It was bad enough when Wonder Woman was so distraught over the loss of her powers that she contemplates suicide. It gets even worse when you see the ending and realize Diana was pregnant at the time. Even Linkara missed this until a viewer pointed it out, and his reaction was pure Fridge Horror.
If Kyle's Lantern Ring was permanently shut down, what happened to active lanterns in the vacuum of space and on duty?
At the time Kyle was the only Green Lantern period, so that wasn't an issue.
Or hell, what about the Atlanteans who were outside the city? Did they get mulched into paste?
Considering Arthur was half-human, the other Atlanteans could still be safe.
And the other non-humans? Since the Martian Manhunter, Superman and Starfire all lost abilities that are natural to their species, I wouldn't be too sure about that...
Think about it, with no superpowered heroes, or anyone using anything more technologically sophisticated than melee weapons, next time a cosmic power like Darkseid or an alien invasion comes along, all that's going to be standing in their way are a handful people who know karate, who, unless Doug Monech is writing, are going to die in about five seconds, assuming the bad guy even bothers to deal with them.
Maybe not in Darkseid's case if the blacklight event wasn't limited to Earth. Maybe Darkseid never invaded because he lost his powers as well.
But Darkseid, his powers aside, is the ruler of Apokolips, a planet filled with sadistic Physical Gods and highly advanced technology. Unless the blacklight also have messed with Apokolips Technology like it did with the Green Lantern Ring, Darkseid still has enough resources to invade earth at any time he wants to.
Darkseid is now mortal, and can now be killed by any one of his subjects with a gun or a knife, and that kind of situation would make him reluctant to even leave the confines of his palace, let alone leading armies to invade distant worlds. Even if he could, a suddenly powerless Darkseid is probably going to be kept busy struggling to maintain his rule on Apokolips for least a few years if he can manage it at all. Planning invasions would have to wait.
Darkseid's primary powers (at the time of publication) were due to his monopoly on technology, specifically an "X-Element" that allowed him to bend space and time (and powering Metron's chair). Darkseid would cease to be superstrong and invulnerable, but he'd still have the bulk of the powers he regularly displayed.
X-element might or might not be considered a metaphysical or supernatural force, much like Green Lantern's Ring and be de-powered as well.
Really Darkseid isn't the point. There are plenty of highly advanced, aggressive aliens who have shown interest in invading Earth in the past: Dominators, Khunds, Thanagarians, Manhunters, etc.
Why would God (theoretically) act against Heroes? The Bible answers it in a rather awesome, but horrifying way. 'For I the Lord thy God, am a jealous God'. For a brief moment, you can grin at the idea of Superman being not only cooler than God (as Morrison would later say), but making God jealous. Then, look horrified at the idea of God being Jealous of Superman and the other heroes. Yes, the DC God is a jealous god, and quite petty too. And most of the world worships such a god who took the powers of moral and good people, because he can't share the spotlight.
Humorously enough, I too thought about that theory. Maybe DC's God has an ego, and can't stand others being more popular than him. He stripped the supers of their powers so he alone can be earth's savior. Let's be real, if they were really being punished for being arrogant, then why isn't Batman stripped of his amazing IQ and gadgets? Bruce is the most arrogant of them all.
So, Batman is essentially god? (Wait, this is DC. Of course he's god.)
How does this even work? Shouldn't Diana cease to be? Same with anything Magitek or based on it? Isn't the ability for the aliens to exist on earth itself a power?
Whatever happens to Superman's Fortress of Solitude? I mean, isn't it superior to the Bat Cave in terms of technology, kryptonians being thousands of years more advanced than humans and Jor-El being one of the most brilliant scientists on Krypton? Couldn't Supes use it to still help humanity?
Well yea but Steel was still alive at the beginning of the story. For that matter so were Booster Gold and Blue Beetle. We have to assume Cyborg was alive as well since his powers are technology based. Hell for that matter its been shown in the past that Batman has a robotic exoskeleton in the Bat Cave. Why did none of them unlock the Fortress?
