Among my favorite apocalyptic stories is the 1996 DC Comics series Kingdom Come. Alex Ross and Mark Waid’s four issue run is a big, sprawling, high stakes affair, and one of DC Comic’s most celebrated titles. Each issue opens and closes with ominous quotations from Revelation-earthquakes, fire mingled with blood, woe to the inhabitants of the Earth-and promises chaos and destruction like we have come to expect from our apocalyptic stories.

By my reckoning, there are two fundamental rules that accompany the seductive quality of apocalyptic stories.

First, in the US at least, the apocalypse is always forthcoming. The world is always falling apart; we’re always stumbling towards doom. Our nation is on the brink of collapsing, our President (whomever it is) is leading us towards disaster. Bureaucracy is destroying the lives of citizens. Power is hoarded; politicians are corrupted; governments crumble. At any given point in any given time, such destabilizing forces threaten to push us off the ledge. On top of our political demise, the End Times of Biblical portent are regularly predicted by preachers and cult-leaders and anyone else who wants to play the guessing game. Dates are chosen, preparations are made, eager evangelizing occurs. The end is always nigh.

The second rule is this: the apocalypse never comes. The world never ends. Even in the stories. Countless lives are lost, as is required from any apocalyptic tale. Millions (billions, even) die, but some live. The difficulty of life after catastrophe is portrayed, but humanity goes on. The virus spreads, but the immune person is found and the anti-virus is developed in time. A new planet is found, a new hope arises. The bomb is defused, or intercepted. When it lands (on the Super Bowl for example) it doesn’t bring about total destruction. The world keeps spinning, and people, however few, are right there with it.

There are some exceptions. Dr. Strangelove embraces the bomb’s total annihilative capacity. I Am Legend (the book) breaks the post-apocalyptic rules. But for the most part, we can rest assured that humanity will survive whatever apocalypse may come.

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Kingdom Come fits comfortably within these rules. Ross and Waid mix the language of Biblical Apocalypse with the laying waste of humanity from a physical yet seemingly unstoppable threat: super-humans beyond control.

In the not-so-distant future of Kingdom Come, our familiar heroes have aged, suffered, and fallen into hiding. Wonder Woman has been disgraced, her crown and title from the Amazons revoked. Aquaman is busy in the sea and unconcerned any longer with the trifling problems of humanity. Hawkman, nature’s watcher, has been branded an eco-terrorist. So it goes down the line. The Flash, Green Lantern, Martian Manhunter, all out of operation.

The bond between superheros that kept the world safe fell apart upon Superman’s retirement. The grey-haired Clark Kent, after the death of his parents and Lois Lane, now lives alone on his Kansas farm, removed from the affairs of humanity, ignoring Wonder Woman’s pleas to get back to work and help calm the storm of the new meta-humans.

Only Bruce Wayne remains on the job, keeping Gotham safe with ever more strict enforcement.

The exile of the superheroes stems from the rise of a new generation of ‘meta-humans’ who by sheer numbers if nothing else, have replaced the old heroes and set about quickly destroying the world. The heroes humans grew to admire and trust have been replaced by warring punks with superpowers serving vigilante justice at their own whims. With the Justice League in hiding, humanity has little hope of calming the fray that is slowly destroying human civilization.

In issue #1 of Kingdom Come, Captain Atom is killed in battle, resulting in radioactive explosion that destroys Kansas and parts of Iowa, Missouri, and Nebraska. Over one million humans are killed, and the world’s economy is brought to the brink of collapse by the complete destruction of America’s agricultural heartland. This is the second largest single moment of death in Kingdom Come.

The end is nigh.

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The historical creation of Kingdom Come, and the relationship between Alex Ross and Mark Waid is fascinating for readers interested in comics as an industry. But almost 20 years after the release of Kingdom Come, the value of the book reaches far beyond it’s intra-industry commentary.

Ross conceived the project in reaction to the contemporary landscape of superhero comics. Superheroes in the ’90s, according to Ross, were getting dark and violent and pointless. Heroes became navel-gazing supers with nothing to do but fight amongst themselves and even that held little purpose. “It was really a reaction to all that stuff, particularly the X-Men, which I felt back then was an egregious example of so much of a naval gazing quality of what super hero comics had become,” Ross told CBR back in 2006 for the 10th anniversary. “Back then, the X-Men was something I just absolutely hated.”

Mark Waid could have embraced Ross’ almost ridiculous level of meta-reference and in-jokes (the Absolute edition details the crazy number of easter eggs) and built his story exclusively for a comics audience. Doing so would have left behind a remarkably good series that would have dated in time.

