Metropolis is often presented as a shining, idyllic city dutifully protected by one of the most iconic superheroes in DC Comics history: Superman. With his incredible power, Superman has saved the day countless times and ensured that no life was lost. Yet because Superman lives in Metropolis, the city also becomes a target for some of the most powerful and dangerous supervillains in the universe. And despite Superman’s best efforts, even he can’t always prevent his home from falling into ruin at the hands of these evildoers. These are some of the worst disasters which have devastated Metropolis and have left Superman heartbroken.
With a city inhabited by dozens of god-like heroes and villains, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that some of their battles have leveled Metropolis.
Superman is a hero who’ll never go all out if there are civilians nearby, and that’s exactly what the Legion of Doom and Leviathan were counting on. In “Metropolis Doom,” the two supervillain organizations banded together to destroy the Man of Steel. To make sure he’d hold back, the villains attacked him in the heart of Metropolis, in Shuster Park. Even with support from both the Justice League and Young Justice, Superman can’t prevent the battle from causing massive devastation. The entire park and all the surrounding neighborhoods were completely leveled in the conflict, leaving hundreds of people homeless, injured, or dead. Not even Superman’s attempts to surrender were enough to stop the Legion of Doom and Leviathan’s destructive rampage. Only when the two groups turned on each other did Superman and the rest of the heroes manage to gain the upper hand and defeat the villains. Still, a significant portion of Metropolis was reduced to a war zone.
Bizarro is a villain who’s defined by his sense of isolation. After he was separated from Bizarro World and couldn’t find his way back home, the twisted Superman doppelganger decided to remake Metropolis in his own backward image. Given Bizarro’s nature as Superman’s opposite, he discovered a natural affinity for the arcane arts after absorbing the magic from several powerful sorcerers. In the storyline “I, Bizarro,” the titular villain used his newfound mastery of magic to turn every citizen in Metropolis into Bizarro versions of themselves. Even Superman struggled to keep from turning into another Bizarro and going on a rampage. With everyone turning into backward-thinking Bizarros, Metropolis fell into immediate anarchy. Firefighters started fires, drivers and pilots crashed their vehicles, and everyday citizens wreaked havoc everywhere they went. Luckily, with the help of a sane Bizarro Joker, Superman overpowered his backwards split personality and cured every one of their Bizarro transformations.
Lex Luthor is the type of egotistical madman who tries to take down the entirety of Metropolis with him when he thinks he’s dying. In “Fall of Metropolis,” Luthor implants his brain into a younger clone body. However, when the clone body starts to deteriorate and his crimes are exposed to the world, Luthor spirals and lashes out. To keep Superman and the authorities off his back, Luthor threatens to destroy Metropolis with a series of missiles he hid beneath the city. But when Superman captured Luthor, the villain’s assistant launches the missiles anyway. As the missiles come crashing down into Metropolis, Superman, Supergirl, and Superboy do their best to stop as many as they can. Yet even with their super-speed, they can’t stop them all. This results in downtown being destroyed. Even worse, Luthor’s failsafe also includes killer robots attacking Metropolis and kicking the city while it is down. Thankfully, Metropolis is already evacuated, and no lives are lost.
When facing a villain capable of universal destruction, Superman faces an impossible decision. “Our Worlds at War” centers on Superman battling Imperiex, who’s the personification of the Big Bang. Imperiex sought to destroy not just Earth, but the entire universe with the use of killer androids that can destroy planets. These killer robots were unleashed upon Earth. There were so many robots attacking worldwide at the same time that Superman couldn’t prevent some of them from crash-landing in Metropolis. And although they didn’t destroy Earth, Imperiex’s androids went on a genocidal rampage in Metropolis that claimed the lives of thousands of people. Even worse, Superman is forced to make the horrible decision to leave his home defenseless so that he can focus on stopping Imperiex from annihilating the entire universe. Even after saving the universe and destroying the last of Imperiex’s drones, Superman is still haunted by his decision to abandon Metropolis for the greater good.
The Superman tale “Phantom Zone: The Final Chapter” was the last canonical tale of the original DC Universe before it was rebooted during the Crisis on Infinite Earths event. With that in mind, the writers unleashed the biggest disaster Metropolis had ever faced without worrying about long-term consequences. The story revealed that the Phantom Zone was once home to a powerful wizard named Aethyr until Krypton began dumping its worst prisoners there with him. Blaming Jor-El for unloading Kryptonian criminals into his home dimension, Aethyr sought vengeance against the scientist’s son, Superman. Aethyr empowered Mr. Mxyzptlk and instructed the Fifth Dimensional Imp to toss the Kryptonian Argo City at Metropolis. To keep Superman occupied, Aethyr unleashed General Zod and the rest of the Phantom Zone’s inmates to attack the Man of Steel. Superman failed to stop Argo City from crashing into Metropolis and exploding into a cloud of toxic Kryptonite gas. Nearly every single person in Metropolis died, and Superman could do nothing but watch his home reduced to a Kryptonite-irradiated crater.
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