Dear Watchers: an omniversal comic book podcast

Welcome to Dear Watchers in Omniversal comic book podcast, where we do a deep dive into the multiverse.

We are traveling with you through the stories and the worlds that make up an omniverse, a fictional reality we all love. And your watchers on this journey are me, Guido, and Be. RA.

I was going to try to say ramog, as in mug GOG, but RA. But it doesn't quite work kind of right a little bit. We have a faint specter of a man here today. Oh. Luckily, the flash has pulled him out of his Ghost of Christmas Past dimensional stalking. And here he is. It's Elliot of Elliot comic art, maker of our amalgaminis and much great art of our podcast and many other smart people who commission him too. Hi, Elliot.

Hi, how are you guys? It's me. Um, I have slightly, uh, older than the last time I was here. I've got a little bit of gray hair and a ponytail and beard that I will soon shave off and cut my hair soon to return.

Yes. You've got that, uh, Superman graying temple look going?

Yes, I do.

Oh, and look, you're wearing black and blue with a little hint of the.

Uh, Superman t shirt on, which only we can see, but lovely. And before we begin today's travel, itinerary Keto. What's new in our little section of the multiverse?

Well, we want our listeners help. So we are eight episodes away from 100 or I guess seven after you're listening to this one. And we want your help. We want more reviews, more listeners, more social media posts, more patrons if you can join. So if you can do any or all of those things, please follow the links in our show notes and go to Deerwatchers.com so that you can help us get more more. We're going to sing the Madonna song Tracy on our hundredth episode. Uh, so more news. Also on our forthcoming stream of guests. We actually have a lot of guests coming up and surprises to come for our 100th.

Can I add something? Joining. Just if you're joining for the first time or you listen to a couple of episodes, I really recommend being a part of this little community. You guys have built such a strong community of really faithful, cool people with lots who love comics and love this stuff. And then there are other podcast people that are following along in other podcasts. It's a really fun community to be a part of. So it's a nice, positive online community if you are looking for that.

It is, uh, nice to have something positive online because those two words don't always go together. If you are joining us for the first time, we have three parts of our journey today. Origins of the story. What inspired this other reality? Exploring multiversity. We dive deeper into our alternate universe and pondering possibilities. We examine the impact and what's followed or coming in the future.

And remember, in addition to leaving a review and supporting us on social media, you can find us on Coffee. And our spinoff series Omniversity um, is over there. Go to dearwatchers.com.

And with that, Dear Watchers, welcome to episode 92 and let's check out what's happening in the Omniverse with today's travels to an alternate universe. Today, when we get our passport stamped, it will say we went to an alternate world, but one without a question just yet. So stay tuned because Dear Watchers, we will be coming up with that question later on in the episode.

And this is DC's Earth 96. Originally, 96 being the year it came out, but it was later revised in multiversity in the post rebirth multiverse to Earth 22. And while it has had a number of appearances, the first view of this Earth is the Kingdom Come miniseries. I'm going to go out on a limb and say this is probably the most famous story we've covered so far. We haven't done the core Marvel versus DC, just some amalgam spin offs. We haven't done the age of Apocalypse or days of future past. So I really think this is it. So because of that, we're going to get right into our show segments because there is a lot to talk about.

Yes, we are going to kick off our first segment and we will have a chance to share our own origins in Origins of the Story.

Right now on this very show, you're going to get the answer to all your questions. Our amazing story begins a few years ago.

Let's start with our origins. This series is so iconic, we probably all have a connection to this regardless of our feelings about it. And then Guido is going to give us some background and I'll kick us off because I have an interesting connection to this, which is that this was the first time I actually ever read Kingdom Come.

That is a shocking origin story.

Yeah, but it always was on the periphery of my comic fandom because 96, I was definitely going to comic book stores a lot then. And that poster, the iconic painted kind of look, you would just see that everywhere. And I remember I associated a lot with the killing joke with, like that lex luther biography thing. It was those three things I really associate as with comics, but I never read it. Maybe it seemed a little too grown up for me and then I would obviously see this art all throughout my life. But for whatever reason, not being maybe as big of into DC, I'd never really read that before preparing for this episode. But I think you both have read this multiple times.

Yeah, I don't even know. This might be my third or fourth time through 1996 was when I was taking my kind of comic sabbatical. So I collected when I was in middle school and then kind of left it for a while but I'd gotten into comics in middle school because I love to draw. And alex ross was always someone that I still do just really respect and love and found a connection with. Like, I have alex ross's mythology, the coffee tabletop book that he and chip kid did that I really connected to it's. Just got all of his sketches of the justice league when he's little. That the made up heroes. I'm sure there are so many artists out there that can connect with his trajectory. And so that's what drew me to kingdom come. Always comics for the art first, and then as I got back into comics in my twenty s, I probably revisited it because I love mark wade. Mark wade and I have a similar passion for superman as a character and what he means to m the superhero and comic book world. But he can also just serve as a modern, um, mythology of how to live your life and things like that too, that I've always connected with. We both have a deep love for the original christopher reeve movie, and there are echoes of that version of superman throughout this, too. So I don't really remember when I first read this and actually revisiting now. I remembered it as like a seven or twelve issue miniseries. I remembered it as really drawn out. I remembered the central conflict, but I forgot how. And maybe I appreciate it more now that I'm older because I probably haven't read it in 15 years. Um, the kind of moral complexity. It's what I love about, um, some comics and mark wade's writing. And so, um, we'll get into that a little bit later. Um, so I didn't really remember it that well. So as guido and rob know, my memory is, uh, I have a very visual memory and not a great memory. If it was a TV series, definitely I would remember every detail, but not.

Because it's, well, maybe it should have been, um, well, and I'm excited. The stuff you said about superman, it's fun because some of the background research reveals that mark and alex had very different ideas about who total man is. And I wonder if kingdom come works so well because it sort of fuses the two or explores the complexity. Um, I guess I should spoiler alert. That my reaction to this. I love this story. I think this is one of the most extraordinary comics there is in the world. And I read it as it came out. I was going to the comic store weekly at this point, and I remember reading marvels as it came out and just being floored by a, uh, painting. That was Alex's first big thing, which we'll talk about in a moment. And so it was just a natural, like, oh, you have to read kingdom come. And I remember my best friend at the time, who we used to read comics all the time, we read it together. So as it was coming out, I don't even remember if we traded it back and forth or just both went to the comic store to get it. So I read it as it was coming out. I think I didn't fully understand the themes at the time, but I loved it mostly because of the art and the drama of it, I think. And then as it became collected, I read it again because, of course, they added a bunch of scenes which we'll talk about. And so I've probably read it a dozen times. I read it a lot in the then it came into an absolute edition 20 plus years ago. I reread it then, but I really haven't read it a lot over the last 15 years. So reading it again for this was the first time in a long time I'd read it. And it was really fun to see how my reaction to it has changed and what I noticed differently.

Um, it's really cool to hear you say that, too, because I think in a certain way, it serves as more like my experience with some literature, like some novels, and that most comics. And if I go back and read them again, I'm like, Why did I like this so much? It's just a bunch of people punching. Or I found a story more compelling. Maybe I just liked it for the art and it's really not that great anymore. This one, I think because of the complexity of the story, I get different things out of it as I read it older and older and older. Like, as I stop seeing the world more in black and white, you can appreciate just like, the different sides of the Batman, the Wonder Woman side, the Lex Luther side, the Superman side. And we'll get into that more.

Or.

The world building, right? Like, as we've explored on our 92 episodes, how people build worlds, you just start to realize, like, Whoa, how did they do this? And how did they do this in 100 and, uh, 50 pages?

Yeah, it reminds me of what you hear a lot of actors do, which is an actor will write down their whole biography of their character. And maybe you see a fraction of that actually, on screen. Right. But it's for them themselves. That's what I almost get that they were doing here. They were writing all this stuff. And you only get a little bit of that actually on the page. But they use that all in the world building, just in their heads. And, uh, we get it through the back matter and stuff. But in the actual story, we only see a fraction.

That's a great point.

Well, let's talk about how they did it. So, um, here's some background. And this is really, thanks to a few sources, the Kingdom Come Companion, which is a really cool book that was published in 98 by Comicology Publishing. Not to be confused with comixology. And Alex Ross was heavily involved in this book. So it's before they started collecting Alex's sketches, he actually gave these publisher all of his sketches. So they published his sketches annotations, page by page, annotations a, uh, character index interviews with him and Mark. It's a really cool text that then was pulled off the shelves. Apparently, DC might have gone after them in a lawsuit because they wanted to publish the sketches in the future collected editions, which of course, they ultimately did. So it's, uh, a hard to find, but really, really cool resource. And then the later collected editions from the absolute onward, including what I think the three of us looked at, which is the 2019 trade paperback collection, which is also what's on DC Universe. It has the original proposals, more sketches, annotations, interviews, essays. So there is a lot of back matter to pull from. Some of it contradicts, actually. And I went with the earlier stuff because I figured that was fresher in their minds. So let's dive in to the background here. The companion starts in the most perfect way, so I have to steal it, which is in the beginning, Alex Ross created Marvels. I think that's a really fun, uh, biblical homage there. So we'll learn a little bit about Alex's career to that point in our next segment. But Marvels, of course, makes him a star, telling the Marvel history in painted form through the eyes of a photographer. And Ross recalls.

Yes, of course, not even halfway through doing Marvels, I thought, what would I do if I were to pitch a painted project to DC? And the thing that came up for me immediately is that unlike Marvels, DC's Golden Age history is not intact.

