10 Times DC Comics Lost Their Damn Minds
4. Superman: At Earth's End
The DC Elseworlds line reimagined its top heroes in a variety of new scenarios, frequently telling tales of familiar heroes thrown into different time periods (like a Victorian Batman) or creating entire new continuities (like one where the Kents never found baby Kal-El). Superman: At Earth's End is something else.
The story takes place in a dystopian future where Earth has been overrun by an army of genetically altered mutants called the DNA Diktators. An elderly and greatly weakened Superman joins an army of rebels to take down the leaders of the DNA Diktators who are twin clones of Adolf Hitler.
It sounds like a story that should be the most awesomely over the top thing ever at yet At Earth's End ruins its premise by playing it completely straight by trying to have some sort of moral that Hitler was responsible for the nuclear apocalypse because nukes were only invented to stop him.
It also tries to throw in an anti-gun message after a depowered Superman is fatally wounded by a machine gun, despite also having a finale in which he saves the day by killing the Hitlers with a gigantic machine gun.
The whole thing basically reads like it was made by people writing out a line of a story without seeing the previous lines.