The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters


PREVIEW： Comics Corner #14 ｜ Legends


Summary

In this episode, we continue our discussion of Crisis on Infinite Earths with a look at Superman's relationship with the Reagan administration and its impact on American exceptionalism in the 80s and 90s. We discuss how Superman s relationship with President Ronald Reagan influenced the treatment of him as a hero, and the impact it had on the culture at large.


Transcript

00:00:00.080 Hello and welcome to Comics Corner episode 14. I am your host Connor. Yes, I found my glasses. I lost on the train so I had to buy new ones.
00:00:06.540 My co-host Harry. Hello. And we are continuing from our prior discussion of Crisis on Infinite Earths
00:00:11.140 because we ran so long talking about that 12-issue maxiseries to discuss its sequel.
00:00:16.000 I think probably superior in storytelling and maybe art. I preferred it. I preferred it a lot.
00:00:22.240 If you've watched the other episode by now, you'll understand that while I recognise and respect its significance
00:00:27.880 within the DC universe, I think as a self-contained story, Crisis on Infinite Earths is really sluggish and difficult.
00:00:34.300 And Legends is very coherent and sometimes a bit ham-fisted, but has a great pro-Christian, anti-communist, pro-American revolution ethic.
00:00:46.760 And I think the setting at odds of the sort of French proto-communist and post-communist revolutions
00:00:52.860 and the American Revolution, which for all its thoughtful faults at its inception with slavery and since,
00:00:59.680 taking the foundational, at least nominal Christianity out as a building block and now they're just squabbling over equality,
00:01:05.560 I do admire some nominally Christian Englishmen going up and setting out a colony where they self-govern.
00:01:12.120 So I've got a lot of sympathies for the American Revolution, as does Legends.
00:01:15.200 And it's very interesting that this was in 1986, at the peak of Reagan's popularity.
00:01:19.960 Reagan features as a character and unlike what you would expect these days,
00:01:24.320 again, I don't really read modern comics, so I'm sure that there have been plenty of depictions
00:01:28.420 of Trump or Trump-esque characters that have been unflattering, shall we say.
00:01:33.860 This treats Reagan with respect or at least neutrality, as far as I can see.
00:01:40.520 He is presented in this as a president who is trying to do his job.
00:01:45.200 Quite. And Superman is a presidential confidant and there's a lot of reverence paid to Superman,
00:01:49.340 particularly by the artist who took up the writing and art duties,
00:01:53.060 John Byrne in the Man of Steel series and the ongoing Superman series.
00:01:56.400 And that depiction didn't necessarily last beyond these pages because this was preceded by
00:02:01.300 The Dark Knight Returns, which mocks Reagan as a mummified despot.
00:02:05.960 And then after this...
00:02:07.580 That's Miller though, isn't it?
00:02:08.700 Well, Miller then in Dark Knight 4 depicted Trump as a literal hand puppet of Darkseid and the Joker,
00:02:13.120 very cringeworthy. And then a couple of years later, when the Justice League International,
00:02:17.540 which spins out of this book as the new Justice League is set up,
00:02:20.620 President Reagan gives the official sanction for the Justice League to act
00:02:23.440 as the US's special ops group on behalf of the United Nations.
00:02:28.640 And Superman comes to him to give his approval, even though Superman doesn't belong to the Justice League.
00:02:32.840 And President Reagan goes, oh, very nice to meet you, Superman.
00:02:35.260 And he goes, we've already met four times, Mr. President.
00:02:37.200 So they were playing up on his dementia a couple of years down the line.
00:02:41.120 Well, I think that's a bit more fair by that point.
00:02:45.300 And it's not inaccurate.
00:02:47.640 Yeah. And look, I don't have unmitigated love for Reagan, given his amnesty policies and his
00:02:53.060 no-fault divorce policies. But it seems, at least at the time as an artifact,
00:02:56.740 the American exceptionalism narrative that was going in the late stages of the Cold War
00:03:00.200 is a wholesome thing to read and it's certainly preferable to the gay race communism we see nowadays.
00:03:03.860 Well, yeah, I mean, the overwhelming message that I got from this was,
00:03:07.640 I mean, not even necessarily American Revolution or anything.
00:03:11.560 It was just anti-dysgenic freaks.
00:03:14.140 That's the message that I got, which is that the interesting thing about this,
00:03:19.080 which I suppose you are right, is supposed to be emphasizing the idea that
00:03:23.340 the American populace has the will of the people that can be swayed from time to time.
00:03:27.960 But in the end, in a Martin Luther King sense, you could say, bends towards truth and justice.
00:03:34.800 The message that I got from it is that the minds of the people are completely empty and malleable
00:03:40.360 and need leading. And it's all dependent on the character of the leaders.
00:03:45.560 You can either choose the dark side and the dysgenic freaks of the world,
00:03:50.360 or you can choose those like Batman and Superman who are going to lead you towards virtue.
00:03:54.800 And it was particularly the American context with its brand of revolutionary values,
00:03:59.340 but also the strong Christian undercurrent weaved into this by writer John Ostrander,
00:04:03.860 who before he became a delusional Democrat, was training to be a Catholic priest.
00:04:08.240 That explains his knowledge of theology.
00:04:09.900 Oh, all right.
