Recaps

Zod endured the yellow sun’s overwhelming effects and resisted the sinister whispers in his mind, then absorbed its energy as his wounds healed and his strength grew. John watched him as a specimen to study, but Zod launched another attack before John could learn more.

• Zod knelt amid the crater as Earth’s yellow sunlight and overwhelming sensory input flooded his body and mind.
• Yellow whispers urged Zod to embrace his power and spread fear, but he used pain and sheer will to suppress them.
• Zod’s dormant cells devoured yellow photons, healing his injuries and increasing his strength.
• John observed Zod and considered him a chance to understand how Kryptonians worked.
• Zod’s hesitation disappeared, and he charged John with a two-fisted blow.

John and Zod fought from the ocean depths through the sky and into Nevada’s desert, where they attacked each other with powerful blows and heat vision. John intensified his beams and began driving Zod’s attack back, leaving their clash unresolved.

• John and Zod traded blows underwater, tearing up the seabed as they fought.
• Zod grabbed John and hurled him through the ocean surface and across the sky into Nevada’s desert.
• Zod attacked John from above with dark-gold heat vision, and John countered with golden-red beams.
• John increased the power of his heat vision and forced Zod’s beams upward.

John fought Zod aboard the Black Zero, but the Parallax entity consumed Zod’s remaining reason and spread fear through the ship. Zod turned eleven surviving Kryptonians into puppets and prepared to sacrifice them for the empire’s revival.

• John drove Zod through the Black Zero’s outer armor and into a deep compartment, where Zod’s body was badly wounded.
• The Parallax entity stirred inside Zod, and Zod embraced fear as a means to restore Krypton’s empire.
• Zod spread yellow fear across the Black Zero and reached the surviving Kryptonians through their minds.
• A young Kryptonian soldier saw an illusion of Krypton and followed a summons from Zod’s ancestor, Dru-Zod I.
• Eleven Kryptonians gathered behind Zod, who shattered their illusions and tightened the threads controlling their minds.

John fought Zod and his Kryptonian soldiers aboard the falling Black Zero, but their battle damaged the ship’s last load-bearing beam and sent it hurtling toward Metropolis. As Zod pinned John down, he sought to fuel his power with the soldiers’ fear of death before the ship crashed.

• Zod created a fear-energy halberd and ordered eleven Kryptonian soldiers to attack John, who disabled them without killing them.
• Zod ambushed John with the halberd, but John melted it with his heat vision; the energy clash broke the Black Zero’s final supporting keel.
• The damaged ship plunged toward Earth at extreme speed, and John realized its impact could devastate Metropolis and kill billions.
• Zod stamped John through the deck and sent the three soldiers still able to move after him, declaring that John would die with New Krypton.
• Zod recognized that his remaining power could not hold John until impact, so he sought the soldiers’ fear of death as fuel.

Zod killed a male technician aboard the damaged Black Zero and fed on the fear his death produced, then turned on a female technician. Faora burst from the wreckage and grabbed Zod just before he reached her.

• Zod pulled two injured technicians from their seats as Black Zero fell toward the planet.
• Zod strangled the male technician, explaining that he needed him to serve the empire’s order.
• Zod absorbed the fear mist from the technician’s corpse, growing larger and more powerful.
• The female technician froze in terror as Zod approached, intending to drain her fear to face Kal-El.
• Faora charged out of the wreckage and grabbed Zod by both arms, shouting for him to stop.

Faora confronted Zod over his plan to sacrifice their people, but he attacked her and continued toward a helpless female technician. After Faora exposed herself to Earth’s yellow sunlight and gained strength, she rescued the technician, but Zod captured and slammed her into the wreckage.

• Faora begged Zod to stop harming their people, but he rejected her pleas and struck her with a bone-covered elbow.
• Zod moved toward a collapsed female technician while Faora struggled out of the wreckage and removed her mask to absorb Earth’s yellow sunlight.
• As sunlight empowered her, Faora seized the technician and sealed her inside a damage-control recess.
• Faora collapsed from her injuries, and Zod pierced her shoulders with his claws before slamming her onto a structural rib.

Diana intercepted falling wreckage to protect the city, but Black Zero began plunging toward it after losing its antigravity field. As the falling mass crushed buildings and pinned Diana beneath its winds, she caught herself on the Lasso of Truth and realized humanity was doomed.

• Diana used the Lasso of Truth to divert a massive piece of wreckage away from a bank tower and into the bay.
• Diana prepared to intercept more debris, but Black Zero's shadow swept over the city as the 230-million-ton vessel began falling.
• The pressure and downdraft from Black Zero collapsed the skyscraper beneath Diana and crushed her against its rooftop.
• Diana caught a steel beam with the Lasso of Truth and swung clear of the collapsing building.
• Diana hung from the lasso and believed the entire human world was finished.

