Kingdom Come (Graphic Novel)

Rating:
Summary: Alex Ross and Mark Waid do the Twilight of the Superheroes
Review: It is rather ironic that "Kingdom Come" was artist Alex Ross's first major work for DC because he had been developing the idea of an epic, apocalyptic super hero story which would re-examine what the DC characters meant and how their role in the world they were protecting would change for over a decade. The idea of an older generation of warriors forced out of retirement to face down a more violent new generation is not exactly news, but what Ross and writer Mark Waid brought to this project was an acute sense of the why the mythos of Superman, Batman, and the others DC characters have become a part of American popular culture. But there is also something more than the mere act of reaffirmation being played out here, especially given that this is not a battle, but a war, with a high casualty count that gives the narrative its necessary weight.

We begin with Superman in retirement, having lived in seclusion for a decade in his Fortress of Solitude. We learn in time that the Joker murdered Lois Lane and was then killed himself by Magog, a new meta-human who personifies the new generation of super heroes who act as judge and jury, and who have replaced the Justice League. But then Wonder Woman shows up to convince Superman to come out of retirement after Magog destroys Kansas in an effort to get the Parasite. Superman brings the Justice League back together and issues an ultimatum to the younger meta-humans to do things the right way or suffer the consequences of their actions. While all the super heroes choose sides the United Nations works on a way to destroy all of the meta-humans, Lex Luthor has Captain Marvel under his control, and Bruce Wayne (outted as Batman long ago) recruits his own army because he does not trust Superman, especially now that Dick Grayson has become Red Robin and the Man of Steel's side kick.

It is in the character of Norman McCay that we get the best insights into how Ross wants us to consider the story of "Kingdom Come." McCay is a minister in the big bad city who is visited by the Spectre, who warns of a coming catastrophe that has to be prevented. I find it interesting that Ross would take the Superman mythos in the direction of its more religious elements by going back to "The Divine Comedy" and have the Spectre play Virgil and lead the Dante-like McCay around the levels of the story. But there is a significant difference in that McCay is not merely an observer, but a pivotal actor in the drama. There was a time when it would have been a young kid saying the right thing at the right time, but the ideas here require an older voice and someone whose vocation is given to ethical judgments. The pivotal speech does have an element of pomposity, but when you are trying to do a modern American comic book version of the Twilight of the Gods I think it is inevitable you will fall a bit short of the mark. But you have to admire the aim and audacity.

However, the more immediate inherent problem in reading "Kingdom Come" in that you need a rather encyclopedic knowledge of the DC universe, not to mention the company's legal battle with Fawcett over the Captain Marvel character, to really appreciate everything that is going on or the particular tensions that exist between specific sets of characters. Besides, I can make the argument that it is Marvel, rather than Superman, that is the more interesting character here, unable to accept the hyper violence of the contemporary world because he has been trapped in a time bubble. You will find other tantalizing elements of this futuristic DC universe, such as Knightstar, the progeny of Nightwing and Starfire. If there is a comic book graphic novel that would benefit from an annotated edition, "Kingdom Come" would be it, and absent of that you can find friends and discussion boards who can help glean additional insights into the mythological density of the work.

Rating:
Summary: How the Gods Kill
Review: Times change.Have you ever had a grief that is so deadly, so weighty, so heavy on your shoulders that you just want to retire from the world into a remote cabin in the mountains? You just want to bury yourself under the ground, crawl down into sweet dark deep oblivion, sleep for two hundred years---or two thousand?

In Alex Ross's and Mark Waid's "Kingdom Come", Superman has done just that. The World's 'oldest Boy Scout' has doffed his mantle as Metropolis's protector, and retired to his arctic Fortress of Solitude. There he uses technology to conjure up the pasturefields and corn as high as an elephant's eye of his "boyhood" Kansas. Where he can idle his time away, concentrate on the things that matter. Like Routine. Like Sanity.

Superman hasn't changed, but the world around him has. Jaded, faded, and pierced, it wants its superhero protectors more ruthless, more brutal, more exciting than the spit-curled shiny-locked Code Against Killing batch of the naïve fifties: it wants super-warriors trained and ready to slaughter those who threaten society.

Mankind gets its wish in spades.

The new superheroes---referred to as "Metahumans", shades of X-Men--- kill without conviction, without code; kill with glee. They battle each other for style, for props, for kudos, for chatter on talk shows and the evening news.

When "Kingdom Come" opens, Pastor Norman McKay consoles his long-time friend Wesley Dodds (and, unbeknownst to McKay, the erstwhile Sandman), now raving about the Apocalypse on his deathbead; we pan out the hospital window, to a cityscape---a ravaged cityscape, the tops of the skyscrapers gutted, torn asunder, oddly truncated, girded with scaffolding. The world of tomorrow belongs to the new Metahumans, and is no longer so much their protectorate as their playground.

