Superman: Peace On Earth
After helping to start the Christmas season in Metropolis; Superman finds a starving young woman that leads to him look up the topic of world hunger. Wanting to help, Superman proposes to the United Nations to help to end world hunger through the gesture of spending a day delivering as much food as he can to settlements that need it anywhere on the planet, an idea met with significant controversy but ultimately given the go-ahead. With tankers filled with food, Superman flies to starving and impoverished locations all over the Earth, and is met with varying levels of gratitude, praise, fear and frenzy. Eventually, Superman arrives in a country whose militarized government warns against his help. In response to his persistence, they fire a chemical-weapon missile at where he is, with civilians below. He attempts to save the people by sending the cloud of poison into space, but the tanker is damaged and the food is poisoned. In the end, Superman makes a statement to the press, quoting the old phrase Give a man a fish and he eats for a day. Teach a man how to fish and he eats for a lifetime. His message to the world is for everyone to share their knowledge to anyone in need. He asks for the world to inspire others in hopes for true peace to live on.
The story in Peace on Earth was conceived based on the Superman stories from the 1940s, specifically, the World War II-era stories where Superman would go out and fix the world's problems. In explaining the reason why he fails, Alex Ross said that the lesson Superman learns in Peace on Earth is that he leads by example, instead of becoming the brawn that humanity doesn't and shouldn't have. The artwork gave Superman another nod to which he has been alluded: a stand-in for Jesus Christ.
Read more about this topic: The World's Greatest Super-Heroes
Famous quotes containing the words peace and/or earth:
“So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
—Bible: New Testament, Ephesians 2:17.
“The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)