Superman: At Earth's End
It's the 22nd century. Earth has passed through two apocalypses (one occurring in the predecessor, Kamandi: At Earth's End[1]). A group of emotionless, logical cyborgs named the Biomech Sevens are overseeing Earth's return to greatness. For the last year, Superman has been regaining his lost strength in a hovering city, where he is able to receive the benefits of the sun's rays. While recuperating, he learns that Gotham City is next in line to be "cleansed", via a nuclear bomb. It has been overrun with mutants and other such degenerates.
After battling the Biomech Sevens' leader Ben Boxer, Superman goes down to Gotham, where he is attacked by bat-like mutants that bear a striking resemblance to the Dark Knight and is saved by a mohawked youth biker gang, and finds that the underground of the city houses a fortress where the evil DNA Diktators, who kidnapped the gang's parents and took Bruce Wayne's body from his manor. There he meets the leaders of the Diktators: twin clones of Adolf Hitler!
This was a one-shot from 1995, written by Tom Veitch and drawn by Frank Gomez. As you can see, this Elseworlds title is a perfect example of The Dark Age of Comic Books, and thus, is universally reviled. It's been reviewed on Atop the Fourth Wall here. Linkara even made a Catch Phrase from the comic: I AM A MAN! *punch*
- After the End
- Altum Videtur: It finishes with "Finis" instead of "End".
- Apocalypse Hitler: Superman blames the Hitlers for everything bad related to mankind.
- Badass Beard: The creators tried to invoke this by turning Superman into a Santa Claus clone. Needless to say, it doesn't work.
- Batman Grabs a Gun: Will he stick to his code and turn the Hitlers over to the authorities to make sure that justice is done? No. He finds the biggest most impractical gun in the world and shoots the piss out of them.
- BFG: The Expunger, which is a bunch of gatling guns attached to each other. It's unclear how it's supposed to be aimed.
- Not just Gatling guns, sawed-off Gatling guns. Look at how short the barrels are compared to, say, a GAU-8 Avenger, which can slice tanks in half.
- Broken Aesop: As Linkara pointed out, Superman uses guns to win, yet the Aesop is "guns are bad!"
- Child Soldiers: The young bikers.
- Cybernetics Eat Your Soul: The Biomech Sevens.
- Elaborate Underground Base
- Elite Zombie: The Zombie Batman which is unleashed upon Superman.
- Ghostapo: The Diktator's SS consists of mutant clones of Nazi stormtroopers.
- Good Is Old-Fashioned: Ben Boxer's thoughts.
- Gun Porn
- Half Human Hybrids: Batclones.
- Hollywood Science: "Of course, don't you know anything about science?"
- Horrible Judge of Character: In the scene where the twin Hitlers are revealed, we can see tubes bearing nameplates like "J. Kennedy", "E. Presley", and "L. Luthor"...and they passed all those guys over in favor of cloning Adolf Hitler...twice.
- In Name Only: The hero acts so much unlike Superman that Linkara starts calling him "Bearded Idiot".
- Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: "I AM A MAN!" *punch!*
- More Dakka: The Expunger. "Its like driving into the worst nightmares of Rob Liefeld!"
- Pietà Plagiarism: Superman holding Batman's corpse.
- Random Events Plot: This story makes no sense whatsoever.
- Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: The Batcave is 30 miles long?!
- Self-Immolation: Superman prefers to die in a funeral pyre than become a cyborg. ("Yeah, I'd kill myself if I were in this comic, too.")
- Shout-Out: To the 1960s Batman TV series.
- Shut UP, Hannibal: The famous line comes from a rebuttal to a Hannibal Lecture ("Reality is, you're an android... I AM A MAN!")... accompanied by Talk to the Fist.
- Stupid Jetpack Hitlers
- Superhero Packing Heat: Absurdly huge heat, mind you.
- Thou Shalt Not Kill: Averted; this tougher and beardier version of Superman does not seem to have a no-killing policy.
- Turned Against Their Masters: The Hitlers say their creators wanted to destroy them, but they killed the scientists.
- We Can Rule Together: The Hitlers predictably offer Superman to join them.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ben Boxer.
- You Cloned Hitler: Twice!
- ↑ a gritty reboot of a Jack Kirby character who lived in a post-apocalyptic Earth