Man of Steel and Superman’s Best Alien Invasion Stories

Repeatedly in the course of the ramp-up to Man of Steel‘s theatrical release this summer, director Zack Snyder, producer Christopher Nolan and others involved with the production of the film said that they had set out to make a very different, much more science fiction-y Superman movie.Krypton, they said, had never really been all that well-explored, and they wanted to make Man of Steel a first contact story, focusing on the way humanity would deal with the realization that they weren’t alone in the universe.The film, then, dealt with Superman–who had been living in secret and performing smaller-scale heroics anonymously for years–finally having to out himself publicly after the discovery of his Kryptonian heritage set off a chain reaction of events that brought General Zod and his army of Phantom Zone criminals to Earth for blood. It was an alien invasion story, to be sure, including the wrinkle–one that rubbed a lot of people the wrong way–that Superman had to first take out the alien technology before he could even handle the one-on-one fighting part of the film.In preparation for tomorrow’s big release of Man of Steel on Blu-ray and DVD, ComicBook.com thought it would be a good time to look back at some of our favorite alien invasion stories from Superman’s history.There are a lot of almost-kinda-sorta alien invasion stories (Doomsday, for instance, is technically an alien, but he didn’t bring an army with him or invade from the skies so it’s a bit different) and a lot of alien invasion stories that are almost-kinda-sorta Superman stories (like DC One Million), but we’re going to try and focus here just on big Superman stories that deal with alien invasions. Let us know which ones you think we missed!