Where Ideas Come To Die
The Kingdom Comes Again
One of my favorite comic book series is Kingdom Come, a stark and frank view on superheroes and what the mean, stand for and most importantly their role in the world. However its sequel, The Kingdom, tosses all that aside for the author's ego and desires. Furthermore it is a recursive storyline that negates both it and Kingdom Come with its events and resolution.
What follows is a very detailed summary of the book that you should not read if you want to read the book.
The only survivor of the Kansas disaster that drew Superman out of retirement in Kingdom Come grows up to found a church based on Superman. Clark, not wanting to be a God, tells him that Kansas was his fault because he gave up the fight for justice and wasn't there to prevent it.
The 5 most powerful beings in the galaxy, a Guardian of the Universe, The High Father, Zeus, Shazam and an unknown fifth, against his objections, grant this survivor knowledge of the Gods and this poor soul goes insane and is reborn as Gog. He then proceeds to murder Superman. He then travels back in time by a day and murders that Superman for being the anti-christ, he repeats this process over and over again.
THe Linear Men, keepers of the time stream, are going insane trying to figure out a way to stop this before all of reality unravels. Knowing what is at stake Rip Hunter takes the “Big 3” (Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) from the time period where Wonder Woman just gave birth to her and Superman's son. After a fierce battle between Gog and an assembled league of heroes Gog kidnaps the child and takes him back to the past where Gog wants to create the Kansas disaster while Superman is on “watch” so the world will rebel against the heroes and see them for the anti-christs they are.
Rip Hunter has recruited four heroes from the future, Bruce and Talia's son, Dick and Kory's daughter, Plastic Man's son and the daughter of Wally West, four who would give up all their tomorrows to save one yesterday, to stock Planet Krypton with weapons from all through time. In a quick side story the present day Batman is asked to investigate strange ghosts at Planet Krypton. While there he recognizes but realizes that some of these items, like blue kryptonite, shouldn't exist.
In the final battle it is revealed that Rip Hunter's plan was to stock Planet Krypton as a weapons depot to fight Gog, taking the most powerful weapons from time to battle a man with the powers of a God. The plan sort of works but Gog isn't defeated and the heroes escape to Hypertime, the greatest wonder in all creation, and scenes from DC's past dance amongst the time stream.
And then the story falls apart. It now turns into Mark Waid's soapbox for the multi-verse and the great stories that were told in the past. He toses aside the entire set up of the book to talk about Hypertime, and how continuity is the bane of creative story telling.
Take this quote from Rip Hunter as the prime example: “The problem with the Linear Men is that they're too linear....They think orderly, catalgued continuity is preferable to a kingdom of wonder.”
Gee, I wonder how Waid feels.
The Mary Sue-ing continues in the form of Wonder Woman. She confronts the 4 gods, the 5th one turned out to be the grown son that was kidnapped earlier who is directly connected to Hypertime itself. She threatens the Gods to repair the damage done to Gog and the Gods agree and reestablish their ties to humanity while a groveling Gog reaches out towards them.
The closing scene is little more than Waid's challenege to DC to cast aside what they have tried to do since 1985's Crisis on Infinite Earths and reconnect to their rich past and the readers both represented in the form a broken shell of man named Gog.
And thus we have the birth of Infinite Crisis.
