Joker Kills Everyone: DC Kingdom Come Remastered Full Story | Comics Explained

all right what's going on guys this is rob and if you talk to anybody out there who has been reading dc comics for well really since the 90s and you asked them what would you say the top five comic book stories are from dc comics i guarantee you somewhere in that list will be kingdom come and rightfully so kingdom come is one of the greatest stories ever written by dc comics right it's written by mark wade and it's drawn by alex ross for those of you guys who are curious about the artist alex ross is kind of like the premier comic book artist the definitive guy doesn't really draw comics as much as he used to this guy was where it was at and this story is kind of like the definitive dc story for a variety of reasons so the reason we're covering this is one i'm gonna be on a cruise for the next week and a half or so and two because we're covering uh dark crisis infinite frontier and this is one of the worlds they landed on and instead of just kind of giving you guys some sort of ad hoc explanation i figured we would actually remaster the kingdom come series we did before and bring it to you here so you can basically see what this story is about and why it's such a big deal they landed here so the way the kingdom come opens up is it's really kind of given to us by a quote now while this story does deal with like what is essentially a superhero or a superhuman civil war in dc comics really more of like a civil war event before marvel civil war it's also just as much a religious story it's not really on the nose or anything like that like the god of abraham will save us but it's one of those things where there's a lot of religious underpinnings and kind of like armageddon-esque scenarios and and really just kind of an overall feel that goes with it so what we get here is we're told and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood there fell a great star from the heaven burning as if it were a lamp and i beheld and heard an angel saying with a loud voice woe woe woe to the inhabiters of the earth and what you end up getting here is this kind of moment where you basically have norman mckay who is reading from the book of revelation to wesley dots now this moment here is highly important and it's really the most significant if you understand the history of wesley dodd so in dc comics way back in the 1980s well technically 1989 so really like the late 1980s with sandman volume 2 issue number one we were introduced to a character that you've all probably heard of called dream of the endless and the way this worked is that there came a point in time where in the dc continuity itself back in the 1930s dream of the endless had basically been trapped on earth right literally had his crystal taken away from him and all kinds of stuff but regardless he was stuck on earth and the result was that it wreaked havoc across the earth itself in the sense that if if dream of the endless is captured people can't dream properly their sleep doesn't work the way it's supposed to so what you had were all these people across the world that were experiencing bouts of insomnia or they were just sleeping continually or they were having like waking dreams or basically they were awake but they weren't really there they were just dreaming all the time wesley dodds is one of those guys the big difference here is that wesley dodds had a lot of prophetic dreams so he was essentially dreaming of the future different things along those lines what kingdom come does and what's so cool about this is this story was written back before you had the new 52 and what that means is this takes place during what was called new earth basically the continuity that came after the events of crisis on infinite earth so there's only one universe here and the reason why that matters is because when it came to new earth in guys like wesley dodds while he did technically get a new origin a lot of it was pretty intact with the way he existed way back before the events of crisis on infinitives and the way this story is told it really kind of harkens back to the heroes of yesteryear so while technically this is post-crisis in a lot of ways it feels like they're referencing the age of superheroes from the golden age of comics from the 1940s in dc's publishing history it's one of the reasons why i love it so much right because alex ross art always remind me of an era or a time when superheroes stood a little bit taller and walked a little more confidently and there was no ambiguity determining the difference between the good guys and the bad guys the good guys fought the bad guys and the day was saved and that was it there was no such thing as anti-heroes or anything like that the waters weren't murky but the reality here is that wesley dodds even growing into his old age had seemingly never lost the power of dream of the endless and so what that means is that what he's experiencing right now are these visions and he even tells norman mckay seven thunders will utter their voices and it was given unto him to make war with the saints babylon falls norman be the one who listens to me and this is why it's important is because the way this is presented to us is that wesley dodds is considered to be a kook he's considered to be a crazy person right these visions of the end times and the apocalypse coming and everything's going to die and come to an end right all that kind of stuff nobody really takes him seriously and he can't convince anybody that these dreams that he's having are legitimate dreams and even in the old sandman stories right the old wesley dodd comics that in a lot of ways it was kind of the question is this guy really insane but you really saw dc sort of toying with the idea that maybe he really was crazy and so it was really cool because in order to basically calm him down right in order to calm him down and to keep him or get him back to her normal state he tells norman mckay you have to read right you have to read from the book now eventually wesley dodds passes on and this is when norman mckay basically gives us a kind of tour of what the world looks like and we learned things like the united nations has enacted more meta-human censures and there's a reason why meta-humans are censured which basically means their their ability to act publicly or speak or what have you is curtailed not necessarily in the sense that anything's actually being done right these are toothless measures that are happening but what norman tells us here is he says that he and wesley dodds and and his wife you know norman's wife that they were all friends at one point and wesley would come over and they would talk and different things along those lines but he says before the bitterness overcame him wesley and i would walk right we would pick our way through the city for hours he'd bemoaned the passing of things like olympic games and nobel prizes sometimes he'd ambush complete strangers and ask them how much they missed of the concept of human achievement and he says i don't know what surprised me more the oddity of the question or the growing number of people who seemed to know what he was talking about i tried to defuse him i would joke that he was just some old guy unable to appreciate this new generation but he would never laugh that wesley insisted that human initiative began to erode the day people asked a new breed to face their future for them essentially the first time heroes began to crop up and the first time humanity looked at heroes to save them instead of humanity saving themselves and he says he mocked their worth these newcomers and spoke instead of legends gone of costume champions who had in his day inspired human achievement not belittled it he swore he'd never forget the world they came from he wanted them to be remembered and that's when you have norman mckay who goes into planet krypton which is obviously a play on planet hollywood and when he's in there it's basically this entire restaurant modeled after the superheroes of yesteryear green lantern wonder woman aquaman the flash these different guys batman superman and so on that the idea of superheroes has become almost a kind of thing that's a joke but it's almost a a kind of commercialized concept that instead of wonder woman standing for righteousness and paving the way for women to progress instead of superman representing everything humanity can become instead of batman representing what it means to be a dick uh what you have is all these different characters who basically represent nonsense right they represent commercialization and they represent the loss of what it means for society in terms of humans actually being something that's worth the damn and so what happens is he says the sandman had gone to his grave without one grain of faith in the future and the saddest part was he was far from alone with each passing day hope for tomorrow has become more and more precious a commodity among everyday folk still i tried to keep the faith and hew to the scriptures according to the word of god the meek would someday inherit the earth but god never accounted for the mighty now this is where we get the reality of how things had shifted now we'll find out later on in terms of what had actually taken place that it led to this shift but what he says here is that the world that wesley dodds had left behind was not the world that he remembered you know wesley dodds the sandman was from the world of superman and wonder woman and green lantern the flash these heroes that represented everything humanity was was striving to be that we as human beings are fallible and and we usually screw up more than we do things right not because we're somehow incompetent or inept we are in a lot of ways but only because we as human beings don't learn until we fail if we could somehow know what the end result of our cons or of our actions were going to be what those consequences would be we would never make mistakes but it's only by making mistakes that we get better and we look back on the consequences of those choices that we truly begin to realize what it is we lost or gained or anything along those lines and then what had happened here is somewhere along the line the traditional superheroes of old with dc comics superman flash and all those guys they're out of the picture and instead they're now replaced by all these different heroes all these different super powered beings that exist out there but what norman says is i tell myself that this too shall pass that humans still have a chance to reclaim a world rightfully theirs while it still exists this is the face of superhuman might and superhuman odds time has not yet run out for humanity and so the reality here is that when it comes to all these superpower beings out there where initially they seem to rise up and replace these various superheroes that we're the most familiar with which of course again we'll get back to them but one you know as these characters rose up instead of them becoming a new breed of superhero that could basically help the world and make it a better place that could somehow lead them into a greener pasture instead of doing that now these descendants of superman and wonder woman and all these guys right these next generation of superheroes even if they're not the biological children of of superman and all those different guys that now they just fight for the sake of fighting right they just face off against each other for the sake of facing off against each other there's no wrong or reason here there's no greater cause being served by all this it's just people fighting for the sake of fighting and there's a lot of innocent people who get caught in the collateral damage now one of the things that we'll find over the course of kingdom come is that humanity actually brought it on itself that this whole situation that you're seeing here is a perfect example of be careful what you ask for you just might get it because humanity did this to itself and again that's kind of the nature of what mark wade says here is that we as people don't learn our lessons until we screw up but amidst all this fighting that's taking place here suddenly in times square there's a journalist that comes on from the daily planet you may be wondering why it's not lois lane you'll find out but basically she says like a catastrophic event has happened in kansas and so before we find out what that is we actually end up following norah mckay once he returns to his church and the reality here is the role he plays as as the head of the church right with his congregation is to instill hope in people whose hope is barely hanging on by a threat right wrong or otherwise regardless of how you see religion in a lot of ways it really is just a concept of hope that's really all it is a construct for hope how much faith people put in what they're hearing and how much conviction they tie to what they believe it really just shifts from one person to the next but religion as a whole is really nothing more than just a hope construct that some people latch onto for the idea of finding a better tomorrow or making sense out of the world in which they live but norman mckay cannot provide this congregation with the hope that they're looking for all these individuals who have grown up in a time before all these new superheroes rose up and just started going crazy they remember what the world was like and they're looking to norman mckay to help guide them back to remembering what that world was and that this won't all be this way but norman mckay has a hard time being hopeful and in fact he tells him i can't do this i'm sorry i can't lie to you i can't fill you with hope when i don't even have hope myself and so his congregation of course basically ends up leaving they don't so much abandon him but they do feel a bit of trepidation and trepidation and shame as they look at him and they see a man who has seemingly lost the faith so how could a man with no faith possibly lead people who are in need of faith and that's when a significantly important thing happens in the life of norman mckay when he's visited by the spectre now this is probably the part that you're waiting for for a lot of you guys out there who had never read kingdom come yes the beginning of the story seems to have nothing to do with dc or any of the heroes we know it takes a little bit to kind of get to that point but it all begins to make sense and so when the spectre shows up