00:04:10.580 Yeah. And there are actual Bible quotes that are embedded in here.
00:04:13.680 That gave rise to that exceptional class of superheroes as the elite to look up to and aspire to,
00:04:19.780 rather than the kind of dysgenic, resentful elite like Glorious Godfrey and the denizens of Apocalypse,
00:04:26.140 who are leading the American public into a revolutionary future,
00:04:29.480 which will castrate them from being able to connect with those aspirational ideals.
00:04:33.500 And so I think the message is pretty good here.
00:04:35.740 So we may as well jump into the story.
00:04:38.000 There is a slight prelude because like any crossover post-Crisis and Infinite Earths,
00:04:42.060 there are tons of tie-ins and there's two worthy of noting.
00:04:45.220 So there are two post-Crisis Batman issues.
00:04:47.840 The first two post-Crisis Batman issues are the two-issue prelude into this.
00:04:51.580 And it's Batman 401 and Detective Comics 568.
00:04:54.260 These aren't included in the Eagle Moss edition that I have given you.
00:04:56.620 They are included in the Hachette edition.
00:04:58.520 And those are basically the only ways you're going to reprint legends at this point.
00:05:01.400 You can find online as well.
00:05:02.640 And they introduced Glorious Godfrey as a televangelist.
00:05:06.220 So it's kind of mocking the Billy Graham mold,
00:05:09.260 but considering the strong Christian undercurrent of the book,
00:05:12.820 it isn't mocking Christianity.
00:05:13.960 It's just mocking false prophets.
00:05:15.760 Essentially, Glorious Godfrey is akin to the Antichrist,
00:05:17.640 something we discussed last week.
00:05:19.000 You could argue the whole televangelist thing was,
00:05:21.880 especially with the American super churches,
00:05:24.200 as far as I'm aware, you could say it was the commodification of faith,
00:05:27.960 which is certainly, I mean, Jesus went into the temple,
00:05:31.680 you know,
00:05:32.660 Whipped all the money changers.
00:05:33.780 Kicked all of the merchants out.
00:05:35.740 So it's definitely that whole aspect of American evangelical Christianity
00:05:40.560 is heretical, you could argue.
00:05:42.880 Yeah, the Protestant work ethic has allowed Christianity to fall from grace,
00:05:47.060 from the ecclesiastical hierarchy towards the worship of mammon over the word of God.
00:05:51.440 And that is certainly, I think, what Glorious Godfrey is parasitizing in this.
00:05:55.320 And in Detective Comics 568,
00:05:57.060 there's a relevant quote to how he appears in issue one,
00:05:59.580 even though they weren't sure how to depict Godfrey.
00:06:02.040 So in one issue, he's blonde.
00:06:03.360 In another issue by Klaus Janssen,
00:06:04.900 he's fat and got black hair.
00:06:06.100 So Klaus Janssen has a very strange art style at the best of times anyway.
00:06:11.240 Yeah, this was straight off the back of Darknet Returns.
00:06:13.720 Well, that makes sense.
00:06:14.620 So he's going for that ultra caricature.
00:06:16.760 Yeah, quite.
00:06:17.320 And so he said,
00:06:17.860 You elected a president who promised to get the government off our backs.
00:06:21.000 Now take the next step.
00:06:22.180 How much longer will you depend on these so-called heroes to make your world a better one?
00:06:25.680 How much longer can you defer your responsibility to a society,
00:06:28.680 to these self-styled saviors?
00:06:30.320 The superhero is an affront to the common man,
00:06:32.860 an insult to the talents and capabilities of the common man,
00:06:35.240 to cope with the world as he finds it.
00:06:36.820 Too long has the common man been held back by the presence of these supermen.
00:06:39.760 Too long have their efforts been stifled by those who had bettered themselves at our expense.
00:06:44.160 Eliminate the superhero and witness the triumph of the common man.
00:06:46.780 And I think this is an accidental but very clever
00:06:50.760 examination of how liberalism can mutate into the resentful,
00:06:56.140 we have to level all things to the lowest common denominator, communism.
00:06:59.180 Because he's saying, in the mould of limited government,
00:07:02.520 in the mould of the American tradition,
00:07:04.980 you have said we need direct accountability between ruler and the people.
00:07:08.400 Well, these superheroes, even though they may be doing good,
00:07:11.040 are unaccountable and they're not equal to you and I.
00:07:13.700 They're not participating in the democratic process.
00:07:15.320 So, jettison the heroic ideal because it isn't democratic and it isn't equal.
00:07:19.740 And after all, that's what we believe in as Americans.
00:07:21.860 And so, that's very much the wall being pulled over American eyes.
00:07:24.620 Certainly, it can be reflective of the ability of rhetoricians to be able to manipulate
00:07:31.720 any set of ideals or any set of abstract concepts into whatever they wanted to be.
00:07:37.720 The same way, I'm reading through Paul Gottfried's After Liberalism at the moment,
00:07:41.500 the first chapter on that highlights all of the many cases where you would have 17th and 18th and 19th century people
00:07:48.960 who considered themselves liberals,
00:07:50.640 whose belief systems were the exact polar opposite of those who would call themselves liberals in the 20th century.
