Recaps

Four days before the invasion, Zod’s ship entered the Solar System, and Parallax’s energy intensified his hatred as he ordered a probe to Earth. After detecting an alien craft approaching, Bruce launched his fighter from the Batcave to investigate.

• The Black Zero entered the Solar System’s gravitational disk with four days remaining in the countdown.
• Parallax’s energy entered Zod and magnified his hatred, while Faora received orders to test Earth’s defenses and search for the Codex of Life and the House of El’s surviving heir.
• A probe launched from the Black Zero toward Earth.
• Bruce detected a gravitational anomaly in the Atlantic and a fast-moving object entering Earth’s atmosphere.
• Bruce dismissed Alfred’s warning that the military had already raised its alert and launched his fighter from the Batcave toward the ocean.

John detected a Kryptonian spacecraft in the Atlantic and learned that other Lantern Ring bearers, including Sinestro, had arrived on Earth. As John headed toward the ship, Bruce attacked it with the Batwing, but the spacecraft repelled his missiles and aimed its cannons at him.

• John used [Insight] to trace seismic disturbances to a Kryptonian spacecraft deep in the Atlantic.
• John's ring resonated, alerting him that other Lantern Ring bearers had arrived, and he realized Sinestro had betrayed him.
• John left the barn and flew toward the Atlantic, declaring that Earth was his.
• Bruce fired magnetic-flux pulse rounds from the Batwing at the hovering scout ship, but its force field destroyed them.
• The scout ship opened four heavy cannons and locked their energy weapons onto Bruce's fighter.

Bruce narrowly escaped the plasma attack as John destroyed the reconnaissance ship, but the vessel launched a beacon toward space before sinking. John knew Zod’s arrival could no longer be prevented, and the chapter ended with Bruce meeting John’s gaze from his damaged fighter.

• Bruce attempted to evade the plasma streams, but their heat scorched his cockpit and overloaded its systems.
• John descended through the clouds and struck the reconnaissance ship with two red beams, splitting it apart and detonating its engines.
• The blast wave drove Bruce’s fighter toward the sea, but he used the ground effect to level the aircraft just above the waves.
• The sinking ship ejected a pod that launched a golden spike and transmission beam into space, confirming the Codex of Life’s resonance and an active spark carrier.
• John chose not to destroy the beacon, knowing Zod’s arrival could no longer be prevented, while Bruce hovered nearby and met his eyes.

John left Bruce after demonstrating his overwhelming power, then headed into space toward the Black Zero. After identifying John as the bearer of the Codex of Life, Zod ordered his forces to prepare for an invasion of Earth in three days.

• Bruce secretly recorded John’s spectral and energy data, then waited for Alf to rescue him.
• John departed through the sky at immense speed, leaving a vast depression in the ocean behind him.
• The Black Zero’s projection revealed John’s Kryptonian genetic structure and the Codex of Life fused into his cells.
• Zod’s violent desire triggered a strange yellow force within him, changing his eyes and unsettling Faora.
• Zod ordered the World Engine and main cannons prepared, declaring that the Black Zero would enter Earth’s atmosphere after three rotational cycles.

Sinestro returned to Earth and received Oa’s order to recover John, the Kryptonian who had fused willpower and primal fear, before Zod’s fleet arrived. On the Kansas farm, John told Old Joe he might have to leave for about five days.

• Sinestro concealed himself in orbit and learned that Zod’s mothership, Black Zero, would arrive in three Earth rotations.
• Oa ordered Sinestro to recover John intact at any cost, and Sinestro resented being told to treat him as a specimen.
• In Kansas, John joined Old Joe to repair the old tractor.
• John told Old Joe that he might need to travel somewhere far away for about five days.

Bruce Wayne survived the destruction of his craft and examined the recovered footage of the Atlantic encounter, identifying John as the source of the beams that cut apart the warship. The footage showed John looking directly through the fighter’s armor at Bruce.

• Bruce emerged from his wrecked craft with severe burns and tore away skin fused to his suit.
• Alfred urged Bruce to get medical treatment, but Bruce installed the craft’s black box in the Batcave’s main computer.
• Bruce analyzed the footage and saw two red beams slice through the unidentified warship, whose energy readings exceeded the analyzer’s range.
• Bruce told Alfred that John was neither the military nor something from Hell and concluded that his attack involved an unknown particle-light stream.
• Bruce showed that John’s gaze had passed through the fighter’s thick windshield and landed on Bruce in the pilot’s seat.

Bruce analyzed John’s extraordinary senses, classified him as an unknown threat, and began preparing weapons against powerful beings from deep space. In Chicago, David Miller’s family dinner was interrupted when energy from a newborn wormhole swept across the Solar System and froze his face mid-expression.

