Kingdom (comics)

First series

At the beginning of the series, Gene the Hackman is the leader of his pack, patrolling Antarctica (which they call "Anarchticy", the name having been corrupted over the centuries). They follow the orders of voices in their heads known as the urgings, which are transmitted to them by their "Masters" (who are never seen in the series). On the coast, Gene and his army encounter a mysterious "land bridge" which leads into the sea and beyond the horizon. They conclude that "Them" from another continent created the bridge to invade Antarctica. The urgings stop, something which has never happened before, and so the pack debate whether to return home to report their discovery or continue their patrol (which has already lasted for an unprecedented length of time). Some of the pack desert Gene, and those who remain with him are all killed in action. Gene alone survives, with crippling injuries, and finds refuge in a mysterious building.

The building turns out to be an ancient outpost, built nearly two thousand years ago by humans. It is run automatically by an advanced computer, and contains a human operative in suspended animation, who is awoken by the computer on Gene's arrival. Gene has never seen a human before – it is revealed that what he thinks are the Masters are not actually humans but merely robots which run everything while the humans sleep – so he is initially sceptical that this human, who he regards as weak and sickly, could be a Master. But when Gene's injuries are rapidly healed with advanced medical technology he hasn't seen before, he accepts the possibility that there might be more to the human than meets the eye.

The outpost is attacked by overwhelming numbers of Them, and despite the advanced weaponry available there, Gene is only saved by the timely arrival of another pack. The human does not survive, and the new pack does not believe Gene's story. The story ends as Gene heads alone out of Antarctica over the land bridge.

Second series: "The Promised Land"

Gene has arrived in Tasmania, and finds it to be overrun with new species of Them he hasn't seen before. They are larger than the ones he was used to fighting at home. But many of them have been incapacitated by parasites, "ticks", gruesome bulbous creatures covered with teeth which attach themselves to the giant insects' bodies. Gene himself is attacked by dozens of these ticks in a swamp, and only just manages to fight them off.

Shortly after recovering from this attack, Gene begins to hear the urgings again, for the first time since discovering the land bridge. the urgings lead Gene to discover a small farm run by a community of humans. The farm is surrounded by a fence to keep Them out, but Gene manages to get inside. Once in the farm, Gene befriends a young girl, called Leezee Sower, who introduces him to her father. The adults accept Gene, recognising that his combat abilities will be useful in defending the farm against Them, who have recently been attacking with greater frequency and ferocity than before.

Gene enjoys living on the farm, but becomes suspicious about the fact that he is being fed meat, given that there are no animals on the farm. He is told that the meat is being grown artificially in a large warehouse, but is is out of bounds and he is strictly forbidden to enter it. Defying the rules of the farmers and the admonitions of the urgings, Gene investigates anyway. He is horrified to discover that the warehouse is infested with ticks. The farmers arrive and arrest him for uncovering their secret, and Gene learns that each of the farmers is infected with a tick, even Leezee Sower. Gene insists that the ticks must be destroyed, as their presence on the farm is evidently the reason why Them are attacking it. But the humans refuse. They regard the ticks as normal, even desirable, and they are unconcerned about being infected. Leezee points out to Gene that he is also infected, and Gene realises that he has had a tick attached to him since the attack in the swamp. The voices he has heard in his head since then are not really the urgings of the Masters, but the telepathic thoughts of the tick as it tries to control him. Gene kills his tick, but the experience is so agonisingly painful that he almost does not survive.

That night, Them attack and overwhelm the farm, killing everyone. Gene manages to rescue Leezee and they escape into the wilderness, the only survivors. Leezee begs Gene to let her return to the farm, but Gene recognises that this isn't really her own desire but her tick's, as it controls her. He leads her farther away from the farm.

Gene tries to kill Leezee's tick, but the tick tells him that Leezee would not survive the separation. Gene reluctantly abandons the attempt for the time being, intending to search for someone intelligent enough to figure out how to detach or kill the tick without also killing its host.

Third series: "Call of the Wild"

Gene and Leezee reach Sydney, which is in ruins. They discover a new pack of dog soldiers, but these ones are not pure-breeds like Gene. They have been breeding wild for centuries, and so the gene pool has diversified. Most of the pack welcome Gene, and one female pack member in particular, called Clara Bow, is especially fond of him. But there is one male, called Dingo Star, who resents Gene as he sees him as a rival to his own status within the pack.

The pack turns out to be just one of many packs, which all belong to a kingdom run by a dog of greater than normal intelligence, called Rex Horizon. Rex has a pet human, who he keeps in a cage, and it transpires that the dogs all think that Leezee is Gene's pet, since they had no prior knowledge of humans. Rex's pet, Paul Numan, tells Gene that three years ago he was in suspended animation on a space station in orbit around the earth. He was awoken and sent down to Sydney to investigate some unexplained electrical activity, which turned out to be the result of Rex having discovered how to make the old machines work again. He offers to take Leezee to safety up on the station, if Gene will rescue him. But Gene is now loyal to the Kingdom he has just joined, instead of to his old Masters, and he refuses to help.

The Kingdom suddenly finds that it is being attacked by Them more frequently than ever before, and by Them of increasing size. Numan realises it is because they can detect the scent of Leezee's tick parasite, which is deadly to Them, and they want to destroy it. Rex orders Dingo to abduct Leezee and chain her up outside where Them will find her, so that Them will leave the Kingdom alone. Rex tells Gene that his pet ran away, but Gene knows this is a lie, since he alone understands that Leezee is not his pet. Gene releases Numan from his cage, and enlists him to help find Leezee and take her to the orbiting station. Dingo interrupts the rescue, and a brutal fight ensues, in which Gene kills Dingo. Gene's pack hunts him down as a wanted murderer.

Gene and Numan find Leezee and save her from Them in the nick of time. Numan summons a ship to collect him and Leezee and take them to the orbiting station. But they are forced to leave Gene behind when he is captured by his pack. Gene only survives because of the intervention of Clara Bow, and the pack allow him to escape, realising that by removing the tick from the Kingdom he may have saved them all from destruction. Gene sets out across Australia on his own.

Fourth series: "His Master's Voice"

Clara Bow catches up with Gene and tells him that she would rather stay with him than live in the Kingdom. Together they discover a base run by robots, where an elderly and insane human general has awoken from suspended animation. A series of flashbacks throughout the story show the general as a young captain in New Mexico, six years before the last human survivors entered suspended animation. He was the leader of the project which created the first dog soldiers, the ancestors of Gene Hackman.

The general detains them, intending to harvest Gene's body for DNA with which to make a new army of thousands of soldiers like him (a process which will be fatal to Gene). Clara Bow is held as a hostage, along with some other humanoid dog captives whose DNA is not pure enough for the general's purposes. Gene resists at first, but surrenders when the general threatens to kill the hostages if he does not submit. Luring the mad general into a false sense of security, Gene kills him, and the robots deactivate. Gene, Clara Bow and the other hostages leave the base together.

Characters