here and basically tells norman mckay i need your aid here this vector basically ends up revealing to norman mckay what his purpose is not fully but basically giving him an idea and simply saying i have been sent here by a higher power in order to judge the world now here's the thing about this right that when it comes to the spectre back when he initially came into existence he operated independently one of the things that dc did in order to both make the spectre more grounded as well as potentially give him a weakness as well as have him essentially have a greater involvement in the dc landscape was basically bond him to people and that by bonding the specter to individuals it was a way to almost turn the specter from this ethereal you know godly imbued being to what was basically a superhero it was kind of like that in the beginning but the the way the spectre initially appeared back in the old school all american comics basically began to move away and it began to shift so by the time you got to the events of crisis on infinite earth he was just this wildly powerful ethereal force that would just show up every once in a while and while it was kind of cool dc was wanting to bring him back to the world of being a superhero and so that's one of the ways in which they did that plus it was cool to have a person who was basically the embodiment of god's wrath walking around the world and so what ends up happening is the spectre basically tells norman mckay you have been imbued with a portion of the power that wesley dods had but more so than that you are going to be my eyes and ears here on earth and where norman mckay is just kind of like why in the world like what what how could i possibly be suited to fit this and even himself doesn't fully seem to comprehend everything that's going on one of the things he says is explain this to me right if you are truly a being of great power how is it that you can find no way to avert this catastrophe that you say is coming this armageddon that you say is going to take place and the response of the specter is that is not my task once earth boasted other saviors who might have stemmed the tide of destruction but as you will see they are no longer the solution they are in many ways the problem and so what the spectre does is he brings norman mckay on a journey to show him all these different individuals who are the superheroes of yesterday what happened to batman what happened to superman what happened to wonder woman green lantern the flash those guys and so what we find out here is he's taken to superman basically on a farm and that as superman goes around here of course wesley dodds whispers and whatnot the response to the specter is no no no you're good they yeah he can't hear you right he can't see or hear you i have shielded you from this uh i am that powerful right that not even the man of steel who can hear virtually anything can hear you here superman is effectively met by the arrival of wonder woman and the cool thing is that wonder woman the way she speaks here is she simply says or at least uh you know communicates that she's been coming here relatively frequently now one of the things that i do want to establish here is that superman does not respond to the name clark i mean he does but he responds with disdain right that's not my name so when wonder woman refers to him as clark she corrects herself then refers to him as cow and that's when he starts talking to her right he was like you know i haven't seen you in months what brings you to the farm and this is what's really interesting here is she says the vain hope that you're still not here and superman says these are my roots right to which he responds you can't live forever in solitude that what superman has done here is basically cut himself off from the rest of humanity isolated himself in his entirety from everybody else and what he says is things can grow here right this place that i'm in life can really grow and flourish here and that's when wonder woman responds but it's all a farce and when she touches the wall and basically reveals he's in the fortress of solitude that he's not actually out there in the world living it really is superman living a lie right you know she's she literally chimes in and she says listen to me like you have to do something right like i've come with news from the outside and it's bad news that news has that has an effect shaking the world that he's out of control and that's when superman says i tried to tell them that 10 years ago i tried to tell them they backed the wrong horse that they should not have gone along with that guy but they did and of course as a result of that by removing himself from humanity what superman's doing is effectively saying i could save you but i'm not going to you chose this path now you have to live with it and humanity's been regretting it every single day and in fact wonder woman picks up on that and she says and they don't listen i know stop punishing them and the response to superman is i don't care right they deserve whatever fate they got they brought it on themselves i feel nothing for them i have no desire to help them at all and she says okay fine if that's true right if if that's really the case then come with me and let me show you the world as it exists right now let me show you the outside world because you've been hiding from it you've been ignoring it you've been pretending like it doesn't exist you cut yourself off from it just go and watch and see what's become of the world but steal yourself right be prepared for what it is that happens and so he ultimately walks into his area with the viewing screens and he simply just says on and that's what we end up finding out there's just a colossal event that's taking place that what had happened is the the villain parasite had basically been chased down by the by magog as well as his at least what's referred to as the justice battalion now magog of course was the character that you saw in infinite frontier and we'll talk more about him as the story unfolds because he turns out to be hugely important but it was a massive fight between parasite and all these different guys and parasite was literally just trying to flee but it was one of these things where he was begging for his life he was begging for begging to be saved he tried to surrender they wouldn't let him surrender they quite literally just wanted to kill him and so in an act of desperation what parasite had done is he had torn captain adam in half or at least split him and when that happened it basically set off a massive explosion and what we're told is that early reports indicate immediate casualties numbering close to a million as the dying atoms radioactive energy swept hundreds of kilometers rendering the entire state of kansas as well as part of nebraska iowa and missouri in a radiated wasteland though magog's comrades have since prevented further spread of the nuclear blight the total loss of america's breadbasket this sterilization of its agrarian culture has thrown the world economy into near collapse in the face of global famine that's what we're looking at here quite literally the entirety of the american agricultural industry has just been annihilated by the force of magog and the recklessness that came with just attacking the attacking parasite in that way and so the response to superman even after having seen all that is there's nothing i can do from here go back to your island diana you're safe there and walks away right and literally just kind of like that's it there's nothing i can do and so you know in that instance the response of wonder woman is we won't all sit here and wait like we won't all deal with this right we're not all going to sit here and rest on our laurels and that's when norman mckay asked the spectre neither will the rest of us who is she talking about and the spectre takes him on a tour of a few others and says that the the idea of superman abandoning his role as a superhero had a huge effect on the entire superhero landscape that some some heroes out there were so disheartened because they took their lead from superman they were so disheartened by seeing him so demoralized that when he quit they quit that there were others out there who basically started functioning in a way to where they keep their city safe but nobody ever sees them a really good example of this is the flash right the flash just races around the entirety of keystone city keeping it safe keeping it protected but nobody ever sees it nobody ever knows he's there that you have hawkman who basically operates out in the pacific northwest as kind of an environmental protector that you have uh the green lantern who quite literally made an emerald citadel for himself that orbits the earth he's the s the only occupant there and he spends all of his days watching for an extraterrestrial threat that will seemingly never come that all these different people out there all these members of the superhero community in their own ways effectively did the exact same thing superman did to a degree now of course you end up having norma mckay who says but what happened to batman what happened to gotham city and what it looks like here is that in the city of gotham one batman's got an entirely automated system that runs and two no crime is tolerated in any capacity whatsoever none right batman has actually become far more extreme than he was when superman existed because superman represented hope and even if batman didn't necessarily put that perception on it permeated him right the hope he experienced with superman was the hope that gotham city could truly become a better place and the only thing we get here is the specter telling norman mckay batman has a city under control and so what happens is you have norman mckay who is taken to a bridge and this is probably one of the single greatest moments in the entirety of kingdom come he asked them the question like that's all that's what you wanted to show me and the specter asks does that disturb you and the response of of norman is yes right you're an angel that makes you a messenger of hope a greater power sent you your very existence is a testament to faith you mean that all you have to tell me is that those who could save us simply won't and that's the thing that norma mckay can't quite grasp his head around is they could save us it's not like they were killed they didn't die in action they just won't they simply just won't save us and i don't understand why why are we as humanity simply not worth saving and so that's when norman mckay has to come to grips with the fact humanity did it to itself and so in this moment when you're on this bridge you end up having all these these you know heroes like a great big fight breaks out here pandemonium starts reigning supreme you got the heroes against villains if you could call them that and as usual people are caught in the crossfire it's just absolute pandemonium and in fact what has happened is that in the aftermath of kansas that because of the lengths that magog and his forces went to in order to take out a parasite that now it kind of feels like all bets are off right that whenever it comes to this bar of recklessness and lack of concern for collateral damage every time he gets raised by magog everybody else follows suit so in a lot of ways he's kind of the opposite of superman right his antithesis and so it's really kind of crazy how this how this goes on and so what you end up getting is in the midst of all this right you literally have people who were stuck in a cable car about to fall to their death right it's virtually the end of these guys and you have this thing where it's like can anybody get out here right norah mckay the whole time is like don't you understand right talking to the specter if any of us are to survive any of us now more than ever we need hope and then he says and suddenly there was a wind right not a not really a wind a blur of motion bending the steel of their weapons and changing the very course of the mighty river below he says even before the bystanders freed themselves from the cable car they knew we all did we knew and we remembered and somebody says look somebody else says up in the sky and it's superman who's finally returned with that being said guys we're gonna bring this to an end let me know what you guys think down in the comments section if you guys want me to finish this i feel like you guys are gonna be like yes [Laughter] because kingdom come it's just one of the absolute greatest stories ever in the history of dc comics right it's so cool because you get this little moment here right this little this little kind of uh kind of a small moment and when when norah mckay basically says superman had not turned his back on us right he stands in the sky faith rewarded he has returned and dear god the threat of armageddon hasn't ended it's simply just begun all right what's going on guys this is rob and we are back with kingdom come part two yes we are part dos now here's the thing superman and the justice league as we know them have effectively returned right superman wonder woman hawkman all these different characters they've all basically returned back to the landscape so what we're looking at now is a scenario where the superheroes of old have returned to face the superheroes of new now this is where things get really really interesting because on the surface we would look at that and we would say okay so like the day saved and everything's gonna be sorted out we're pretty far from that actually and things are gonna get a lot worse before they get better so what this does is it initially picks up at the statue of liberty and you've basically got this crazy guy right like the american commando and his minutemen is what he calls him now the thing about this here is he just kind of goes on this just ultra i wouldn't even call it patriotic so much just ultra insane ranch where he says like this is my country right for years the america mando and the minutemen have protected the us from foreign threats only to have overlooked the most insidious menace of all the poor tired huddled masses camping on our shores begging for citizenship you immigrants dare expect sanctuary america's not as big as it used to be for god's sakes kansas is gone we can't house you now we can't even feed you now but still you force yourselves on us well no more today the america mando declares war on the wretched refuse and at that point you basically have all