• Bruce concluded that John could see and hear through barriers and harsh conditions, and Alfred suggested that John might not be an enemy.
• Bruce created a threat file for Super-Man and warned Alfred that humanity had no conventional means to retaliate against him.
• Bruce ordered preparations from the Arctic laboratory and began modifying military equipment to build weapons capable of fighting powerful beings.
• In Chicago, David Miller grilled dinner and shared a warm moment with his wife, Sarah, and their daughter, Emily.
• As energy from a newborn wormhole in the Kuiper Belt swept across the Solar System, David’s face froze while he was chewing steak.

Manhunters across Earth awakened when a deep-space gravitational distortion triggered their protocols. At a Washington gala, Diana reflected on her decision to let humanity shape its own future before leaving the washroom and returning to the gathering.

• David's hidden retinal membrane opened, and his eyes detected a suspected military-grade gravitational field generator near the edge of the Solar System.
• Manhunters in London, Tokyo, and Vatican City awakened as their Earth Dormancy Protocols were overridden.
• Diana attended a Washington gala at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History while questioning her choice to remain a quiet observer of humanity.
• Diana used the private washroom, composed herself, and stepped out toward the washbasin.

Diana sensed an extraterrestrial war approaching and decided to abandon her rule of staying hidden, while Zod’s fear of Krypton’s extinction drove him to punish Val-Zod for questioning his plan. The chapter left Diana preparing to reveal her power and Zod’s forces poised to carry out a dangerous invasion of Earth.

• Diana sensed a war coming from beyond Earth and realized Ares would soon awaken.
• Diana weighed the danger of revealing herself against the destruction an extraterrestrial attack could bring, then accepted that she had to act.
• On the mothership Black Zero, Zod stood over the wounded Val-Zod, who had challenged his plan to deploy the World Engine without more reconnaissance.
• Three minutes earlier, Val-Zod had warned Zod that an unknown enemy could destroy the World Engine and Krypton’s remaining Codex and embryos during its descent.
• Zod had cut off Val-Zod’s arm before he could finish speaking, while Faora watched tensely.

Zod punished Val-Zod for questioning his plan to use the World Engine to remake Earth as Krypton, then rallied the Kryptonian soldiers to fight for their civilization. As the crew pledged themselves to the mission, Faora suspected Zod had lost his reason and touched the blade at her back.

• Zod seized Val-Zod and declared that he would drive the World Engine into the planet despite Val-Zod's objections.
• Zod threw a severed arm into the decompression chamber to show the soldiers the lethal cold outside the ship, and Val-Zod passed out.
• Zod ordered Val-Zod placed in the regeneration tank and addressed the crew, condemning the Council of Elders and urging them to fight for Krypton.
• Zod displayed the blue planet on the star chart and promised the soldiers they would witness Krypton's rebirth there.
• The soldiers cried out for Krypton, while Faora noticed signs of Zod's worsening condition and touched the short blade at her back.

Faora chose to remain loyal to Zod, who launched the Black Zero toward Earth for a surface saturation strike. The ship emerged near Earth and disrupted communications and electronics across the planet, beginning with Wall Street.

• Faora considered killing Zod and taking command, but decided the surviving Kryptonians needed him as their anchor.
• Faora reported that the atmospheric entry angle was calibrated and the World Engine’s first-stage release locks were disengaged.
• Zod ordered the Black Zero’s thrusters overloaded and drove the warship toward Earth.
• The Black Zero emerged from a wormhole near the Earth-Moon gravitational point and entered low Earth orbit, breaching Earth’s magnetosphere.
• At Goldman Sachs, market data froze, communications failed, and electronic displays filled with static as traders realized the outage had reached military communications satellites.

A citywide electromagnetic disruption drove Manhattan residents to Times Square, where Dru-Zod announced that Earth had twenty-four hours to provide Kal-El’s location or face destruction by the World Engine. In the Batcave, Bruce assessed the Black Zero mothership as nearly impossible to intercept while Alfred reported that the Pentagon was preparing an unofficial handover plan.

• Emergency generators failed as a widespread outage disabled computers, communications, and other electronics across Manhattan, sending residents into the streets.
• Crowds gathered in Times Square, where the giant screens displayed Dru-Zod’s message demanding Kal-El’s extradition coordinates within twenty-four standard sidereal hours.
• Dru-Zod warned that the World Engine could reduce Earth to ruins if his deadline passed.
• Bruce analyzed the Black Zero mothership’s specifications and found that conventional missiles had virtually no chance of intercepting it.
• Alfred told Bruce that the Pentagon had raised military readiness and that the Joint Chiefs of Staff were drafting an unofficial handover plan.

