Waid, Mark, & Alex Ross, Kingdom Come. Softbound, copyright 1997 DC comics, 232 pp. color, $14.95, ISBN1-56389-330-4 (this is a slightly edited reprint of an essay that originally appeared in Sord&Sworcery 82.)

When Alan Moore's Watchmen burst upon the superhero comics scene, it really drove home how completely artificial the genre's assumptions about might and right were. In the real world, rule of law and due process are assumed to protect the weak from the powerful and that all have a fair shot. That messy reality does not live up to this ideal, that justice is often slow or even missing makes the allure of noble, powerful vigilantes stepping in to fix things very appealing.

Genre, according to Bujold, is “series of conversations”; and superhero comics have been stuck with answering Moore's criticisms ever since. This book is one of those answers; and I'm going to use a feminist lens to examine it...because women, like the everyday people Superman and his ilk strive to protect, live in a world in which they must acknowledge, every time they walk down the street during the day and risk being cat-called or walk down a dark alley and night and risk worse, live in a world in which they cannot escape that the realization that they are not Superman or Batman or Wonder Woman.

They are the average ordinary jane; the ‘man on the street’ or the old lady leaning on her cane—the rescued, the raison d'etre for superheroes.

Or so we are told.

Feminism, it turns out, is good for more than identifying casual sexism in this or that piece of literature. It's no great shakes to point out, for example, that the one-in-three women:men ratio represented by the three main characters—the elderly minister Norman McCrae, Superman, and Wonder Woman—is pretty much the highest depicted in this book (that being the number required to create an appearance of parity, btw), and that none of the secondary characters—Batman, Spectre, Green Lantern, Lex Luthor or Captain Marvel—are female. At least (white) women bit characters do get speaking parts—after page 73 or so I gave up trying to find a line uttered by a nonwhite character. Any nonwhite character, never mind a major one. Aside from assorted newsclips from anonymous television screens, nothing qualified. The fact that most of the non-white metahumans were mostly non-US meta-humans and all seemed to be villains, and that some of them are based on, say, Hindu mythology in to the bargain, is, I suppose, um, shall we say, disappointing.

(Kudoes for showing Batman as disabled, though it would've been a lot more believable if his muscles had wasted.)

Despite the fact that Wonder Woman's ass is hanging out of her costume, the art is not actively misogynistic—no Rob Liefeld broken backs or John Ford pornfaces, yay, and women's frames are believable—that is, they have muscles like the men, and believably sized boobs, hurrah. Female stances are relatively aggressive—in fact WW is cast as the one with hawkish tendancies to Superman's more conciliatory policies (despite this she still gets stuck ‘protecting the innocent’ while the guys ‘sweep aside the foes’ early on—I thought it telling only one person was delegated to protect bystanders while the entire rest of the team clobbered the misbehaving meta-humans. A little beta-reading could have pointed out this logical flaw, that some unthinking sexism that momentarily undermined their characterization of WW, there.) And the book is blessedly free of sexual assault. Again, given comic book history (Women in Refrigerators) this is very welcome.

So, on the surface, particularly given the industry standard, the book does surprisingly well with regard to women. Yes, the book is sexist; so is most of US society. That's intended to be a matter-of-fact observation, not a harsh condemnation. But its day-to-day sexism was not the reason I found it an intensely uncomfortable read, to the point of having to put down and pick up again the book multiple times. As I mentioned before, the art is good; the plotting, characterization, and other technical details are also of very good quality.

It was, I realized, the book's underlying themes—its overall message—that I found so hugely disquieting. This was for several, interrelated reasons, I believe. So, what were the squick inducing themes? What was the book's overall message?

On a strictly conscious level, I think the authors were trying to do two things: on the one hand, have a battle of the titans—but, despite multiple references to Olympian Gods, that simply doesn't resonate with modern Americans, except as a phrase; the actual struggle between Uranus and Cronus simply doesn't mean much to them (or me—I dimly recalled it having to do with the ‘pre-gods’, but it had been too long, and I had to look it up. Thank you, wikipedia.)