00:07:59.020 And how the difficulty with the liberals of the 20th century, and this is quite a Misesian point,
00:08:04.840 was being able to try to tie their own radical, in many ways, socialistic beliefs
00:08:10.780 into a genealogy that would grant it legitimacy in the eyes of the people.
00:08:15.760 And that's all a rhetorical trick.
00:08:17.300 And so, they brand themselves liberals as a way to try and connect themselves to John Locke,
00:08:22.920 to John Stuart Mill, although I'd say the lineage between John Stuart Mill and the early 20th century liberals is there.
00:08:29.140 There's definitely much more connective tissue between John Stuart Mill and someone like John Dewey
00:08:35.040 than there is between John Stuart Mill and somebody like Ludwig von Mises, for instance.
00:08:40.160 Even if Mises could occasionally be quite utilitarian.
00:08:42.660 But I do find that interesting, like you say, that no matter the ideal,
00:08:47.120 if you've got somebody who's a good enough speaker,
00:08:49.860 they can manipulate that ideal into practically whatever they want.
00:08:53.860 Well, the perfect example of this, I think that we'd all agree on here,
00:08:56.460 is the critical race theorists and Martin Luther King
00:08:58.580 trying to make themselves seem as American as apple pie.
00:09:01.800 They do come from the American tradition,
00:09:03.460 but they're certainly not the definition of equality that the founding fathers,
00:09:06.700 presuming themselves white Christian Englishmen,
00:09:08.400 would have embedded into the Constitution.
00:09:09.820 But you do have Martin Luther King parasitizing the words of the Constitution
00:09:13.860 in even the I Have a Dream speech,
00:09:15.600 saying the Constitution was an unwritten check,
00:09:18.960 and we have come to cash that check now as black Americans.
00:09:21.840 And if it stopped the enfranchisement and the recognition of equal dignity before the law,
00:09:25.820 everyone would agree with that.
00:09:27.160 And that's why many people now still think Martin Luther King was a conservative hero.
00:09:30.500 But he went on to push for reparations and Norwegian-style state welfare redistribution.
00:09:35.840 And so the critical race theorists say, well, MLK was a good start,
00:09:39.000 but why don't we move full-throatedly into race communism
00:09:41.400 because the liberals haven't made good on their promise,
00:09:43.440 and that's the American way.
00:09:44.920 And I think that's very similar to what Glorious Godfrey is doing.
00:09:47.100 Well, of course, just to complete your point that you've made there,
00:09:49.480 it's now to the point where some people,
00:09:51.840 even some on the center-right,
00:09:54.420 use the line that MLK was some kind of late-arriving founder.
00:09:59.780 I've seen people like, I know he's rather contentious,
00:10:03.820 some people may not say he's a conservative,
00:10:05.500 but he's written for the National Review.
00:10:07.060 So David French and others like him have said that he was a late-arriving founder.
00:10:12.020 And that just goes to show the effectiveness of propaganda.
00:10:16.960 Because what that essentially is,
00:10:18.600 and what most of what we experience regarding MLK,
00:10:22.000 is sloganeering.
00:10:23.340 The I have a dream, content of the character,
00:10:26.100 these are all slogans which, separated from the context, sound nice.
00:10:31.860 They're non-objectionable, and we would agree with them.
00:10:33.860 When you separate them from the context,
00:10:36.880 and repeat them often enough,
00:10:38.400 and with enough authority,
00:10:39.640 and from authoritative sources,
00:10:41.860 it convinces people that it's true.
00:10:44.400 Whereas if you actually go back and study what MLK did,
00:10:47.120 what he was pushing for...
00:10:48.420 The content of his character.
00:10:49.440 The content of his character,
00:10:50.660 you'll find that the, again, at the time,
00:10:53.820 the fact that he didn't even write the I Have a Dream speech,
00:10:56.160 that was a collaboration between Stanley Leverson
00:10:58.360 and some of the other people.
00:10:59.640 And even they ripped a lot of it off from other speeches
00:11:02.080 that had come beforehand.
00:11:03.800 That's another example of pure rhetoric
00:11:06.680 getting traction over the people.
00:11:10.200 Even at the time, it was only accepted
00:11:11.920 because it was broadcast from all of the major media sources.
00:11:16.680 If they didn't want MLK to be a thing,
00:11:19.240 they just wouldn't have hosted interviews with him.
00:11:21.140 They wouldn't have let him march on Washington.
00:11:24.640 They wouldn't have let him do the things that he wanted.
00:11:26.760 It was all top down from the beginning.
00:11:28.940 And I think whether it realizes it or not,
00:11:31.040 that's what this is tapping into.
00:11:32.880 Because Godfrey is somebody
00:11:34.360 who's being given a public platform
00:11:36.540 and is using rhetorical techniques
00:11:38.660 to manipulate the people
00:11:40.100 in ways that they don't realize is harmful to them
00:11:43.280 because you sell it to them as,
00:11:45.380 this is the cure to your poison.
00:11:47.900 Yeah, quite.
00:11:48.300 A really important point that connects that
00:11:51.060 is that Godfrey debuted in Forever People issue number three
00:11:54.680 when Jack Kirby came to DC from Marvel
00:11:57.120 and launched the new God's universe.
00:11:59.000 And on the first page,
00:12:00.060 there are a mob of people with blank expressions
00:12:03.100 being hypnotized by Godfrey's words
00:12:06.520 as they come out over the airwaves, over the radio.
