Note: This piece on the limited comic series Kingdom Come will contain spoilers. If you've never read it and want to learn what happens the old-fashioned way, stop now. Hope you enjoy it and come back.
Twenty years ago this month, the first issue of a DC Comics prestige "Elseworlds" miniseries hit the stands, offering perhaps one of the best answers to a downward spiral of grim, grit, vengeance and violence that Frank Miller's lesser heirs had levied upon the genre.
In 1986, Miller's The Dark Knight Returns offered an aging and retired Bruce Wayne watching his city crumble in the absence of its protector, Batman. Miller took seriously the impact of an obsessive quest like that fate imposed on the young orphan and what kind of man it might create. He also took seriously what kind of response a real world not made up of curious but helpful citizens popping out of windows would have towards the titans in their midst. The Dark Knight Returns, along with Alan Moore's Watchmen published later that same year, reflected a desire on the part of comic book fans and creators to bring more realism to their cape-and-longjohn worlds. Although most of the main stream of super-heroes in DC comics would retain their various codes of honor, many would become more ruthless and much darker. Of course, few comic creators had talent like Miller and Moore, so a good portion of the new "grimdark" comic world was as cartoonish as its square-jawed, eat-your-vitamins-and-say-your-prayers predecessor. There may have been a lot of mayhem to revel in, but there weren't very many heroes to aspire to. Not all comic creators liked these developments or the dominance of the grim-and-gritty worldview, and in the mid-90s they began to push back via their own work.
KINGDOM COMING
Artist Alex Ross was coming off 1994's Marvels, his landmark collaboration with Kurt Busiek that told a little of the history of the Marvel Comics universe from the everyday person's point of view. Busiek's story broke some new ground in literary complexity but remained very much in the Miller-Moore vein of what a real world might be like if populated by superheroes, villains and mutants, only less dark. Busiek and Ross shared the idea that the inspirational aspects of Silver and Golden Age comic heroes were not entirely useless. A realistic world might very well have room for them as well as for the reality that what super-heroes could inspire included fear, jealousy and anger. Ross's painted artwork, a style in which he'd started working heavily the previous year, enhanced Marvels' narrative as well as its appeal.
DC, obviously, was interested in having the same kind of buzz regarding a story with their characters. Ross was interested in that idea as well, and pitched a story treatment to the company while Marvels was in production. It picked up several themes from a shelved Alan Moore proposal, Twilight of the Super-Heroes, that forecast a future earth ruled by super-hero dynasties more concerned with their power and interests than protecting humanity. When Moore stopped working for DC in 1989, the idea was filed away -- how much Ross or eventual writer Mark Waid knew about it is open to question. Moore patterned his story as well as his title on the Norse Ragnarok myth, which is not exactly all that unknown a tale. I couldn't find any online interview where anyone asked him about it, anyway.
DC selected Waid because of his own extensive knowledge of its universe and characters. The story, which was going to concern itself with a future DC universe, required that widespread understanding of the past. Although Waid was willing to create a story using someone else's idea -- which a couple of earlier collaborators hadn't -- later published interviews suggested he and Ross had a bumpy working relationship with fault lines showing along who had what idea. It would torpedo them teaming for a sequel; Waid's vision of what happened after Kingdom Come showed up in 1999's The Kingdom; Ross's in the Justice Society of America arc "Thy Kingdom Come" in 2008.
THE STORY
Norman McCay is the pastor of a shrinking Metropolis congregation in the first quarter of the 21st century (those writing about the series settled on 2020 as the date). Super-powered beings are no novelty in this world, but in many ways they are no blessing either. The moral codes and restraint that characterized an earlier generation have been largely abandoned, at first in favor of heroes who would "do what needs to be done," including executing the villains they fought. But now even the concepts of "hero" and "villain" are fading as the metahumans seem to fight each other as much out of boredom and a quest for power as anything else. Humanity seems to have lost ambition and drive; there's little point in stretching the limits of strictly human achievement when some random moke with a power ring, cosmic technology or unearthly ability can blow past those limits in his or her sleep. Thanks to his parishioner Wesley Dodds -- the original Sandman -- McCay has been considering these questions much lately, and has even begun to have visions of some apocalyptic event involving the super-powered beings that may mean an end to all of humanity.
When McCay is visited by the Spectre, he learns that his visions have some kind of divine message by which the Spectre will be led to pass judgment about who is truly at fault for the condition of the world. The confrontation he foresees begins to look more and more likely as heroes of old return, led by Superman. A devastating tragedy fueled by one of the modern "take no prisoners" kind of super-beings brings the Man of Steel out of exile to corral the out-of-control super-population. But he has been gone quite awhile, and many of the newer metahumans resist his control. Joined by Wonder Woman and a growing number of heroes, Superman finds himself now also a jailer, as the conquered but resisting super-beings are imprisoned in a super-secure facility called the Gulag. His enemy Lex Luthor works to counter Superman's moves, and finds an unlikely ally in Bruce Wayne, the Batman. Batman sees the same problem Superman does, but fears Superman's method of handling it will only cause more problems.