these guys who start attacking these people who were looking to make their way into the united states now while all that goes on what you have is another of these really just anti-hero groups out there that just attacked the amir commandos and again as we talked about before what you have here in this instance are basically feral superheroes it's the best way to look at it that traditionally in dc comics the emergence of superman while he didn't really present himself as the de facto leader in the standard by which all superheroes should follow it just kind of ended up that way the superman's morale was almost unquestionable and incorruptible what you have here are basically people with powers and no leadership whatsoever right it's an answer to the question what will people do in a circumstance when there is no one to lead them they'll do whatever it is they want to do and the the rules or any collateral damage won't really make any difference it's a really really interesting critique on people who are like we should not have an ordered government okay well if you look at the nature of humanity what is the average person without someone telling them what to do or where to go they're people who just do things arbitrarily and never take into account the wants or desires or the consequences of their actions on other people it just becomes lawlessness and it'll only lead to chaos and destruction and so it's really really interesting how this is critiqued how that concept is looked at and put through the lens of these superheroes because what you get is in the middle of all this you have the justice league that arrives here now contrary to to what you might think in the sense of superman and then just show up and start pummeling everybody while they do bring an end to this fight what superman does is he basically presents himself and the justice league to these people and basically gives them an option right you can join us or you can be dealt with now there is a way in which they're dealt with and that way doesn't necessarily come until well really towards you know in this story but it's one of those things where superman's hand is kind of forced instead what he does is he kind of repairs the statue of liberty as best he can kind of presenting himself as a beacon of hope and then in turn basically uses the numbers of all these vigilantes and brings them to his side now that's an important distinction that i want to make here when it comes to these different heroes out here again they're not really villains they're more just feral like they've never really had any direction they've never been taught any better one of the things to know and what's kind of interesting is this book in a lot of ways throws into sharp relief the idea of like social constructs different things like that like if you scale out right if you look at like how people function on a day-to-day life or look at your life and then you scale out and look at it at a macro scale we as human beings largely just do things because that's just what you're supposed to do we don't question it we don't really ask why we just do it because everybody else does that social norms and social constructs are largely just created in order to provide a sense of comfort and that anybody who deviates outside of these unspoken social norms has to be quote unquote corrected and brought back in again even if what we're doing is entirely stupid and ridiculous and doesn't really make any sense a really good example of this is the mitch hedberg joke right that like escalators that are broken are basically just stairs so why would you be an idiot and take stairs instead of taking the escalator right but we don't think about that we're just like oh the escalator's not working i'll take the stairs instead even though that's basically stairs and we all do that and so that's why it's kind of interesting when somebody just sort of looks up and says why am i doing this right because the response of everybody around them is shut up stop asking questions get your head back down and then they just continue on just like they did before right so you know violating social norms is kind of looked down upon which really kind of makes you beg the question who's the one that really is screwed up here is it the one who's asking the question why am i following these social norms or is it the one who's telling that person to stop asking questions and to follow those social norms but the thing about this is that these heroes don't have a leader there's no one out there for you know to really tell them here is how heroes are supposed to act they're feral and so superman presenting himself in this way is quite literally giving these people the kind of you know person to follow or the kind of ideology to a degree now you're going to find over the course of this that there is a lot of hypocrisy that goes on there and a lot of things that don't necessarily seem to make sense but following all of that superman and his guys you know the justice league appear basically before the united nations at a kind of press conference and they say look like we've been gone for a really long time right a lot of you or at least some of you all may remember who we are some of you may not but the fact that we've been gone that's our mistake and he says in our absence a new breed of metahumans has arisen a vast phalanx of self-styled heroes unwilling to preserve life or defend the defenseless a legion of vigilantes who have perverted their great powers who have forsworn the responsibilities due to them we have returned to teach them the meaning of truth and justice together we will guide this new breed with wisdom and if necessary with force above all we will restore order we will make things right again now there is an attempt by various members of the press to ask some questions but for the most part they're not necessarily answered there is a point where superman is asked well what if this leads to you having to face magog to which superman just kind of looks away and seems to avoid the question and then basically just ends up taking off now one of the things that we are kind of given here and at least you know we're given this kind of moment where superman transitions to wayne manor of course we knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he would confront bruce wayne and this interaction between the two is really really cool because when superman gets there wayne manor is trashed i mean this place is just torn up i mean obviously it's just experienced some pretty rough times and superman finds batman down in the cave but one of the things to notice here is that there is no happiness from batman to see superman and in fact this exchange is phenomenal because what you have here is superman who says uh batman i know you're here right like you cannot hide from me and the response of batman is i bow to your superior wisdom after all you know all about hiding don't you clark and it's one of those things where batman holds a lot of animosity towards superman now what's interesting here is that the debate between the two is that superman has always believed that mankind should be led to a better future right if the world becomes a better place it's because superman and the actions of the superheroes show humanity that they can become better but you could argue that's a very naive perspective right that superman is john tuturo from miller's crossing right when you have gabriel byrne with a gun pointed at his head and superman says look into your heart right that's what he is whereas batman is the realist right batman looks at humanity and says no if given the opportunity humanity will just do crazy and violent things i mean look at these vigilantes that exist out there they're an answer to your question superman what is humanity at its core what will humanity become when you take away consequences it's the grocery carts litmus test those of you guys who are unfamiliar with that the grocery cart litmus test is this really really fascinating ideology what it says is that when you go to the grocery store and you buy your groceries and you put them in the cart and then you put them in the car and so on and so forth and then you're done the grocery cart is sitting right there and that's when the test comes into play right there's no reward for putting the grocery cart back inside the cart corral and that's what it's called i don't know what it's actually called but there's a there's no reward for doing that but it is the right thing to do however if you don't do that and you just leave the grocery cart out there in the middle of the parking lot there's no punishment for that so what will a person do when there's no reward for doing the right thing but no punishment for doing the wrong thing what will they end up doing here and the argument that batman's making here albeit absent the grocery cart litmus test although i would love to have seen that in the comic as he says the world in which you see clark is the answer to that question the world that you see out there that's what it looks like when you have metahumans where there's no consequences for doing the wrong thing but no benefit for doing the right thing outside of a you know moral pat on the back they'll do whatever they want to do and that right and wrong won't matter anymore right and wrong or completely and totally irrelevant there's just simply what a man can do and what a man can't do and that's it those are the only rules that apply here so you championing how great humanity can become the evidence runs contrary to everything that you believe and that's why batman had basically turned gotham city into what's essentially a dictatorship where he where he rules it with an iron fist now there's a few different reasons why this had happened the first one is because once batman's identity became publicly known bane and two-face showed up and just wrecked wayne manor now of course they weren't able to access the batcave hence the reason why all this stuff is still intact the other reason why is because there came a point uh where essentially arkham asylum was just annihilated and basically all the villains that were in it were basically killed so there's very few of any of batman's traditional villains left if any at all instead now it's all just sort of meta humans that are there the meta humans those ones that just kind of do whatever it is they want presumably dealt with batman's villains but the reality is that in the absence of all that the gotham city in the eyes of bruce wayne is a utopia there is no crime none of that stuff now people don't necessarily have the same free will that they had before but as we've seen so far with regards to all these meta-humans what will people do with complete and total freedom they'll go crazy right they'll basically destroy things that right and wrong simply won't matter it's just it's a really really interesting idea here and i love the way this is put together and so that's where you have just kind of a splitting of ideologies here that at the end of the day there is no real way to find any measure of unification and in fact batman even goes as far to tell superman you are just as naive as you ever were like you really believe that humanity's this great thing but rest assured right like there's myself and the people i work with whose names you will never know we see humanity for what it really is and what you see here in gotham city we will try to extend this to the rest of the world because humanity by its very nature needs to be controlled if there's no one telling people where to go or what to do then people will be lost they'll be just chaotic and nonsensical right they'll do things that are quite literally worse for society because whether or not something's better for society won't matter to them they'll operate on their own selfish instincts the world has shown us that humanity has shown us that so we have to control them because they cannot control themselves now initially superman ends up leaving instead of just creating a confrontation with batman he basically walks away and you end up finding out that the various people that bruce wayne has on his side include people like ted cord and dinah lance and oliver queen that these are some pretty intelligent and capable forces that are out there more so than that what batman also says is with the justice league returned and the justice league reforming what superman's going to do is all those different meta humans out there who were just rogue and doing their own thing it's only going to be a matter of time before they basically join his ranks which means the the ranks of the justice league are going to bolster which means we have to find our own team we have to build our own team up this includes people like like black adam it includes people like dr fate and so on and so forth we've got to build our own team and so what you end up getting is this moment where as time goes on you have superman who is meeting with different groups out there right these these meta humans and whatnot who are just rampaging and causing all kinds of problems and whatnot and basically teaching them direction now not all of them join the side of superman and we're not really given an immediate answer as to what it is that happens to them instead for the most part the ones who do agree with superman basically join his side but what we end up doing is transitioning to another group out there which is basically called the mankind liberation front and what this is is a coming together of humans across the world now one of the funny things here is despite its name not all of them are directly tied to humanity i mean they are but they also kind of have they have powers essentially so you could argue meta humans and the reason why i say this is because one of the first people that we're met with is vandal savage now depending on how you want to look at dc's history you could take that traditional history of vandal savage as it exists regarding dionysium and the substance he consumed that basically made him immortal you can apply that to kingdom come if you want to and say in this alternate reality that's basically how he came to be of course that whole dionysium thing was established in the new 52 batman run by scott snyder uh vandal savage is not just a guy who's going to live for like probably 85 to 90 years and then die of age he's immortal but regardless this this mankind liberation front is headed up by