So he's referencing, of course, Crisis on Infinite Earth at that point and how it disrupts that continuity. Ross decides he has to focus on Superman. But his Superman is the silent, brooding type from the earlier, uh, Siegel and Schuster stories and the Max Fleischer cartoons, which side note Max Fleischer's, uh, animation is actually what inspires Cal's look in Kingdom Come with the s and the black on it. So Ross starts to brainstorm with Sung Ku, who is an owner of a big comic shop in Chicago at the time, where Alex Ross is from and I think still lives and is a close friend. And they decide it should be a future story, allah, Dark Knight. And so it could be an elseworld tale. That way he can set aside continuity. Ross ends up producing a 20 page proposal titled The End of the Heroic Age, pulling in references from the history of the DC Universe, which is the Wolfman Perez follow up to Crisis on uh, uh, Infinite Earth, where they sort of try to reconcile this new earth of DC and Armageddon 2001, the 1991 crossover that is supposed to be a glimpse into the future of the DC universe. So he knows there's a grand reckoning among Earth's superhumans on the horizon. And he says, I thought there is.

Some big story taking place in the future, some great final World War Three type battle involving heroes we have always known but has never been documented. It was perfect. Everything after that fell in line, I came up with an outline that had a really cool ending, a cool beginning, a couple of other cool scenes, and a fair structure to be built upon.

So Ross approaches Neil Posner, who's the new talent coordinator at DC, and got Ross's first assignment, which is actually the painted cover of the young adult novelization of Death of Superman by Wheezy. Simonson, which I had. Elliot, you probably had too, I feel like I feel like I ordered it at, like, the scholastic that sounds pretty familiar.

I wouldn't have been able to tell you that, but I think.

And so while Ross was thinking of a writer, he started with James Robinson. They'd met at San Diego comic con and Robinson's else world series. The golden age had just started, or was maybe even solicited and not out yet, which is looking at the DC. Superheroes post world war II. And, uh, because they were looking at a sequel to that, the Silver Age, which never happened, it didn't make sense for Robinson to get involved. But Robinson did introduce Alex to the Twilight of the superheroes, the famed Alan Moore storyline pitch that he had developed post Watchmen. We discuss it, actually on an episode with the three of us. Elliot when you were on when we were talking about whatever happened to The Man of Tomorrow, because Alan wrote a, uh, huge, massive treatment for this epic storyline, which has a great battle between human and superhuman factions, but is quite bleak and dark and twisted and that's.

Never been seen, that was never published.

DC released it only a few years ago. So for a long time, it had floated around, and DC would actually do legal cease and desists to websites, even to say, like, no, get that down. So it was traded on the black market. But it was only finally, a few years ago, in Whatever Happened to the man of Tomorrow collection, that DC finally succumbed and published Allen's treatment.

Because I thought maybe Alan burned it with some sage in a ceremony so that no one could ever read it.

No, maybe those of us who read it are cursed. But no, it is out there. So Ross hears from Archie Goodwin and Peter Tomasi. They're working on the specter, and they ask him to do a cover. And he says, well, he has this proposal, and he wants to bring it to them. So he brings it to Tamasi. And at that point, Tamasi senior editor, Dan Rasplar, and they're the ones who suggest Mark Wade. So they meet to talk through. And now, as Wade tells it, it was in listening to this pitch that he can see the closing scene of Cal putting back on his glasses, which, if you haven't read it, don't know what that means. You'll hear in our next segment. Uh, but in earlier interviews from the companion wade actually talks about the fact that he and Ross don't see eye to eye on Superman. And it was actually his friend Tom Pear, comic writer Tom Pear who told him that he needed to understand what Ross was doing with Superman was that Superman kept screwing up because he separated himself from his humanity. Mark Wade's superman could do no wrong. But Alex Ross's Superman is more powerful than humans but no better than us humans in his constant struggle to be good. And I thought that was a really cool dichotomy. Elliot, I don't know if you have a thought on that.

I do. I like both of them. Uh, and I was just thinking about this uh, I was just thinking about this the other day when I was watching Superman and Lois. There's a scene, uh, for those that don't know I'm a father. And there's a scene where, uh, Clark and Lois's boys are arguing and Superman busts upstairs and just yells at him. He just blows his top. And I was like, Superman doesn't do that. And I was like, But Clark dad does. I do it all the time. I feel like, um, it just showed his humanity. In that same episode, he admits to General Lane that he's made a mistake and that he's sorry. There's all this humility built upon them that I really respect about it. And I also like the stoic, moral high ground Superman. And I think the middle of those two is really great. Which is what I like about there's parts of this kingdom come that I'm like that's not the Superman that I really like. And we'll get into that a little bit. But because of Mark Wade, he ends up being the Superman that I think I like. Um, I think the good versions of Superman have that in him.

Yeah. So it's clear the collaboration is tight, right? Like, they're navigating this story. They both have a real strong sense of the story and what the point is. And they're really co architects from everything you read. You cannot separate Ross from Wade in this, though it is Ross's original vision that leads. His original proposals are pretty close to this. So there's a heroic age proposal dated from early 1994 that then evolves into Elseworld's heroic age. And finally, later that year, there's a third proposal fleshed out Elseworld's Kingdom Come. The title comes from Alex's suggestion to Mark. And as Mark said it's they're fueling each other. They sort of go back and forth constantly. And then it happened. And afterwards, Alex Ross, reflecting on Kingdom Come being done, said this wasn't going.

To be Mark's final piece on superheroes. But if I'd wanted it to be, it could have been mine. Once I was done with Marvel's, I didn't feel like I had any more to say about Marvel characters. But finishing Kingdom Come, I still feel like I'm dying to return to something with Superman or Batman. I've put my stamp on them. I could move on. I could do the Alan Moore thing and move completely out of superhero comics for a time. But to be honest, I had a ball. I've reaffirmed my belief in the ideal of a superhero, and that reaffirmation was, for me, a very personal thing.

And I love that end. Uh, that end, I think, gets at, uh, for me, what this reading of Kingdom Come brought, like, what is a superhero and what is the ideal of a superhero? And so it was cool to hear in Alex in 1998, reflecting on why Kingdom Come kept him wanting to do this, whereas the Marvels felt like almost a, uh, coda.

And I was just thinking too guitar about that marriage between Mark Wade and Alex Rosses and their different takes. I've always found Mark Wade, and I know him to be a more he loves science. Like, a lot of his explanations for things are really scientifically based. And I know that because of Alex Ross's upbringing and his father was a pastor, I believe that's true. Right. That he comes, um, it's not surprising that he comes up with this religious title, Kingdom Come. But really good stories, too, uh, are the combination of both of them. It's a belief, the faith. I'm thinking of a lot of Carl Sagan's work is really cool because he's so scientific, but he also brings this bigger vision of the universe and this almost religious take on Carl Sagan's, famous for saying, we're all made of star stuff. Those are what atoms are. And so it brings in this bigger than us narrative. Yeah, this bigger than us narrative to this, too. And I was just thinking maybe that's one of the reasons why the story works so well, too, um, from those two perspectives.

Yeah. So let's get into it.

Yeah. We're going to lock this segment up in the Gulag and move on to our next segment, Exploring Multiversity.

I am your guide through these vast new realities. Follow me and ponder the question, what.

If, for this segment, we are going to give the credits for the four issue miniseries all up front. And this is, of course, Kingdom Come issues number one to four from DC Comics from May to August 1996. And the titles of these issues are strange Visitor Truth and justice up in the sky and Never Ending Battle.

The writer credit is Mark Wade, but it is Mark Wade and Alex Ross. It's penciled, inked colored, painted on I never know how to say that. G o. Uh, gouache. Okay, thank you, artist Elliot so he used gouache painting. It's, uh, such a weird, ugly word. Too. Uh, so that's how he painted this whole book. It's lettered by legend Todd Klein, who Alex talks about being a great collaborator on this project too, and edited by Bob Cahan. So note that we read the collected edition. So starting in 1997, this has an added scene in chapter two and an added epilogue after chapter four. So we're considering all of that part of the original canonical story. And real quick before we get into the story where these creators were before this, Alex had first published a Terminator comic, doing the penciled art for now. Comics then did some work for Marvel. The DC novelization cover marvel's co creates Astro City and then kingdom come. And after Kingdom Come, of course, since Kingdom Come, it goes on and on with interiors, covers a little less writing, but still occasionally writing something or copoding something, such as the, uh, really fantastic, Fantastic Four full circle that we talked about last year. And so that's where Alex was at this point. This is pretty early then in his career, though he's quite famous for Marvel's. Mark Wade, on the other hand, is famous at this point and still famous to this day. He starts at Fanzine Amazing Heroes, then starts writing in the 80s for Impact Comics, moves on to DC, Marvel countless, just probably honestly thousands of titles at this point that he's written. Certainly hundreds of titles that he's written too many to list, but worked on The Age of Apocalypse Big One at this point prior to Kingdom Come, and then has still to this day is writing a huge amount of comics. And so for us to dive into this, elliot is going to sort of lead us through a chapter by chapter summary and we'll talk through and we're going to analyze the whole thing. So listeners, if you've read this, then great, you'll get your memory refreshed and we'll talk through what we think. But spoiler alert if you haven't read it, we're going to go into all of the plot details and really just need to read it. But you can also feel that you can follow along from Elliot's summary.

All right, let's go. Let's do this. So chapter one again is titled Strange Visitor. And we're introduced immediately to Norman McKay, who's a pastor. And just I think it's really cool. Alex Ross used his father as for photo reference. I mean, it is his father in almost every sense, uh, here, which is really cool. Um, so Dorma McKay, a pastor who we learn about, uh, this alternate future through we learn of a world without our familiar DC heroes and how the next generation of heroes are more extreme and violent. Magog is one of these new heroes who uses killing as a means to rid the world of the bad guys. Norman is visited by Vicector, uh, because of Norman's apocalyptic visions of the future. And like a Dickensian Christmas Ghost and much kinder, gentler Scrooge, the Specter and Norman visit the future versions of the Justice League to see where they are now. And just to pause here, we talked about the world building earlier in this, uh, episode. I thought the first I don't even know how many pages this is, maybe it's ten. You get so much and it's such a cool way of introducing and getting the reader, uh, to be like, oh wait, this has happened, this has happened, this has happened, just wanting to know more. And they do such a good job of world. Uh, what do you guys think about how this opens?