So they substituted a more theologically relevant struggle: Armageddon. Everybody has at least heard of that, and not just as a hyperbole applied to aging boxers or wrestlers. Second, I believe, by incorporating such a huge number of super-heros and villains, they were attempting to obliquely celebrate—and reinforce—their core readership's loyalty by citing all these characters and their highly complicated, interlocking backstories (which frankly put the Greek and Roman pantheons to shame for complexity.)

Well, superhero stories are all about epic battles, and why shouldn't their most loyal readers be rewarded by stuffing in the most obscure characters and in-jokes? I get the appeal, I really do.

Alan Moore's Watchmen is brilliant, and, according to the author, specifically an indictment of the Reagan years. The liberals amongst us (that would include me) would suggest, given the current US involvement in two wars, both of which we started on much weaker countries than ourselves, without provocation, that Moore's criticism is still timely. From my point of view the most powerful country in the world is acting like a bully. My observation is that billionaires are far more likely to act like the thoughtless meta-humans—or Olympian Gods to whom all the “special” humans are repeatedly compared—who are far more concerned with their own status, toys, and petty quarrels among their peers than in the problems of folks mopping floors or cleaning toilets.^[1]

If we're lucky, they merely bid up the cost of art so high museums can't compete, thereby depriving the rest of us the chance of ever seeing it.^[2] If we're unlucky, their drive for counting coup on each other manifests itself by sucking ever more money from the rest of US society; if we're really unlucky, they actively tear the government apart, as the Koch brothers have been doing. Even Bill Gates, with his foundation, got his start by stomping (illegally) on his competitors;^[3] truly benign, principled rich guys, like Warren Buffet, are rare.

Moreover, as a feminist, I have a little problem with the idea that the “older” super-heroes were principled good guys, operating with a meta-human version of ‘white man's burden/noblesse oblige’ while their children and grand-children all run wild like barbarians. Hello, what went wrong with these older, nobler folks’ parenting skills? Or are comics so male centric that since none of these monsters had proper mothers, they therefore had no upbringing at all? To be sure, I could very much buy the idea that if the older generation were saving humanity more from a sense of noblesse oblige rather than a genuine desire to help people, I could easily see that goal being re-interpreted by a younger, cynical generation as the battles being the point. —But the authors don't go there; the only excuse we're given is that regular humanity applauds the new, crueler vigilantes because they're more effective.

We feminists have a term for this sort of thing: we call it victim blaming. How is it regular humanity's fault that the metas cannot keep their citizens in check without resorting to appalling violence? Why, indeed, is violence so prevalent? —The average woman would like to be able to walk down a street without fear of more powerful men harassing or raping her—just as the average man expects to walk down a street without having his wallet stolen. Neither of these hypotheticals should have to worry, ever, about bullets flying between vigilantes and criminals defending their turf—yet that is the situation regular humanity faces in this book: accept this violent form of protection, (and die from collateral damage) or reject it (and then die.) Kind of like being a woman—walk down the street at night, and it's your own fault for getting assaulted; stay home and get blamed for being a leech on men because you've got no way to earn your living: public spaces aren't for you! .^[4]

The other major strand that is deeply troubling comes out of the religious imagery, and it fails in several levels. First and foremost, of course, is that the Roman pantheon and Christianity (and Judaism, of which, technically, it could be said to be a sect, or subset) are not very happy playfellows: in fact, a major source of friction between Jesus and his fellow Jews, and the Romans, was the former's fierce monotheism, and resistance to adopting the latter's gods, even in addition to their own.

In other words, the Christian god doesn't really make a distinction between Superman and man—they're all people, all equal. Hence the whole ‘meek shall inherit the earth’ or ‘inasmuch as you have done to the least of these (children had no status to speak of in biblical times) you have done to me’ thing. Therefore, just because they're meta, they don't, on christian terms, get special treatment. —This would also, I would note, be an american value as well.

Therefore, they don't need ‘special’ judging, any more than the rest of humanity does. (That is, Norman McCrae is not called upon to judge war crimes or other heinous acts of ordinary humans, who presumably go through the regular judicial process. However, it's not sufficient for the metas.)

Moreover, while the greek and roman gods may strike us as basically amoral—good or bad, depending—the Christian God is, at least in mainline interpretations all-knowing, all-loving and all-powerful. And reserves to Itself the right to judge. —Thus, having the Spectre act as a (broken) Angel of God who ‘borrows’ the human minister Norman McCrae to help judge the Armageddon in which the metas battle it out is truly horrendous theology.