00:12:09.000 And there is a quote from Adolf Hitler
00:12:10.600 which says that the beauty of our people, our race,
00:12:13.260 is that they even have the same uniform expression
00:12:16.400 because of what we have told them.
00:12:17.840 So this idea of people to be sophistic,
00:12:20.840 to gin up resentment in a crowd,
00:12:23.420 to create a mindless mob
00:12:25.280 who all move in concert without rational faculties,
00:12:28.600 to what extent people are fully capable of those,
00:12:30.760 again, under liberalism is still debated,
00:12:32.660 is the core of Godfrey's character.
00:12:34.900 And this book takes it from being purely,
00:12:37.720 he is something representative of the demons
00:12:40.600 of the Second World War,
00:12:41.460 which of course Jack Kirby being Jewish
00:12:43.140 and actually serving in the Second World War,
00:12:44.600 of course he was concerned about,
00:12:46.080 to more broadly extrapolate it out to 40 years on from that
00:12:49.920 in the American context,
00:12:51.020 in the Cold War context,
00:12:51.960 to say the anti-American revolutionaries
00:12:54.860 who would like to see us go towards
00:12:56.500 a French Revolution,
00:12:58.340 Rousseauian style egalitarian utopia
00:13:00.560 are going to wear your tradition like a skin suit
00:13:03.940 and fool you into torching effigies of your heroes,
00:13:06.520 I think is a clever way of evolving the character,
00:13:08.760 particularly post-crisis as well.
00:13:10.060 And I really have to commend John Ostrander and John Byrne
00:13:12.420 and Len Wein as well.
00:13:13.780 RIP, fantastic editor,
00:13:15.280 Create Swamp Thing for doing that.
00:13:16.940 Can I say, before we go any further into the themes
00:13:19.520 and the story, flipping through this again,
00:13:21.240 it's very nice that one,
00:13:22.420 John Byrne's art is absolutely fantastic.
00:13:25.160 You can see on the panels
00:13:26.620 that will be flashing up on the screen
00:13:28.160 and also the screens behind us,
00:13:30.360 his artwork is fantastic,
00:13:32.680 clear, well-defined, punchy, iconic.
00:13:36.600 And not over-inked as well, that's very important.
00:13:38.460 The way he depicts Darkseid especially looks great.
00:13:43.400 It's got a great flow from panel to panel,
00:13:45.440 which was one of my problems that I had with Crisis,
00:13:47.960 which was it felt as though George Perez
00:13:50.300 was cramming as much into every panel
00:13:53.380 and cramming as many panels onto every page as possible,
00:13:56.880 which is somewhat inevitable
00:13:58.020 if you're writing a story of the scale of Crisis.
00:14:00.800 But it's nice to be able to have this
00:14:02.260 be a bit more well-flowing,
00:14:05.260 a bit more readable,
00:14:06.540 and not have every single page,
00:14:07.960 not just be crammed
00:14:08.920 with as much visual information as possible,
00:14:11.640 but have a miniature essay written on every page.
00:14:14.560 Now, it's still the 80s,
00:14:15.720 so it's still quite wordy in places,
00:14:18.020 but it doesn't feel as though,
00:14:20.180 let's throw 20 characters
00:14:21.960 into a single panel that's this big,
00:14:24.420 and every single one of them
00:14:25.820 has to blast off a catchphrase,
00:14:27.400 and you've got to kind of scan through all of them,
00:14:30.400 because one of them might say something
00:14:32.020 that's relevant to the plot
00:14:33.160 that you don't want to miss out on.
00:14:34.380 So it's nice to not have to worry about that.
00:14:37.300 Also, was this an introduction of Amanda Waller
00:14:40.980 in the post-Crisis universe?
00:14:42.640 First appearance of Amanda Waller,
00:14:43.840 Rick Flagg, and the Suicide Squad.
00:14:45.260 Is this all together,
00:14:46.620 even pre-Crisis?
00:14:48.480 She did not exist before Legends Issue 1.
00:14:51.180 All right, okay.
00:14:52.180 And I like the fact as well
00:14:53.700 that it points out that Rick Flagg
00:14:57.300 may have some racial grievances
00:15:00.840 with the fact that he's now working
00:15:02.360 under a fat black woman,
00:15:04.260 but for the sake of professionalism
00:15:06.600 and for the sake of getting the job done,
00:15:08.940 they're both willing to put that aside
00:15:11.000 and just get on with it.
00:15:12.500 These characters are not meant to be morally pure
00:15:14.580 per their involvement in the Suicide Squad,
00:15:16.280 and that's what makes them particularly interesting
00:15:17.820 going forward,
00:15:18.600 and this is why John Ostrander's
00:15:19.640 subsequent suicide run was very successful.
00:15:22.400 And I think we wouldn't get
00:15:23.860 the same nuanced portrayal as seen now,
00:15:26.180 especially since they've slimmed down
00:15:27.840 and girl-bossed up Amanda Waller
00:15:29.720 and made her a significantly
00:15:30.720 less interesting character,
00:15:31.800 because in the original Suicide Squad run,
00:15:33.880 she's a single mother,
00:15:35.240 she hasn't done right by her ex-husband
00:15:36.820 or her own children,
00:15:37.940 she hasn't done right by the squad,
00:15:39.040 and a lot of her bravado and her aggression,
00:15:41.940 her need to control,
00:15:42.800 is to make up for her failing personal life,
00:15:44.700 and I think they make her
00:15:45.320 a very complicated character,
00:15:46.580 and that's stripped away by, again,
00:15:47.980 modern race communism.