Well, and I think the other thing for those who aren't looking at it is every panel is filled with Easter eggs, which is why the annotations that are in the collected editions or in the companion are so important. Because right up front, I mean, you have The America Mando on Liberty Island and you just have an enormous amount of characters drawn into every scene. But they're characters that are either older versions of characters we know, or completely original creations. Sometimes Alex is imagining the children of heroes that we know. Sometimes he's imagining wholly new characters. There are a ton of pop culture references, some of which we might mention, where he's drawing people we know from the world. I mean, it's just incredible how many different people are in each panel. And sorry, The American Mando is chapter two, but there's still so many people in chapter one on every panel.

Yeah, and I'd have to think because you referenced it, Elliot, I'd have to think that Carol was an influence here because you've got a ghost bringing someone through all these other worlds and times. But what's interesting is, as you said, norman really isn't our Scrooge.

Really.

Superman is our scrooge. Superman is the character that we're watching change over time, and also has isolated himself like Scrooge has, and kind of reentering humanity by the end of this. So it's interesting that they took that context that we all know, the Christmas Carol Scrooge story and turned it on.

They really use cinematic yeah, that's a great point. And I think they also use cinematic ways of introducing a lot of not backstory, but the state of the world right now. Like this restaurant that they go to that feels like, uh, it's like a Hard Rock Cafe or planet Hollywood.

Planet Hollywood.

You just see that the Justice League that we all know and love is in the past. They're famous, but they're gone all these really subtle ways that kind of pokes fun at them a little bit. We, um, get some aquaman slander and things like that too, which is, uh, really condensed. This is probably why I thought it was a twelve issue miniseries when I thought about it, because so much is packed in here.

Um, well, m one thing on the Planet Krypton piece that I want to add here, and I think it's going to keep coming.

Up.

But what was interesting to me is he was totally imagining this world where the heroes were mainstream and essentially a thing of the past. And what's interesting is I feel like we're living in that world now. I don't think, uh, it's certainly in 1996 and since 1996, I think it's only been the last few years. Like, I can imagine Marvel opening a restaurant. I think we can all imagine that this would happen. Marvel has lands at Disney, right? So Planet Krypton could exist now. It could not have existed 25 years ago. So it's interesting that he sort of is predicting a world where heroes just exist. And essentially that's happened now, even though heroes don't exist in our world. I don't know. The planet just unseen really struck me.

As it also reminded me of, uh, two years earlier than this, pulp Fiction had come out. And that has the famous sequence at Jack Rabbit Slims where, uh, all the waiters and waitresses are famous Hollywood people, and Steve Bouchemi's, Buddy Holly and his Marilyn Monroe and all these things. And I was wondering, oh, was this all happening at the same time? When you had Planet Hollywood, you had this fictional version, and Pulp Fiction, you had this fictional version here in Kingdom Come. There was something about this happening at this time, this kind of experiential thing. I was wondering if even that Pulp Fiction was a little bit of an inspiration for this motif.

Yeah.

Uh, uh.

And I had forgotten this came out in the 90s because it's still so relevant. And one of the things that I found interesting is one of the themes in this is it calls into question of Superman's relevance, which is, I feel like a conversation that happens a lot. And it was coming out in the mid 90s, which was a time when you saw all the image and the Rob Lifefield and Todd McFarland expired heroes with big shoulder pads and belt. I mean, all the new generation of heroes. This is such a commentary in response to 90s comics and the loss of our Silver and Bronze Age heroes.

Yeah. Well, this starts, too, with Wesley Dodds kind of passing his visions on to Norman and Wesley Dodds, the original Sandman. And, uh, one thing I read, I didn't read Kingdom Come, but I did read Zero Hour over and over again. And Zero Hour, which came out two years before. This also starts with Wesley Dodds as an old man having these visions and actually dying in, like, the opening bit. And I was like, wow, that had to maybe have been related to this because they're using the same character as an old man. His visions and kind of his visions being the inciting incident for the rest of the story.

Yeah. So, again, using that, we get introduced to the world, and then we have Norman and a specter. I always read it and want to say spectrum like an old timey spectrum. Now we see where the Justice League members are. And of course, we first witness a conversation between pretty much a no nonsense, really strong she's always strong, but really strong. Wonder Woman. Uh, strong. And will, I'd say always, uh, strong in body and a reluctant Superman, where the purpose of it is to have Diana call Clark into action to help lead the fight against the out of control, quote unquote heroes like Magog. And Wonder Woman shows Clark, via news outlets how Magog's m extreme approach caused Parasite to split open to Adam in a desperate attempt to end the battle. And this causes a nuclear explosion, uh, in the Midwest, an area that includes the entire state of Kansas, which is, uh, really brilliant because you're thinking of at least I thought of like, were Ma and PA Kent still alive? Did they die because of this? Um, and it kills millions of people and creates an irradiated wasteland. And Clark still denies Diana's request to get involved. It kind of ends with him being like, see you later.

And it's what's funny to me is so you just called him Clark. And I love that he refuses to be Clark. At one point. I don't remember if it's in this scene or, uh, a scene in early two when Batman it m might be when Batman meet sees him. Someone calls him Clark. And he's like, um, I'm not Clark. And even then, the farm he's working on, it's a simulation in the Fortress of Solitude. So it's being made clear to us that he is leaving his humanity behind. He's leaving both humanity as a species behind and his own humanity behind. He's really just leaning into being Cal and isolating himself as Cal Superman.

This is in this first issue. Uh, Diana says hello, Clark. And we just get this panel of him glaring at her and you can't even see the pupils of his eyes. He looks mad.

And she says, Cal. Yeah, she corrects herself.

Um, again, you're just getting so much what happened to Cal? Why is he doing like, all this world building that we were talking about, uh, presents itself in this one scene. It's a really important scene that sets up the rest of the story. Uh, yeah, go ahead.

We'll also get in the next issue why Diana is the way she is, which is very cool. I just want to sort of hint why she's saying, we need to do something. We need to do something. So it's cool that we see her being really action oriented. We don't know why yet.

She's like, uh, we see brief glimpses of where Hawkman and the Flash and Green Lantern and Batman aren't. All those people are important, but I'd say Batman is pretty important. Uh, in trying to summarize all of this, he's got a tight control over Gotham using big bat robots, bat Nights. This is very much reminded me of, um oh, my God, I almost said Batman 2099. Batman beyond. Ron batman beyond. Batman beyond. And just like the old broken Bruce, uh, Wayne, who's still fighting a good fight, but in a really different way, mostly, uh, from behind computer screens in his chair. And we all see that. What I want to note about that scene, which I love, is it's all silent. Uh, we have a lot of, uh, text overlay with Norman and the Specter making commentary about where the heroes are. But the Batman, once we see the Batman and the Bat night, it's completely silent. You just get that dark foreboding, uh, almost like the beginning of Batman, uh, The Animated Series. You don't really need any words. You can just see that it is. Uh, we know that Alex Ross is inspired by animation, so it's pretty cool.

Well, and one cool thing, I was reading an interview with Alex about his approach and how he works, and they were asking him, they were saying that I guess generally and I don't know this maybe Elliot, you do, but generally, paintings don't show action. There's something about the medium of paint that doesn't lend itself to action. And so they are asking him, how is he able to achieve movement and action in his panels? Because it's what allows there to be a scene like this one, where there's no dialogue, but it doesn't feel static. It doesn't feel like some oil portrait hanging in a museum for whatever reason. And it's just the extraordinary work of his. So it was cool to hear him talk a little bit about that.

Well, it's interesting you bring that up, because I actually think that there are some and I feel this way in a lot of Alex Ross's work. The big double spread action scenes I actually find distracting. Uh, they are meant to look like these Renaissance style paintings where you had hundreds of characters. And it works from that sense, especially with kingdom come, because it's supposed to bring about some. All Renaissance paintings are about religion and, uh, myth. That doesn't work for me. I think comics, the way they were drawn, those black outlines really help. Like, the line weight really helps you see, like, a thicker line weight helps you see what's supposed to be in the foreground. And when you have everything kind of using natural light, it's much harder to discern what's going on. Characters get lost, little details get really lost. And so I think that the Batman scenes work and some scenes work, and then there are others that I find that I'm kind of overwhelmed visually. And, um, it doesn't work that much. I apologize. That's the only thing I can ever critique about Alex Ross. I think he's right there. It's really, for me.

I think overwhelming is a good word to use to describe this as someone, as the only person here who read this for the first time, I think I will benefit from really kind of going back to reading it a second time because it is so jampacked. Elliot, you keep mentioning that you thought it was twelve issues instead of four issues. And that's because there is so much here. We've talked a lot about the world building, but almost on the flip side of it, they don't spend a lot of time talking about things. For example, M magog, I had to look up, wait, is this a preexisting character? I've heard this name. It's a character created for here. There's other characters we meet later on who are, uh, kind of introduced as if they are preexisting characters, but they were created for this story. So it almost is like an encyclopedia. And it's helpful then to kind of go back and read interviews and the backmatter with the creators and go, okay, oh, that's that character, because it's never really explained. Later we meet Robin. And I didn't even know it was Robin when we met him because I don't think, uh, anyone even calls him Robin in the story. And he has like, one line of dialogue. So I think it's definitely kind of helpful to have read this and then kind of go back.