Or why didn't any of the Fortress robots automatically sense the problem and come out to retrieve Clark Kent like they did that time when Superman died?
Everyone seems to readily accept these events as an act of divine intervention, in which the heroes deserved punishment. Even ignoring that not all heroes believe in God (Batman at the time was usually depicted as atheist), and even setting aside that villains got the exact same punishment (even if it meant massive, God-approved casualties among civilians), nothing about this event appears any different from any other Crisis Crossover event. If anything, the logical assumption would've been some kind of magical assault, since the magical community suffered disproportionately high losses. Instead of heroes feeling ashamed for angering God, shouldn't they have been wondering what Mordru, Eris, or Neron were going to do next?
Superman acting depressed is ridiculous. If he wants to continue fighting crime, then why not have Batman hook him up with some gadgets and a jet pack?
Why is the freaking Cyborg Superman, still retaining a powerset more than matching Superman's, letting the Joker order him around? The rest of the tech based villains at least have slight excuses like being dumb (Metallo) or not interested on leading societies of supervillains (the relatively little ambitious Flash Rogues Gallery), but Hank Henshaw was the type to plot single handledy word domination by machines and for machines on his own. Why does he tolerate Joker telling him what to do again?
What's worse is that according to this comic's logic, Cyborg Superman shouldn't even exist. Hank Henshaw was a human scientist who has the power to inhabit machines and living things that have machines attached to them. The only reason he is Cyborg Superman is because he had access to Superman's genetic code and is using his superpower to inhabit a cybernetically modified clone body of Superman. He is in essence a living superpower and when the black light hit, he should have simply ceased to be seeing as his original human body died long ago. Of course, one could always argue that Henshaw just became trapped in that one body, but he still wouldn't be able to use any of the body's kryptonian powers which operate identical to Superman's.
Why the hell would Lex Luthor look for a way to market superpowers to the public? Didn't he hate super-powered beings in the first place? Why not keep them to himself? That would've been more consistent with his personality.
Actually this is completely in character. See 52 for the explanation.
And why would the Batman-trained heroes even bother delivering Luthor (DC's champion-king of string-pulling, ass-buying, and loopholes) to justice knowing full well that corruption, and lawyers are not super-powers?
Let's assume some god zapped away their powers for acting arrogant and being above normal people. Sooooo...what about the gadget-based villains and heroes? Makes you wonder if this god has a massive ego, and want all the super beings gone so he can be the only super in the universe.
Even if it was the Moench-equivalent 'god' to the Judeo-Christian one behind all this, why in the nine hells would he zap away Zauriel? The big Z is a divinely-appointed and -empowered agent on Earth in the DCU; if this steaming pile of stupid was some kind of divine justice, it mistargeted a little. And the story even calls him out by name as being among the missing!
And if Zauriel disappeared, why is Linda Danvers still around? At this stage in her career, she was an 'Earth-bound angel', just like he was. Or an 'Earth-born angel', or something... it was never very clear.
The whole thing is made even worse by its constant insistence on pointing out its own stupid; the Android Hourman is front-and-center in the bit in the first issue detailing the activities of the tech heroes before quietly vanishing from the story so it can resume kissing Bat-backside. What, exactly, took him out? He's more powerful than all the remaining supervillains put together, and the product of 853rd century technology... an 853rd century that wouldn't exist without the heroic age and its descendants. Why was he still around? For that matter, why was Booster Gold? They should have blipped out of existence when the Heroic Age was brought to an abrupt, shuddering halt by the Plothole Wave.
Why did Martian Manhunter and Starfire lose their powers? Their powers were just normal biological functions of their species. Did all Martians and Tamaranians lose their abilities? Or was it just those two? And if it was just those two, would they regain their abilities of they went back to their home planets? At least with Superman, you could make the argument that his abilities were the result of him being outside of his "natural enviornment," so to speak.