00:15:48.920 So she was a complex and interesting character
00:15:51.560 with flaws,
00:15:52.400 and gay race communism has made it
00:15:55.300 so that anybody,
00:15:57.240 a darker shade than milky pale,
00:16:01.020 has to be perfect.
00:16:02.480 Many such cases.
00:16:03.440 Right, let's go into issue one then,
00:16:04.560 because there's a lot of thematic stuff
00:16:06.000 to sink our teeth into.
00:16:06.880 So on the first page,
00:16:08.080 we get a shot of Apocalypse,
00:16:09.300 and again,
00:16:10.080 this defines it as
00:16:10.980 the post-crisis hellscape
00:16:12.680 and the epicentre of evil
00:16:14.040 that it will soon come to be
00:16:15.080 throughout many Justice League runs,
00:16:16.440 and it's described as...
00:16:17.500 I don't like that it's constantly exploding
00:16:19.380 by the looks of it.
00:16:21.340 There's just always explosions
00:16:22.880 going off everywhere.
00:16:23.940 Yeah, quite.
00:16:24.400 It's described essentially
00:16:25.220 as like a 20th century
00:16:26.560 totalitarian state
00:16:27.520 with camps and gulags.
00:16:29.000 Jack Kirby himself,
00:16:29.780 when he created Apocalypse
00:16:30.580 in the original New Gods run,
00:16:32.020 described it as
00:16:32.760 an armoured camp
00:16:34.080 where those who live
00:16:35.000 with weapons rule
00:16:35.800 the wretches who build them
00:16:36.940 and presided over by Darkseid,
00:16:38.820 called, quote,
00:16:39.340 a wielder of holocaust
00:16:40.500 and decipher of power and death.
00:16:41.960 So that's from the original New Gods.
00:16:43.860 Walt Simonson,
00:16:44.660 who collaborated with Kirby
00:16:45.660 on later New Gods runs
00:16:46.760 pre- and post-crisis,
00:16:48.220 summarised the sort of
00:16:49.240 anti-life equation,
00:16:50.460 the modus operandi of Darkseid,
00:16:52.920 as Kirby's comic book
00:16:54.440 reification of fascism.
00:16:55.900 He obviously means Nazism there,
00:16:57.260 because Nazism and fascism
00:16:58.620 in the American mind
00:16:59.320 are conflated,
00:16:59.920 but slight distinctions.
00:17:01.460 And Darkseid's ambition
00:17:02.300 to be, quote,
00:17:02.880 the ultimate totalitarian,
00:17:04.240 stated it's most monolithic
00:17:05.500 and tyrannous.
00:17:06.380 And I think that's
00:17:07.240 definitely depicted
00:17:07.900 by Byrne and Ostrander in here.
00:17:09.780 In New Gods 7,
00:17:11.100 you see actually
00:17:11.780 how those craters,
00:17:12.620 those smouldering fire pits
00:17:13.700 came to be.
00:17:14.520 And it essentially recreates
00:17:15.700 the Second World War
00:17:16.320 in a few panels.
00:17:17.140 So we'll show those on screen.
00:17:18.700 But essentially,
00:17:19.420 Darkseid uses
00:17:20.320 scientific advancement
00:17:21.480 because before,
00:17:22.340 the New Gods of Apocalypse
00:17:23.380 and New Genesis
00:17:24.300 fought on horseback.
00:17:26.060 They were cavalry charging,
00:17:27.300 like in the First World War.
00:17:28.440 This is what Steppenwolf
00:17:29.360 was evolved in,
00:17:30.240 the original villain
00:17:31.220 of the first Justice League
00:17:32.180 movie if you have seen it.
00:17:33.740 Snyder Cut,
00:17:34.280 good stuff.
00:17:35.060 And Darkseid uses science,
00:17:36.640 quote,
00:17:36.880 to seek new roads to tread
00:17:38.460 concerning creating
00:17:39.280 the means of mass slaughter
00:17:40.560 and tragic extinction.
00:17:42.100 And so it goes from
00:17:43.220 melee and horseback combat
00:17:44.360 to being waged using,
00:17:46.000 quote,
00:17:46.400 technocosmic machines
00:17:47.620 like dragon tanks,
00:17:49.220 giant biological mutations,
00:17:51.220 and napalm spewing
00:17:52.560 cosmic lasers.
00:17:53.680 And so they destroy
00:17:54.880 the surface of New Genesis.
00:17:55.980 It starts looking like
00:17:56.800 the fields of Flanders
00:17:58.440 or Brussels or France
00:17:59.420 in the First and Second World War.
00:18:00.500 And these were once described
00:18:01.800 as soft green forested lands
00:18:03.900 and then turn into
00:18:05.140 rotting hulks of war machines
00:18:06.640 instead of trees.
