Line #9 Headscratchers/KingdomCome


1	[[folder:Power Girl's fate]]
2	* The novelization of ''ComicBook/KingdomCome'' says that Power Woman/Girl dies in the nuclear blast, but if Superman survived the blast why didn't she if she's presumably Kryptonian in this universe too? It just doesn't add up.
3	** Less absorbed sunlight in her tissue at that point in time?
4	*** It's directly stated Superman's invulnerability has never been higher due to his age, and the fact that he's been absorbing sunlight for decades more. Power Woman is younger than Superman -- ergo she is less invulnerable.
5	*** Due to a smaller cup size and no boob window. See what ignoring FanService gets you?
6	** Or she's simply not Kryptonian in that universe.
7	*** Bingo, when Kingdom Come came out, she was still officially an Atlantean.
8	*** But wait, If she isn't his cousin in the ComicBook/KingdomCome time line, then how come in the JSA story that crossed over with ComicBook/KingdomCome it's her that's his BerserkButton upon returning? Also he calls her Kara. Was that still her name during the Atlantean era?
9	*** That was her name during the Atlantean period of her history. The reason that the main Earth Power Girl tried to connect with Kingdom Come Superman was because of his age, and his powers, he was much like her cousin, Kal-L of Earth-2 who was murdered by Superboy-Prime in ''ComicBook/InfiniteCrisis''. This was an event of ExpendableAlternateUniverse being averted.
10	** Even if she ''is'' the Earth-2 Kara, the Earth-2 Kryptonians are {{Nerfed}} compared to their Earth-1 counterparts. Kal-L didn't have powers approaching those of Earth-1 Kal-El (in his prime, not years and years later as in KC) until he was in middle age.
11	** Worth noting, she did survive. She shows up in later ''Kingdom Come'' tie-ins. She might've simply decided ScrewThisImOuttaHere after the nuclear blast, to grieve while the others talked Superman down.
12	[[/folder]]
13
14	[[folder:DCU characters]]
15	* What happened to all the characters of the DCU not used in ComicBook/KingdomCome?
16	** Dead or retired? That seemed to be the implication when I read it.
17	** Many of them are "exploring distant worlds or other times". Most notably ''Comicbook/{{Superboy}}'' and ''Comicbook/{{Supergirl}}'' joined the ''Comicbook/LegionOfSuperHeroes''.
18	** If Alex Ross doesn't like you, you ''don't exist''. Ask poor Kyle Rayner.
19	*** C'mon, they didn't include Guy or Hal or John Stewart either. Kyle had been around for less than a year when this story was written. The League in this story entirely consists of iconic old school heroes while Kyle at the time was YoungerAndHipper, one of the trends being deconstructed in this very story.
20	** While the book uses DC characters it doesn't 100% share it's continuity. It's simply another universe.
21	[[/folder]]
22
23	[[folder: Captain Marvel stopping the missile]]
24	* Why is Captain Marvel's HeroicSacrifice treated like a viable third option? He stops the bomb, but it still explodes and kills him and many metahumans. If he let Superman deal with it, wouldn't Superman have prevented it from killing ''anybody''? Then again I'm not quite familiar with the limits of either Superman or Marvel's powers, am I missing information that would help?
25	** Superman would have prevented it from killing anybody, and the war of supers would have raged unchecked across the world leaving devastation in its wake. The two options were letting humanity destroy the supers, or letting the supers destroy humanity. It was a Third Option because he found a way to instead help them live together in relative peace.
26	*** And said Third Option HAD to involve a mass murder? Hell, this is STILL unresolved at the end of the story, the New Heroes should be absolutely furious, but because they got lectured at on Themiscyra for a few months they just forget about it? It a great story overall, but the writer really underestimated humanitys need for revenge when they are wronged.
27	*** At that point, yes. The bomb wasn't just going to go away by itself. The heroes weren't just going to stop fighting. It was either that, let the bomb kill all the heroes, or stop the bomb and let the heroes fight until the entire planet was reduced to rubble, or minimise the casualties on both sides. As for unresolved, it is resolved. Never mind the new heroes, you seem to be forgetting that ''Superman'' is so pissed by what happened that he almost goes on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge and has to be talked down. By the end, the survivors on both sides are clearly so shaken and sickened by events that they decide there's been enough bloodshed and decide to mend their ways, because the alternative was just to get caught in the same cycle of violence once again. Never mind the writer, you seem to be underestimating just how sick of pointless, endless bloodshed for no gain whatsoever humanity (and superhumanity) can get.