lex luthor and you have a few different people here one of whom is al zuffasch who's basically the successor to rajal ghul then you also have of course lord naga you've got selena kyle you've got the riddler edward nigma and the cool thing is that what you find is that behind the scenes with a lot of things that's going on the mankind liberation front is actually working to make life more difficult for humanity and i know it seems counter-intuitive that they're doing things like impeding rescue efforts right or they're getting the getting in the way of uh food and resources that are being brought to the united states from different places and so on and so when the question is being asked how is any of this helping humanity which is the charter under which you operate the response of lex luthor is simply no pain no gain he says our objective is to heighten the tension between humans and metahumans to bring it to a head so that humans have no choice but to reclaim the being of world power regardless of the cost there will be war bloodshed but in the end mankind will once again rule the earth now the reason why he says that of course obviously he wants to be him and this council that rules everything but the reason why he makes this argument is because for years what has happened is humanity has handed the reigns over to superheroes to keep them protected that's the way it was when you initially had the justice league it's the way it was when the justice league disbanded and we got this new generation of heroes humanity ultimately bit off more than they could chew they regretted the decision they made but there was no one willing to step up and save humanity from itself now that the justice league has returned humanity hasn't changed it's not doing anything different than it was before it's not like the reformation of the of the justice league led to humanity saying oh my god i see the light we clearly made a mistake by looking at superheroes and asking them to save us no it was humanity looking at the justice league and saying man the world's such a terrible place save us justice league show us a better way and then when humanity made the decision that it made which is what we'll talk about later on in the story the justice league disbanded and the anti-heroes that rose up humanity was like yes you're the ones we want and then when the anti-heroes did exactly what they would do which was showing really in a lot of ways becoming a mirror for humanity itself that humans were just like no we don't want this this is not what we wanted we want we want the justice league back so the justice league came back and they're like justice league these meta humans are going crazy you have to save us so it's one of those things where humanity never quite takes responsibility for itself it never looks around at any point and says maybe i'm the one responsible for all of this instead it just blames everything else on everybody else and so the idea of the mankind liberation front is to force the hand of humanity to make things so dire that what the majority of the human race does right what people in general do is they look at meta humans and say metahumans in their entirety are the problem many humans are the reason why all of this is the way it is we have to get meta humans we have to get rid of them completely and then once that's done that will lead to humanity re-inheriting the earth quote-unquote as lex luthor puts it now the other part of this is that lex does have an ace up his sleeve it's one thing to interrupt trade routes and to make resources more scarce it's another to actually be able to stand against superman and the justice league what we end up finding out here is the ace in the hole that lex luthor has is actually shazam but before we figure that out before we find out about that what we end up doing here is basically picking up with a with a point where superman and wonder woman go to visit aquaman now initially they asked aquaman for aid but the reality here is aquaman's like no like i'm not i'm not helping you guys at all one i never really wanted to be aquaman i never wanted to be your aquaman i was there more or less because i wanted to ensure atlantis was protected and because i didn't even really initially know what you guys were about right so in a lot of ways for those of you guys coming from marvel it was when black panther initially joined the avengers he joined them to keep an eye on not because he actually wanted to be a part of the team and because he believed in their cause as time went on aquaman did to a degree but the reality here is that when the time came when it was obvious the justice league wasn't going to reform superman was done he had walked away and there would be no one there to look out for atlantis that aquaman's response was i'm gonna look after my kingdom myself whatever happens in the service world i don't care so long as it doesn't impede here now this is in reality and it's one of the things that wonder woman points out it really is aquaman sticking his head in the sand and just waiting for the danger to pass or hoping the danger passes the question she has is how long do you think this chaos on the surface will take before it comes down here to the oceans and the response of aquaman is well if that time comes and i will deal with it then but that's if that time comes at the moment i don't really care it's not my concern here and so it's a pretty significant moment because one of the things that we learn is that wonder woman had basically been banished from themyscira she's not allowed back anymore that she's lost her title of princess that the reality here is that with themaskira you know when she had left that place and gone out into the world she was supposed to be an ambassador and she was supposed to make the world a better place but she never did she's not welcome back anymore and so she has she's no longer the the person that we knew but one of the other things that goes on is you have this uh this moment where superman actually finally tracks down or really it's more like speedy he finally tracks down uh magog and then he actually travels to meet him now in a lot of ways it's one of these things that's fearful because what this does is it tells us how things got this bad why the justice league disbanded why superman basically quit the whole nine yards that what magog is doing is he's actually out in kansas seemingly trying to rebuild to a degree and that's when superman asks like what are you doing out here and you kind of have this moment where magog basically kind of pokes fun at him right just sort of rustles his feathers a little bit gives him a bit of a hard time superman's not necessarily having it but the mad dogs was like don't you remember like you're the one who caused all this right like you're the reason why things are the way they are and that's when we end up getting this bit of a flashback and what we find out is that at some previous point in time the joker had shown up to the daily planet in metropolis and massacred everybody 92 men and lois lane one woman and the results of that is that with her being killed along with jimmy olsen and everybody else that the joker was captured and the joker was put on trial but before the trial could could actually take place maggod showed up and killed the joker and instead of humanity condemning this action and saying that's a problem humanity cheered the action on they were like yes the joker had to go the joker had to die and what this did is it led to superman becoming disheartened by the fact that everybody was okay with it the magog was eventually arrested and then when he was put on trial he was acquitted and so it was essentially humanity saying we're okay with the fact that a meta human took the law into their own hands and killed a villain we don't really believe in truth and justice anymore we believe in doing whatever it takes to win now the reality is that really is what it takes that really is the case there are some people out there that just have to die the result of this is what you had really the bigger issue that you had here is that the magog wasn't really any measure of a leader himself he was just a guy out there with power and so when he killed the joker and became the kind of face of this new generation of superheroes and superman abandoned his role and the justice league disbanded as well it left the stage open for all these meta humans to rise now that's the big difference there i do champion the idea that there are some people out there where the world would just be better off without them that as a society you have to create a kind of structure right you can't have this kind of open-ended idea where it's like everybody can do whatever they want to that makes them happy you know like you do have to have a rigid and firm structure on how society functions otherwise you start running into all kinds of problems and yes like maggot killing the joker isn't him crossing a line sure but if this was like superman who had done it or something like that things could potentially turn out different now i know a lot of people are gonna say like but rob in justice so on and so forth superman was right in injustice he was 100 right humanity couldn't be trusted to make the world a better place so superman had to do it for them that if superman didn't step in and do that humanity would have eventually wiped out the whole world and is one of what use is freedom to a society that will use that freedom to destroy itself i would say freedom is useless at that point and so the the thing about this is that you have this kind of situation where ultimately the magog comes clean i don't know why i keep saying the mag but the uh but mega i think it's because i'm used to saying the man gog from uh from the thor comics at marvel [Laughter] but magog comes clean and what's been happening is he has this enormous weight that he carries around because he never wanted this he never wanted to be the face of some new generation of vigilante that showed up and turned the world into a hellhole he never wanted to be that he never wanted the entirety to the entire destruction of kansas that's never what he wanted here and so what he's what he tells superman is i'm sorry right like this is all your fault you were supposed to be better than us you were supposed to be great you were supposed to be the one that showed us a better way you weren't supposed to quit you were supposed to show me what i was doing wrong you were supposed to guide us at a time when the world really actually needed you you quit you gave up and so he says like i'm tired of dealing with all these ghosts that haunt me all these like a million ghosts all these people in kansas that haunt me punish me lock me away kill me just make the ghost go away right make my guilty conscience disappear and that's when superman tells wonder woman we are at war and the reason why this matters is because wonder woman having been a warrior and so on and so forth the big concern of the spectre and norman mckay is that if anybody was going to push superman over that edge and send him into a place where he would potentially become a dictator it would be wonder woman because when you're a hammer everything is a nail and so when you're wonder woman and all you live to do is fight and like defeat the enemy the idea of things like nuance right the idea of not everybody is an inherent bad guy and not everybody needs to be treated the same way that kind of thing goes away now to a degree that's true treating people decently does not mean treating people equitably that if you are a person who has known nothing but war in conflict if someone showed up to you with a kind and caring and gentle hand you would likely see them as being weak because the defining attribute of what makes a person strong is whether they can withstand and cope with that war type environment right physical and emotional and mental strength that's what defines a valuable person you would see that kind person as being weak whereas if you are someone who comes from a kind and gentle place you would look at somebody who uses overbearing force to get their point across as somebody who's inherently weak because you value strength through kindness and compassion so again one of the things that wonder woman doesn't really seem to have a good grasp of is the nuance of that everything can be treated the same way so that's gonna be an element that's actually gonna be very very important as all of this goes on but one of the things that superman does here is he actually travels to apocalypse which is the realm of dark side to visit with orion now this is kind of a small little deviation here like kind of a small little thing it's not a great big huge moment and in fact word had reached the ears of superman that basically darkseid had been overthrown by his son orion and that when that had happened orion had seized control of apocalypse but when superman came here asking how can i as a person right this this individual who's supposed to somehow show these meta humans a better way what do i do about the ones who don't want a better way and the responsible ryan is that's the issue that i ran into when i took over apocalypse and i replaced darkseid my thought was that all these people who live on apocalypse would love the idea of freedom they would love the idea of being able to live their lives as they see they saw fit but what i found is that because that's the the only life they ever knew they don't want a different life than that because it's scary it's fearful the idea of change giving them freedom is something they've never known before comfort comes in being a prisoner right and so because of that when i gave them that freedom they rejected it they rebuked it they didn't want to have any of that right by just literally getting rid of dark side and no leader operating here they put me in his place because they wanted someone to rule them they wanted someone to conquer them right to control them to tell them where to go and what to do because for us as people and you could kind of argue by extension the people on apocalypse we want to be controlled why we want direction we want to be told where do you go what do you know where to go what to do how to act we want to say we don't we like to say no i don't want that i want to have a life where i can make my own choices and do my own thing and live my life as i see fit but when push comes to shove