Kingdom Come – Mark Waid & Alex Ross (DC Comics)
This visual novel is set in a not so distant future, a future where superheroes are very common. The problem is, they have forgotten what heroism really is and what a superhero is suppose to be, leaving the people they should protect fear for their lives.
The Justice League have gone into semi-retirement, having retreated from the public eye. However, after a disastrous fight where the superhero Magog causes The Parasite to split Captain Atom open, causing a nuclear explosion killing millions, Superman will have to leave his secluded life to set things right again.
It is an older Justice League we get to meet in this visual novel, Superman having left the spotlight, Wonder Woman having been stripped of her status by the amazons, and the Batman sitting in his cave keeping control over Gotham with the help of heavy surveillance and machines. And neither of them really agrees on how the situation with Earth’s rampant superheroes and villains should be handled.
It’s a good setup for the story, which is told through the eyes of a former priest, tagging along The Spectre, dropping into different happenings throughout the story as ghosts. The visual style here is colorful, but there isn’t much linework, which can make some panels hard to follow when there’s is a lot happening. And god damn do they cram a lot of action into some of these panels. There is like 400 different superheroes featured throughout this comic in various sized roles. The problem is that so much of the fights are between so many different characters that I can’t really become totally invested in many of them. With that said there is some more epic stand-offs that definitively catches the attention in great way.
A lot of things to find for a DC fan in this, I’m sure I missed 99 percent of it not being that broadly into the DC universe. The story is the definitely the strong part here, and there’s nothing wrong with the visuals apart from the few things mentioned above. It’s a must read for fans of DC, but frankly everyone who’s into comics should read this. If you’re new going into comics perhaps this isn’t the place to start, but definitely put it on your reading list.