A Year In The JSA: 2009 (issues 19-22)

[knight_moves]

The Thy Kingdom Come story arc continues on and as you might expect from countless TOS episodes, Gog turns out to be a 'god' whose drawbacks outweigh his positives, so he's summarily superhero-battled. All his miracles are undone, aside from Lance's transformation into Magog, and the toys are firmly put back in the box. Power Girl comes back from Earth-2 and everything.

I hold that this three-TPB arc probably could've wrapped up sooner, as Gog pretty self-evidently was going to turn out to be a rotter the whole time, but let's not get into pacing in superhero comics.

Kingdom Come Superman returns to his own world too, leaving me feeling it was all a bit pointless to give him a big adventure in-between panels of KC. It just feels to me that if he had days or weeks to process what he thought had happened with Captain Marvel, he wouldn't have been in the state he was in. But then, I don't hold KC to be such a sacred cow that I don't think an author can take a big swing on it. Just "oh, that's been around long enough that we're getting nostalgic riffs on it? Kay."

Which brings us to Magog.









I suppose there is something interesting in a superhero that's explicitly America's military (and id) post-9/11, but it's also hard for me not to see him as John Walker redux, with him going nutty/nuttier as loved ones are killed and ending up flickering between antihero and straight-up villain. The big difference between that Gruenwald could be a very nuanced writer and Willingham... well, we'll see.

But it's hard for me not to see this as the character who was supposed to be the throughline for this run, but what ended up happening was him getting lost in the shuffle of countless new characters (seriously, I'm not counting them all) and not really getting any spotlight because every story with him was a huge crossover saga. Johns' blockbuster writing taking over and ironically damaging what his more low-key writing had built.

Comments

[giraffesforever]

If one wants to show how hurt, angry, and emotionally unstable one's character, one could show him angrily blasting his weapons into some nearby boulders, a Jeep, the ground, a tree, or the sky. Or one could draw him exploding a pair of peaceful herbivores. What a choice.

[knight_moves]

Warthogs are omnivores, but yeah.

[giraffesforever]

Huh. Insects and grubs and such?

[knight_moves]

Well, since pigs can dispose of a human body, I imagine warthogs would do the same, so it's at least comic-book plausible that warthogs would be eating a dead corpse.

[giraffesforever]

Fair point, I guess carrion probably would be on the menu. I wonder how often they manage it, given that pretty much everything that eats meat in Africa would view a warthog as a tasty snack.

[numeronone]

MUH GOG

[thanekos]

It's beautiful that, over the last sixteen years, there have been three separate " Here's this all-new character - surprise! It's actually Magog (Kingdom Come)! " stories.

[beyondthefringe]

As I noted, DC REALLY needs to stop trying to make Gog and Magog, and for that matter Kingdom Come, happen. Once or twice was fine, but every time they go back to that story/setting, it diminishes it even more, Starting with The Kingdom mini-event, and then this whole mess, and then treating it just as another parallel Earth to visit.

I'll allow some leeway for the most recent story in World's Finest because it was Mark Waid himself returning to it, but even so... there's only so many times Sad Older Superman can gaze sadly upon his Younger Not Dead Yet friends and family.

[mastermahan]

Magog was kind of interesting in KC, but Johns didn't seem to understand why. He was interesting as a repentant man who realized how deeply he'd screwed up. Magog *before* the Kansas disaster is a deliberately generic gritty antihero with a terrible outfit.