Thankfully, Waid and Ross created a story imbued with deeply resonant moral questions that excite the mind and emotions of those who could care less about the details of the comic book industry. Questions of personal, social, civic and spiritual significance; about the value of progress in the face of traditional moral values, how our moral values are to be considered in extreme circumstances, and what to do if the fate of the world rests on one decision.

These are the kind of moral questions that we do not confront in our daily lives, but that apocalyptic stories require us to ask: if it were you, how would you behave? These questions are the reasons we return to the end of the world.

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Wonder Woman, in coaxing Superman out of retirement, argues the need for the old superheroes is even greater in the brave new world. Once he’s back Superman and Batman argue about how to handle a threat as dangerous as any they’ve seen.

Superman, always loathe to kill, builds a gulag for the meta-humans that will not reform, the moral and civic repercussions of which are not lost on anyone. When Bruce Wayne asks Superman if he takes any pleasure in the death of his enemies, Superman replies, “I don’t have that dark a side.” Not so for Batman, who sees how the world changed, and how the old moralities might need updating. “They’ll fear me more than they’ll trust you,” Bruce says.

Lex Luthor and Bruce Wayne, joining forces in the Mankind Liberation Front, debate the role of humans in a world of supers. The UN argues about what the future of humanity looks like, and what options are the table to ensure humans have a future. And on it goes. Extreme circumstances often call for extreme measures. In Kingdom Come the moral battle is waged by everyone.

Kingdom Come provides insight into the moral questions underlining the apocalypse. No one lives in this future without understanding history, society, and the ramifications of one’s choices. No matter what you choose, some will die. Such is often the way with the end of the world.

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There are all kinds of apocalypse stories in popular culture to indulge our infatuation with the End of the World. Zombie apocalypses have been popular for some time, with 28 Days Later at the top of that genre. But the fashion changes. Rocks from space had a late-90s spike. Bruce Willis (spoiler alert) averted Armageddon, though not before Paris is completely annihilated. Au revoir. Vampires, viral outbreaks, nuclear meltdowns, all rise and fall in our popular portraits of the end. Lately it’s been comedies. This Is The End is among the most sincere embraces of the Biblical end times I’ve seen in the movies.

The premise of all of these post-apocalyptic stories is that most of humanity has been or will be wiped out. That’s where we start. I’ve long been curious though: why do we want to consume these stories? I know I do. I love them. Among my favorite books (I Am Legend, The Road) and movies (Children of Men, Matrix) and comics (Y: The Last Man) are post-apocalyptic stories. But why am I-and everyone else, it seems-so drawn to stories that start with the deaths of millions of people, and the very real threat of human extinction?

To find out why we’re so drawn to the near extinction of our own species, I asked my friend and PhD Candidate in Literature at the University of Minnesota, Wes Burdine. He studies these things.

He said this:

Apocalyptic narratives play into liberation fantasies. Mass annihilation is depressing sure, but it’s sure as hell more exciting than the mall and running to the store to get toilet paper. These stories let us imagine being suddenly forced out of our comfort and into something far more heroic. Plus, have you tried to change the world lately? It’s painful and slow or quixotic at best. End of the world narratives allow us to imagine large scale rebirth and play into our utopian desires.

The Apocalypse, then, is not about the end, it’s not about those millions of deaths, but about the rebirth that comes afterward. The Second Coming is not about the destruction of the world and mass death and chaos, but about Christ returning to make good on his word, ushering in the next phase. Strip the Biblical part, and you still have something to hold onto in these stories, something hopeful. Humans are resilient and savvy and damn near impossible to eradicate. Our ingenuity finds us a way through even the most catastrophic circumstances, and not only do we rebuild, but we do it better. Or we can imagine it so, at least.

We gravitate towards stories of the end, if only to see that we will, in the end, survive.

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There can be no discussion of Kingdom Come without mention of Alex Ross’ artwork. Painted by hand in gauche, the the visuals of the book are undoubtedly the most memorable story-telling element of Kingdom Come. The images are of such detail and deliberation, and the story so vividly rendered, that the script truly operates in the support role for the artwork.

Kingdom Come is not the only place to find Ross’ hand-painted work of course. When Kingdom Come was released, Ross held rock-star status for his work in Marvels. He would later do Earth X and its sequels. All of which are beautiful.

But here we have Norman Rockwell meets the apocalypse. And it’s stunning.

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Among the reasons that I returned to Kingdom Come this time has been the news stories coming out of Ukraine. Not that Mark Waid’s story is similar to the Russian annexation of Crimea, or that Russia’s impulse to expand its borders is reminiscent of another time-not far enough in our past to avoid parallels-when the possibility of the apocalypse was very, very real.

