There have been three distinct humans who have claimed the name Gog. The first two were child survivors of very different tragedies in Kansas on separate parallel Earths. The first was a survivor of the Kansas Holocaust on Earth-22 that was precipitated by that world’s Magog. The second was a survivor of an alien attack on Topeka during the Imperiex War. Each of them began by worshipping Superman, but became disillusioned with him and came to see him as an anti-christ. Permutations of history have removed these men from existence, but  echoes of them remain in a third man who was driven insane as the harbinger of true Gog.

The disastrous events on Earth-22 were felt throughout the Multiverse. One potential future of Earth-22, beyond even the events of Kingdom Come, saw one of the few survivors of the Kansas Holocaust grow up to become Superman’s most devoted disciple. Minister William worshipped Superman as a saviour. He helped people in hospital, schooled them, and took on the duties of any good pastor. His faith was driven by the belief that Superman was a god who had sent the Kansas tragedy to test the world and to redeem it. William believed he was special because Superman had “spared him” from the tragedy. In a manner it was William’s way of dealing with the horrors he had seen and to try to give a meaning to the senseless deaths around him.

Eventually Clark Kent (who had left behind the Superman costume) was forced to explain to William that he wasn’t a god and that he really should do something else with his life. Matthew’s philosophy was shattered. He torched his church and stumbled through the streets asking people, begging people “Tell me what to  believe!” He was found by the Phantom Stranger who delivered a scroll from a council of cosmic beings called the Quintessence (Ganthet, Zeus, Shazam, and Highfather). The Quintessence gave him power and knowledge of time travel so that he could precipitate the Kansas Holocaust early thus allowing them to manipulate the course of history on Earth-22.

The power unhinged Matthew’s  mind and transformed him into the a demigod monster called Gog. He  murdered the Clark Kent that had just spoken to him and then travelled back in time to the previous day and killed him all over again. He repeat the process day and after day as he slowly worked his way back through time killing Supermen as he went (New Years Evil: Gog #1). Gog’s actions of killing younger and younger versions of Clark Kent should have ripped the time-line apart, but it exposed the existence of something previously unknown to the Linear Men (the guardians of Linear Time). A phenomena called Hypertime that allowed for the existence of multiple, contradictory realities. In essence Gog was jumping between a ladder of universes that were almost identical to Earth-22.

Gog rampaged across Hypertime killing consecutively earlier and earlier Supermen until he reached the Kingdom Come era of Earth-22 and discovered that this Superman had a child by Wonder Woman. Gog kidnapped the child and journeyed to Earth-0 where he hoped to recreate the Kansas Holocaust by killing Captain Atom. It took the joint efforts of the Supermen, Wonder Women and Batmen from both Earth-0 and Earth-22 with the help of Rip Hunter and the grown Jonathan Kent II (the kidnapped child) to stop Gog (The Kingdom #1-2).  Today the events of Gog’s rampage, and even his existence, appears to have been forgotten. The Infinite Crisis reordered the Multiverse and while Earth-22 still exists the Crisis did erased the duplicate Earth-22s whose Supermen Gog had killed.

A second Gog, this time one native to Earth-0 (the foundation Earth), was also the survivor of a tragedy in Kansas. But, this Gog was one of the survivors of the destruction of Topeka during the opening stages of the Imperiex War. He was saved by Superman who said he’d find the boy’s parents, but they were already dead. In the chaos and confusion it was the boy who found their bodies. The knowledge of his saviour and his inability to save his parents would haunt the boy for the rest of his life (Action Comics #813). As an adult he devoted his life to the study of time travel with the intention of saving the rest of his family who had been killed during the Imperiex War. It took him over thirty years, but he eventually discovered a method of time travel.

Cruelly he found that his method would only take him back a short distance in time, not even far enough back to save his parents. He made thousands of attempts over the next two hundred years, but all resulted in failure. Eventually his motivation changed from idolisation of Superman into hatred for his inability to save his parents. In search of revenge he rewrote his own history, imprinting on his child self a new compulsion – kill Superman! (Action Comics #825).

This Gog, or another version of him, appeared in Smallville to ambush Superboy (Conner Kent, a teenage clone of Superman) and his Teen Titan friends in a feint to draw Superman’s attention. Their battle tore through the historic centre of the town with Superman and Superboy drawing Gog’s fire while Kid Flash and Wonder Girl got the civilians to safety. Gog’s teleporting kept Superman and Superboy off-balance and they both took a pounding. Gog cut Superman with his trident and injected liquefied kryptonite into the wound. He then beat Superman until he believed he was dead and then vanished (Action Comics #815-816).