00:18:08.560 And so the big crater
00:18:10.360 comes from the fact
00:18:11.360 that the New Gods
00:18:14.120 of New Genesis
00:18:14.820 recognise they're about
00:18:15.600 to lose the war
00:18:16.200 and so they bomb Apocalypse
00:18:18.040 and the panels
00:18:19.840 look exactly like
00:18:20.920 the dropping of the atomic bomb
00:18:22.140 on Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
00:18:23.900 And so that giant
00:18:24.560 small dink crater
00:18:25.140 that's now a permanent feature
00:18:26.140 of Apocalypse's topography
00:18:27.360 is essentially
00:18:28.720 a nuclear bomb.
00:18:30.380 So I think
00:18:31.380 the commentary
00:18:32.100 has been made
00:18:32.740 that the creation
00:18:34.220 of Apocalypse
00:18:34.700 is actually akin
00:18:35.340 to the creation
00:18:35.820 of the Soviet Union.
00:18:36.640 With the introduction
00:18:37.400 of the atomic bomb,
00:18:38.460 you've escalated it
00:18:39.600 to this never-ending
00:18:40.480 existential war
00:18:41.560 where previously,
00:18:43.760 at least in the First World War,
00:18:44.580 they were horrific tragedies,
00:18:45.860 but the scale of slaughter
00:18:46.800 was not possible
00:18:47.460 without science
00:18:48.120 and industrial machinery.
00:18:49.360 And now you've
00:18:50.160 prolonged this
00:18:51.020 from being
00:18:51.580 an undignified slaughter
00:18:53.760 of millions
00:18:54.140 on the battlefield
00:18:54.700 to the extinction
00:18:55.660 of the human race
00:18:56.340 in totality.
00:18:57.180 And I think that's
00:18:57.640 what Darkseid is representing.
00:18:59.040 And they're saying
00:18:59.600 in the waning days
00:19:00.300 of the Cold War,
00:19:00.780 if we revive heroism,
00:19:02.240 the American exceptionalist
00:19:03.460 Christian form of heroism,
00:19:04.780 we might be able
00:19:05.420 to call ceasefire
00:19:06.040 on this Cold War
00:19:06.720 and defeat the forces
00:19:07.540 of Apocalypse.
00:19:08.160 And I think that's
00:19:08.480 a very interesting thread here.
00:19:10.200 So at the start,
00:19:11.240 Darkseid essentially
00:19:11.960 plots his takeover of Earth.
00:19:13.460 He did this
00:19:13.820 at the end of Crisis
00:19:14.400 when he helped
00:19:14.900 defeat the Anti-Monitor
00:19:15.680 by blasting him
00:19:16.460 with the Omega beams
00:19:17.140 for Alexander Luther's eyes.
00:19:18.420 And we see the payoff here.
00:19:19.620 And he explains
00:19:20.220 through captions
00:19:21.640 that he forged
00:19:22.700 order from chaos.
00:19:23.880 And the narrator says
00:19:24.640 that there is one law,
00:19:25.520 one word,
00:19:26.560 and one voice
00:19:27.180 on Apocalypse.
00:19:28.260 And it's essentially
00:19:29.000 akin to hell.
00:19:30.680 Because Darkseid
00:19:31.840 contorts the transformative
00:19:33.940 power of
00:19:34.840 what the Americans
00:19:35.500 would say in the First Amendment
00:19:36.420 is free speech,
00:19:37.560 the logos,
00:19:38.160 the ability to
00:19:38.920 persuade,
00:19:39.900 do discourse,
00:19:40.800 and conduct
00:19:42.460 politics properly
00:19:43.520 in their republic,
00:19:44.840 and instead uses it
00:19:45.980 to beguile
00:19:47.660 and hypnotize
00:19:48.700 and control
00:19:49.500 through anti-life.
00:19:50.860 So it's
00:19:52.000 a bastardization
00:19:52.820 of the logos.
00:19:53.720 And I use that word
00:19:54.340 purposefully because,
00:19:55.040 again,
00:19:55.380 the Christian
00:19:55.760 are undercurrent
00:19:56.260 which is made
00:19:56.720 very apparent
00:19:57.360 in this story.
00:19:58.820 And so Darkseid
00:20:00.040 requires essentially
00:20:00.920 the death of the hero
00:20:01.700 archetype to render
00:20:02.900 humanity, quote,
00:20:03.920 compliant.
00:20:04.860 And what he does
00:20:05.740 is he sends,
00:20:06.620 as is over your shoulder,
00:20:07.800 Harry,
00:20:08.400 an emissary
00:20:09.300 of his destructive
00:20:10.840 agenda,
00:20:11.420 Brimstone.
00:20:12.060 So he's a
00:20:13.020 screaming skull
00:20:14.100 and he's born
00:20:14.800 from a nuclear reactor.
00:20:16.560 I mean,
00:20:16.720 you couldn't get
00:20:17.340 more obvious
00:20:18.000 in the Atomic Age
00:20:18.820 of where the great
00:20:19.760 existential threat
00:20:20.480 of humanity
00:20:20.880 is going to come from.
00:20:22.040 And so Firestorm
00:20:22.960 is the first
00:20:24.040 hero to do battle
00:20:25.180 with Brimstone.
00:20:26.080 And Firestorm
00:20:26.500 himself is
00:20:27.240 a representative
00:20:28.180 of American
00:20:29.460 nuclear power.
