. Similarly, Superman shouldn't be able to move the entire Earth.

Was Superman's earth-moving ever portrayed in a plausible manner?

Not quite. But one was a better effort than others. In fact, by trying to give it some semblence of realism, they added to the drama.

Jim Shooter, in the mid-to-late sixties, plainly influenced by the Marvel comics at the time, made the Legion of Super-Heroes much more dramatic, introduced new Superman villains like the Parasite, and foes for the Legion like the Fatal Five (one of which, Validus, who was even stronger than Superboy/Superman) or the Sun-Eater (clearly influenced by Fred Hoyle's THE BLACK CLOUD) and in one really odd story where Superman was convinced he was the Flash, and Flash was convinced he was Superman...

...At the end faced the REAL menace...and he and Flash came up with a unique solution.

Justice League members ROUTINELY faced Galactus-level threats. Even when they're Galactus-level house plants.

So how much of the Matto Grosso did Superman destroy? Hopefully he and Flash reseeded it afterwards. Between the two of them, reseeding a hundred square miles of Matto Grosso would have probably taken ten minutes.

Okay, yeah, that wouldn't work. Unless he made a solid surface all the way through the Earth's core and beyond...but Shooter tried. The bit when the Earth had tremors all over the globe emphasized the sheer scale of the power we're talking about.

This was before the JLAers revealed their IDs to each other, so this was the first time Barry knew Clark was Superman, and the first time Clark knew Barry was Flash. This was the best part of a goofy story, and the most "realistic" portrayal of Superman moving the Earth...

It wouldn't work in real life, but it was better than seeing Superman just push against the dirt and supposedly moving a world...

Hmm. Maybe Superman's flight is a biological intertialess, reactionless drive, a la Larry Niven's Puppeteers?

Comments

[ozaline]

I liked in PAD's run on Supergirl when Linda saw Kara doing a handstand and asked what she was doing. Kara explains that she heard a meteor was going to impact Earth so she was going to move Earth out of the way. Linda explained how that isn't possible, makes less sense then destroying or diverting the meteor which the JLA was surely already taking care of, and would kill everyone even if it was possible.

[q99]

I remember the time in Super Friends where the Legion of Doom sent yellow meteors at Earth, the Super Friends only sent Green Lantern to deal with it, he realized he couldn't affect yellow (!), so moved the Earth out of the way instead (!!), which it turns out, was the Legion of Doom's plan all along (!!!).


Using GL rings does seem the most sensible way to do it, since they can believably distribute force....

[leoboiko]

PSA: Please don't burn Mato Grosso to push Earth around, as it's a irreplaceable treasure of incredible biodiversity. Next time, try some of the countless acres of pastureland, where native forests were already burned anyway.

[alicemacher]

Not to worry! Before burning Mato Grosso, Superman obviously would've used his super-disk-imaging powers to create a backup of its entire ecosystem, for handy super-restoration of it later.

[bruinsfan]

For flat-out insane scope of Superman's powers, I think this example is hard to beat.

[alschroeder3]

I try to rationalize it that we're missing a word. It was a "shooting" star. A meteorite.

Yeah, that's thin. Meteorites aren't aflame.

Still better than the alternative.

My theory...

[7dialsmystery]

In an even more ridiculous story, Superboy is showed supposedly dragging a long chain of worlds out of a "dying galaxy".


They were really small planets. Like North Kai in Dragonball.

[jmacq1]

Random side-note: That depiction of Barry in the final panel looks so much like a comic-ified Stephen Amell it's kind of eerie.