Next Gog recruited a mild-mannered repo-man called Jesse and turned him into a monster which fought the slowly weakening Superman (Action Comics #822-823). The Kryptonite poison caused Superman to become weaker and weaker. After fighting the Kandorian zealot Preus (another of Gog’s lieutenants) Superman was exhausted, but he was confronted by a legion of duplicated Gogs. The future Gog had used his time travel expertise to duplicate himself into an army (Action Comics #824).

Superman’s saviour that day came in the unlikely form of the monster that had once saved him. Doomsday, newly sentient, refused to allow anybody else to kill Superman and waded into Gog’s legions. Even after Gog appeared to capture Superman Doomsday remained in the field. It was inspired by Superman’s courage to mend its ways and to adopt Superman’s colours. Doomsday’s League of Superman battled the Army of Gogs in a single battle that ranged for a century. The prime Gog eventually grew weary and withdrew from the battle to amused himself by torturing his captive Superman. However, even that grew tiresome after two centuries.

Superman and Gog grew old together. For five hundred years the two white-haired enemies were locked in a seemingly eternal game of resolve – the shackled Superman and the inquisitional Gog. With his last breadth Superman shamed Gog and dispelled his hatred. A moment later Doomsday breached Gog’s defences. He could have killed Gog, but the old man convinced him that together they could undo the future they had created. They travelled back in time and undid the actions of their past selves, nullifying their own existence as history was over written (Action Comics #825).

The history of Earth-0 healed itself and erased the multiple paradoxes created by the many Gog and Doomsday time duplicates. A Gog still existed, but he only had fractured memories of what had gone before.

The new Gog was William Matthews, an American missionary to Zaire who disappeared for several years after discovering an ancient temple buried deep in the Congo. Inside it he found the remains of the true Gog (a dormant Old God from the Third World which had come before New Gods’ Fourth World) Matthew’s took Gog’s name and staff and sought to kill the false gods who claimed to protect the Earth. Through Gog’s power Matthews glimpsed the Kansas Tragedy of Earth-22 and believed that only Gog could prevent it.  He claimed “I believe that the unification of good and evil will lead to the future. ” and sought to pave the way for the true Gog’s emergence. He used his new superpowers to attacked Superman before vanishing again (a retcon of the Action Comics plotline)

After being driven away by Superman Matthews began hunting super criminals who claimed to be gods or demigods. His murder of the Teen Titan’s villain Goth caught the attention of the new JSA. Starman tried to put out the fire caused by Goth’s death by creating a miniature black hole. In doing so he accidentally created a wormhole between Brooklyn on Earth-0 and the instability created by the explosion on Earth-22 that had killed the majority of its superhumans. The Superman of Earth-22 was pulled through the wormhole and arrived on Earth-0 without any knowledge of how the war on his Earth had ended (Justice Society of America (vol. 2) #9).

The Earth-22 Superman saw the JSA’s world as a Heaven where their efforts to reach out to the younger superheroes was in stark contrast to his own actions on Earth-22. He believed his world had been destroyed and tried to make a place for himself with the JSA (Justice Society of America (vol. 2) #10). Mister America was brought in by the FBI to investigate Gog’s murders. The media had called him the “Heartbreak Slayer”, but Mister America eventually discovered the name of the real killer. The Earth-22 Superman instantly recognised the similarity of the name with his own Magog. His suspicions were confirmed when he and the Earth-0 Superman saved Hercules from Gog’s attack (Justice Society of America (vol. 2) #13).

The Earth-22 Superman and the JSA tracked Matthews/Gog to the Congo, but he attacked them in their headquarters before they could mobilise. The JSA fought the crazed Matthews back to the Gog Temple in the Congo. They watched as Matthews dissolved into energy and was absorbed by a giant Gog head.

Seconds later the head came to life and ripped itself and its body out of the ground. The now awake golden giant told the stunned JSA “People of Earth. I come in pease.” (Justice Society of America vol. 2 #10-15, “Thy Kindgom Come”).

Each of the three human Gogs were driven to an almost insane hatred of Superman by the power they possessed. Yet none of them except Matthew Williams even suspected the true origins of the their name or knew of the entity that had inspired them.

Next: The true Gog.