and it really comes down to it a lot of people out there who have the opportunity to forge their own path choose not to because it's scary it's outside of what they're used to and if being being given the choice between stepping into that box or staying in the box they're in they'll choose the box they're in and that's that's the the wisdom that orion offers here if what they understand is being conquered if what humanity and these people understand is being made to do things by force if what they understand is imprisonment and pain then give them that give them what it is that makes them comfortable and so while it's not necessarily superman approaching this from the perspective of we're going to make people suffer what he does is out there in kansas this irradiated wasteland he starts building a prison he literally starts building together this giant prison system where all those individuals who stand against him will be housed and so as the final little bit of this video what we end up doing is switching over to the mankind liberation front where you have lex luthor effectively telling everybody they've brought someone on board that will essentially help them to change the tide to achieve their goal and effectively eliminate the entire meta-human issue once and for all allowing humanity to effectively step into the role of being the sole inheritors of the world and this person is revealed to be batman accompanied by ted cord and dinah lance and oliver queen what's going on guys this is rob and we are back with kingdom come part three yes enter shazam so i know this is probably the one that a lot of you guys have been waiting for um who were aware of what we did you know in the last video where we talked about how shazam was a part of it it was pretty obvious it's it's really really awesome right let's check this out what we end up getting here and one of the things to keep in mind is that it's not necessarily the specter and this is something that i that i saw in the comments it's not necessarily the specter that's taking norman mckay on all these journeys if anything it's the visions of norman mckay that's leading the spectre on all of this because remember the spectre is there to judge some future evil and he's very cloak and dagger whenever he talks to norman mckay about exactly what he's there for or what his purpose is we as the audience are well aware of the spectre we're well aware of how dark and twisted he can be but also how good he can be just depending on who he's bonded to at that particular point in time or whether his spirit's gone insane but that's something that we'll actually talk about here in a little while but at the moment switching back to earth what you get is the completion of this prison that has basically been built by superman oddly enough it looks like that old legion of doom headquarters from the uh what is it the super friends where aquaman rode around on a seahorse and talked to fish that show did more damage to aquaman as a character than any meme that's ever been created by humanity because of that show everybody's like aquaman rides seahorses and talks to fish and no one could take him seriously anymore but the thing about this is that this prison that's being built here is a really cool discussion because what the specter says is that once the kansas wastelands were stripped of radiation superman's penitentiary was fast completed the gulag was built to imprison the deadliest and most uncontrollable of the superhumans thanks to its vast size it was intended to house prisoners for months to come within two weeks of its construction it was filled beyond capacity and what this illustrates here and it's one of the most important things what this illustrates here is to a degree how quickly superman is falling now a lot of this is coming off the heels of wonder woman that's one of the things to keep in mind that while she's not a true villain in this story the position of wonder woman is more of as we said in the last video when you're a hammer everything is a nail and so she doesn't really understand the nature of diplomacy she does to a degree insofar as an ambassador from themyscira to humanity can understand diplomacy but there's a lot more to it there's nuance there's a much bigger scene going on here with regards to all these meta-humans which is like we mentioned before they have no real leader there's no quote-unquote parent teaching them how to function in this world without superman this is what the world looks like when you have meta humans and no one likes superman to inspire guide or lead them now the other part of this is that in order for the prison to function effectively and actually house these people the justice league needed someone who was capable of building a prison that no one could escape from and can only do that by being someone that could escape from any prison they basically enlisted scot-free mr miracle now we're not given a whole lot about him for all you super hardcore mr miracle fans i'm sorry to say we don't get a whole lot about this guy all we're really told is that he was the one that was instrumental in building the prison building a place that no one could escape from because he's a master escape artist who can escape from anywhere so if if he can build a place no one can get out of that means no one can get out of it but the bigger issue that you have to contend with is that what superman was trying to do was balance the humanity of meta humans with a prison system and so what he ended up creating was this situation where you had all these people who were there but they all kind of had free reign they could sort of move around and they could do their thing he didn't want them to feel like they were in some kind of like a concentration camp or something that starts to present a lot of issues because what he does is he presents himself to these people as someone that can lead them into a better future but the reality is the life they know is the only life they've known they haven't known a life where there's been some greater force out there that can show them the way all they've known is this vigilantism so to them that's the definitive life right it's one of those things those guys who are familiar with uh the allegory of plato's cave that's what this is those you guys who don't know what that is the allegory of plato's cave is this idea that if you had like three people who had basically spent their entire life in a cave and all they ever saw of the real world were shadows projected on the cave wall to them that is the real world right for us we know that it's not real but it is real to them and so if you were to take them out of that cave and you were to show them the world as it really exists they would reject it as incomprehensible because it just defies everything they know and as we know as people in times of desperation people will believe what they want to believe logic and reason and emotion have no bearing on that it's just whatever makes them feel the most comfortable and what makes these people feel comfortable is the life that they've been living suddenly this guy just comes out of nowhere quite literally strips them of this life they had throws them into what is in effect a prison system and then says i'm here to improve you from their perspective it's but there's nothing wrong with me because they don't believe there's anything wrong with him that's why he's met with so much hostility and so what you have is this kind of fight that begins to break out to a degree but it all is quelled pretty quickly but it really is one of these things where superman is in over his head he's putting too much faith in those who cannot who just cannot be trusted in that way right he's putting trust in people who have no reason to be trusted he's trying to fix the broken who are beyond repair and so that's what's kind of crazy is because while all this goes on you have of course the uh the mankind liberation front that's watching all of this unfold and coming to this realization that nothing that superman is trying to achieve is actually going to work he is fighting a fool's errand beyond that what you also have is the quintessence now the quintessence are basically a coming together of cosmic forces if you want to call them that so think of the quintessence as dc's equivalent to the the sky fathers but on seemingly a higher level of power honestly there's no direct translation between the quintessence and the sky fathers but the sky fathers that marvel has is about the closest you get to this but within the dc landscape these are some heavy hitters the spectre the phantom stranger uh the wizard shazam you have ganthet of the uh of the green lantern or the guardians of the of the universe you have some heavy hitters here they're kind of an inner council that basically monitors and watches things to see how the universe unfolds now the funny situation about this is that as the spectre is watching all this unfold that you have the quintessence that's just like whatever happens on earth that's their problem right earth is a single world right it's just a just tiny little ball of mud in an infinitely expanding universe there's much bigger things and more important things that we need to worry about and the spectre asks the question is that so and when the answer or the response of the of the quintessence is yes and he says then why do you all spend so much time dealing with humanity why are you observing this for such a lengthy period of time if humanity matters so little you would give them no more of a thought than you would some comet streaming across the cosmos but you're facing like you're literally focusing on humanity you're focusing on this whole thing so on some base level it's entirely possible that you congregate in order to prevent each other from interfering that each one of you wants to be involved in your own way you gant that want to gather the green lantern court and send the green lantern corps in to quell this entire thing you phantom stranger want to do something else or you the wizard shazam want to step in in some capacity but each of you have agreed to remain hands off you care more than you're willing to admit now a really important moment in the story comes when norman mckay watching all this unfold really just can't understand can't hear anything they're saying because i guess the conversation is not meant for him that's really what he speculates he's met by the arrival of boston brand now boston brand being dead man this is when we're starting to get into this idea of the the religious and mythological side of dc comics right for those of you guys who are new to dc dc has two sides you've got the front-facing superhero side that's the face they present to the general public anybody who wants to start getting into comics that's your superman batman wonder woman justice league comics then you have the other side you've got like the vertical side the the idea of mysticism religion god lucifer all that kind of stuff boston brand and everything the specter that's the other part that's the mystical side the religious side boston brand whenever you see him usually in a story like this he possesses somebody not always but the idea of boston brand is that he's well aware of the spectre and the phantom stranger and this whole side of things norman mckay is not and so where norman mckay is basically a pastor who's devoted his life to the belief in god basically the presence that kind of a thing showing up here and encountering all this it is to a degree questioning his faith and not to really be a terrible person about it but boston brand kind of pushes him over a little bit further because what he basically tells him is that you have no idea what's really going on here in the greater world do you like you read your bible to your congregation you take the words that you see in the book with an absolute faith that up to this moment can never truly be shaken you believed that it was true but you never actually had the facts you never really knew what was going on now norman mckay can't really be faulted for that because no one had taken him on a journey like this before nothing had ever happened in his life that led him to believe that while the book he was reading wasn't necessarily false there was just more to the to the equation than he was seeing but what boston brand says is one you're being taken on this ride by the spectre and it is important that you undergo this but one thing to know the spectre just because he's some being out there of divine nature does not mean he's inherently good it does not mean that that's the case he's like one of the things you need to understand is that when it comes to the notion of good and evil that sure you've got things like the presents you've got lucifer and all the stuff contained within your book but the reality here is the the situation as it exists the real world as it you know as if you could call it that right what passes for you know a lack of a better word here it's anything but that it's just varying shades of grey good and evil do not really exist out there it's just whatever a person can do and can't do so do not take everything the specter tells you as an absolute truth he was bonded to jim corgan he was a cop at one point in time when he was just the spirit of vengeance he went crazy basically lost his mind became what you would call evil for a while the guy is not some genuine altruistic force out there designed to just punish the wicked on behalf of god it's not that that black and white it's not that binary and so he says take what he tells you right listen to what he tells you and keep it in the back of your head just don't take it as an absolute truth and then he basically walks away now this particular moment with boston brand will become incredibly important once we get to the end of the story because it'll totally change the way that norman mckay handles things but on the other side of the equation regarding the whole idea of the mankind liberation front one of the questions that i imagine a lot of you all have is why is billy batson working with lex luthor so the way this works is we're not really given a definitive answer here we'll actually get that here in a little bit it'll really be on behalf of batman that explains it the thing behind this though is that billy batson here as an adult is constantly showed footage of superheroes just being violent how superheroes are quote unquote