John defeated two Kryptonian soldiers aboard Zod’s warship, then flew beneath the descending vessel to stop it from destroying Metropolis. The chapter ended with his silhouette eclipsing the sun as the city watched.

• John blocked the Kryptonian soldiers’ four light blades with a force field and shattered them with a snap.
• John punched through one soldier’s faceplate and knocked the other through two walls with an elbow strike.
• John strolled toward the main control hall as the warship bore down on Metropolis.
• John rose beneath the warship and formed a force field that swept away the scorching wind.
• John’s silhouette aligned with the sun, creating a radiant halo as the city watched.

Faora fought Zod aboard the Black Zero until he overpowered her, but she struck back with heat vision and warned John the ship would soon crash and destroy the continent. John considered the millions at risk and doubted he would intervene, then worried that fate might endanger Old Joe and Martha.

• Faora traded a brutal series of blows with Zod, but he seized her by the throat and smashed her into the ship's main beam.
• John arrived and distracted Zod, giving Faora an opening to blast him through the Black Zero with heat vision.
• Faora warned John that the Black Zero would hit the continental shelf in less than ten minutes and its antimatter core would destroy the continent.
• John surveyed the city and dismissed the fate of its millions of people as unimportant to him.
• John wondered if fate would endanger Old Joe and Martha.

John raced into Black Zero’s lower hold to use its emergency gravity brakes, but [Insight] revealed that the braking system had been destroyed. With the ship nearing the ground, he had only thirty-seven seconds to find another way to stop it.

• Faora told John where to find Black Zero’s emergency gravity braking anchors as the ship fell toward Earth.
• John used [Insight] to locate the anchors and raced through the ship’s lower compartments.
• Zod emerged from the wreckage and slammed the injured Faora across the floor.
• John found the brake pins and counterweight system completely destroyed.
• John calculated that he had thirty-seven seconds to intercept Black Zero before it reached the critical point above the ground.

John transformed into his battle suit and used his force field to stop Black Zero from crashing into Metropolis, leaving the warship suspended above the city. Exhausted and injured, he was hailed as a god among men by a stunned family watching below.

• John burst through Black Zero's hull and transformed his suit into blue armor with a red cape.
• John braced both hands against the descending warship and spread his force field across its underside.
• John absorbed Black Zero's momentum, sending a shock wave across Metropolis and forcing the bay's seawater away from the city.
• John stopped the warship less than a thousand meters above Metropolis, then withdrew one injured hand as it remained suspended.
• Diana and the city's residents watched in shock as a little girl asked her father who John was, and he called him a true god among men.

John discovered that Zod had survived and was regenerating by absorbing the fear spreading across Metropolis and beyond. As Zod’s power continued to rise, John realized the threat would grow as long as Zod remained alive.

• John repaired his shattered wrist while using Super Hearing to detect movement inside the damaged warship.
• Zod burst through the ship’s hatch, dragging the unconscious Faora before tossing her onto the suspended deck.
• Zod absorbed the fear in the air and rapidly healed his injuries as his aura grew stronger.
• John used Insight to learn that Zod’s recovery came from fear, which could continually increase his power.

John pursued Zod into Black Zero, where Zod used the ship’s radiation-blocking hull to try to deprive him of sunlight and attacked him with Parallax’s fear projection. The projection failed to interpret John’s alien memories, and Zod then sent two enormous spinning grinding wheels after him.

• Zod formed a massive yellow fear-energy armor and retreated into Black Zero, intending to lure John away from the sun and exhaust him.
• John followed Zod through the ship’s breach and found him waiting inside the darkened hull.
• Zod used Parallax’s fear projection to probe John’s memories, but the resulting alien images overloaded the projection and caused it to collapse.
• John taunted Zod about the failed probe and charged at him.
• Zod summoned two huge, rapidly spinning grinding wheels and sent them at John from opposite sides.

John fought Zod inside the Black Zero, but Zod’s attack weakened John’s Bioelectric Field and made the ship sink. The panic of Metropolis’s residents strengthened Zod, leaving John struggling to bear the field’s mounting pressure.

• John froze Zod’s grinding wheels, shattered one, and used curved heat beams to destroy the energy junction powering Zod’s scythe.
• John and Zod continued fighting until their battle tore through the Black Zero’s hull and carried them into the sky.
• Zod struck John’s transparent dome with a giant drill, causing the Bioelectric Field to buckle and the Black Zero to drop eighty meters.
• Panic spread through Metropolis as residents fled, and their fear gathered into streams that flowed into Zod.
• Zod grew stronger from the fear, while the strain of maintaining the Bioelectric Field caused John severe pain.