And I agree because you realize that the focus isn't on those characters. The first time through, you're kind of like, wait, I want to know who all these I don't really understand who all these new characters are. You see all these designs that Alex Ross worked on, and the next couple of times through, you realize you've got to focus on the Justice League and Batman ah, and their interplay.

Yeah. Mark Wade has even said one of the most frequent questions he got was, who is the Green Lantern? Who is the Flash? And it's Alan Scott and Wally West. But you don't even hear their names. And I don't even think the characters necessarily have maybe Green Lantern has one line of dialogue and the whole thing. So you don't kind of dwell on that. It's again, kind of going back to what I said, it's all like, uh, in a Bible going back to religious metaphors that they've kind of created. But it doesn't always come through to you as the author. It's all kind of in their heads.

So this issue ends with so we see, uh, where Batman is, and then this chapter ends with basically the return of Superman. It's one of my favorite, um, it's a full page spread. We see this conflict again, the characters don't matter, really. Uh, but we get this very cinematic rescue. Citizens, uh, are in danger on this skyway, uh, tram, and it's falling. And we get this this is where I know Mark Wade is such a you could see it Christopher Reeve playing it. It's right out of, like, Superman Two, the Niagara Falls thing where people start shouting, oh, my gosh, when the little boy falls and look up in the sky. And then you turn the page, and it's from the angle. Alex Ross does an amazing job with the angles. It's from the citizen's point of view. You're actually looking up in the sky. And Superman in his new suit, he's gotten a haircut shaved. The beard awesome. Still got the gray. I respect that coming, uh, down. You don't even see what he's done. Yeah, he single handedly got the village, uh, by the belts, basically.

And importantly, I think there's some foreshadowing here. He's looking down upon you. Totally down.

And then you get the angle from above, superman's angle, looking down on humanity, with Norman looking up. And Norman gets this flash of, uh, what we don't see until issue four, uh, which is the coming Armageddon. And Norman realizes that it's return. Superman's return doesn't end his visions. It's the cause of the coming apocalypse.

So cool. And it also reminds me, we've called it cinematic a few times in this conversation. The pacing is very cinematic. This ending is such a great cliffhanger. It sets up like what you thought was true is not true. And now there's a larger question and mystery to solve. Uh, the pacing reminds me a little bit of the way on this show, and in life, as we've read it, we've talked about, like, Hickman's Avengers feeling very cinematic, that there's these cutscenes, there's these moments away, and this does that.

Even the way that Superman shows up, it's like, whooshes, a, uh, swirl of water. You don't really see him until the battle is over. The two second battle is over. He's captured the criminals. Book two titled Truth and justice. This chapter opens with Norman and the specter witnessing a heavily armed fascist group firing at immigrants arriving at Ellis Island. Like I said, timeless American tale before, unfortunately. I'm sorry to laugh.

Also, here's what's really fun. So, in one of the interviews, they talk about that specifically, this design of America Mando. They discussed it as being what if Rob Liefield designed America, mando. So they were directly referencing the shift in the tone and look of comics at the time. And I find that really interesting, because while Rob Liefield might not be a fascist, he certainly participates in a lot of hate and extremism on the Internet and in the world. So, I find it really quite a meta reference going on here.

And Magog, too. Uh, I was looking at him and going, well, he looks just like Cable. And then I read it's, like, oh, they hated the design of Cable, and they wanted him to look just like Cable.

Oh, my gosh. So they are interrupted. Their shoulder pads and huge knee pads are interrupted by Superman. And another awesome shot, Guido. As you mentioned before, it's looking up. They're always silhouetting the sun, the sun's behind them. They're bathed in light. Very renaissance style. Um, a reassembled Justice League who easily end the conflict aided by red Robin, uh, which we find out later as a middle aged Dick Grayson. The League then holds a press conference at the United Nations to state their mission to teach the newer generation of heroes the meaning of truth and justice. And this is where I really find this is Mark Wade's version of Superman. Like, it's all about truth and justice. It's basically his mission statement. Uh, it filled me with hope. We've already got that word used by Norman, like, we need hope. And here it is, Superman coming in, though.

That's so funny because I read it. I read it. I read it as he's so paternalistic here. He's not talking about inspiring truth injustice. He's saying, we'll teach them. We will make things right again. Right. Like, he's being very patriarchal. Like he is going to fix everything. They need to do it the right way.

Yeah. He's going to make America great again.

How dare you rob how dare you? Oh, my gosh. They should sell kingdom come hats like that now. Red kingdom come hats. Oh, my gosh. Okay. Uh uh however, the Secretary General of the United Nations isn't confident of Superman's plan, and neither is Bruce Wayne, who we learn has been working with urban warriors Oliver Queen, Dinah Lance, and Ted Court to continue the fight. They have their own plan uh, sorry, they have their own plan. But form an alliance with Superman, even though Bruce calls into question his, quote, fast totalitarian solution, end quote. What do you guys think of this? Set up the scene, bringing Ollie and Donna and Ted into the fold.

Well, I love what makes go ahead, Gita.

I was just going to say it makes sense. They are sort of the street level heroes, even though Black Canary is a metahuman. So that one, she's a little funky to me, but otherwise, they are the street level heroes, so it makes sense to me.

Well, and he said in their design. One of the reasons why he wanted to make Oliver bald, for example, is that they are the humans. So they've aged more like a human being, while Superman kind of still looks like Superman, but with graying hair. Wonder Woman looks exactly the same. So I like that kind of touch of, okay, these are the older they really look like in a previous episode.

I can't remember if it's the Speeding Bullets episode you covered or another one. You were talking about stories that really show the relationship between Bruce Wayne and Clark or Superman and Batman and why they get along, but how they don't. And I think Mark Wade really gets that. And I think when I was listening to that episode of yours, I actually thought of kingdom come, because maybe it was the first time I had seen them so blatantly opposed to one another. So we get this kind of shaky alliance. It was hard to summarize that because it's kind of unclear that they're forming an alliance. They're clearly at odds. Like, they clearly don't agree. Uh, the fast totalitarian solution is exactly what Bruce says to him. And I love that interplay. I think that good friends respect one another but often have differing opinions and but they learn. They stay together because they respect one another. And I just I just like that scene. I like that scene.

Yeah. And I like what Alex Ross said too, about how he depicted Bruce, which was that he wanted him to smile a lot. And he said that a smiling Bruce is actually more unsettling than an unsmiling Bruce because there's something what's going on there. And it's also a nice contrast because even as we talked about in Speeding Bullets, Superman and Batman kind of look a lot the same. So it's a nice little here. They don't as much because of other factors, but it's nice that oh, that little touch of, like, Superman's so serious. I don't think we ever see him smile here. But we've got bruce has that kind of sly smile.

Even cracking jokes here. So fun. He's sort of jabbing Superman in a way that both, I think, adds to their antagonism. But also, uh, as you're saying, Elliot, uh, demonstrates their friendship that they can almost tease each other. And I love when Cal says, I don't have that dark side. And Bruce says, Tell that to your tailor, right? Because he, uh, has the black now on his logo. So it's really fun.

And it could be interpreted as also patronizing. Bruce knows a lot more. I think he knows why Superman abandoned everything and he's kind of coming from it holier. Now, like, I've stayed in the fight. I've got a team here who's, uh, been hiding in the shadows and you abandoned us. I'm a better hero than you. That's the way I interpreted that kind of knowing grin. Uh, all right, moving on. And we, uh, get Lex Luther. We see Lex Luther, who's assembled a team of retired villains calling themselves the Mankind Liberation Front.

The MLF, which, real quick, I have to mention, is obviously a direct reference to the Mutant Liberation Front created in X Force drawn by Rob Liefield, though he did not create the team. That was Louise Simonson, but she was the writer. But definitely a reference to the Mutant Liberation Front, which is a very 90s team that shows up.

I've thought about that a lot with a lot of the team names in this too. The 90s stuff. They're intending to use the battle between Superman's, Justice League and the rogue superhumans to their own ends and purposes. Among them, Norman McKay and a specter see an adult Billy Batson, as a servant to Lex Luther pleasantly giving Lex a shave. Uh, sorry. Uh, Superman tries to recruit heroes to his side but gets turned down because of his methods, including Aquaman, who now serves as the king of Atlantis instead of a superhero. I think that title has been passed to someone else. Those that oppose Superman in the League are being captured. If they refuse, as Superman puts it, to see the light, they're refusing to see the light. Very, uh, biblical reference. We also get a scene where Superman turns to Orion, and this is one of the added scenes. Am I correct in that?

Yes. This, other than the epilogue, is the added scene, which was cut out both because they had limited page count and there was a concern over pacing. But Alex really, really wanted the new Gods to be a part of this. And in this help, uh, instructing him.

Turns to Orion, who we learned has killed Dark Side and now rules Apocalypse for help and answers. I'm curious about this because what I liked about this, and again, we see time is passing a little bit as Superman tries to recruit people. And we see Superman actually failing. I think he's surprised that people are refusing to follow him. And I like that this adds to the uncertainty of the future, where originally, when I see Superman return, I'm like, oh, he's back, and we're going to get this battle with the new heroes, and it's all going to be over with. And I like this little wrench that gets thrown in that idealistic plan.

Well, I think also, though, Superman, he wants to be the moderate in all of these cases because Orion says, well, you can just send all of the bad people to Apocalypse, right, and they can live here. And Superman is like, well, wait a second. I didn't want to go that far. So he's kind of constructive prison. Exactly. He's trying to be that centrist through a lot of this, uh, uh, compared to Wonder Woman, who's maybe farther to his right, and then these other kind of cases here. So it's interesting. He's trying to and which is so much, I think, what this story is about. What does it mean to be human. And he's the one that's kind of straddling that human god paradox. Which of course, comes into the climax of the story as well.

