When the squid-like alien spacecraft appeared over Metropolis, armed forces around the world witnessed the astonishing scene through live broadcasts. The "meteor" that had appeared on aviation department monitoring equipment turned out to be an alien spacecraft.
Buildings lit up as people woke from their dreams, and countless experts rushed into their offices. They had thought this would be the most thrilling moment of their lives—alien life had truly visited Earth!
But then an even more jaw-dropping scene unfolded: Superman appeared and punched the spacecraft apart, shattering everyone's fantasies of a friendly close encounter of the third kind.
Superman stood in the night wind, his cape snapping sharply. Metropolis grew brighter and brighter beneath the night sky, nearly drowning him in light. The shock and fear in the eyes of his fully armed fellow Kryptonians standing on the skiffs seemed small, no different from those of humans.
That finally made him understand that the one capable of changing everything was not the Kryptonians, but him—Clark Kent.
The noise of helicopter rotors rose, and the sirens became increasingly piercing, but Clark's thoughts began to drift away. He recalled what had happened several months earlier.
A man in a plaid shirt walked downstairs holding a cup of coffee, raising a hand to greet his colleagues. One of them stopped him and said, "Mr. Kent, you have a letter."
"A letter for me? Is it a bill? Why wasn't it sent to my apartment?"
"Not sure. Maybe it's fan mail. Here."
Clark took the letter from him, set his coffee aside, and opened the envelope. What he saw was not an ordinary sheet of paper, but a faintly glowing invitation bearing the words, "Battleworld Invitation."
The sunset beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows of his apartment looked like a painting slowly dissolving. Clark's handsome profile