Dark Knights of Steel #10 (2023)

Diana tries to attack Alfred, believing he is behind the pointless carnage of the battle, but Bruce and Beast Boy protect him. Kal-El gives Diana the magic rope so she can discover if he means them any harm. Diana binds Alfred's hands and he tells her that he means no ill will to their kingdoms or their people. He tells Kal-El that he is loyal to the House of El, and tells Bruce that he loves him like his own son. John Constantine suggests that they all take a moment to calm down and reassess the situation, and Diana turns her anger on him, saying that everything that has happened is the fault of him and his prophecy. In his mind, John admits she is right. Anissa and Jennifer defend him, but are shocked when they see Jacob emerge from the battlefield and demand to know what he has done. Lara invites the other queens and their soldiers to enter the city so they can discuss what has happened. The three queens and Ivy, who came to represent the forest and nature itself, interrogate Alfred; who reveals that his real name is J'onn J'onzz. He tells them his story: his homeworld was once a beautiful, verdant world where the Green and White Martians lived in harmony. However, one day a White named Protex began preaching a doctrine of racial supremacy, that the Whites should dominate and rule over the Greens. His message quickly spread through the telepathic Martians, and as one the Whites united to enslave the Greens. The Whites had assumed that the peaceful Greens would be easy to control, but they fought back, sparking a bloody civil war. The Whites were superior fighters but the Greens' greater scientific acumen allowed them to create weapons of mass destruction. Mars was devastated, reduced to a planetwide desert, and all but a handful of each side were left alive. Although there was nothing left worth fighting for, Protex refused to give up and decided that if he could not rule the Greens, he would exterminate them. J'onn and his son J'ordan retreated with the few remaining Greens to an underground shelter, where they hid for months. One day, a group of Green refugees came to the shelter, led by what appeared to be J'onn's dead wife. J'ordan ran to her, but the refugees were in fact Whites in disguise. The Whites slaughtered the surviving Greens and J'ordan was mortally wounded by Protex, who had been disguised as his mother. J'onn hid with J'ordan and his son died in his arms, begging his father to help him. The Whites departed, not realising that J'onn had survived. He buried J'ordan and then escaped to Earth. The Waynes took him in, and knew what he was, but asked him to keep it a secret from everyone else, fearing he would be mistaken for the "Green Man" in Constantine' s prophecy. Ivy asks J'onn what they are dealing with and he tells them that there are fewer than twenty Whites left, but as long as Protex is leading them they will not rest until they have taken Earth. Anissa realises that Protex engineered the war so that the forces who could have stopped him: the Amazons, the Kryptonians and the Pierce's with their power over weather; would wipe themselves out. Lara suggests that they unite their forces to stop the invaders. Meanwhile in the forest, Luthor is perched on top of a tree. He asks his ring what he should do now, but the ring tells him he will have no part in what is to come. Luthor is confused by this but the "ring" says "they" can't allow so much power to be held by someone who believes inanimate objects speak to him. Protex appears behind him, revealing that he was the "voice" of the ring all along. He rips off Luthor's hand and drops him to his death, then dons the ring, saying that the time for subterfuge has passed.