DC readers have known for a month now (since Batman/Superman: World's Finest #10) that Superman's long-lost sidekick David Nikela AKA Boy Thunder was Magog, the brutal anti-hero and antagonist of the classic DC event Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross.
But Boy Thunder's evolution into Magog and what if anything that means for the future of the DCU was still a story to be told. January 17's Batman/Superman: World's Finest #11 by Waid, artists Dan Mora and Tamra Bonvillain, and letterer Steve Wands raises a few more questions than gives answers but does leave a few breadcrumbs on the trail of where Waid's story is heading.
Batman/Superman: World's Finest #11
Still reeling after David's brutal attack on the Joker (the Kingdom Come version he's destined to murder in that story), Superman and Batman debate what do about the Boy Thunder, since he can't seem to control his violent impulses and follow in Superman's heroic footsteps.
Superman decides to take drastic measures and takes him to the Fortress of Solitude where he decides to put him in a machine (that will remind loyal fans of a key scene in Superman II) that will nullify his body's ability to absorb and convert sunlight into energy - in other words, take away his superpowers. But at the last second before throwing the crystal switch, Superman decides against this drastic plan, deciding he has to do better himself to show David the right path.
Just at that moment, the Key attacks the Fortress along with some bargain bin supervillains. Skipping over the details, David helps defeat the Key and is about to do to him what he did with the Joker, but this time shows better judgment.
But the use of his powers in the Fortress activates the device that brought him to Earth-Prime at the beginning of the story arc and David begins to vibrate/phase, which means he'll jump to another reality as per the design of the device. Batman and Superman conclude they won't be able to stop the device in time, and David accepts his departure, telling Superman, Batman, and Robin he'll be fine, as they taught him how to make friends and family wherever he goes, and maybe he'll find other versions of them and the Teen Titans on whatever Earth he winds up on.
His final words are "I had some great teachers" and "thank you" before disappearing completely.
Robin assures a despondent Superman they'll see David again someday because Superman promised he'd find him and "Superman never lies."
But what the trio doesn't know is David doesn't find other versions of the DC heroes in his new home. In a one-page epilogue, he instead finds himself in a barren desert (or is that a nuclear blast site?) and is found by Gog, who greets David by name and tells him he waited a long time for him.
The epilogue concludes with the ominous promise "Not the end..."
"I haven't decided yet," Waid told Newsarama in December when asked if readers
are witnessing the rise of the specific Kingdom Come version of Magog, or something else.
"But at some point, Superman does have to find David again, because - as he himself puts it - while he's forced to mislead people sometimes with his secret identity, Superman never lies. And he promised he'd find David," Waid continued.
As to where Waid's is seemingly leading, clues may lie in the identity of Gog, who was not an original Kingdom Come character.
Though there have been several versions of Gog in DC continuity, the version seen here appears to be the one that debuted in the 2007-2009 story JSA: Thy Kingdom Come, a spiritual sequel to Kingdom Come, in which the original version of Magog first appeared. This incarnation of Gog is an Old God of the Third World - as in, predating the New Gods of the Fourth World - and comes from the planet Urgrund, which split in half to become the planets New Genesis and Apokolips when the Fourth World was born.
In 'Thy Kingdom Come,' Gog turns a JSA recruit named Lance into a version of Magog, though that continuity has since seemingly been rewritten due to the 'New 52' and subsequent DC Rebirth reboots. However, in the current era, bits and pieces of all those incarnations of DC could be in play.
Batman/Superman: World's Finest #11 is on sale January 17. As to where Gog and David/Magog eventually reappear, we'll let you know when we do.
Kingdom Come was named by Newsarama readers as the best DC story of all time