inherently bad now it's not really lex luthor cooking the books here he's showing uh shazam actual footage he's showing him these actual things that go on the difference is that much like most things that exist here in the world on the media side news and so on and so forth he's only ever been given one half of the story to serve a particular purpose the other part of this and what like lex luthor's doing is he's channeling the knowledge of dr savannah right mr mind now one of the things to keep in mind is that kingdom come is post crisis on infinite earth but before the new 52 so the new 52 origin of mr mind and dr savannah don't really apply here instead going by the power of shazam way back in the 1990s and 1996 that the way this played out is that mr mine had basically taken over savannah and then planned like an invasion of earth right that kind of thing what we're not told here but what seems to be the case is that with mr mind being a sentient being that could operate by his own whim his own will and desire and so on and so forth that maybe something happens somehow dr savannah managed to overpower mr mind or whatever it is but the idea of a telepathic worm was basically used here we're not really given the details about how all this unfolded all we know is using a worm to mentally control other individuals around him is how lex luthor's been controlling shazam so there's a lot of ambiguity there but one of the things that does go on here is you do end up having batman who's actually watching all this unfold using a secret spy device now of course what's also taking place here is working with the the mankind liberation front they're basically weaponizing and creating a whole bunch of these mech bats right these these bat robots that can be used to kind of operate in lieu of metahumans in order to keep society in check now one of the things that batman wanted to establish with lex luthor is that what they're looking for is to basically move the world in a better direction right to create world order not world domination they're not looking to subjugate humanity they're looking to lead humanity in a better to a better future and believe they can only do that because they themselves are humans that many humans just can't relate to humanity in that way right because they simply have a level of power that humanity doesn't possess right that at the end of the day if mankind were to follow the will of god it would be due more to fear than an actual love or belief in the power that person possesses and so what you have here for the most part when it comes to billy batson walking around is he basically seems very inhuman in terms of his appearance he smiles all the time and never really shows any emotion or anything like that and so it really it really freaks people out it creeps them out in a lot of ways like why is this guy always smiling and looking like that he looks like a robot like it's just kind of strange and so what you also have going on here and this is one of the more important things that we don't get a lot of a lot of exposition on is martian manhunter because that's probably a question that a lot of people had where's martian man hunter and all of us now what we end up finding out is that martian manhunter basically keeps himself under the guise as a regular guy that you that at least attempting to use the telepathy of martian manhunter is very very limited here in order to keep anybody from knowing what he actually is and the reason why is because this guy's mind is walking a nice edge then following superman basically walking away martian manhunter in what was probably the most terrible decision he could make had actually telepathically reached out to the whole of humanity and experiencing all of the nature of humanity at one point in time basically broke him but humanity like the very core of human beings broke martian manhunter he never truly understood what humanity was about until he touched all their minds at the same time and so because of that where there's an attempt by batman to utilize the powers of martian manhunter to effectively read the minds of the people in the room to find out what their actual goals and motivations are in the end it simply just proves to be too much and so martian manhunter just kind of goes about his business and that's seemingly the last we see of him for a while but the thing about this is you do have this kind of moment in the the watchtower or really the i guess the citadel of the green lantern where the justice league watches everything and for the most part they've quelled most all of these meta-human threats that exist around the world just by arbitrary fighting and whatnot things have calmed down like germany's clear all these different locations but the funny thing about this is that the flash picks up on the presence of norman mckay and as a result of that actually yanks norman mckay out of this kind of invisible barrier so to speak because the reality is that with the spectre they had him slightly out of phase with the universe itself but as the flash he can phase through dimensions so it was only a matter of time before he saw something that indicated norman mckay was there as soon as he picked up on it norma mckay's yanked out he subdued my power woman and then questioned by superman and when he when superman asked the question like who are you and why are you here the reality is that witnessing this guy's presence firsthand actually meeting him firsthand overwhelms norman mckay he doesn't quite know how to respond he ends up turning into what's basically a babbling fool all the way to the point that he starts basically running off biblical scripture by just saying like well the end times are coming and that kind of stuff he sounds like a religious kook babbling about how the the how armageddon is coming the end of days is here some crazy person that you would just walk by on the side of the road and pay no attention to and that's kind of what superman does they basically dismiss him because the well while this is going on you have dick grayson as robin who chimes in and says like there's a riot in the gulag right like we have to get to the gulag we have to respawn and of course wonder woman steps in and basically tells everybody what they need to do and sends them out there and then a great big huge debate takes place between wonder woman and superman when he asks the question why did you override my authority why did you undermine me and the the response of her is why did i do that i saw a crisis i reacted in a confident and unequaled manner the others need to see that sort of authority from someone pull yourself together we're overdue for a meeting with the united nations they can't help but know about the gulag by now and the response to superman is that i guarantee they're wondering when we started making up our own laws let's go and in meeting with the united nations basically the overall gist of this conversation is humanity is losing faith in the meta humans they're losing faith in superman's ability to keep this entire threat under control because where superman responded by saying i can corral them in i can get this whole thing sorted out the reality here is he's losing control that the gulag was created as a prison he did what was probably the worst possible thing which is take all these people with all this power and put them into one single location it's a melting pot of just anger and rage and madness that's literally what it is tempers running high the whole nine yards you've got villains who are now being housed with heroes because that's kind of how they see themselves to a degree they all they do all they know how to do is just fight and so because that's all they know how to do when it comes to solving their problems any disagreement that that arises between these different meta humans is met with conflict they don't understand the idea of diplomacy or talking things down or having a conversation or any of that stuff they don't know there's a better way while that whole thing goes down with regards to this crisis in the gulag you do have the the mankind liberation front that finally decides it's the time to make their move it's their time to decide what it is that they're going to do right how they're going to act here now you do have lex luthor who effectively grabs shazam and says now's the chance right now's your time to deal with this and when that happens batman incapacitates lex luthor and that's what we end up finding out that's why batman was here in the first place that he never really joined the the mankind liberation front never really even believed in their movement in the first place what he wanted to know is what happened with billy batson what's going on with shazam because the reality here is that shazam is probably the only guy out there that can go toe-to-toe with superman and in fact that's going to be a major component of this story when we get to part four superman versus shazam but it's a really cool thing because what we end up getting is this explanation where batman had figured it out and he says i'd suspected for a while and jon jones telepathic probe confirmed it it seems marvel's dual identities are in quite a bit of mental conflict all these years as batson grew to manhood luther kept him in check by turning him into a stew of schizophrenic psychosis and he says my only goal in outlying with you was to learn your connection to captain marvel and the entire global conflict he was the wild card and i hate wild cards and so that's the crazy thing here is because now we know that when billy batson was a little kid and superman had basically walked away that that essentially lex luthor took billy batson under his wing and then using basically telepathic worms the knowledge of mr mind or of dr savannah had been keeping billy batson under his thrall under his control the problem here is you have batman who tells his guys take out the mankind liberation front right deal with those guys and at the same time you also have billy batson who basically races off under the orders of lex luthor to find superman and to deal with him but again billy batson is still under the control of lex luthor but that's the concern that you have when it comes to batman is because when he confronts uh shazam when he finally you know encounters him and you've got all these tubes that are filled with all these worms that lex luthor's been using on shazam and they all start to kind of infiltrate billy batson he finally shouts the word shazam and becomes a superhero self and then takes off at the direction of lex luthor to find superman so that's the big issue is what happens when these two meet how is it all going to go down and so when you have wonder woman and you have superman who arrived back at the uh at the the watchtower i guess we can just start calling it that right like the emerald citadel the justice league watchtower is effectively what it is a great big huge argument breaks out between the two because what you have here is this this point where superman says yet another side of you that i'm not comfortable with right this part of you that's willing to do whatever it takes to win and the response of her is get used to this one a soldier unprepared has no business calling herself a soldier and the response of superman is you know quote unquote more amazonian wisdom right isn't it possible that we've already won the big fight once the rioters are calmed we can instill some measure of peace and the response of wonder woman is you always were a bit vulnerable to magic because superman cut himself on her sword be careful the sword was a gift from hephaestus it can carve the electrons off an atom and and the question of superman is did you expect to use that on me and she says i expected to be a soldier right so what this indicates is that if it came down to it wonder woman was willing to kill superman she was willing to take him out that the sword was effectively a backup plan and he says i will not sanction lethal force against me or any of the rioters i'm uneasy with that blade because that's the other part of the equation sure it can be used on superman if it needs to be but she's willing to kill those meta humans superman is not and that's the discussion that we had in the previous video in any particular conflict wartime video games sports whatever it is right they're all forms of conflict there's only ever two people involved or two types of people involved at any particular point in time the ones who would like to win and the ones who want to win who need to win and the ones who would like to win are not usually the ones who win because the ones who feel like they need to win or have to win they'll do whatever it takes the only thing that matters is that they come out on top superman is by all standards of measurement what you would call a high road defeatist he's a person that takes the stance of saying i would rather die and keep my morals intact right i would rather lose and keep my morals then win by betraying them but the reality here is of what use would that do to anybody right if the one who loses and keeps their morals intact if they die if they're out of the picture now all that's left is the one who wins and whatever it is that they want to do there's no one there to stand in the way so in effect they've quit they're a defeatist they gave up right literally maintaining their moral code is what caused them to lose in the first place and that's the real position here wonder woman is the one that has to win that needs to win she's the one that's willing to beg borrow steal and kill for superman it's a war of convenience and that's why you see this conflict unfolding the way that it is because he says there are lines that we do not cross we have rules and her stance is and the prisoners don't that's why they're prisoners and if they don't remain prisoners your big blue marble teeters on the brink you made the decision to incarcerate them for the good of mankind remember and he says and maybe that was my mistake maybe i should have let the humans decide how to deal with this but at the end of the day it was superman's screw-up that what he failed to realize is that he's basically fighting a war against people who don't follow the rules while following the rules himself and that desire to follow the rules is how you lose that's his weakness and so as this whole thing on the whole thing unfolds you end up having this communication that