So, uh, this is coming up. One of my, uh, favorite parts I'm going to try to summarize, uh, really quickly, is, uh, Superman learns of Magog's whereabouts and confronts him in the Kansas wasteland. And this is where we get I think if this were a TV series, this would be like one of those standalone episodes that would give us a lot of backstory, um, that, uh, I enjoy watching sometimes. So, uh, here we learn about this past conflict. Magog blames Superman for the disaster, saying it all started when the Joker killed the Daily Planet staff, including Superman's wife, Lois Lane. As the Joker was being brought into custody, magog killed him with a blast from his energy staff. Superman brought Magog into court for his actions, but the judge ruled in favor of M magog, considering his actions justifiable and acquitting him. Superman takes off instead of fighting Magog. Not because he is afraid of Magog, but, uh, because Superman realizes he's the kind of hero people want. The people want Superman. The people want magog instead.

Yeah. Magog even says, you were afraid i.

Uh, was the man again. I like this kind of stuff. We fridge Lois Lane with the Joker. But it reminds me of too, of how injustice starts also. It's the only explanation.

It is for sure, Tom. There's no other reason for no doubt.

Superman turning against humanity. Ah, because Lois Lane has always served as his link to humanity. I'm talking about Rob straddling that. And so it also makes sense. It just shows humanity's the shift into extremism, like how how quickly that can happen. We're seeing it a little bit, um, in our current American culture, but that Superman has always tried to stand for we don't kill. And this reminded me of Batman Begins a little bit, too, in Batman's story also, of like, um, that violence isn't the answer, even though he's a product of that violence. Um, and that, I think, we see in some Batman tales of him wanting to kill Joe Chill or whoever it is that killed his parents and decides not to and goes down that other path. Same thing with Peter Parker and Spiderman wanting to kill the guy who killed Uncle Ben and then deciding not to. So there's always that edge of rage and the choices that make them those heroes, which I always, no matter how many times it's told, I enjoy.

Well, in calling back to Speeding Bullets a few episodes ago, it's fun because in Speeding Bullets, it's actually having Superman's powers that causes Bruce to kill Joe Chill, ultimately, because his rage combined with the power, ends up resulting in Joe Chill's death. So it's interesting, I guess, there's constantly this question of should a hero should someone as powerful as Superman kill?

Rob, what did you think of yeah.

Came up a lot when the man of Steel movie was made, too.

Rob, what did you think of this, uh, reading it for the first time, this explanation of the conflict between Magoga and Superman?

Yeah, I think it's interesting. I like this idea of the new man of Tomorrow. And they do use that phrase a lot throughout all of kingdom come. And what does it mean? Magog, I think, says, oh, you're not the man of tomorrow. You're the man of the 1950s at one point. And it's like, oh, that's interesting. Yeah. This character that's kind of stuck in the past. And I think so many people have always said, well, isn't it just batman just killed the Joker at some point? If the Joker is killing all these people, isn't it better to kill this one person so all these other people don't die? And here we have a quote unquote hero that is, um, doing exactly that.

It's always the trolley problem. So the chapter ends with this really good time. We see Superman overseeing the construction of a prison in Kansas. We think it's a prison. We don't quite know what it is yet. And then meanwhile, Bruce and Ollie and Dinah and Ted meet with Lex Luther to form an alliance. The last panel we see is Bruce and Lex shaking hands.

Uh, so fun. And yeah, I mean, we keep getting at this, and I'll just mention it again, but it keeps coming up like, this is such compressed storytelling, right? I think each of these issues could have been four sub issues. And, uh, that is not a complaint at all, in fact. But it's really fascinating how much and it makes sense.

It doesn't bother me because we're seeing it through Norman Inspector. Uh, it's the narration. It's like time shifts. They're able to travel just like Scrooge and any ghost.

Right?

We got the Ghost of Christmas Past. You can jump around a little bit.

Yeah.

There was a few times when I thought, wait, did I miss a page or something? Because when I was reading it on the app and sometimes the app can be funky. So I was like, did I skip a page? And it was like, no. And actually, that's a great point. I hadn't thought of Elliot, where we're seeing it through these people that are also experiencing it through a window. Just like us, our surrogates here in Norman in the specter. So it makes sense that we have this kind of jump cut editing through a lot of all right, chapter three.

Up in the sky. I'm going to get into these titles, uh, when we get to chapter four. So this one was hard to summarize. There are a lot of smaller scenes here and moving parts, but it really serves it well because this is the penultimate issue and we're building towards and setting up the finale. So Norman and Inspector visit the structure we saw Superman building in the previous chapter. We learned that the dome is a rehabilitation center for superhumans called the Gulag. Due to its vast size, it was intended to house prisoners for months to come. But within two weeks of its construction, it is filled beyond capacity. Kryptonian robots, uh, are sentries, and holograms teach prisoners how to responsibly use their powers. I just love this.

Again, ten, uh, years later, this becomes the raft storyline in New Avengers that Brian Michael Bendis writes. So this is again, there's so many people who've taken inspiration from this storyline.

And something that Alex Ross took inspiration from a little show called Super Friends. Because the gulag is just the Legion of Doom's giant Darth Vader like element. Headquarters.

Right. And we also see what I like, too. And I'm wondering again if this is Mark Wade's influence is I love that the prisoners are trying to be because remember, the prisoners are either superheroes. That wouldn't like this new generation that just they were trying to do good but wouldn't see the light, as Superman called it. And so he's trying to rehabilitate them using holograms. But in the 1978 Superman film, it's Holograms that taught Clark to be Superman, taught him who he was. And so we get a little bit of that Kryptonian technology and a little bit of why Superman thinks that might be a way to if you just lecture at them, they'll understand. It's really poor teaching, in my opinion. All right, so there's a scene, uh, with Norman the Specter and a small council, including the wizard Shazam Ganset of OA. And is it the All Father? Um, yeah. All father.

And, uh, this is the Quintessence. They're known as the quintessence. This group sort of a high council of cosmic beings.

I was a little confused by this, but I think that this is a scene to let the reader know that they're kind of also questioning billy Batson's mysterious role in all this. It's a way to kind of build suspense about what's going to happen here.

Well, I get the sense I don't remember if this was true in 1996, but I get the sense that it's supposed to be a mystery, that it's Billy Batson. That it's, uh that it this was a reveal that you didn't realize that that character because we only know we only knew Billy as a child and Shazam as Shazam Captain Marvel. I don't know that you're supposed to realize that's who Lex is manipulating in the last issue.

Exactly. I agree. Except for that the first page of chapter three is a huge painting of well, who is then Captain Marvel. But yeah.

Uh, yes, because I think this issue is revealing that that, if I'm not.

Mistaken, as a big role Captain Marvel. Shazam is popular now because of the movies and because of Jeff John's and things like that. But in the 90s, it was like people wouldn't really have guessed. I don't remember. I didn't know who the copy was.

Nothing.

Yeah. No. Reading interviews with Mark Wade and Alex Ross where they said one of their major goals with this was to bring him back into the public consciousness. So I do think you're right. People might have known him if they were hardcore comic fans, but otherwise, Mark.

Wade's about to come out with a new Shazam series pretty soon. In a scene in space right outside of Love, uh, it's Green Lanterns. Kind of like it's kind of like the Watchtower. It's the satellite now that, uh, the Justice League uses Diana Gilsta Clark, why she was banished from Paradise Island in the first place. She had failed in her mission as an ambassador for peace. And I think while they're doing this, they're just, like throwing rocks at asteroids and destroying them. Yes.

Skipping rocks on Asteroids. Yeah.

And this is so good. And this is one thing that I really absorbed differently now than I did a long time ago. So, uh, we talked about Rob and I in our Wonder Woman episode. That one of the things I always love when I think writers really get Wonder Woman, and it's rare, sadly, is when they position her as this blend or this complexity between Superman's morality and Batman's willingness to do whatever it takes. And I think Gail Simone in Infinite Crisis does it. And I love that. But it's really cool to me that it shows up here, and I didn't realize how explicit it shows up here that, uh, the reason she was calling to action and the reason she is pushing so hard is because her people told her she was being too soft. So it's a cool way that she has decided, you know what? It's now peace by any means necessary. I like that way of her being because it's a little different. Again, Batman's just willing to do whatever's necessary, and Superman is too moral in a lot of cases. She's like, okay, now I need to do whatever it takes. And my goal is still peace and love, but if I need to kill a few people to get there, I'm going to do that. So it's a really neat motivation for her. And, uh, it's one I just also shows.

It gives a little bit of back understanding and the time jump for the reader who haven't been with these characters in a long time, how your methods can change based on your experience and how some people I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this, I've tried this. And I'm going to try this now because the other stuff wasn't working. Um, it's just interesting. It's thought provoking, I think, for me. All right. Meanwhile, Lex Luther subjects Billy Batson to torture by making him watch gruesome images of him and his friends being slaughtered by superhumans and causing worms to crawl in and out of Batson's ears, keeping him from saying Shazam's name or the name Shazam. Um, this was strange and disturbing. Luther later joins with Bruce Wayne, where Bruce reveals his team of superhumans who are ready to lend their support to Luther's cause. But then we see on the side of the end that John Jones, the Martian Manhunter, had changed forms and was disguised as one of these people of this council. And I don't know about you guys, I didn't understand. I think it was it felt like they just wanted to shoehorn Martian Manhunter in there to explain where he was because he doesn't really add to it. I mean, it does help us. That scene is there to show that Bruce really isn't allied with Lex Luther. He's trying to gain insight into Luther's plan. Um, right.