Note, please, that I'm not saying humans don't have the right to judge each other—obviously we do. But no imperfect human can claim to know the mind of god. That's hubris.

There are some other issues that, while taken separately, do not mix well—besides the difficulty cited above, the Revelations symbolism (and quotes) the authors use as a framing device are very heavily associated (in the US) with Premillennial Dispensationalism—the idea that at some point in the not-too-distant future, a few thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of proper Christians (plus possibly the world's children) will be raptured up, leaving the bulk of the world's population—the unsaved—‘left behind’. And ultimately condemned to hell, regardless of whether they were good or bad. (Because in this mindset, not to be a saved christian is automatically to be evil.) In fact, mainstream biblical criticism has acknowledged for decades that both Revelations and Daniel, which obstensibly are cast as prophetic dire futures, were actually scathing condemnations of their current times, disguised with elaborate symbolism to protect themselves from oppression. Why so few people seem unaware of this still puzzles me, as I found this research the most fascinating thing I learned in my Old Testament class.

(Rather like a animation from an Iron Curtain country with severe censorship policies, that I once watched. All the characters were various tin cans, which were filled—and periodically refilled—with assorted vegetables, till at the last, forced to hold too much, the overstuffed cans burst. It boggled my mind that the censors completely missed the scathing condemnation of their efforts to ‘stuff’ ideologies into their people, like tomatoes or peaches into a can, but as the film was made and released to the west, it clearly happened.)

Normally, I'd just shrug this off merely as uncomfortable interpretation; but apart from a human taking on god's role—something PMDs are awfully prone to doing—to the fact that the UN, rather than the US, drops nuclear warheads (um, hello, where would the UN get those? Otoh, again, PMDs are always worrying that the UN is going to enforce some sort of one-world government by fiat and force upon the US)—not to mention the conclusion—Superman and his pals end the book by squashing the opposition (with a christ-like sacrifice of the innocent and tortured Captain Marvel along the way) and resuming their roles as humanity's protectors.

In all, it ends up reading as a evangelical-flavored conservative paean to American Exceptionalism; and, as I stated at the beginning of this essay, I'm not currently seeing much evidence for the divine right of kings—either by the US government (yes, Obama too)^[5] or by our most powerful citizens, the top 1% who currently hold as much wealth as the bottom 95%—something I find profoundly unfair.

Yet this book would have me believe that the most powerful, the richest—Superman—is looking out for my interests. Let alone some poor kid of color living in a cardboard box on the street.

I don't believe it.

And you shouldn't either.

This book was made to reassure the mostly-white fanboys that, really, might makes good; that the weak are only good as subjects to be protected—not agents equally worthy and deserving to walk down the street without fear and molestation. I know what the authors really wanted to do was show the idea of a Superman, a kind and good man who has never lied nor killed, driven to nearly the breaking point, and being brought back from the brink by a kindly old minister.

But that's not the book I read.

I didn't particularly like Watchmen. It was bleak as hell (and, I'm guessing, even more sexist, since it's been at least two decades since I read it, and my ability to tune that stuff out, at least on a conscious level, was better back then) than this story. I really hated the art, particularly the figurative drawing, which I just didn't feel was up to standard. But by the god I don't believe in, the story hung together, and delivered exactly the message the author meant to, which is why it's widely regarded as one of the most brilliant graphic novels ever published.

This book makes a valiant try to answer that critique; but ultimately, while delivering pretty art, interesting symbolism, and a complex story with engaging characters, fails utterly to deliver on its themes. Perhaps nowhere is this better symbolized by an image, near the end of the book, in which Superman is pulling a multi-story high plow to reseed the land—as a gardener all I could think of was: you idiot! Don't you understand topsoil only goes about 8 inches down, and that if you compact and pummel the earth with that thing you'll just create another 1930s Dust Bowl? That layer is fragile! It has to be treated gently.

But no, slow, gentle,^[6] discussion based solutions—frustrating because there's no bad guy, merely competing views—that's a real-world, feminist approach. It doesn't fit, in the comic-book land of strong men.

14aug2020: added comics tag.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn