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A Parent-Child Relationship?

One who reads both Marvel's Squadron Supreme 12-part maxiseries from the eighties and DC's Elseworlds mini Kingdom Come would very likely lack the obstinacy necessary to deny that these two works contain some remarkably similar elements.

We can consider these points in common:

• The Justice League, and their proxy the Squadron Supreme, embark on a utopian plan that aims to reign in superhumans.

• Both the Squadron Supreme and the Justice League make public statements establishing new relationships with the balance of normal humanity in which they divest themselves of masks and secret identities, although the Squadron do this prior to their crisis of ethics and the League do this at the resolution of their crisis of ethics.

• Batman, and his proxy Nighthawk, object to this plan on ethical grounds and ultimately form and lead resistance movements to it.

• Luthor, and his proxy Emil Burbank, play central roles in creating grief for the Justice League and their proxy the Squadron Supreme.

• Green Arrow, and his proxy Golden Archer/Hawkeye/Black Archer side with Batman's/Nighthawk's resistance movement, and, in the huge battle that finally resolves the matter, dies.

• Wonder Woman and Superman (and their analogs) become an "item" at some phase of the story.

• Alex Ross did the cover art for the trade paperback.

Even given these points of detail, and the similarity of the fundamental ethical question about the use of force to compel right behavior, Squadron Supreme and Kingdom Come deliver as very different works.

Through a number of particulars, these works remain distinctive. On axes of realism versus sentimentality, of principles versus principals, and of echoes versus voices, both works tread a sometimes common ground on opposite sides of a common fence.

Corruption

Squadron Supreme hits the themes of selling out one's ethics for a purportedly higher cause in a way that largely does not appear in Kingdom Come.

Hyperion and his peers, step by step, march down a slippery slope that ultimately involves them in increasing crimes against basic human rights. Each hero pursues a particular path, but most converge at some kind of ethical (and sometimes physical) self-destruction. Shortly after the Squadron comes to a consensus favoring the use of a mind control device to reform criminals and convert supervillains, the Green Arrow analog Golden Archer appropriates the technology to compel Black Canary analog Lady Lark to love him after her bona fide affections have begun to cool.

The slouching towards an ethics of convenience affects both factions in this piece, with Nighthawk first dropping out of the Squadron, then increasingly colluding with a criminal element he once fought. Although driven away from the Squadron by its totalitarian vision, he finds himself complicit in crimes of mind control by tampering with the memories of Blue Eagle after he stumbled upon the resistance compound.

The taint washes over most of the principal figures, who generally abandon their principles or abandon their alliances, and, in the end, resort to killing each other to further their causes.

Kingdom Come, on the other hand, traces no such chronicle of corruption. The characters decide very early what path to follow and change factions in the denouement that follows the nuclear destruction of most of the superbeings on the earth. In this sense, the later work deals more with arrogance and its consequences than with the dangers of ethical compromise.

Personal Tragedies

The heroes of Kingdom Come play a more aloof role than those of Squadron Supreme, so it fits that the heroes of the Squadron should go through more personal tragedies while those of the Justice League should face a collapse of iconic roles and a loss of validity that requires a redefinition rather than the more personal crises of the earlier work.

In Squadron Supreme, we see demoralizing failures such as Tom Thumb's inability to prevent the deaths of Nuke's parents and, ultimately, of himself. We see Doctor Spectrum's inept confrontation with a rampaging Nuke result in the younger hero's preventable death. We see Golden Archer betraying himself and his lover by using the behavior modification device to compel Lady Lark to love him after the course of their affections had passed. We see Amphibian abandon his long-term loyalty to superheroes who once served as his comrades but became something unrecognizable when their political hubris inclined them to believe that they knew how to remake the world into a better one.

These events occur throughout twelve issues of Squadron Supreme, with their closest parallels appearing in Batman's (apparent) betrayal of Superman by allying with the Humanity Liberation Front that Lex Luthor leads and in the mortal confrontation between Superman and Captain Marvel in the endgame that follows the breakout at the metahuman gulag.

Emphasis

Squadron Supreme plays out as the consequences of a political-ethical crisis and its effects on the central players in this crisis. Kingdom Come, on the other hand, plays out as a piece on the basic tragic flaw typical of Greek tragedy: hubris.

The scope of each work, in turn, takes on different dimensions. The resolution of the fundamental crisis of Squadron Supreme does not redefine the role of the superhero, except in that it somewhat defines what limits should attach to what a superhero should allow himself to do to make a better world. On the other hand, in Kingdom Come, events force heroes - especially Superman - to scrutinize with some intensity what defines a "superhero" (as opposed to a "human"), and the heroes ultimately realize their mission must fail if they attempt to play as anything but human beings. Self-definition plays a central role in the conceptual crisis moving the events of this work.

Superman, Hyperion, and Iconic Status

Superman plays a central role in both the problem and the resolution in Kingdom Come. His abdication brought on the central crisis; his return suggests a solution to this crisis, but actually worsens it; he leads the mainstream heroes in their campaign to convert or subjugate the metahumans of earth; and when everything goes blooey, he comes close to ruining any hopes for a redemptive solution by launching a rampage on the United Nations.

Hyperion, on the other hand, plays in several episodes of Squadron Supreme, but only in a much more disposable capacity. Nighthawk, like Batman, plays a central and indespensible role. Hyperion, however, could theoretically have died at the onset of the Squadron Supreme maxiseries without seriously interrupting the flow of melodrama.

In part, this difference developed because Hyperion, as an imitation Superman, never enjoyed the iconic role which Waid inflated wherever possible in Kingdom Come. Hyperion had similar powers, a similar (though minimal) supporting cast, and similar origins, but he did not own the six decades of recognition that Superman had. Without a long publishing history to build his role and legend, Hyperion could not achieve an iconic role like Superman's. Mark Gruenwald could have made other characters view Hyperion in a role like Superman's but could not have similarly inspired readers to do so.

In part, since Marvel characters - even ones derived from DC characters - play a more individualistic role than an iconic one, this fits that company's editorial model. The Silver Age saw DC casting characters as the Hero, while Marvel cast men in the role of the hero, devoid of capitalization. Of Marvel characters, only Captain America really dabbles in the duties that adhere to a "living legend". Nonetheless, this separates two similar works into dissimilar paths.

The Gulag and the Utopia Program

An ill-considered utopian scheme foredooms the heroes to conflict in both pieces, although the reformed Justice League and the returned Squadron Supreme take different approaches to curing the anarchy undermining their respective worlds.

The Justice League, under Superman's leadership, moves from region to region subduing rogue metahumans and attempting to recruit any redeemable ones. This approach resembles conventional penology, as approached through notions of rehabilitation. This strategy at first greatly bolsters the League's numbers, but soon finds the Law of Diminishing Marginal returns setting in. Not only does Superman quickly run out of sympathetic heroes who wish to aid him, but heroes begin turning to underground channels to resist him. Batman, for instance, seems to go so far as to ally with Lex Luthor in a movement designed to bring down the tyrannical metahuman regime of the Justice League. With the lobbying effort of Green Arrow, nonpowered heroes and dissident metahumans combine as a movement to undermine the Justice League's efforts.

For those on the wrong side of the fence in this dispute - meaning mostly a swarm of grotesque and Image-like disposable villain-heroes whose design self-consciously intends to impugn the ethos of the fading "new comics" - Superman has contracted Mister Miracle to create an escape-proof supervillain gulag with Captain Comet, DC's canonical spearhead of the Silver Age, as warden. Though fairly benign as far as prisons go, this facility remains a prison. In this prison, the concentration of power and opposition catalyzes rebellion, and a prison riot ultimately forces Superman's followers to attempt to contain it even as a brainwashed Captain Marvel attempts to neutralize Superman.

The Squadron, on the other hand, attempt to remodel their world via a behavior modification device that refashions the minds of its subjects so that they no longer pursue evil. On this level, the Squadron's utopia takes a much more depraved character than the League's; while Superman sought to redeem his prisoners through reeducation, the Squadron leaps right into a kind of mind control generally found in speculative pieces about how technology and totalitarianism can work together.

Nighthawk reacts reflexively to this, particularly in the aftermath of several crises in which the mind-controlled Squadron found themselves on the wrong side of the ethical fence. He recognizes the obscene violation of human rights implicit in removing a victim's mind and replacing it with a more desirable version, and creates an alliance of like-minded souls and/or past or potential victims of the brainwashing the Squadron intend for the troublesome. Fewer heroes end up in Nighthawk's camp, but he has the advantage of a number of villains to work on his behalf. Plausibly enough, once Nighthawk - through the aid of Hyperion nemesis Emil Burbank - achieves the means to undo the brainwashing, he restores the minds of a number of refurbished villains, many, but not all, of whom, agree to aid him. Unlike the relationship between Batman and Luthor's liberation front, Nighthawk forged a real alliance with the criminal element he once fought, accepting a lesser evil to oppose a greater one (somewhat like allying with Stalin to defeat Hitler).

The Final Confrontation

Squadron Supreme plays out on a smaller scale than Kingdom Come. The former explored the ethical and political aspects of the problem, without getting into the denser, and more difficult, questions of self-definition and self-awareness that drove Kingdom Come.

So, to, when the final resolution of the series approached, Squadron Supreme involved gangs of principals for both factions, but did not attempt a Gottendammerüng involving all superpowered beings and costumed heroes such as the endgame of Kingdom Come.

In both final sendups, however, similar things happened, though on dissimilar scales. Large numbers of central heroes and villains died in the dispute. Both Superman and Hyperion had to face the death of heroes they admired (Captain Marvel and Nighthawk, both of whom, to some extent, served as the conscience of the superheroic communities of their respective worlds).

Similarly, the aftermaths of the mass destruction resulted in the abandonment of the arrogant plans of the Squadron and of the Justice League. Following the funerals, the remaining heroes established a new relationship with the worlds they inhabited.

Parallel Evolution or Pilferage?

Mark Waid and Alex Ross claim no intent to appropriate material from Marvel Comics in the vision they presented in Kingdom Come. Waid observes, in this context, that the iconic role of the Justice League in both cases suggested a very similar premise; and if a writer chose to explore a story where the Justice League (or some proxy) chose to divide and fight among themselves, one can see obvious leaders in Superman and Batman for two factions, whatever disagreement served as the kernel for contention.

The similarities nonetheless tend to implicate Kingdom Come as a derivative work. Artists do not need to intend anything dishonest to produce materials that prove to have origins in other works; George Harrison, for instance, intended no plagiarism of "He's So Fine" with his own piece "My Sweet Lord," but recognized the possibility that a memory of the earlier song had shaped the creation of his own piece.

That Kingdom Come approached the concept on a very different level does much to exonerate Waid and Ross here. The tone of Squadron Supreme does not come through in the later work. If Kingdom Come did borrow from its predecessor, the result stands distinctly in the same way that Hamlet stands distinct from the Oresteia.

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