His fears prove out when the prisoners of the Gulag revolt and break loose from their prison, drawing Superman's forces into battle. Luthor's secret weapon -- Captain Marvel, driven mad by Luthor's brainwashing -- threatens to tip the balance against both Superman and Batman's forces, and eventually the Secretary-General of the United Nations sanctions the use of an incredibly powerful bomb to at least stop the fighting if not wipe out all of the metahumans once and for all. Marvel regains his sanity and sacrifices himself to lessen the bomb's destruction, but at first Superman believes it has killed everyone but him. He flies to the UN to wreak vengeance, but McCay demands the Spectre let him appeal to Superman and is able to counsel him against destruction. The devastation of the battle and the bomb, the sacrifice of Marvel and McCay's words convince the few remaining metahumans to work alongside humanity rather than operate according to their own code or desires.
SOME THINKING
Given that the importance of the problem of real-world destruction caused by super-beings fuels both Batman v. Superman and Captain America: Civil War, the way that Kingdom Come deals with it helps it have some pretty good staying power. Ross's art, of course, maximizes the impact. Few comics were painted in the mid-1990s, and far fewer were painted with his skill, which made the appearance of Kingdom Come that much more special. Like Waid, Ross had an extensive knowledge of DC's history and used it to pepper the backgrounds with a delightfully obscure range of characters that guaranteed a surprise in almost every panel. The almost photo-realistic look of the paintings suggested what a comic book might look like if Norman Rockwell had created it, its nostalgia creating a tension with the bleakness of the future world it showed.
Waid's dialogue and narrative easily matched the quality of the artwork. His characters clash, spar with words, vent and sometimes barely manage to be in the same room without fighting. This is not an episode of the Super-Friends. The dialogue has a real-world quality about it that helps emphasize that Kingdom Come is trying to grapple with the real-world consequences of life among super-powered beings. Some would be good and trustworthy, some would be evil, some would be unhealthy, some would be cautious about how they used their powers, some would be careless.
To borrow a line from another super-hero universe, the only way they could maintain humanity's trust was to realize that with great power came great responsibility. When they began crossing the lines, even in order to save lives, then their ability to be responsible for their great gifts was questioned. Sure, JusticeDude blew away Captain Psycho because Psycho escaped and killed a dozen people every time he was locked up for "treatment." But what if JusticeDude decides someone else needs killing and it turns out he's wrong? Who could stop him?
Waid and Ross said in different interviews and in introductions to various editions of Kingdom Come that the book was in some way a commentary on and argument against the grim and gritty excess that seemed to drive most of the comic book heroes being written at the time. It seemed like titles featuring grimacing, merciless dispensers of "justice" dominated the shelves, with artists trying to outdo each other in creating more and more ludicrous battle armor, weaponry and utterly impossible female anatomy. Magog, the ruthless fighter whose mistake caused the tragedy that prompted Superman's re-emergence, was a deliberate imitation of that kind of character.
Waid and Ross saw that kind of character and storyline as a creative dead end, and potentially harmful to the whole comic book medium itself. In their vision, heroes are more than people who punch harder -- they are people who use their gifts with others for the good of everyone. Superman can stop a meteor from hitting Metropolis, but he can't tuck Joe and Jane Average's kids in for the night or be the ones to soothe them when they have nightmares. And what makes Superman a hero is that he knows that. He has his gifts and uses them, Joe and Jane Average have their gifts and use them, and everybody's better off because they're all on the same team and the difference in what each of them has done is a difference of degree, not of kind.
Waid puts words to that effect in Superman's mouth as he speaks to the UN about Marvel's sacrifice after Norman McCay has persuaded him to turn aside from vengeance. Super-heroes are super because they are strange visitors from another world, or because they've been affected by fantastic scientific experiments, or they represent figures of ancient mythology come to life. But they're heroes because they remember their kinship with humanity -- even if that kinship's mostly metaphorical in more than a few cases.
A WRAP-UP
Kingdom Come happened 10 years after Watchmen and Dark Knight. It's highly likely that without those two groundbreaking works and their opening the doors of the comic book world to some more realistic influences it would never have come to pass. But it's also likely that it, combined with Marvels, helped steer a course back towards the middle, away from the Clenched Teeth Armored Avengers who had flooded the medium. Their successes helped give creators like Waid, Ross and Busiek leverage to create more work according to their vision of the super-hero medium, in both of the Big 2 companies as well as independents.
Grimdark remains, and it remains a problem. DC's current storytelling woes owe something to their ridiculous "New 52" concept, but also to their leaning in that direction. Marvel has its movie mint, but its books struggle because of a stress on "event" stories rather than on the human dimension of their heroes -- which is what's always been their strength up until now. But a significant group in the comic industry recognizes its excesses for the dead end they are, and I think it's highly likely that stems from the kinds of changes that Kingdom Come helped usher in. Only time will tell whether they can be maintained -- and if there are actually comic books to read in the 2020 in which Kingdom Come is set, then we'll know whether or not they were.