00:20:30.300 He was at an
00:20:31.100 anti-nuclear protest,
00:20:32.040 Ronnie Raymond,
00:20:33.000 and fused
00:20:33.600 with Dr. Martin
00:20:34.600 Stein,
00:20:35.020 who was working
00:20:35.800 on the nuclear
00:20:36.280 program
00:20:36.700 and became
00:20:37.840 a hero
00:20:39.140 able to
00:20:39.720 transmute matter
00:20:40.520 using nuclear
00:20:43.100 fusion.
00:20:43.880 And we later
00:20:44.320 find out in
00:20:44.840 Doomsday Clock
00:20:45.380 something we'll be
00:20:45.980 covering eventually,
00:20:47.100 after we redo
00:20:47.820 Watchmen,
00:20:48.200 I think,
00:20:49.160 where the
00:20:50.520 Americans had
00:20:51.260 a Superman
00:20:51.880 program,
00:20:52.680 and so did the
00:20:53.100 Soviets,
00:20:53.560 and so they were
00:20:54.040 actually engineering
00:20:55.120 their own superheroes
00:20:56.100 in an arms race
00:20:57.060 against one another,
00:20:57.840 and Firestorm was
00:20:58.740 the first character
00:20:59.720 to have this done
00:21:00.520 to him.
00:21:01.100 So actually,
00:21:01.460 it wasn't just
00:21:01.840 a nuclear accident.
00:21:02.740 It's the US
00:21:03.180 government were
00:21:03.620 trying to engineer
00:21:04.260 their very own
00:21:04.920 Superman to become
00:21:05.680 compliant.
00:21:06.900 So it's all
00:21:07.900 very interesting
00:21:08.560 overlapping here.
00:21:10.960 Also,
00:21:11.600 something quite
00:21:12.540 interesting,
00:21:13.340 I think,
00:21:13.600 with Brimstone,
00:21:14.480 of course.
00:21:14.860 You hear the terms
00:21:15.340 fire in Brimstone,
00:21:16.280 this is the sort of
00:21:17.440 doomsday revelation
00:21:18.580 style preaching
00:21:19.460 that was drawn
00:21:20.040 upon in
00:21:21.280 Kingdom Come,
00:21:22.120 but also Ostrander
00:21:22.800 would know this
00:21:23.240 as an attempted
00:21:25.480 to practice
00:21:26.220 Catholic priest.
00:21:27.400 I wonder if he's
00:21:28.780 drawing on sort of
00:21:29.700 the archetype
00:21:30.920 of Apocalypse
00:21:31.560 with a C
00:21:33.340 rather than a K,
00:21:34.520 and he's like
00:21:34.980 putting the end
00:21:36.380 times as a
00:21:37.600 single character
00:21:38.300 because he's
00:21:39.640 like manifesting
00:21:40.700 hell on earth,
00:21:41.260 he's the beast,
00:21:41.960 he's the Antichrist
00:21:43.160 whose emissary
00:21:44.080 is glorious God for him.
00:21:45.220 He's also
00:21:45.980 spouting a lot
00:21:47.260 of religiously
00:21:48.080 tinged
00:21:48.840 statements as well.
00:21:51.340 For Brimstone,
00:21:52.280 sinner,
00:21:52.760 all is possible,
00:21:54.200 and ye,
00:21:54.780 you most grievous
00:21:56.220 sinner,
00:21:56.780 shall have the
00:21:57.420 honour of being
00:21:58.080 the first,
00:21:58.600 etc, etc.
00:21:59.460 And I believe
00:22:00.400 it turns out
00:22:01.240 that he was
00:22:02.260 granted sentience
00:22:04.120 by Apocalypse
00:22:05.280 or glorious
00:22:06.200 Godfrey
00:22:07.080 and implanted
00:22:08.900 a personality
00:22:09.640 that believed
00:22:10.340 that he was
00:22:10.820 working as an
00:22:11.660 emissary on
00:22:12.340 behalf of some
00:22:13.480 angel or god.
00:22:15.320 Yeah,
00:22:15.760 he's in
00:22:17.220 the eschatology
00:22:20.100 of particularly
00:22:22.000 the Catholic
00:22:22.360 Church,
00:22:23.180 the study of
00:22:23.860 the end times,
00:22:24.840 they say that
00:22:25.640 the Antichrist
00:22:26.660 figure who is
00:22:27.640 the apologist
00:22:28.540 for the beast,
00:22:30.200 the devil,
00:22:30.640 that will bring
00:22:30.940 the final war
00:22:31.440 on earth,
00:22:32.000 will become
00:22:32.940 the Antichrist
00:22:33.380 because he
00:22:33.720 pretends to be
00:22:34.660 more Christian
00:22:35.340 than Christ.
00:22:36.420 And so if you
00:22:37.240 are planted on
00:22:38.220 earth by a
00:22:38.760 demonic force
00:22:39.340 and then you
00:22:40.440 genuinely believe
00:22:41.480 and are proclaiming
00:22:42.460 that you have
00:22:43.260 come to avenge
00:22:44.200 all sin and
00:22:44.940 redeem the earth,
00:22:46.000 then you're
00:22:46.620 positioning yourself
00:22:47.120 very much as
00:22:47.720 an Antichrist
00:22:48.180 figure.
