Kingdom Come/Headscratchers

• The novelization of Kingdom Come says that Power Girl dies in the nuclear blast, but if Superman survived the blast why didn't she if she's presumably Kryptonian in this universe too? It just doesn't add up.
  • Less absorbed sunlight in her tissue at that point in time?
    • It's directly stated Superman's invulnerability has never been higher due to his age, and the fact that he's been absorbing sunlight for decades more. Power Woman is younger than Superman --- ergo she is less invulnerable.
    • Due to a smaller cup size and no boob window. See what ignoring Fan Service gets you?
  • Or she's simply not Kryptonian in that universe.
    • Bingo, when Kingdom Come came out, she was still officially an Atlantean.
      • But wait, If she isn't his cousin in the Kingdom Come time line, then how come in the JSA story that crossed over with Kingdom Come it's her that's his Berserk Button upon returning? Also he calls her Kara. Was that still her name during the Atlantean era?
        • That was her name during the Atlantean period of her history. The reason that the main Earth Power Girl tried to connect with Kingdom Come Superman was because of his age, and his powers, he was much like her cousin, Kal-L of Earth-2 who was murdered by Superboy-Prime in Infinite Crisis. This was an event of All the Myriad Ways being averted.
  • Even if she is the Earth-2 Kara, the Earth-2 Kryptonians are Nerfed compared to their Earth-1 counterparts. Kal-L didn't have powers approaching those of Earth-1 Kal-El (in his prime, not years and years later as in KC) until he was in middle age.
• What happened to all the characters of the DCU not used in Kingdom Come?
  • Dead or retired? That seemed to be the implication when I read it.
  • Many of them are "exploring distant worlds or other times". Most notably Superboy and Supergirl joined the Legion of the Superheroes.
  • If Alex Ross doesn't like you, you don't exist. Ask poor Kyle Rayner.

• Why is Captain Marvel's Heroic Sacrifice treated like a viable third option? He stops the bomb, but it still explodes and kills him and many metahumans. If he let Superman deal with it, wouldn't Superman have prevented it from killing anybody? Then again I'm not quite familiar with the limits of either Superman or Marvel's powers, am I missing information that would help?
  • Superman would have prevented it from killing anybody, and the war of supers would have raged unchecked across the world leaving devastation in its wake. The two options were letting humanity destroy the supers, or letting the supers destroy humanity. It was a Third Option because he found a way to instead help them live together in relative peace.

• If Von Bach is German, then why is he dictator of Yugoslavia?
  • Who says he's German? He could be Austrian, which makes a little more sense considering it's a bit closer, and fits with his whole "Hitler Expy" thing. The way I see it he either moved there to take it over, or he just speaks German to be pretentious. He doesn't even really speak good German “No trouble Cosmonaut" indeed.

• So, how old was Magog? He acted very young, acted rashly, talked about how he heard of Superman being outdated, etc. But when he takes the helmet off, he looks as old as Bruce.
  • He said "people were calling you old-fashioned when I was a teenager". Due to Comic Book Time, Superman has always been around "about 10 years", and the timeline of this story adds another 10 years. So that puts Magog's age at about 35 - 45, depending on how old a teenager Magog was and what stage in Superman's career they were calling him outdated. But you're right; he does look older. Maybe he's just seen a lot of battle? Or maybe his powers rely on drugs or something that take a toll on his health?
  • Magog is based on Cable, who is also an older man so maybe Magog had a time-traveling origin story like Cable? He could have spent decades in a different time.

• Superman stops from killing the UN leaders. Okay, fair enough, no-killing rule, totally in-character. But then he (and the writers) simply forgives them for just killing a bunch of his old friends among other people. So Supes couldn't get along with Magog who killed exactly one person (who totally deserved it) but is ready to give a free card to motherf@><ing genocidal murderers? They should be jailed, tried and sentenced not offered to work together. And don't tell me 'They are elected heads of states': first it implies that laws don't apply to them and second - so was Hitler.
  • Well, their decision was entirely justifiable. They were sorta trying to save the world. Superman probably understood that.
  • The 'Hitler' comparison isn't entirely fair, since this is hardly unprovoked aggression or anything; the superheroes (of either stripe) have been out of control for a good long while, even before Superman showed up, and even when he came back instead of working with the authorities they've in fact shown clear signs of taking over (for one example, building a superhuman prison on American soil without actually telling anyone beforehand). And now they're in a pitched battle that's threatening to engulf the entire planet and conceivably wipe out anyone who isn't a superhuman. They're completely out of control, and something needs to be done. Plus, the Superman / Magog example is kind of undercut by the fact that Superman eventually comes to forgive -- or at least come to an accord with -- Magog as well.

• Soooo... how did Hawkman turn into a birdman, again?
  • Because Green Lantern became crazy because a yellow bug was in his brain and he turned evil. He tried to hit the reset button on the whole universe and made big portals appear and everything, things were turning white all over, and all kinds of nasty s*** was going down. Hawkman (Carter Hall, a handsome white guy who was the reincarnation of an Egyptian guy and later found out he was actually Native American), Hawkman (Katar Hal, an alien from Thanagar who actually lived on earth without anybody knowing it, and was the founding member of the JLA until we found out it was actually Carter and some guy impersonating him the whole time), and Hawkgirl (Shayera Hal, Katar's wife and an alien who was sometimes the reincarnation of an Egyptian princess and a cowgirl) all got sucked into a portal and crunched together. Out came this big ugly bird-man who had the powers of all three. And the editors thought that this was LESS confusing than how things were before.
  • Same reason the only living male Flash is either Jay Garrick or all the male flashes merged with the speed force and projecting as a singular being in Jay's image. Same reason Beast Boy can now only change into mythical creatures. The same reason the only Green Lanterns appear to be tied to the Golden Age Green Lantern.
• What I really think triggered the whole NAH running riot really was that having Magog's name cleared of charges gave the wrong message to the NAH generation - that they can take a life and create collateral damage and not take responsibility, which is what Kingdom Come really all about. It's not "NAH suck, GAH rule." Sure, it's what it looks like, but what Supes and all the others attempted to do is showing that generation that every action they do has to be done with responsibility. On the other hand, Supes' mistake was simple - a deconstruction of the superhero, if you will. Do people really need superheroes when superthreats are gone, or should human beings police their own? From the resolution of the story, it is evident that "living WITH the humans and not ABOVE them" it is fairly evident that we are getting a different sort of doctrine,which I daresay does have some theological aspect; in reasoning it out, why is it better that mightier forces (even in the family environment, i.e. parent-child relationship) do not intervene with certain problems that do not require their services? It would be spoon feeding and will subsequently hinder any potential development, in this case for the "man" to become closer to the "super" thanks to their own effort and adaptation.