While the world languishes under titans less interested in fighting evil than in scoring airtime on "Springer", the original JLA languishes in retirement: Wonder Woman is stripped of her title and exiled from Paradise Island; Green Lantern broods above Earth in his gleaming emerald space station, a sentinel against alien threats; Batman, body now feeble and hair gone white and thin, has Gotham in a grip of law, order, and terror, policing the city through computer wonks and manipulating his army of robotic drones below the decrepit ruins of Wayne Manor.

Destruction and madness tends to the extremes: a little superpowered barfight between new-fangled hypgerpowered superhero Magog's vigilantes and a supervillain (?) named Parasite gets out of hand, obliterating Kansas in a nuclear apocalypse and irradiating the American heartland.

Now, in any world where Superman and Wonder Woman have anything to say, NOBODY is gonna irradiate the heartland without payback. So Supes comes back, augured as "The Second Coming of Superman", makes a speech before the UN (backed up by the classic DC heroes: Green Lantern, Hawkman, Wonder Woman, Red Robin) to set things right---and heads off to Kansas to throw the worst super-offenders in a specially constructed gulag. For the uninitiated: Alex Ross, who scored his sergeant's stripes with "Mythology", tears out jaw-dropping panel after jaw-dropping panel here, capturing the iconic glory of the DC pantheon of superheroes---Superman, Green Lantern, WonderWoman, Hawkman, Red Robin, Aquaman, Batman---at the very Twilight of the Gods. Of course, the Gulag doesn't hold.

Of course, Lex Luthor is crawling around the halls of the United Nations, introducing Billy Batson (aka "Captain Marvel") to the literati and jet set, and brewing up plans---and perhaps even cementing an alliance with Batman?

The story aside, you're in for a lavish feast in terms of Ross's artwork: outside of "Mythology", DC's pantheon has never looked this good, been captured in such lavish high style. The word "photorealistic" has been bandied around in reviews. But `photorealism' captures the world in, at best, two dimension: "Kingdom Come"'s magic lies in the way it stakes out the superhero on canvas, and then plumbs down into that 2D illustration for the core truth, the ambition, the drive, the motivation, behind such a God among mortals. Alex Ross has given us the Gods made flesh: Mark Waid has scripted the device to put the Gods into motion.

JSG



Rating:
Summary: Never ending battle still rages on
Review: Now by this point, everyone is familiar with the popularity of Kingdom Come, along with writer Mark Waid, artist Alex Ross, and my personal favorite, Pre-Crisis guru Elliot S! Maggin, who wrote the novelization. It is safe to say that on the top ten of comic fans' lists of the best of all time, DC Comics has a surprising number: Watchmen, Dark Knight Returns, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and Kingdom Come. The story of the twilight of the gods never stops inspiring new generations of storytellers, and in this case, it is the twilight of the most iconic and recognizable superheroes of all time. I think half of the charm of this story is the fact that, although we all grew up knowing who Superman is, as we get older, he stays the same, until eventually, you end up older than your childhood icon. With Kingdom Come, time is brought to the timeless Superman, and the results are well worth the weight. the only reason I don't give this a five star rating is that for post-crisis DC readers or the more casual reader who isn't a comics geek, you'd need to do a lot of research to understand half of the characters and references in this thing. There are a LOT of Golden and Silver Age characters and mentions in this, and most of the time, they don't spell it out for you. It doesn't detract from the story, but the numerous 'in-jokes' peppered throughout can make the whole thing a fresh experience on repeated readings. Alex Ross is especially fond of amusing cameos (such as Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids on the run from Batman's robots!) and, apparently, Bjork. The artwork is phenomenal, the story is classic, and the characters are better realized than any previous interpretation. This story has proved to be an influence on DC and comics ever since (and not just the page; Smallville TV fans should look at Clark Kent's civilian clothes in this thing!) I would recommend this to anyone who loves these classic characters.

Rating:
Summary: For anyone who doubts that comic books are literature
Review: Kingdom Come. One of the hardest reviews I've had to write. Basically Alex Ross and Mark Waid wrote a masterpiece of. This book should not be treated as a comic book, but as a piece of American literature. It should be required reading for 4th grades students.

