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Kingdom

Kingdom

List Price: $17.95
Your Price: $12.21
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: the kingdom
Review: i thought the kingdom was one of the best books of the year if you liked kingdom come you will like the kingdom althogh the art is some what lacking

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Bit Too Complicated For A Single Graphic Novel
Review: It is difficult for this book to stand on its own without background concerning Crisis, Zero Hour, and DC History. It misses the fine detailed artwork of Alex Ross and Hyper Time is just a device to bring back the Multiverses. Mark Waid should have taken a quote from Alan Moore...."this is an imaginary story....aren't they all?" Letting continuity dictate how you write stories does not make them better.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Mark Waid should go to hell for this.
Review: Kingdom Come was one of the best stories ever and had the potential for a lot of great follow ups but is completely ruined by the Kingdom. Why did Mark Waid think that this was the way to follow up Kingdom Come? There were too many mistakes here to be believed, the story was bad, the art was bad, and all it served was to create a plot device that completely undo's Crisis and is sure to be an even bigger mistake in the future. It also screws up Alex Ross's character designs. Batman doesn't wear his helmet in the final part, why do we want to see an old man in Bat-armor. The Flash's look is reduced to the regular custume with Jay Garrick's Helmet (why, why, why!!!?). In it's defense the filler stories showcasing the Kingdom Come characters decent, enjoyable stories with good art exploring the Kingdom Come future, which is what a KC sequel should have been about. But these aren't enough to forgive Waid and to ever just his writing again.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Very Poorly written Book
Review: Largely because here we are introduced to a concept caled Hyper-time. A new way for DC to bring back it;s alternate Earths which were destroyed in Crises.I don't know what DC was trying to do here. First they destroyed their universe in Zero Hour and now the Kingdom was a way of scattering the pieces.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: A Bit Too Complicated For A Single Graphic Novel
Review: Mark Waid seems to have been torn between the will to tell a good story and the will to undo Crisis on Infinite Earths and bring back the multiple universe scenario. As a result he seems to spen the first several chapters telling a good story, and then in the final chapter, quickly rushes in the multiple universe thing in such a strained way that it reads more like a lecture. A major reason for this rush at the end is that the story is structured so that the main story is really told in the first, second and last chapters, and some offshoot stories are told for the rest of the time. As much as I like the offshoot stories, they don't really leave enough room for the main story.

The art varies dramatically in quality between the beautiful work of Frank Quitely in the Offrspring story and the substandard Mike Zeck (I think) work in the closing chapter.

This book just scrapes a 4 star rating out of me, up until the beginning of the last chapter it deserves it fully, and it does open up a lot of fun in the DC Universe for other writers to use - As Grant Morrison has already done in Earth 2.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not bad, but could have been better
Review: Mark Waid seems to have been torn between the will to tell a good story and the will to undo Crisis on Infinite Earths and bring back the multiple universe scenario. As a result he seems to spen the first several chapters telling a good story, and then in the final chapter, quickly rushes in the multiple universe thing in such a strained way that it reads more like a lecture. A major reason for this rush at the end is that the story is structured so that the main story is really told in the first, second and last chapters, and some offshoot stories are told for the rest of the time. As much as I like the offshoot stories, they don't really leave enough room for the main story.

The art varies dramatically in quality between the beautiful work of Frank Quitely in the Offrspring story and the substandard Mike Zeck (I think) work in the closing chapter.

This book just scrapes a 4 star rating out of me, up until the beginning of the last chapter it deserves it fully, and it does open up a lot of fun in the DC Universe for other writers to use - As Grant Morrison has already done in Earth 2.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not a bad story, but don't expect to see Kingdom Come part 2
Review: Overall, I'd have to say I found the book to be an enjoyable read, but if you're expecting storytelling at the level of the original Kingdom Come novel, you'll be sorely disappointed. The initial setup for the creation of Gog and the multiple "deaths" of Superman are all well-handled.

Additionally, I feel that the middle stories were basically interesting and well-drawn. The characters were unique enough and infused with just enough mystery to keep me reading.

It was the final chapter of the book I found most disappointing. Mike Zeck's artwork was simply awful (a shame considering some of the work he turned in back in the '80s). And the story seemed to simply lose steam. I think Mark Waid got trapped by the "trying to accomplish too much" bug. Not to mention that this story effectively cancels out the entire Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline (which happens to be one of my favorite comic book stories ever).