Bruce left the Batcave in the repaired Batplane to investigate the silent ship and the threat to humanity. At Kent Farm, armed forces arrived to take John, and Old Joe urged him to flee while preparing to face them himself.

• Bruce ignored Alfred's warning about his broken ribs, put on the Mechanical Batsuit, and launched the Batplane from the Batcave.
• A disguised Department of Defense official analyzed Kal-El's early-stage Parallax contamination and received orders to maintain silence and avoid revealing himself.
• Martha feared that aliens had discovered John, while Old Joe spotted armored vehicles approaching Kent Farm and sent her inside.
• Old Joe called John out of the barn and told him that the armed forces had come to take him.
• John asked what would happen to Old Joe, who insisted the farm was his land and said the soldiers would not harm him if he kept quiet.

John surrendered peacefully to U.S. forces rather than fight them, sparing Old Joe and Martha from seeing him become a killer. He was taken to an interrogation room, where Brigadier General Nathan Walker asked about the Zod fleet and its identification of John as Kal-El.

• John told Old Joe he would stay, then agreed to go with the soldiers surrounding the farm.
• Old Joe protested the military seizure of the farm, but John gently drew him back and stepped forward.
• Soldiers restrained John with heavy tungsten-carbide cuffs and carried him away in an armored vehicle.
• Eight internal security soldiers secured John to a restraint platform in an interrogation room.
• Brigadier General Nathan Walker asked John who the fleet was and why it had called him Kal-El, with seventeen hours left on the fleet’s countdown.

John Kent was interrogated by General Walker, who threatened his adoptive parents and prepared to incapacitate him for transport. As John began to unleash his power, the radiation-shielding doors suddenly opened.

• John told Walker he could deal with the alien threat if Walker let him fly up to it, but Walker refused to release him.
• Walker said the government planned to inject John with a neural inhibitor and transport him in a sealed capsule to Nevada.
• Walker threatened to arrest Jonathan Kent and Martha Kent and place them under federal control unless John cooperated.
• John imagined killing Walker and destroying the bunker, while his strength and heat vision began to build.
• The radiation-shielding doors suddenly slid open just before John could attack.

Deputy Secretary Davis arrived at the military base and ordered General Walker to release John Kent, who then left the base for the Nebraska wilderness. There, John transformed his watch into a nanofiber suit and launched himself toward the sky.

• Davis presented a Supreme Command directive suspending Walker's authority and ordering John Kent's unconditional release.
• Davis disabled Walker with a touch and had a military policeman unlock John's restraints.
• John noticed Davis was a fully mechanized being, warned him about Walker, and walked out of the base.
• John reached the Nebraska wilderness beneath the mothership and activated a Rolex watch that assembled into a dark gray suit.
• John's launch shattered the desert into a crater as he rocketed through the clouds.

John pierced the Black Zero mothership’s armor at extreme speed, forcing the crew to seal the breach and restore the ship’s Kryptonian atmosphere and heavy gravity. The chapter ended as a dark, armored figure emerged from the fog inside the mothership.

• Diana waited above the clouds, watching a powerful figure climb toward the edge of space.
• Bruce evaded John’s approach in the Batplane as John struck the Black Zero mothership and tore a huge hole through its underside.
• The mothership’s crew sealed the breach with heavy lead-steel shutters, containing the damage.
• The crew flooded the compartment with Kryptonian atmosphere and raised its gravity to five times Earth’s.
• A nearly two-meter-tall figure in a black exoskeletal suit emerged from the fog.

Zod’s engineered Kryptonian atmosphere failed to weaken John, who resisted its effects and attacked Zod aboard the mothership. Zod survived John’s powerful blow and called Faora to attack.

• Zod explained how Krypton’s atmosphere and gravity were meant to incapacitate John.
• Zod emerged from the copper-colored mist and demanded that John kneel and help extract the Codex of Life.
• John remained unharmed, dismissed Zod’s threats, and said only Old Joe and Martha could tell him what to do.
• John launched a sudden punch that blasted Zod backward and buckled the mothership’s deck.
• Zod recovered and ordered Faora to attack John.

Faora attacked John with monomolecular blades, but he shattered them, crushed her armor, and slammed her into the deck. As he prepared to finish her, a giant blade struck the floor nearby, and John looked up toward the platform where its wielder stood.