Yeah. Mhm, I think that's the purpose of that. And back to the worms. I think it's some evolution of Mr. Mind. Rob, do you agree?

I don't know if it's because Mr.

Mind is a big antagonist of Captain Marvel's and he's a worm. And so I, uh, imagine it's one of those things where they came up with this backstory where there are like these worms that Lex somehow was able to create or Mr. Mind turned.

Well, Dr. Savannah creates the worms. We don't see Dr. Savannah in here.

Right.

But Lex, we get a little reference that refers to him. Ah, I definitely think it's at the very least a reference. Whether it's an actual evolution, but it's certainly a, uh, reference. And I think, as we were saying at this point, being that this character was not as famous as he now is, or was, that it's more of, ah, one of the many Easter eggs.

In that makes a lot of sense. I had not put that together. That went over my head. As someone who doesn't, well, I wouldn't say I'm not a huge fan of Captain Marvel and sort of read a bunch of it up. In Green Lantern satellite, red Robin speaks one of his few lines with his former Teen Titans members about his growing concerns that Superman's plans would eventually fail. Much like me. At the beginning of this episode, Norman McKay finds himself suddenly pulled from the spirit realm by Flash, who can, because of his vibration, he's always vibrating. He, uh, can see into different dimensions and things like that. Norman, uh, tells Superman he is there to warn him of the coming Armageddon, but does so in biblical verse. Red Robin alerts the team that a riot has broken out in the Gulag. Wonder Woman sends Flash, Greenland and Power Woman to deal with the catastrophe, while she and Superman speak to the Secretary General of the United Nations about their growing concerns of the Gulag. So we're starting to get the cork has popped and, uh, we're getting, uh, more of the conflict here. We then see a confrontation between Lex and Bruce. As lex tries to send billy batson to the gulag. Bruce reveals his betrayal, sending his Bat robot knights to capture Lex. Billy is able to call upon his shazam powers and escapes, ruining Bruce's plan. So now we see Bruce's plan. The cork has popped in that one, but in the wrong direction. And, uh, things are heading sideways. Wonder Woman, adorned in her golden eagle armor. Now this was seen in the Wonder Woman 1984. Is this not knowing Wonder Woman that well? Okay. That's what I thought. That's what I thought. Okay.

This is created here by Alex.

Robin, um, argues with Superman about how to deal with the rioters. So now we're seeing the separation of Superman and Wonder Woman, who are allies. Now we're seeing a, uh, difference in their ideologies and ways to deal with this a little bit more. She wants a battle. Uh, sorry, she wants a battle, but Superman doesn't. Superman races to get Bruce's help and he reveals that Captain Marvel is headed to the gulag. Clark races there at super speed. Very cool paintings, uh, here. But it's too late. He gets knocked aside. We don't know by whom. And norman and the specter watch as captain marvel appears. The chapter ends with this text box. Armageddon has arrived with a full page reveal of captain marvel. Now no. Shazam.

Yeah. And real quick, we haven't talked too much about him, but I love the portrayal of lex here. I think he's just very funny. He gives that he's that perfect balance between a more sinister lex and some of the gene hackman.

He reminds me a little of Vincent dinofrio's kingpin mhm.

Yeah, totally. And his plan I mean, he's so inconsequential, which I think is kind of the point. He's got this kind of convoluted plan, a little bit like gene hackman in the first superman movie, where it's like, okay, there's Billy. We don't really quite know why he's doing all this, but I think it almost speaks to it's like, oh, the humans are inconsequential to this story. This is about these people that are more of the gods and less, unfortunately.

Back to your point about the use of the holy, uh, trinity of DC comics batman, superman, and wonder woman. I think I'm drawn to the scenes between them and those conversations between them. So my favorite scenes in this issue, this chapter, are between wonder woman and superman. And then when superman confronts Bruce Wayne in the bat cave and tries to get him to help, this is where I think alex Ross came up with the structure of this and everything. And I think that mark wade adding the dialogue and the economy of words and what they say to each other is really important. It's just enough to get it, um, and the word choices are, uh, really important.

And then, of course, it circles back because then it's the facial expressions. And there's so many moments, especially between Clark and diana, where you're feeling the tension and the intimacy at the same time.

Totally.

Package is such a great collaboration.

All right, are we ready to end this never ending battle? So chapter four. I just want to make a note about titles of these four chapters. I love it. I believe it's all from the original. Either radio show or the beginning of the old live action superman television series. It's a strange visitor from a new world fighting a, uh, never ending battle for truth, justice in the American way. Look, up in the sky. It's a bird. So he takes it's not in that order, but it's a strange visitor uh, up in the sky. Sorry, truth, injustice. Up in the sky. And a never ending battle. So these are phrases taken from the original. Not the original, because it wasn't comics. But so much of superman was influenced from those three media that are all combined into kind of superman we know. And I'm willing to guess that's either a love letter from both of them, or it's really great. Uh, so this chapter opens with a huge battle at the Gulag centered on Superman and Captain Marvel. Norman pleads with a specter to make it stop, but the specter says he cannot take action yet, that there must be a reckoning.

The specter very Wattu in this moment. I'm just going to watch.

Yeah, I can take action. Not yet.

Very similar.

Right? I'm messing with everything. But I'm going to now claim the.

Question of, like, what I understood, the story reason or the narrative reason why Norman inspector there. They kind of take us through. And then I think when I was reading this again, I'd forgotten Norman's real role here. I was like, why is he even here then? Uh, if he's not going to get involved? Or he's pleading with the specter to make it stop. Um, I thought that was as good because maybe it was meant to do that. So the reader is also like, yeah, what's the deal here? Why can't you make it stop? What is his role here at the United Nations? The Secretary General decides to take action to deal with a Superman problem once and for all. Dropping nuclear bombs that are capable of destroying all superhumans except for Superman. Meaning that I think they know that it's going to kill everyone but Superman. And that's the risk they're willing to take.

And they do have a good, um, um, moment where they say, oh, we can't kryptonite ah, no longer works on Superman. He's just too powerful at this point. Which is just a nice little yeah.

Like, why nuclear?

Okay, that's off the table.

The Gulag battle continues when Bruce now in full Batman armored suit. So, I love this. It's a mirror to chapter two, when you have Superman and the Justice League first show up. Now we have it's again, the same exact angle, but we've got Bruce and Batman armor, except the background is not sun. Um, it's complete darkness and dark clouds. And it's all the heroes that, um, Bruce has assembled. And we get to see, finally, Ted and Dinah and Ollie and lots of other people in their new armor and their new outfits. And, uh, they're going to come in and help. He and Wonder Woman have a confrontation after Bruce witnessed Diana indiscriminately killing during their conference. So she jacks Batman up and flies him above the clouds. During their confrontation, they see the blackhawks coming to deliver their payload. Bruce convinces Diana to help him take them out. They're almost successful. There's one nuclear bomb that they don't destroy. Again, I love the scene between the two of them. It's ideological. Um I don't know. Um, guido is our resident Wonder Woman expert. How'd you like that scene?

Yeah, it makes total sense. I love her reaction before they go up. And she's like, you dare condemn me, you aristocratic bastard. And then they fly up. It makes sense why they'd be in conflict at this point and what they're both trying to do. And then that they stop fighting. And I like how he says to her, we can keep fighting and just let the planes do their work. But then they both realize like, no, we need to stop this.

Superman and Captain Marvel continue to battle until Superman finally grabs Captain Marvel as he calls upon Shazam's M name, letting the lightning bolt turn Captain Marvel back into Billy Batson. Superman grabs Batson's mouth and clamps it shut while he tries to reason with Batson, making him see the urgency of a bomb being dropped that will destroy all superhumans Superman.

The fight is great too.

Uh.

You can feel especially Captain Marvel supposed to be Superman, right? Having been inspired by Superman, you can feel the threat to Superman here. He's got the bloodshot eyes and because Captain Marvel just keeps calling down lightning on him and it's like relentless. So I really love even though the.

Battle is very brief, uh, layout is perfect. Superman lets Batson make the decision of what's more important to him. As he flies off to intercept the bomb. Batson speaks Shazam's name again and transforms into Captain Marvel, flinging Superman to the ground as he outraces Clark to intercept the bomb first. He calls upon Shazam's name three times and the lightning bolt ignites the bomb, consuming all superhumans in a mushroom cloud except for Superman and whoever was protected by the Green Lantern's power rings.

And, ah, it's a shocking I mean, there's desolate it's skeleton after skeleton after skeleton. There's really no holding back on this panel. Like the death is obvious and it's supposed to be you have all of these costume heroes and it's just their skeleton.

I also like it because Superman's the resolution of the story is not action based. They failed in some way. They failed to prevent this from happening. And again, why is Norman there? Why are Norman inspector there still trying to figure out if they weren't there to prevent this armageddon, what's Norman's role? So I like that this is still being teased to us. But I forgot yes, I forgot about that full page skeleton smoke. I love the different sizes of the skeleton. You've got that giant skeleton in the way background. It's great. Well, as any Superman fan knows, once you see Superman looking down with shadows over his eyes but a, uh, red glint, you know, uh, he's mad evil. Superman enraged evil and flies off, uh, toward the United Nations and seals the door shut, terrifying all the people within as he threatens to pull down the whole building on top of them. This is dark. I was like, that's not my Superman. The specter takes Norman there to try talking some sense into Superman to make him see the humanity that he's ignored all those years. Believing that he was a god. Superman eventually relents and forges a new relationship with the people to not solve their problems for them, but to solve their problems alongside them. Not imposing his power among men, but working to earn their trust.

And I love how Norman reasons with him here, how he realizes, because it's such a nuanced, emotional beat of the story, he realizes that he's not mad at humans. The specter keeps saying, like, he's so enraged. And Norman's like, no, he's mad at himself. And that's how to get him out of this is to help him realize his anger is about that he feels like he failed and he's afraid. And it's not actually about the humans and the choices they made.