Kingdom Come takes place years in the future of the DC universe, even past Dark Knight Returns. The being known as the Spectre is showing Pastor Norman McCay the events that led up to Armageddon, we see the whole entire story unravel from Norman's point of view. The world is full of super heroes. But they aren't the heroes we know and love, they're new more violent heroes. It appears somewhere down the line super villains became extinct, and now with no one else to fight, the heroes just battle each other. But what of the heroes we know? Batman has turned Gotham into a Police-State from his chair with his giant Bat-Knight robots roaming the streets. The people in need of a darker hero forced Superman into retirement. Wonder Woman was thrown out of her Amazon society and labeled a failure. And the rest are either retired or still active.

The "hero" (and I use the term loosely) Magog is the one that replaced Superman. Magog has become so corrupt and violent that the people live in fear of death and are begging for some real heroes to come back. Wonder Woman sees this and she tries to recruit Batman, Superman, and the rest of their crew back to their former positions at the Justice League to save the day once again. Needless to say not everything goes over well. Different alliances form and the ex-villain Lex Luthor brings out a secret weapon so powerful, that it can even destroy the Man of Steel himself. Many amazing battles ensue and characters that you could not possibly picture together become partners.

Incase you didn't get the point; the story of Kingdom Come is amazing. The art of this book is something I haven't seen as well. Every panel is almost photo realistic and done beautifully, the only thing I've ever seen that even compares to this are the covers of the new Punisher series. The aging of the DC universe is done amazingly as well. You'll see a character numerous times and have no idea who they are, and then Superman will call them by their first name and it'll hit you like a ton of bricks. All of the character's costumes have been advanced as well and they look very cool while still keeping their old looks (Especially Batman and Robin's).

I can't find many flaws at all, which is why this book is getting my best rating ever. You may think I'm calling the book a perfect 10, but I'll never give out a 10. Every book can be improved some way. A must have for fans of DC or even comics in general. Hell, even fans of writing should pick this up. And if you like Watchmen but were starving for some more mainstream characters, you'll be in heaven. Buy. This. Now.


Rating:
Summary: Overrated self-indulgent comic garbage
Review: Kingdom Come is a failure. It's a failure in that it's best moments are the ones that remind us why we read superhero comics in the first place - to escape from reality and see a dazzling expression of imagination. Alex Ross's spectacular hyper-realisitic art certainly aids the suspension of disbelief. However, most of the truly great moments in the comic are all that stand out amongst a derivative storyline that's less of an homage to works such as Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, and it's most obvious influence, The Squadron Supreme, but more of a total rip-off. Furthermore, it feels as though the comic was written for children, as there are so many overly simple elements to the storyline, but only a truly seasoned adult comic reader would be able to understand given the dark, mature tone. In the end, Kingdom Come is little more than a fanboy work meant to please fans of DC Comics' most iconic characters who want nothing more than validation for a belief in the value of characters that very few would challenge.

Rating:
Summary: A Stunning Rebuke to 90s Comics
Review: Alex Ross and Mark Waid are not trying to impress anyone with the action here. This is not a comic about big guns or big chested women in ultra-tight suits. This is a reaction to that.

The story follows an everyman, who is shown the course of Armageddon as played out by Superman and the ex-Justice League. At the story's outset, superman has left the world to seek solace in the nuclear wasteland of Kansas after being driven from Metropolis by the ominously named Magog who murders criminals rather than bring them to justice. Magog is Ross' and Waid's caricature of Cable or any other of the ultra-violent "heroes" created by Rob Liefeld and others.

In the JLA's abscence, the world's "heroes" have turned on one another, fighting petty wars over turf and pride. Here, there is no distinction between villain and hero. Superman's reformed JLA puts an end to this fighting, when he comes out of retirement, joined by Green Lantern, Flash, and a militaristic Wonder Woman.

Batman remains aloof. He has been busy in Gotham City, maintaining the peace through an army of robots. He rejects Superman's JLA and forms his own league amongst the still-unaligned heroes along with Green Arrow.

Superman himself sets out to imprison the super-villains of the world. In a stunning confrontation, Magog challenges him to single combat. Although the anti-hero unleashes his full-power against the man of steel, it does not hurt the kryptonian. Magog himself now becomes a pitied figure, empty of importance and import, like Liefeld's Cable, he is nothing more than show.

Lex Luthor allies with Batman and reveals his ace in the hole, the world's mightiest mortal, Shazam! Billy Batson is an adult now, and for twenty years has been brainwashed by Luthor. Ross' depiction of Batson is chilling. He always wears a huge smile and is scary as all heck.

Anyhow... things get out of control and Shazam! under Luthor's control, breaks all the villains out of Superman's prison. Here is the battle of Armageddon at last, with the JLA and Superman against the armies of evil led by Shazam!

Needless to say, it's a winner.

Rating:
Summary: Just not that good
Review: Beautiful art but the story and particularly the dialogue are weak. Alan Moore set the benchmark for this kind of thing years ago and Kingdom Come does not measure up.