The reason is much simpler: photographs of Vladimir Putin’s distinctly remind me of Alex Ross’ painting. When I see the pictures of Putin that are so often filling my screens, I cannot help but think of the world of Kingdom Come, especially Lex Luthor.

It’s as much carriage as it is physical likeness. The smirking mouth, the shoulders, the arms and gestures. This could all just be my imagination. But when I see Putin these days, my mind is pulled into visions of the apocalyptic fantasies.

Maybe these days-of terrorism and annexation and polarization all on display in 24 hour news cycles-require a certain consideration of apocalyptic visions. Certainly Putin has no more relation to the subject than anyone else. Many others see these same signs in the presidency of Barack Obama. He too, has no relation to Revelation. Still, when Bill O’Reilly runs a segment about Stephen Colbert titled More Destruction in America, it’s hard to avoid such thoughts.

If every era feels as though the end is nigh, why should ours be any different?

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Without the Justice League to control the new threats, two human authorities seek to rid the world of meta-humans, old and new alike. The first is the United Nations. Even in the face of the meta-human induced apocalypse the bureaucratic bickering remains at the UN, and in-fighting among Ambassadors seems likely to keep any solution from being reached. In the end, faced with a rising catastrophe that threatens all of humanity, the UN will turn to the only weapon that places humans on the playing field with gods: a nuclear bomb.

The other is the Mankind Liberation Front, led by Lex Luthor. Luthor has brought the world’s human villains together to form the MLF which, as Luthor sees it, is humanity’s last chance to stop the meta-humans from laying the world to waste. Waiting for the Justice League to come out of retirement would do no good for humanity’s plight. According to Luthor, Superman and the JLA are no better than Magog and the new line of meta-humans. It’s time for humans to reclaim authority.

Luthor makes a pretty strong argument, actually, and he wins an unexpected ally at the MLF. The most famous non-super of them all, Bruce Wayne. He is, at the end of the day, only human. And his success in Gotham would indicate he’s no long interested in the concerns of the Justice League. His inventiveness and skill has kept Gotham City intact just fine without the help of Superman and his super friends.

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Audiences for the apocalypse are never comprised of superheroes, or oil-drillers in space, or brilliant epidemiologists racing against time. We are, for the most part, regular folks caught up in stories beyond our control.

The scale of Kingdom Come is magnificent. Superheroes battling superheroes, the UN, nuclear bombs, humanity’s fate resting in the balance of a war humans can barely partake in. The end of the world, as an event, occurs at a scale that is difficult if not impossible to grasp. There’s no intimacy in pulling out and seeing things fall apart from afar. We need to access it ourselves.

Kingdom Come is not the story of the apocalypse. It is not even the story of Superman and Bruce Wayne and Wonder Woman, and their fight against the new meta-humans. It is instead the story of Norman McCray. Norman is the pastor of a small church who has visions of Revelation finally coming to earth. He is our window to the world’s collapse. He is visited by The Spectre. A retired superhero himself, the Spectre works now as a roving spirit. Together McCray and the Spectre travel through the planes of existence to bear witness to the great events of the time, and to debate the moral questions of the book: will humanity find salvation? Or is the fate of humanity to be destroyed.

In the extemity of circumstances, apocalyptic stories ask the audience, how would you behave? In Kingdom Come, the audience is Norman McCray, present for the world’s momentous occurrences, one after the other, as they lead towards doom. With the Specter as guide, Norman travels outside the realm of influence. We watch and await the fate we are to be given. A fate to be decided by others.

But if Burdine is right about the attraction of the apocalypse, if we engage in the destruction of humanity only to re-imagine large scale rebirth, to embrace our utopian desires, then why should we settle for simply coming along for the ride?

Norman McCray, our representative in Kingdom Come is not along for the ride. Though he is no one, in the grand scheme of the world’s end, he will decide everything.

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The second rule is this: the apocalypse never comes.

When I think about the great apocalyptic stories that I hold dear, Y: The Last Man, Battlestar Galactica, 28 Days Later, The Road, I cannot help but notice that these are small stories. The scale of the events are always massive: the destruction of all Y chromosomes, the destruction of all human planets, the release of a zombie plague, or even an an unknown catastrophe; but the central narrative arc of each story is intimate, telling a few stories with care and detail. These stories are always about how people live.

In living, Yorick in Y, William Adama in Battlestar, Norman McCray, all the men and women who inhabit the stories of chaos and death, decide to uphold this second rule. This is how I’ve learned to keep the apocalypse at bay: by examining our moral selves-what would we do with the end of the world?- and deciding to live our lives. Living is not going along for the ride. It is taking the wheel and setting the course for ourselves.

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