Yeah. And I think so much of the mission statement of this or the question that they have is Superman here saying that he's not going to solve the problems for them, he's going to work with them. Because I was thinking, reading this, oh, if we had a Superman or God in our own life who could just do anything, oh, cure cancer, please do that. Oh, stop this hurricane from happening. Stop that. But Superman saying, but what if that person goes away? Which is kind of how we start this story. And I think here Superman is saying, like, I'm not going to have all the answers. I'm not going to just do this for you. It is going to be us working together to actually solve these things. And it's like, oh, that's very interesting because I think that is how we would have to work with someone like this in our actual reality or we would become dependent on them.

Well, and you see it in the this is pre epilogue, but the beats of the actual finale here, because you see, Batman's rehabilitation is in a hospital setting. And so he's working with people.

And he has a funny moment with.

Lex where he says, Shazam. And Lex says, shut up. Uh, and then you see Diana is now brought back into the Amazons and Green Lantern is now on the UN. So you literally start to see them inserted into human, in a sense, like.

We'Ve talked about before when I've been on the show with any good what if it brings it back to the status quo, but the characters are changed? I hear people talk about writers, especially the toys got taken out of the sandbox to play, and now they're put back in the sandbox. So we get some growth. But like you mentioned the beginning of the episode, Guido, we kind of end this first part, uh, right before we get to how Norman has changed, but with how Cal has changed, where he's going back to Clark, he's putting the glasses back on. And the thing that's different is he kisses Wonder Woman. So, um, they have this relationship now. He's not in a virtual kind of field, but he's actually plowing. Uh, what I probably think is Kansas trying to make the soil healthy and things like that. Um, and I love how we kind of end before the epilogue with Norman up in front of his congregation again as a pastor. But now it's different from, um, his opening sermon. This is more about hope. And so Superman did exactly what he's supposed to do, like we were talking about before, when he's written really well. He's there to save people, but he's more there to inspire hope and let human beings understand who they have the power and potential to be and not to sit back and relax while he does everything. I really like that part.

Yeah. And the Specter is now a human in his parish. And it works because you kind of almost see it like the Specter has fulfilled his mission, which had to do with judgment. So it makes a lot of sense. And then, of course, that blog, which is one year later, and back in the world of Krypton, we have just an incredible crypton.

The restaurant not Crypton, the planet.

No, world of Krypton. Uh, or planet Krypton.

There you planet. There you go.

Yeah.

And so I love this. And in some of the back matter, mark Wade and Alex Ross talk about how this came to Alex Ross. He actually does a sketch of the three of them at a, uh, table having a meal. And he brought it to Mark at a Comic Con and said, okay, I have this idea for this epilogue. And he knew that their goal was to tell Bruce that Diana was pregnant. And Mark Wade instantly knew, oh, the reason they're telling him is because they want him to be the Godfather. And so, again, just an incredible collaboration between these two artists and storytellers to get to this scene where that's what happens. They are having a child and they want Bruce to be the godfather so that he can be the moral compass. And this being, who will be a superhuman, probably the most powerful being, will have a human guide and a human balance in his life. So very cool scene and very funny.

Yeah. It's hard to believe that this was originally published without this, because I think this is so key to what they're trying to say with this, which is that the god you need also the human influence as well. And also, I think it puts a happier button on this story, which doesn't end necessarily unhappily, but has dower moments. We saw there's another nuclear apocalypse. So yeah, I can't imagine this having I disagree. Epilogue.

Go ahead.

I was going to disagree that I actually think it works without the epilogue. Uh, because how we open and close with Norman and the closure, but also the sense of possibility, where I saw the epilogue as not funny. I still like it, but I don't know if it was necessary. I guess I'm not being that eloquent, but it seemed a little bit silly because they're back at Planet Krypton, which made me kind of chuckle and laugh where I felt the weight of the story without the epilogue.

Yeah, there are lots of great jokes. My favorite was, uh, getting the Power Girl chicken sandwich. And what cut is that? Of course, it's the breast.

Or I just love too, even like when Bruce is ordering and he's like, steak. And then the person's like, oh, do you want this? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, steak.

Yeah, even their drinks just tell you.

So much about them because milk, water, and coffee. Right?

Milk, water, and coffee. Which of course, Wonderful would have water, Superman would have milk, and Batman's going to have true.

I mean, it's really well done.

Yeah, I guess I'm curious, like, Rob, do you love this story? So you're the first to read it. Is it, uh, in the canon now for you?

I really liked it a lot. I kind of thought it was a little too quick for me in some cases, as we've kind of gone back to that, it felt very compressed. I would have almost liked to have seen some of the beats played out over longer periods. And also, I think some of it is just because I have less experience with some of the DC characters in general, that maybe getting more familiar with some of the canon would also help. So I don't have, say, the long love of Superman that Elliot, for example, you have, but I mean, I certainly loved it, but I think, um, was it like the super top tier? For me, I would say a little bit below, and I would actually say that's because the thing I think does this story really well, and I would say better. And it came out before. This is the Mark Gruenwald Squadron Supreme, which I know you can't exactly compare because they're doing different things. Certainly the art style is very different. But that kind of story about how much power do we give superheroes and what control do they have over things definitely is hinted at there. Maybe because that's a twelve issue story, they can dive into some of those things in deeper ways.

And this and that both have a political mhm piece, too, like, what are the actual real world political implications of these heroes? So I can see that connection. And Elliot rereading it now, this time. What's your overall opinion of this? Or what's your takeaway from this reading?

I love it. I love Alex Ross. Uh, and just to let you guys know, I always like comics better when I get to talk about them or hear you guys talk about them. So thank you for making me more deeply appreciate this. I think that being able to say why I like it instead of just reading it as a story is really helpful for me. Again, like I said during this episode, anytime there's a moral question and we get characters, and we get an insight and understanding of why they make those choices. I love as Rob alluded to my deep history, and love of Superman makes me love this story more. I don't think I'd like it as much without Superman and the nods to why he's an important character for me and as just a superhero. And again with Alex Ross's art. Uh uh. I love movies. I love seeing audiovisual stories. And so I think that we talked also about just what Alex Ross brings to this, both for his love of these characters. But the visual storytelling is, uh, the icing on the cake here. I can't really imagine this without I can't imagine this, like I was saying before, as drawn or something like that. Right?

That's true.

Painted. It's a bigger story.

It's an epic.

Yeah. What about Yogita?

It has to feel epic. Yeah. I continue to love it. I think I always loved the mythological commentary on it and the humans versus metahumans sort of political commentary that was a little lighter here than, say, in Squadron Supreme, but I think it still is present. And I love the commentary on eras of heroes, like we were saying with Rob Liefield and the extreme comics and what that meant. And what place do Golden Age heroes have in that? I mean, it's an eternal question that especially DC is always faced with heroes that are 30 years older than Marvel. Heroes is just what do you do with these characters who are mythological, who are iconic, who, uh, were moral black and white at one point? How do you deal with that ghost story? Does it really well?

I think it goes to what alex ross's quote we read at the beginning was where marvel marvel is constantly, uh, in its own time, while here the reason why he wanted to maybe go back to those superman and batman characters after this, while marvel he was done after the marvels is to deal with that eternal question of what do you do? How do you bring these characters always into the future, into the present, when they are so much of the past?

I think it also works for me that I think I've said this on the show before, but when I look at my collection, I look at my bookshelf. M most of my DC, the collections I own and the stories I love are taken out of continuity or else worlds. I think there's something about the DC heroes that just really work really well as these one and done stories. And I'm going to bring this up a little bit later. And Marvel really works as what's going on? How is their history inform, what they're doing right now? And so that's why I think also that this story works really well. You can set these DC stories in the future, in the past, or with different versions of the characters, because it's the. Core. And it's what Mark Wade and Alex Ross do so well. Like we've talked about earlier, that getting Batman, Wonder Woman, and Superman and the interplay between them and why they do what they do. Right. Like so on the nose, right. Makes this story really powerful as well.

Mhm and I think you're right. It's a great else world. It's a great alternate universe. It has all of the world building that we've talked about, the extraordinary world building. It has the deviation from the norm, which, upon reflection, gives you more information about the norm. We understand these characters better. Even if this is a Superman that's a little different than us. It's a Superman who removed himself from society for a few decades. It's a wonder woman who got exiled by the Amazon. So everyone's slightly different. So I think it's a great example of an alternate universe. But that begs the question we use a what if question every episode. Even if it's not a what if, what is the what if here? Like, what is the point of divergence, would you say? Or what is the question Alex and Mark are posing with this series?

To me, I think the key aspect of it is not Superman going away, but it is the prison concept. So it's almost like, what if Superman tried to police not only the world villains, but also the world heroes?

Though I'd say that doesn't happen at the onset. Right? That's not the catalyst.

No, it's not. But I don't think that is where the conflict kind of then arises. I think the conflict arises from this, him imposing his will, what he thinks is right on. Uh, not only people who are, quote unquote, bad guys, but also the people who are trying to be the good guys as well. I don't think it's necessarily him going away. And even the Kansas aspect, that is where the conflict really happens in this story.

My first go in thinking about this, and Robbie just mentioned this, you don't think it's centered on Superman? And I would tend to agree with that. My first take was kind of like, what if Superman felt he wasn't relevant anymore? Um, and then that made me it's not really about Superman because it wasn't just him that left that did all this. So I thought about the perspective of what they bring about in the court system. Like why did the judge rule the way they did? And why did people side with Magog? And so I'm wondering if this is a question maybe a little bit better is what if people stop believing in heroes? Or the type of hero that the Justice League used to represent? And then everything kind of falls after that. So once people stop believing in it and getting behind them, then you get the rise of all the other type of heroes that spawns Superman returning to get rid of everything. So that might be the key point or the turning point.