00:22:48.500 And I think
00:22:48.780 Glorious Godfrey
00:22:49.360 is meant to be
00:22:49.740 the sort of
00:22:50.020 apologist of
00:22:51.160 that,
00:22:51.400 to burn down
00:22:52.000 the heroes
00:22:52.340 and actually
00:22:52.640 mislead the
00:22:53.500 flock.
00:22:54.300 So I thought
00:22:54.700 that was
00:22:54.880 interesting.
00:22:56.100 So Firestorm
00:22:57.120 gets his ass
00:22:58.420 handed to him
00:22:58.960 and he tries to
00:22:59.460 call on the
00:22:59.920 aid of the
00:23:00.540 Justice League.
00:23:01.660 And the purpose
00:23:02.660 of this series
00:23:03.200 is to usher in
00:23:03.860 the new Justice
00:23:04.560 League and the
00:23:04.980 post-Cold
00:23:05.340 War at the
00:23:05.760 Justice League
00:23:06.160 International
00:23:06.580 that operates
00:23:07.240 under the
00:23:07.600 jurisdiction of the
00:23:08.260 UN and
00:23:09.440 essentially
00:23:09.700 satirises how
00:23:10.560 farcical post-Cold
00:23:12.360 War politics is,
00:23:13.400 something we'll
00:23:13.820 visit in future,
00:23:14.720 hopefully with
00:23:15.120 guest Aiden
00:23:15.480 Paladin,
00:23:15.880 who very much
00:23:16.340 likes that as
00:23:16.840 well when she's
00:23:17.380 next over.
00:23:18.420 And the
00:23:19.000 interesting thing
00:23:19.460 we see here is
00:23:20.580 that the Justice
00:23:21.100 League get
00:23:21.560 destroyed and
00:23:23.020 it's because
00:23:23.300 they suck.
00:23:24.120 In the latter
00:23:24.860 days of the
00:23:25.400 80s,
00:23:26.080 the Justice
00:23:26.520 League had
00:23:26.880 gone from
00:23:27.480 their founding
00:23:28.180 group of
00:23:28.960 Batman,
00:23:29.760 Superman,
00:23:30.140 Wonder Woman,
00:23:30.960 Aquaman,
00:23:31.580 Martian Manhunter,
00:23:32.440 Green Lantern,
00:23:32.860 The Flash,
00:23:33.360 the real heavy
00:23:34.100 hitters,
00:23:34.620 the brand
00:23:35.120 identity of DC,
00:23:36.420 to Martian
00:23:37.740 Manhunter,
00:23:38.460 Vixen,
00:23:39.300 Gypsy,
00:23:39.740 Vibe,
00:23:41.420 and Commander
00:23:42.140 Steel.
00:23:44.100 Anyone else
00:23:44.800 remember those
00:23:45.180 characters?
00:23:45.620 Because most
00:23:45.980 people don't.
00:23:47.000 I know Martian
00:23:47.420 Manhunter.
00:23:48.220 Martian Manhunter's
00:23:48.780 great.
00:23:49.140 Martian Manhunter's
00:23:49.580 on almost every
00:23:50.600 incarnation of the
00:23:51.240 Justice League,
00:23:51.860 save the new
00:23:52.600 52 one.
00:23:54.100 But Martian
00:23:54.560 Manhunter is
00:23:54.940 basically the
00:23:55.280 only one who
00:23:55.600 makes it out
00:23:56.020 alive properly.
00:23:57.320 Vixen retires,
00:23:59.080 Commander
00:23:59.380 Steel,
00:24:00.280 Citizen
00:24:00.500 Steel,
00:24:01.640 Commander
00:24:01.920 Steel,
00:24:02.300 because Citizen
00:24:02.580 Steel's the
00:24:02.900 third one,
00:24:03.400 gets put into
00:24:03.900 a coma,
00:24:05.620 Gypsy is sent
00:24:06.480 into hiding,
00:24:07.660 Vibe is
00:24:08.120 straight up
00:24:08.580 killed,
00:24:09.720 so the
00:24:11.220 Justice League
00:24:11.620 is desolated
00:24:12.360 and what
00:24:13.320 they then turn
00:24:13.900 into is
00:24:14.280 basically a
00:24:14.760 sitcom,
00:24:15.180 which is
00:24:15.900 hilarious,
00:24:16.620 but you don't
00:24:17.100 get the proper
00:24:17.700 Justice League
00:24:18.300 back until
00:24:19.120 Grant Morrison
00:24:19.900 revives it in,
00:24:21.640 what was it,
00:24:22.120 1997?
00:24:23.020 Was that
00:24:24.480 with his
00:24:24.760 JLA run?
00:24:25.580 It is,
00:24:26.040 yeah,
00:24:26.320 and even
00:24:26.620 then he
00:24:27.000 had to
00:24:27.220 deal with
00:24:27.500 Blue-Suited
00:24:28.000 Superman
00:24:28.440 and Connor
00:24:29.560 Hawk Green
00:24:30.020 Arrow and
00:24:30.740 comics were a
00:24:32.100 wild time.
00:24:33.000 Continuity
00:24:33.640 is difficult.
00:24:35.460 To watch
00:24:35.720 the full
00:24:36.000 video,
00:24:36.560 please become
00:24:36.980 a premium
00:24:37.360 member at
00:24:38.040 lotusedus.com.