28	** So at that point the bomb was always going off. It was too close. Superman may have been killed if he took it out point blank. I think Marvel chose to preserve as much as he could.
29	** Another point: according to the comic and the {{Novelization}}, the bomb was ''specifically'' made to be immune to Superman's powers - you might notice heat vision bouncing off the bomb. In order for Superman to stop it, he'd have had to have been in ''physical contact'' with the bomb - which ''would'' have killed him. Shazam was able to set off the bomb before its timed explosion using ''magic''.
30	[[/folder]]
31
32	[[folder:Von Bach]]
33	* If Von Bach is German, then why is he dictator of Yugoslavia?
34	** Who says he's German? He could be Austrian, which makes a little more sense considering it's a bit closer, and fits with his whole "Hitler {{expy}}" thing. The way I see it he either moved there to take it over, or he just speaks German to be pretentious. He doesn't even really speak good German. "No trouble, Cosmonaut" indeed.
35	** Confirmed in the {{Novelization}}. Von Bach was pretending to be German because he thinks its cool. Adam Blake calls him out on it pointing out that only Movie Germans would say "Schweinhund" the way Von Bach does instead of "Schwein" (that usage of the word has been out of favor in Germany for about a century now.)
36	** He's a non-Yugoslavian who basically invaded it and took over. Simple.
37	[[/folder]]
38
39	[[folder:Magog's age]]
40	* So, how old was Magog? He acted very young, acted rashly, talked about how he heard of Superman being outdated, etc. But when he takes the helmet off, he looks as old as Bruce.
41	** He said "people were calling you old-fashioned when I was a teenager". Due to ComicBookTime, Superman has always been around "about 10 years", and the timeline of this story adds another 10 years. So that puts Magog's age at about 35 - 45, depending on how old a teenager Magog was and what stage in Superman's career they were calling him outdated. But you're right; he does look older. Maybe he's just seen a lot of battle? Or maybe his powers rely on drugs or something that take a toll on his health?
42	** Magog is based on Cable, who is also an older man so maybe Magog had a time-traveling origin story like Cable? He could have spent decades in a different time.
43	** TheNovelization establishes he's been wandering the irradiated areas of Kansas for months, and it's taken its toll.
44	** Hard-living can prematurely age someone. I suspect that Magog is the kind of guy who, on top of all the anti-hero fighting he does, basically smokes like a chimney, drinks like a fish and so forth, all of which works to make him look older than he actually is.
45	[[/folder]]
46
47	[[folder:Why did Superman forgive the people who sent the missile?]]
48	* Superman stops from killing the UN leaders. Okay, fair enough, no-killing rule, totally in-character. But then he (and the writers) simply forgives them for just killing a bunch of his old friends among other people. So Supes couldn't get along with Magog who killed exactly one person (who totally deserved it) but is ready to give a free card to motherf@><ing genocidal murderers? They should be jailed, tried and sentenced not offered to work together. And don't tell me 'They are elected heads of states': first it implies that [[ScrewTheRulesIMakeThem laws don't apply to them]] and second - so was Hitler.
49	** Well, their decision was entirely justifiable. They were sorta trying to save the world. Superman probably understood that.
50	** The 'Hitler' comparison isn't entirely fair, since this is hardly unprovoked aggression or anything; the superheroes (of either stripe) have been out of control for a good long while, even before Superman showed up, and even when he came back instead of working with the authorities they've in fact shown clear signs of taking over (for one example, building a superhuman prison on American soil without actually telling anyone beforehand). And now they're in a pitched battle that's threatening to engulf the entire planet and conceivably wipe out anyone who isn't a superhuman. They're completely out of control, and something needs to be done. Plus, the Superman / Magog example is kind of undercut by the fact that Superman eventually comes to forgive -- or at least come to an accord with -- Magog as well.
51	** What else was the UN supposed to do? We've seen various heroes duking it out -for fun- over the previous chapters, with civilians in the crossfire, and no normal person's been able to stop them. Dropping a nuke wasn't just a last resort, it was also the only weapon the UN had that had the potential to stop the supers.
52	** I think the bigger question is why Superman was allowed to leave when he nearly killed representatives of every country. I just realized reading this page; wouldn't doing that only make the relationships between the UN and superheroes even ''worse?''