• Faora rushed John with twin blades, but they broke against his neck and the recoil wrecked her arm guards.
• John grabbed Faora by the faceplate, crushed it, and exposed her to the kryptonite gas filling the compartment.
• John mocked Faora, then hurled her into the deck after she broke a bone and bloodied his suit.
• As John raised his foot to stamp down on Faora, a dark-red giant blade slashed toward him and embedded itself in the deck.
• John traced the blade's hilt and leather cord upward to a raised platform.

John fought Zod in the passage, enduring his attacks while his suit repaired itself and he remained unharmed. As Zod charged again, the scene shifted to the western Atlantic, where American forces prepared for battle against several enormous mechanical figures descending from beyond the Kármán line.

• Zod charged John through the mist and struck him with his armored shoulder and giant blade.
• John's nanoparticle suit repaired its cuts, and he countered Zod with blows that damaged the armor but left him uninjured.
• Zod injured his knee and wrist during the fight but ignored the damage and charged John again.
• The American fleet and Iron Rooster Squadron prepared for an incoming threat off Chesapeake Bay.
• Watchtower AWACS reported that several mechanical figures had breached the Kármán line, and the chitin-covered silhouettes appeared in the stratosphere.

Colonel Hall’s squadron attacked two Kryptonian craft, but their gravity weapons overwhelmed the human fighters. As Hall faced death, memories of his grandfather’s story about a god who fought in the First World War surfaced.

• Colonel Hall ordered twelve Raptors to fire twenty-four missiles at the Kryptonian craft, but a gravity field crushed their fuzes and stopped the warheads.
• The Kryptonian craft destroyed two fighters with gravity beams, while Hall struggled to escape the craft pursuing him.
• As the craft charged its weapon, Hall remembered his grandfather describing a bronze-armored woman who fought through the First World War’s trenches.
• Hall’s grandfather told him the woman was a god who entered the suffering human world, and Hall recalled that he had once believed the story.

Diana arrived above the clouds and used the Lasso of Truth and her bracelets to save Colonel Hall and fight the Kryptonian ships. She hurled one assault craft into another as the remaining attackers faced her.

• Colonel Hall gave up hope as a Kryptonian ship targeted his F-22A.
• Diana appeared and used the Lasso of Truth to drag the hovering ship into the clouds.
• Diana rode the lasso through the clouds and thunderstorms as Colonel Hall recognized her as Wonder Woman.
• Kryptonian assault craft attacked Diana with plasma beams, but she deflected them with her bracelets.
• Diana caught an attacking craft with the lasso, swung it like a flail, and hurled it into another ship.

Bruce fought three Kryptonian craft over the harbor, using rigged cranes and the Batplane’s weapons to destroy two despite severe damage and injuries. With his engines disabled by the third craft’s force field and its cannons charging ahead, Bruce was left in grave danger.

• Bruce refused to abandon the evacuation point and led the three Kryptonian craft into the harbor’s crane-lined channel.
• Bruce detonated explosives on two gantry cranes, bringing steel cables and a crane boom down on the first pursuer, then destroyed it with armor-piercing rounds.
• Bruce maneuvered his damaged Batplane past the second craft and shot through its canopy, sending it crashing into the oil tanks.
• Bruce coughed up blood and suffered blurred vision and dizziness as the third warship blocked his path.
• The third warship’s force field scattered the rain and shut down Bruce’s engine thrust while its bow cannons lit up.

Diana rescued Bruce from the doomed warship, shielded the coast from debris when Black Zero exploded, and forced the Batplane into a sea landing. She left Bruce unconscious in the wrecked cockpit as a communicator called for him.

• Bruce failed to eject from the Batplane as the warship's cannon charged at him.
• Diana intercepted the beam with her bracelets, destroyed the warship with the Sword of Hephaestus, and hurled the falling Batplane toward open water.
• Black Zero erupted in orbit, sending flames and wreckage toward the coast, and Diana shielded the area with a golden dome.
• Diana caught the Batplane and guided it into the sea, where it skidded to a stop.
• Diana sensed two powerful forces battling near Black Zero, while Bruce remained unconscious as his communicator called for him.

John fought Zod from the Black Zero down through Earth’s atmosphere, then used him to smash through an evacuated Metropolis skyscraper. Zod emerged from the rubble with his face exposed to Earth’s yellow sunlight, and his mind suddenly crashed.

• John caught Zod’s wrist and struck his face, sending them crashing through the Black Zero and falling toward Earth.
• As they plunged through the atmosphere, John grappled with Zod and reversed their positions before they hit a skyscraper.
• John used Insight to confirm the building had been evacuated and drove Zod headfirst through its floors.
• The damaged skyscraper collapsed inward around them, and Zod punched through the rubble with his faceplate torn away.
• Zod’s exposed face met Earth’s air and yellow sunlight, and his brain suddenly crashed.