comes from the green lantern who's like we can't hold this right these guys are just way too powerful for us there's too many of them they're overpowering us they're reaching the walls we cannot keep this thing contained somebody has to do something and we end up finding out that one of the people that one of the superheroes had been killed captain comet had died so now members of the justice league are dying because of superman's high road defeatist attitude and so what this does is it leads to wonder woman stepping in and saying then we're gonna go there and we're gonna do whatever we have to do if that means we have to kill every single meta human that's housed in the gulag we'll kill every single one either you can stay back here and you can hope that things work out or you can join us in this conflict you can grow some balls and you can make the decisions that need to be made because this is a time of war are you a winner or are you a loser choose one and ultimately superman stays behind and so that's one of the crazy things is because in this moment he races off actually where wonder woman takes off to the gulag he races off to batman and confronts him and says i need your help and where batman's like no we've been through that already superman fed up is like i've had enough of this right this is not the time for you to take some kind of high road or be a dick or anything like that right this there are huge stakes here we literally have many humans breaking out of this the united nations is waiting on pins and needles to decide what it is they're going to do and if it comes down to it they're going to go to the nuclear option so they could very well just wipe us all out as meta humans the entirety of our future hinges on this it hinges on this whole thing and the response of batman is what did you think was going to happen you took every single metahuman that you deemed to be a bad guy and put them in one place you took a huge group of people tons of people who don't know how to solve any problem other than fighting over it and you put them in one place and gave them free reign you created this circumstance you set this whole thing up you're the reason why this is happening in the first place it even says like do you mean to tell me superman that you you you mean to tell me you never imagined that it might come to this did you ever consider that war might actually be for the best that perhaps humanity's only chance is for the superhumans to swallow each other right to basically annihilate each other it's the best chance humanity has of any of having any kind of meaningful future and this debate back and forth rages in such a way to where it's like either you can do something or a batman or you can do nothing because lest we forget you're a member of the justice league and so before you take this high stance of it is humanity's chance right it's time for superhumans to go you were along with us you're the smartest man in the world maybe depending on lex luthor do you really think they're not gonna come after you do you really think they're gonna say well all the metahumans have to go and by metahumans we mean anybody who has powers batman's cool do you really think that's what they're gonna say no they're gonna come after you because you have the ability to affect the world on a global scale maybe not with powers but certainly with your intelligence you represent a clear and present danger and then the response of batman here is like okay fine and he says i will tell you this one thing i'm not going to help you on all this but i will tell you this one thing there's a player that you have not counted on and that's marvel that's literally captain marvel billy batson and superman's taken aback and he says he's been brainwashed severely once there was a good kid inside him but he's basically been driven out and i don't know how you'd ever find him again he's lost right billy batson is headed to the gulag he's gonna break it wide open onto the justice league he's literally gonna unleash all the superheroes out there and he's going to initiate a circumstance where humanity is going to respond with nuclear arms and when that happens it's game over right like it's that's it there's no coming back you all get nuked maybe some of you survive but ultimately the entirety of the human race will see you as the reason why it happened and so ultimately you end up having shazam who arrives on the scene superman gets there just in time right tries to get there just just before it happens but he's too late shazam smashes the place open right as superman gets there and then before he can do anything shazam stops him dead in his tracks all right what's going on guys this is rob and after four days we are here yes we are here at the conclusion of kingdom come yes i'm gonna be on a cruise by the time this video comes out so uh i'll see y'all in like a week i'm gonna be getting tanned i'm gonna be getting drunk i'm gonna be having a great time hanging out with my sister right she and i we love taking trips together so here's what we're gonna do right here's here's how this whole thing works this video is basically the end of it all right the battle the huge conflict that happens now this is literally everybody against everybody to some degree the reality here is that much like the various vigilantes that they fought to overcome superman shazam batman wonder woman all of them there really aren't any good guys or bad guys anymore it's really just descended into superheroes fighting superheroes that's really all it is because a lot of old wounds are coming back out now right a lot of injuries are coming back out a lot of anger a lot of disdain a lot of hurt is coming back to the surface and that's what's happening here we get this really really cool statement that's offered where it said is that the only reason i'm here of course norman mckay talking to the specter and he says to watch some hideous judgment superman and i share the same terror his face is a mask of confusion he cannot comprehend how things came to this once upon a time captain marvel was one of his mightiest allies now whichever wisdom he once possessed has been dulled by luther's brainwashing making the captain a soldier of chaos the one warrior who can counter superman's every move and prevent him from containing this battle superman believes himself to be the only force on earth powerful enough to end the superhuman war he is wrong and the reason why is because we transition to the united nations where a meeting is being undertaken and you have all these world leaders who are saying this multi-megaton nuclear explosion held in reserve for just this moment that he says take a look at mankind's last hope capable of vaporizing a country achieved in a force field unbreachable by all catalogued meta-human powers a deployment system that's virtually undetectable that essentially they've been waiting for something like this to happen and when this thing goes off there will be casualties there will be civilians who will die but the reality and what humanity is arguing here what this guy's presenting is he's saying listen to me and understand there is nothing rational about dispatching tactical nukes into the heart of our own country but these are not rational times we are at the flashpoint of human existence my god you can hear the battle even here at any moment it threatens to spread forth and engulf the world what then what do we do in that circumstance and he says the only way to ensure that future generations remember this as humanity's final option is to ensure that there will be future generations after today let us strike while we still can god's speed and the response is the united nations fires off these uh these jets containing tactical nukes and so jumping back to this major conflict again it's all heroes fighting heroes and even norman mckay says that he says even in the brightest day the dust of the battle eclipses the sun itself the prisoners released by marvel's thunderbolts strike out blindly wonder woman's troops return force in kind both sides fight with reckless abandon whatever heroic moors of combat might once have ruled them becomes nostalgic memories this is not a fight that will eventually die down this is a forest fire that's just begun a war that may well end the world any instant now there will be fatalities and no way to turn back with superman deadlocked their only prayer of deliverance rests with a force from on high and this is the arrival of batman along with his entire team and he says batman's legion soars in like a silent cavalry man or machine each agent knows his mission stem the loss of life prevent the riot while there's still time to exert control the sheer force of batman's presence kindles a desperate ember of hope too late right like there's nothing that batman's presence can do to calm everybody down he does what he can where he can but in the end the arrival of batman is not changing the tide to make things even more difficult an argument and then eventually a fight erupts between him and wonder woman where he tells her this whole thing that you have this idea of killing these meta humans you're no different than those crazy meta humans themselves right those fanatics the vigilantes who just believe or who don't really care about collateral damage you've become the very thing that you swore to fight against right this idea of spreading love and understanding but don't be afraid to bloody your knuckles doing it he says at the end of the day what you're what you're doing here everything that you're doing here is not going to win you back your position with the amazonians you're overcompensating and in your overcompensation you're leading to the ending of everything that wonder woman fires back and it's like why in the world do you believe you have any right to condemn me after all these years of you just vanishing from the entirety of the landscape we could have used you after superman left we needed you and you were nowhere to be found superman abandoned us and so did you at a time when we actually needed you the most you could have been our liaison to the rest of humanity our eyes and ears you could have spoken truth to lies you could have been this person but instead you weren't but you cowered in your bat cave turning your entire city into a some kind of a dictatorship ruling it with an iron fist who are you to tell me the problem with operating like some kind of a dictator after all this time your hypocrisy still knows no bounce and in this giant fight between the two of them suddenly something catches batman's attention and that's when he sees these drones these jets flying towards their conflict with nuclear bombs and that's when you switch over to the fight between superman and shazam and it's just this really amazing fight right because the entire time shazam is not holding back and that's one of the big differences between the two that in the various conflicts they've had over the years by whatever manner and whatever means that billy batson was always the moral compass right he always held back because he was never really aiming to kill that's not the case here right under the mind control of lex luthor his job is to kill superman that's his purpose here so there's no real holding back here that's why he keeps yelling shazam that's why he just keeps like just hitting superman with all this energy and that's why superman is quite literally dying in this fight and in a lot of ways people see it happen but they're so caught up with their own battles that they actually end up missing the fact that superman is being killed by shazam and so switching back to wonder woman in batman batman says open your eyes diana right your answer flies on metal wings those are nuclear carriers the ultimate warbringers our war is not one uh one act of violence at the cost of some lies our war ends in extinction if you're that devoted to the amazon honor if your soul genuinely longs for atonement on amazonian terms then let's keep fighting and let the planes do their work and the response of wonder woman is no and she ultimately stands down and the two of them end up going after these drones the problem here is that as norman mckay is watching this he says despite my spectral form i feel the heat of batman's lasers i feel the strain of titanium muscles and i hear the whisper of a pilot begging for forgiveness because they missed one and one of the bombs comes falling down to its destination they couldn't get to it in time and so what happens is you end up having superman who just seizes shazam right just grabs his mouth and billy batson turns back into his human form and norman mckay says for one frozen instant the storm clears fingers that can fuse coal into diamond crawl across human bone and in the hush of ears that can hear a cell divide pick out with chilling ease the scream of human rage a wave of x-rays confirms the bomb's potency a telescopic glance calculates the seconds before impact he has to act now and that's when spectre says it is time right judgment has come norman mckay the hour tolls our entire journey has brought us to this moment and he says judge and judge wisely that the specter needs a human host and he puts the responsibility on norman mckay and says you have witnessed all of this you've seen all of this unfold norman mckay judge who will be condemned in this will it be humanity that will end or will it be will it be the metahumans that will end what will happen here and so it's this really really just beautiful and amazing moment because we're told superman's palm spasms around batson's jaw and bats and whimpers the clock is racing only moments remain before the blast and superman says listen to me billy listen harder than you have ever listened before and he says look around us look at what we've come to there's a bomb falling either it kills us or we run rampant across the globe i can still stop the bomb billy that much i'm sure of what i don't know is whether i should be allowed to superhumans or mankind one will pay the ultimate price and that decision billy batson is not for me to make i am not a god i am not a man but you billy you're both and so he says more than anyone who has ever existed you know what it's like to live in both worlds only you can weigh their worth equally fight the brainwashing billy you can let me go or with a word you can stop me do you understand the choice that can be made by you alone and norma mccaig