53	** This implies that there was anybody left on the planet who had to ''decide'' to "allow" Superman to leave. At this point, if there's anybody left on the planet who could stand up to Superman it would be someone who'd survived the nuke, and one doubts that they'd be in much of a mood to argue the point, either. Sure the UN diplomats might raise a fuss in later negotiations, but the "superhuman war" apocalypse everyone was fearing had been effectively defused and everyone was probably relieved enough about that to go ahead and accept a cease-fire. Remember, this is probably the first time since the Magog trial that someone was in play who was both willing to negotiate with the humans and powerful enough to speak for the supers.
54	** At that point, everyone was probably just so relieved to not be a red smear on the wall that they decided to let the matter drop. Superman was successfully talked down, no one at the UN appears to have been seriously hurt, he could clearly argue "extreme emotional disturbance", it would be less "not allowing Superman to leave" and more "hoping Superman was in a mood to allow them to detain him" (seriously, we're asking why no one tried to detain ''the man who can punch through walls'') and it was at least partially the UN Council's fault that they found themselves in that position to begin with (they did kind of drop ''a doomsday bomb'' on him and his friends). In between risking exacerbating tensions once again and just letting bygones be bygones, it's hardly surprising that everyone went with the latter after what they'd all been through.
55	** The UN had projections that the superhuman war would spread from the Gulag in a few hours and completely consume the Earth. This, and the fact that superheroes were ''already'' destroying whole areas ''and'' the fact that '''an entire state got consumed by ''five'' superheroes''' which caused ''widespread famine'' (yes, America's breadbasket is ''that'' important)... the fact that ''all'' of them were localized in a single area. It was basically a ''Literature/FailSafe'' situation.
56	--->'''UN Secretary General:''' We saw you as gods.\
57	'''Superman:''' As we saw ourselves. We were both wrong.
58	* He's Superman, the Big Blue Boy Scout standing for Truth and Justice. And while the story nearly broke him, Norman was able to show him that he needed to be more empathetic with people to understand how to properly be their hero.
59	[[/folder]]
60
61	[[folder:Hawkman]]
62	* Soooo... how did Hawkman turn into a birdman, again?
63	Because Green Lantern became crazy because a yellow bug was in his brain and he turned evil. He tried to hit the reset button on the whole universe and made big portals appear and everything, things were turning white all over, and all kinds of nasty s* was going down. Hawkman (Carter Hall, a handsome white guy who was the reincarnation of an Egyptian guy and later found out he was actually Native American), Hawkman (Katar Hal, an alien from Thanagar who actually lived on earth without anybody knowing it, and was the founding member of the JLA until we found out it was actually Carter and some guy impersonating him the whole time), and Hawkgirl (Shayera Hal, Katar's wife and an alien who was sometimes the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess and a cowgirl) all got sucked into a portal and crunched together. Out came this big ugly bird-man who had the powers of all three. And the editors thought that this was LESS confusing than how things were before.
64	** Same reason the only living male Flash is either Jay Garrick or all the male flashes merged with the speed force and projecting as a singular being in Jay's image. Same reason Beast Boy can now only change into mythical creatures. The same reason the only Green Lanterns appear to be tied to the Golden Age Green Lantern.
65	** It's been confirmed that the Flash is Wally West.
66	** Basically, all of the above mentioned transformations were done with the goal of making the heroes less human, more godlike, to reinforce the theme. Superman is simply more powerful than ever, Batman uses a mech, Green Lantern has merged with his power battery and lives on a citadel in space, The Flash simply is speed incarnate, and so on.
67	* What I really think triggered the whole NAH running riot really was that having Magog's name cleared of charges gave the wrong message to the NAH generation - that they can take a life and create collateral damage and not take responsibility, which is what Kingdom Come really all about. It's not "NAH suck, GAH rule." Sure, it's what it looks like, but what Supes and all the others attempted to do is showing that generation that every action they do has to be done with responsibility. On the other hand, Supes' mistake was simple - a deconstruction of the superhero, if you will. Do people really need superheroes when superthreats are gone, or should human beings police their own? From the resolution of the story, it is evident that "living WITH the humans and not ABOVE them" it is fairly evident that we are getting a different sort of doctrine,which I daresay does have some theological aspect; in reasoning it out, why is it better that mightier forces (even in the family environment, i.e. parent-child relationship) do not intervene with certain problems that do not require their services? It would be spoon feeding and will subsequently hinder any potential development, in this case for the "man" to become closer to the "super" thanks to their own effort and adaptation.