Note that as mentioned previously, Alex Ross has nothing to do with this graphic novel. Don't expect to see any of his artwork contained within.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not a bad story, but don't expect to see Kingdom Come part 2
Review: Overall, I'd have to say I found the book to be an enjoyable read, but if you're expecting storytelling at the level of the original Kingdom Come novel, you'll be sorely disappointed. The initial setup for the creation of Gog and the multiple "deaths" of Superman are all well-handled.

Additionally, I feel that the middle stories were basically interesting and well-drawn. The characters were unique enough and infused with just enough mystery to keep me reading.

It was the final chapter of the book I found most disappointing. Mike Zeck's artwork was simply awful (a shame considering some of the work he turned in back in the '80s). And the story seemed to simply lose steam. I think Mark Waid got trapped by the "trying to accomplish too much" bug. Not to mention that this story effectively cancels out the entire Crisis on Infinite Earths storyline (which happens to be one of my favorite comic book stories ever).

Note that as mentioned previously, Alex Ross has nothing to do with this graphic novel. Don't expect to see any of his artwork contained within.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The Kingdom has come home.
Review: Space and time dance a merry little jig when time-travelling lunatic, Gog, murders Superman over and over, every day.

The sequel to Kingdom Come, Kingdom opens with Gog's origin, and follows both Gog's madness and the lives of some of Kingdom Come's minor characters. The books are well-written and interesting, though the art sometimes falters (most visibly so when, over the course of three panels, a woman changes bra sizes each time). Unfortunately, Alex Ross was not part of Kingdom, and the work suffers for lack of his touch. Interesting ideas (i.e. Magog actually being Superman and Wonder Woman's child) are raised without resolution, and Gog's secret masters have no noticable goals.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: DC, all is forgiven !
Review: Three days ago I wrote a review of "Crisis on Infinite Earths",decrying DC Comics for eradicating all of my beloved parallel universes and alternate realities. At that point I had not read "Kingdom" by Mark Waid, et al. I just finished this graphic novel a little while ago. DC COMICS, ALL IS FORGIVEN: THANK YOU FOR 'HYPERTIME'! Hypertime, what a brilliant and elegant concept! I suspect that by now the folks who make policy at DC came to the inalterable conclusion that rather than clearing things up, COIE only made things a bigger mess; that try as you might to tidy everything up into a nice neat continuity with no contradictions, inconsistencies and incongruities, they will inevitably creep in. By constantly revising the history of the "DC Universe" to try and arrange it into a neat and orderly little bundle, the writers at DC were forced to rip out all sorts of past characters and events and even entire runs of comics,i.e., "Superboy", "Supergirl", "The Marvel Family", Krypto the Super-dog, etc., etc. So all of us who were reading those comics for all those years and really believing that Superboy was Superman as a teenager, that Kara a.k.a. Linda Danvers a.k.a. Supergirl was Kal-El's cousin from Argo City, well, all of that stuff had never 'really' happened in the 'real' DC Universe. So what were we reading? Were all these tales just 'imaginary stories' or 'Elseworlds', as they call them now. AT THIS POINT I WANT TO STRESS THAT THE 'KINGDOM' GRAPHIC NOVEL DOES NOT BEAR THE 'ELSEWORLDS' LOGO AND THIS IS CRUCIAL TO THE WHOLE POINT I AM MAKING. At the very end of the story we are introduced to the concept of Hypertime. On pages 224 - 225 there is a slash panel that literally choked me up and brought tears to my eyes! (Yeah, I get all emotional over comics, I must admit.) If a picture is worth a thousand words, this one is worth literally millions! The writers bestow on us the sublime, elegant and aptly named Hypertime, which is the infinite expression of endless timelines, including all of those that were supposedly eradicated in COIE. WOW! THANK YOU, DC COMICS! On the next to last page, where our heroes (Superman, Wonder Woman, Rip Hunter & others) confront the supposedly omnipotent beings Ganthet the Guardian, Zeus, Izaya the High Father and the wizard Shazam and accuse them of arrogance, I see that as a metaphor for all of the angry, frustrated, disillusioned and broken-hearted readers of DC Comics over the last 65 years who were told that all of their heroes had been rendered invalid and in effect, relegated to limbo. (I wonder what the writers will do to our heroes twenty years from now?) "Crisis on Infinite Earths" was a door closing on a universe of infinite and wondrous possibilities, an ill-advised attempt to bring a semblance of order to what is essentially unmanageable. You might as well try to capture the wind or contain the ocean. With the concept of Hypertime in the "Kingdom" book, DC has opened the door to infinity just a little crack. Now do they dare to go through it? Will they let us into the infinite worlds of ALTERNITY?


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