chimes in and says the tears of billy batson answer this question for superman and superman says then decide decide the world and ultimately superman takes off and in the moment when superman leaves billy batson yells shazam and the seven thunders come crashing down billy turns back into shazam again grabs superman smashes him into the ground and goes flying up to the bomb now it's one of these crazy moments because when this happens everybody stops fighting like everybody stops and they're just watching shazam as he's racing up to this nuclear bomb that's going to annihilate them all he shouts shazam three times the bomb goes off and billy batson dies like literally he sacrifices himself to save every superhero here and all the specter says is judgment right this just super iconic scene of superman on his knees screaming if you ever saw that shot that's where that's from it's from kingdom come and he's just surrounded by dead bodies that's it when he gets up superman is eight kinds of pissed this guy is incensed and ultimately the specter's like i've done my job right judgment has been has been passed it's time for me to go he literally bids norman mckay for a while and norman's like no you're not going anywhere right like you're bound to me right like you're literally your spirit is bound to me if only in the moment if you really believe that letting superman just race off and whatever happens next is just you know it's whatever that's what's truly evil because all i saw here was bedlam and tragedy sadness right just a man who made a series of bad decisions and led everything to this if you leave now then that really is an evil thing and so ultimately we end up following them to the united nations where superman's going and this guy starts to unleash holy hell i mean just like starts to rip down the ceiling right he's gonna kill everybody here he's gonna kill every single person here and the specter says after 10 years superman has finally let free a wrath that would cower satan himself how can any man possibly calm the fury that he feels towards his prosecutors and that's when norman mckay steps up and he says clark don't do this right you blame yourself for captain marvel for magog and kansas for 10 years that ended today yes you're angry but in that anger you're forgetting once more what humans feel this is what humanity has been feeling for a long time humanity didn't just fire off these rockets at you to annihilate you because you just pissed them off one last time it's because all they've known since your emergence the emergence of metahumans is fear they might follow you they might smile at you but at the end of the day in their heart of hearts they're scared of you because you tower above them you fly above them you spend your time above them they never really see you exist in a watchtower that literally orbits the world right like you are always in a state above them all they know is fear you are an omnipresence reminder that they are not you and how easy it would be for you to destroy them and that's when superman asks who are you and why are you here and norman says listen to me clark he says of all the things that you can do all of your powers the greatest has always been your instinctive knowledge of right and wrong it was a gift of your own humanity you never had to question your choices in any situation any crisis you always knew what to do but the minute that you made the super more important than the man the day you decided to turn your back on mankind that completely cost you your instinct that took your judgment away and he says take it back if you want redemption clark it lies in the very next decision that you make make it as a man and make it right and so ultimately when he's met by the arrival of all these survivors he's shocked by it all he's like how did anybody survive and we're basically told that between the flash and between green lantern and what have you basically some heroes were protected or some meta humans were protected the big concern though is that humanity still has the same level of distrust like magog is among these people who has survived right there's still the same level of distrust the same everything right and the question of wonder woman is what do we do now right like what do we do now clark it's still the same thing like we're still super like there's less of us but we're still meta humans right there's still those individuals out there who believe that that fighting is the only way to solve problems and to a degree that's true right violence is not always the answer but it is a answer and it's usually a very effective one and the response to superman is years ago i let those that i swore to protect drive me away we all did and that was the day all of this began and and these people say like we saw you as gods and superman says so did we we saw ourselves as gods too who could somehow lead you into a better place but that's not what you need that's not what humanity needed humanity did not need to be a horse that we strapped a rope to and led to water what humanity needed was someone to show them how to get there what you needed was for us to live among you to be a part of you but not to be above you and that will change from this point going forward we will no longer operate above all of you we will work alongside you we will work with you we will help you make the world a better place we will offer our wisdom and our guidance from our own experiences we will bring that to the table i can bring you wisdom and guidance from a long dead civilization that's that was vastly more more advanced than yours was at the time that it expired batman is the most intelligent person in the world wonder woman has the experience and wisdom of quite literally gods we can bring all of this to the table and we can help make you better and we're going to do this by also using the wisdom of a man who left his legacy on the world by sacrificing his life of billy batson and they actually end up using the cape of billy batson as one of the flags at the united nations and so what you get is this sort of epilogue where you end up finding out that wayne manor has basically been rebuilt it's been turned into a hospital to treat those who survived the entirety of the soup of the meta-human conflict but it'll also serve as basically a way to kind of keep those detained uh lex luthor's one of those [Laughter] superman of course is recovering he's accompanied by wonder woman who's also probably offering her own methods of recovery for superman if you know what i mean but you also have wonder woman regaining her ranks among the amazonians right having basically ushered the world into a better place what you get in the aftermath of this meta-human conflict is really a utopia you get an entire utopia here and it's a wonderful and a beautiful thing because a lot of these graves are built in remembrance of those individuals who died and clark kent actually starts working to set kansas back to a place where it can be it can go back to being the bread basket right you can go back to growing crops and different things along those lines they lead the world into a much better place and to a utopia that they always wanted it to be and that right there is the value of violence had this entire meta-human conflict never taken place in the in the first place would this future ever have come to fruition would it have ever happened and the answer is most likely no if superman had stayed hands off if he had remained in his fortress and never gotten involved you likely would have seen some kind of a nuclear response by humanity and the world would have just been plunged into chaos those meta-humans who did survive would have annihilated what remained of humanity and they would have taken the world for themselves and that would have been the end of it right that what it took was a massive conflict it took death and destruction on that scale in order to force the change of both humanity and metahumans because it's only in the face of such tragic loss that we're actually forced to confront what caused that loss in the first place in that moment we're caught up we're all emotionally swept up with everything that's going on right that's exactly what happened here superman wonder woman batman green lantern the flash humanity likes luther so on and so forth they were so caught up in the situation that no one ever stopped to take a step back and asked the question how did we get here what led us to this point it was only when humanity were when the many humans were facing their own extinction at the hands of a nuclear arsenal and that near extinction came to fruition had it not been for billy batson if that bomb had detonated a ground zero they all would have been killed likely superman too i don't know that would have been the case but presumably it would have been maybe you would have survived i don't know but the thing is most the entire meta-human population would have been destroyed right like it was only in the face of their own extinction and annihilation that they were finally able to to heal bla peel back this this cloak right this blanket of destruction and death and despair and come to terms with what they'd done and the fact that superman himself had led the hero uh the metahuman community on this collision course it was his actions that led things to getting where they were and so everything is really kind of settling back down norman mckay finds his own measure of hope reaffirms his conviction in god goes back to reading the bible and this congregation grows it's that kind of thing this serves a greater purpose what's really cool is like the specter as jim corrigan shows up to listen to his sermon at one point in time that's the beauty of it all and so of course for the first time in the story you have a superman and you've got a wonder woman who basically show up to planet krypton where they sit down and they basically realize everybody's dressed up as superheroes not gonna lie i would go to this place if this place existed in the real world i don't know if it does and if it does exist i will go to wherever i need to be in order to be able to go there but i would absolutely go to this place 100 and in fact you know what like if this is something that's like a major kind of a convention right of like they do this at san diego comic-con we should all go right i mean i don't know if you know one or two point what the 2.132 million three 130 000 people can fit in there but uh we'll try so like i would love [Laughter] i would love like to go to a place like this it just looks amazing but at the end of the day it's really the three of them just kind of sitting down and having this conversation and really just being a part of humanity not really above them not really beyond them not operating outside of them but basically being among them and just kind of enjoying their life among people having this conversation talking about everything that's going on right that you know batman and having this conversation says that it's been a long road for rehabilitation for the for all the injured he says fortunately i'm not laboring alone i was able to put several members of the mankind liberation front to work in our ad hoc hospital and when he says he put him to work he means like slap collars around their necks and made them work which rightfully they deserved he says they're pulling their weight vandal savage alone has picked up quite a few healing tricks in his 50 000 years that's really them just kind of talking about everything that's happening having this conversation and what's really really cool is you end up finding out that uh wonder woman and superman they kind of got something going on right that batman's a little pissed off because the stick is well done which i you know you know i can't even judge him for that whatever man but you have this moment where like wonder woman and batman or superman are like hey we kind of have something to share and batman's like yeah you're pregnant i already know like i know you're pregnant wonder woman right so like superman knocked up wonder woman making a life for himself that's really what's going on here it's just kind of going forward right they want batman to be the godfather which i don't know why anybody would ask that right i would never ask batman to be the godfather of my child ever well there would be there would okay i'll take that back there would be rules i would be like he has to be a robin at least once he has to be set up financially for the rest of his life or her life or whatever they have to be able to drive the batmobile at least one time like they have to be able to take the batmobile to prom that's that's like a rule right like i mean i don't know how i would reinforce that i'd be dead if batman was like if it came to that right i would have been dead hence the nature of a godfather but i'd be like you have to let my child take the batmobile to prom because how dope would that be you'll be walking away with other people's prom dates you know but nonetheless it's just one of those things right you gotta take you gotta have the batmobile taking the batmobile to prom will be legit but again kind of being more serious here right getting back down to a serious tone and talking about all this it really is everything coming to a close right that this world has achieved a level of peace and a level of of understanding and really a utopia that was previously never thought possible all it took was the near extinction of the entirety of the metahuman race coming from a decision that humanity didn't want to make in order for it to happen but with that being said guys we're gonna bring this to an end this was the story of kingdom come absolutely loved it let me know what you guys think about it and i will catch you all later peace you

Channel: Comics Explained

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Keywords: comics explained, comicsexplained, marvel explained, fluidic beats, comics, comic books, marvel, dc, infinity gauntlet, world breaker hulk, crisis on infinite earths, comic explained, infinity war, the batman who laughs, doomsday clock, DC Comics, Kingdom Come DC, Kingdom Come, Superman, Superman DC, Wonder Woman, The Flash, The Flash Trailer, Aquaman, Marvel Civil War, The Spectre, The Spectre DC Comics, Batman, Batman Comics, Magog DC, Magog DC Comics, Shazam

Id: bb62ZBSEmoM

Length: 98min 3sec (5883 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022