68	[[/folder]]
69
70	[[folder:The destroyed Batcave]]
71	* Why does it take the revelation of Batman's identity for Bane to wreck the Batcave? It's well established Bane knows he's Bruce Wayne.
72	** LaserGuidedAmnesia, happens to supervillains all the time when they learn a hero's secret identity, if they don't die.
73	** Also, Two-Face was with him. It was probably ''his'' idea and Bane said, "Okey-doke."
74	[[/folder]]
75
76	[[folder:What will happen with the new generation?]]
77	* The ending to the story makes absolutely no sense. The wedge between the old guard and the new generation of anti-heroes is completely unresolved, and if anything, the surviving metahumans should be MORE disenfranchised and angry at the world than before, since they were basically the target of a genocide attempt. And everyone just... forgets about it? Yeah, the epilogue has them being "mentored", but then what? What, did all of them just need someone to hold their hand and give them encouragement? What about the ones who still werent the least bit interested in what the first generation of heroes thought should be the end all to be all morality? This is not adressed at all. Where they just kept in confinement?
78	** They were the target of a "genocide attempt" because their very existance was a threat to the whole planet. There are no supervillains anymore on this earth; it's all super "heroes" fighting each other because there is no one to stop them; the story explicitly tells us that after Captain Atom is killed they become even more suicidal and careless in their fights. If anything, the world powers are now super heroes vs antiheroes; and both of those groups completely disregard the lives of civilians who they are supposed to be protecting. The old guard is composed of silver age heroes who shut down into themselves, retire, or just plain abandon earth out of disillusion after Superman leaves. The very few still active are so set on their ways that they compound the problem even further, having reached the limits of their potential they are out of touch with humanity. Hawkman is an ecoterrorist who couldn't care less if he murders "evil people" as long as the environment is protected; Aquaman effectively abandons the world and is more focused on preserving the seas (he's not human anyways), Wonder Woman was expelled from Paradise Island and she believes it was because she didn't fight hard enough (ie: willing to kill) and is looking to have her status brought back, Batman is a de facto dictator in Gotham, a city that is now an Orwellian nightmare with Batman as the man in control, Keystone City is a perfect place as The Flash patrols it at superluminal speeds, correcting even the most minor of crimes in the blink of an eye; Green Lantern detaches from humanity and fuses with his battery and goes to live in orbit, scanning for alien threats but completely ignoring what happens on the surface.
79	** The point is that all the old heroes become overlords who are more focused on keeping their status quo than in truly protecting makind, while their successors have almost completely eradicated supervillainy by turning into even worse thugs than the old supervillains; this is what flies over the head of many people reading this book: BOTH SIDES ARE SHOWN TO BE WRONG FOR DIFFERENT REASONS. Superman is also so detached and living in the past, unable to fix the world even tough this is the most powerful Superman to be depicted in comic book history; it blatantly spelled out during the finale: he is certain that he is able to stop the bomb getting dropped on them, he doesn't know if he SHOULD anymore.
80	*** But arent the anti-heroes arguably right? I still dont understand the moral at the end, it doesnt matter how much you work together with the goverments of the world, super villains would appear anyway. Unless the new order of the day is comprehensive social changes, it wont actually prevent a new generation of supervillains to appear. The anti-heroes appeared because the original heroes couldnt actually prevent super criminals from running rampant, and I dont see how that magically changed.
81	*** The new order of the day pretty clearly ''is'' comprehensive social changes. And like the troper above points out, the problem isn't super villains because the super villains are all pretty much dead or powerless by this point. The problem is the superheroes, and the few who actually survived have all clearly been sufficiently shaken by their near-extinction experience to prompt a bit of a rethink of how they do things.
82	*** It's also mentioned by the previous troper that both sides are wrong for different reasons. It follows too that they are right for different reasons as well; both have a point, both a flawed in how they go about their points. It isn't a black and white issue and the story is under no illusion about it.
83	** All that talk about who was wrong and why is fine from a reader's POV. But an average new generaton hero would likely look at things this way: "Me and my pals protected the planet, all but eradicated supervillainy and that's how we get rewarded now? First these old farts, who quit decades ago, return just to throw us in gulags and now these goddamn muggles we risked our lives to protect have just murdered hundreds of my pals (sure, we clashed a lot but we were still ultimately on the same side)." The way new blood is written it seems much more in character for them to go on a RoaringRampageOfRevenge against the UN leadership then suck it up just because Superman (who they aren't partitularly inclined to listen to, due to aforementioned gulag thing, and may also blame for the tragedy) told them to.