I'd say, I like that. I think that's the direction to go. And I'm reminded of one of the final panels when Superman's at the UN. He says, you started to see us as gods, and so did we. And I think that's what's happened here. What happened here is society started to see them as gods. And gods are, uh, removed from the earthly plane. And so once that happened, it brought in all these other heroes, like Magog and M, these other characters that Alex created who are not gods. They're like you and me, and they're making good and bad decisions. They're killing or not killing. They're being tried in a court of law. So what happens if you start to see superheroes as gods? I think that's the question.

Well, only one of us can be right, so I think it is me.

Well, we invite our listeners to share what they think the question is on our social media. We'd love to hear what you think. The what if question of Kingdom Come.

Is, um, one of us types the episode title into the system that distributes the podcast. I get to decide what we land with as an episode title. So it'll be a surprise to us, but not to our listeners, because they'll have seen the title when they loaded.

The what if people couldn't decide on the central question brought to you by their watches.

What if an elsewhere else was so good we, uh, couldn't decide a question?

Mhm?

Well, here's a title. What if this podcast never ends? So let's, with that, move on to our final segment, Pondering Possibilities.

Will the future you describe be averted? Diverted? Diverted.

So Gito, what are we talking about for our pondering possibilities?

Well, if you're still listening, thank you for bearing with us. This won't be a long segment. There are many futures of Kingdom Come, and before this podcast ends one day in the far off distant future, we will cover them all in the collected editions of Kingdom Come. There is a great timeline. It only goes through 2006, but it actually maps out every reference to Kingdom Come as small as like, when did Wonder Woman's war armor first show up in the Prime Universe? So it's a really cool timeline to look at. Or when did the Quintessence show up? Or, of course, when does GOG show up? Now, GOG is Magog's father, and GOG is sort of the first way that they bring Magog into the DC Universe. But this timeline has really cool influences and inspirations in the prime continuity. There are maybe two kind of sequels to this, and we will cover them briefly, though, very briefly. In 99, there's the kingdom. So Mark and Alex started collaborating on this, though Alex left and has pretty much disowned that project. Mark ends up writing this two issue series and a whole bunch of one shots that's supposed to be a prequel. Alex leaves and it becomes more of a sequel. It introduces GOG Hypertime, and of course, the birth of Superman and Wonder Woman's Child. And then the thing I would call more of a sequel, but again, it's not a direct sequel is in the volume of Justice Society of America. Late in Jeff Johnson's Run, alex Ross returns to a story called Thy Kingdom Come. In the pages of that which has the Kingdom come, Superman show up. And Magog is there with all this GOG stuff. And they're trying to determine what to do with Magog and is he good or is he bad, and how can they prevent the Earth from being destroyed? And it's not intended to really be a sequel, but it does give us more glimpses of the Kingdom Come timeline. The kingdom come earth. Earth 96 or Earth 22 now is shown in other ways. It shows up in glimpses in multiversity, or it's a part of 52. So it really has been referenced and keeps showing up. But those are the two kind of sequel stories, and we'll deal with them one day. There's also the novelization, which adds a lot of material by Elliot McGinn, came out closer to the time of the original publication. There's an audio dramatization or audio book of that with some cool voice acting. We listened to some of that earlier, the three of us. There has never been an animated adaptation. There's been one trading card set, there's been the toy set and Hero clicks. So it's interestingly. Obviously a huge selling book. It's constantly in print as a collected edition, but there is not an enormous amount of merchandising about it. So for our, uh, pondering possibilities today, I want us to stay on just the original and really ponder the possibilities of that original story. Could there be more? Should there be more? Where could we see it? So who wants to start?

Go. Uh, ahead, Rod.

I think you can see more of it, but I think the one tricky thing with this, compared to some other else worlds, something like, say, the Batman dark, uh, Knight Returns, is that I think part of the enjoyment of this or why this would resonate, is knowing the deep backstories mythologies of these characters. So I don't think this is like the first thing that you can do. This is the thing that you can do after you have reestablished these characters, whether in film or TV form. So I think it has to be after we've gotten to know, if not the actors playing them, certainly, I think at least the characters.

I don't think I agree. I think in the same way we were talking about with speeding bullets that, uh, because everyone in the world knows enough of who Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman are, that I think you can get into this story. And the right storyteller could give you a sense of sort of what it means that these superheroes are being seen as gods now and ever move themselves. And you don't need a lot of detail about to get it to be this really good story. And I'm actually thinking a little bit of the other thing I'd like to see is, like a Watchman esque the HBO Watchman esque version of this, something that builds on the source, but is very removed from the source, too. I don't know why I'm thinking about that, but that feels like a good model, perhaps, for how this story could be told.

I think you're thinking of the reason why I'm thinking of the Watchmen HBO series is because I think wondering if it was inspired by Kingdom Come. It does. Exactly what Kingdom Come um, does is imagining where those here where the Watchmen heroes are in the future, what the next generation has done, what the world that Alan Moore Dave Gibbons world is now.

That's true.

Um, so I have a couple of thoughts about, uh, when we were talking before and Rob was mentioning someone like Red Robin, I was wondering if one of the reasons that this story existed in all these characters was maybe to inspire more smaller miniseries where we'd see the Red Robin, we'd see what we'd get. A little side miniseries comic miniseries of Dick Grayson and how he went from Robin to Red Robin. Or we could get a little bit more backstory. There's all these little side characters. Or the flash. Like, you could have a whole Flash miniseries of the Kingdom Come Flash.

If this was an event today, there would be, like 61 shots tied into it.

Yeah, I'm just surprised that it didn't spawn this. Like, every once in a while, there's a little else world line, and it's the version of that character. From there, I could see that. I would read that. I'd be interested that I don't think it would take away from the story. And I wouldn't want it to add anything like I wouldn't want it to add to the continuity. It would just be a companion for people that people that love that. My other thought was that, and it's been a thought for a long time when Snyder took over and started creating this DCEU. And I was like the man of Steel, because it basically took a lot from Mark Wade's Superman birthright, which is a story I really love. I love that kind of retelling of the origin or Mark Wade's version of that. And it got me thinking about the different movies that DC could do. And like I said before, how they're different than Marvel and should be different than Marvel. Marvel works because of continuity and who's going to show up in every issue. And I think that stories that tell the power that Kingdom um Come does. If Kingdom Come was a movie, this is what I really wanted to see. And like you were just saying, we already know who Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman are, and to see them in a different light, to understand those characters and see them in a different story, you can just do that. You don't need origins. You don't need all this other stuff that Marvel, I think, needs to do. You can't all of a sudden have M Miss Marvel show up in a movie and not know her origin. That's part of the Marvel thing. And I always thought that a director and cinematographer that could mimic the lighting in the way of Alex Ross's artwork would be amazing to see, like a little bit grainy. Zach Sander tried to do a little bit of it, like man of Steel is a little bit like that. It sometimes looks like the painted tones. I would love to see a movie.

Just without the color.

Yeah, right.

And that was my kind of wonder for you, Elliot. There is a novelization, there's an audiobook, and we listen to some of the audio version. It's fun. But do you think this loses too much not having the Alex Ross drawings, uh, in a live action or certainly if they did it animated, would it not be good if they didn't try to replicate this style?

Uh, I can't picture a movie without that scene of Superman silhouetted, the bright colors, but silhouetted against the sun and the angles and the look of Clark. I always thought that maybe it was the height of Lord of the Rings. If they beefed up Vigo Mortensen, he would be a great older Clark, like an older Kellel. Um, but now with streaming, that was my thought, like, ten or 15 years ago, but now with streaming, I could I could see this as a really the way that HBO and some of these streaming services are treating the writers rooms and things like that. I think it could make a really great limited series on one of these platforms, dump a huge amount of money into it. Uh, I would watch the hell out of a kingdom come. HBO series would be great.

Well, and of course, a matter of weeks after James Gunn being announced as his role in the DC films in November 2022, he tweets a picture with no explanation of Kingdom Come and then announces that elseworld's movies and TV shows will be in development. So I think we can safely say this is in development. Now, whether or not we'll see it, who knows? But we can safely say it's in development. I think that's exciting. My gosh. Thank you, Mike.

My magog.

Be done.

We're done. Uh, I guess this is what we can expect every time we cover a famous, iconic, legendary meaty story. And there are a lot of alternate stories that are going to take lots of coverage, but that's a wrap on Kingdom Come. Dear Watchers, thank you for listening. And Elliot, thank you for joining us for this extra special, giant sized kingdom come episode.

Pleasure. I always love talking about Superman. Thank you guys for and talking to you. Secondary um, or primary? Should probably be primary. Um. Thank you guys for having me on. It's always a pleasure.

Can you tell our listeners how to find you and support the work you do?

Find me at Elliot. Two LS, one t, comic art, all one word on Twitter and Instagram. Actually, I haven't been able to share a lot of my commissions. It sounds weird to say that, but I've been doing a lot of work for people that haven't revealed what I've done. And I will add a little thing for Dear Watchers fans. I've been done with it for a long time. I created something for you guys to celebrate your 100th episode, but you won't get to see it till June. Um, so if people are curious about it, um, I will be posting some things as we lead up to and hopefully you'll join Guido and Rob for their 100th episode. It's a huge accomplishment.

I have been Guido.

And I have been Rob.

The reading list is in the show notes. You can follow us on all social media. Dear Watchers.

Leave a review wherever you listen. We'll be back soon with another trip through the multiverse.

In the meantime, in the words of Watu, keep pondering the possibilities.

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