84	*** The average new generation hero is ''now likely to be dead''. And those few that aren't have just survived an apocalyptic battle, being at ground zero of a doomsday bomb, seeing most of their friends and loved ones die horribly and watching ''Superman'', the Capiest of [[TheCape Capes]], briefly go nuts and have to be talked down from going on the most Roaring of [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge Roaring Rampages of Revenge]]. Seriously, that's more than enough for even the most hardened and bloodthirsty of warriors to throw up his or her hands and go "You know what? Fuck war. Let's give peace a chance here."
85	** Furthermore, it's not like the government just bombed them for no reason, you know. You seem to be overlooking the fact that they were kind of engaged in an apocalyptic mega-battle that threatened the entire planet a bit here. This isn't like the government siccing the Sentinels on the defenceless superhumans who just want to live in peace or anything; the superheroes (of both stripes) are as much to blame for what happened as much as the government if not more so. Even the most immature and petulant of heroes is probably not completely self-absorbed enough to fail to realize that.
86	** I wouldnt be too sure about that. Notice in the epilogue how the black-suited hero, I think his name is Swastika, mock-gags and Magog headslaps him. Yeah, its obviously played for laughs, but I think that opens a pretty big question - what about the ones who DONT want to be educated in the new way? Are they forcibly interred on Themiscyra until they agree? Is this just a new kind of gulag? Do as we say or you cant do anything at all? Everybody smile and be nice for Big Brother Superman and the President.
87	** You're really getting into RonTheDeathEater mode here a bit, aren't you? In context, Magog clearly gives Swastika a clip across the back of the head because he's being pretty disrespectful during what is obviously a rather important occasion of some great significance to their hosts. While Magog is definitely being a bit blunt, it's a long way from that to concentration camps. I mean, if you were in a church dicking around in a similar fashion during someone's wedding ceremony, they'd probably react more or less similarly (maybe not with mild violence, but this is still Magog we're discussing here). But that doesn't mean you live in a police state and are being oppressed, it just means you're being an ill-mannered asshole and should knock it off. Presumably metahumans who don't want to spend their lives studying on Themyscria are perfectly free not to do so, but it's also presumably expected that if they do happen to do so, they show a little basic respect for their hosts and surroundings while they're there. As for "Big Brother Superman", as has been repeatedly pointed out ''the whole point'' of the ending is that Clark Kent ''isn't'' going to be setting himself above ordinary mortals any more, he's going to be living full-time as one of them; he's just going to openly use his abilities to help out from now on.
88	** Let's not forget the entire reason The Spectre was involved. It was '''the Apocalypse'''.
89	** This is the DC Comics universe, where the heroes are moral guardians who inspire respect and trust, and would be able to appropriately guide a new generation of heroes on the right path, now that they could see how they nearly lost their way.
90	[[/folder]]
91
92	[[folder:Wonder Woman and Themyscira]]
93	* How was Diana able to sort things out with Themyscira? They condemned her for being too gentle, and she proved that mercy was what was needed to spare the world, but how could she show her sisters that lesson was important? That bit was unfortunately glossed over.
94	** Diana's original mission was to serve as Themyscira's Ambassador of Peace to Man's World. The fact that the rest of the world isn't a smoking crater, and that the metahumans (of whom Wonder Woman was a key proponent) and normals were able to come to an accord, was sufficient for Hippolyta and co. to decide that Diana was back on track and finally making some headway in her mission statement.
95	** The Amazons exiled Diana because they believed she was too soft, and should be using violence and ruthlessness to force peace on Man's World rather than compassion and empathy. Now consider the ending. The world's most powerful man has been pushed beyond his limit of endurance, and has given in to his rage and pain. He is on the verge of succumbing to violence as the only way of solving his problems and ruthlessly destroying and subduing those he considers his enemies. There are no weapons that can stop him, no armies that can stand in his way, seemingly nothing that can force him to stop laying waste to the entire planet should he choose. But what eventually brings him back from the brink? A single person showing empathy and compassion to him. Not a warrior. Not someone besting him in combat. Just a man showing kindness and understanding to another man who has suffered and is in pain and is misguidedly lashing out. If that's not a complete repudiation of the ruthless views of the Amazons, then what is?

Context Headscratchers / KingdomCome