Kingdom Come revisited

[The Toyroom]

^ That's probably true....It's gotten very confusing as to what aspects are now a part of the regular DCU...It's like they (DC) wanted to go down the path 100% toward Kingdom Come but then got cold feet and only walked halfway down the road before they turned around and went back home.....

[samurainoir]

I did.
Sorry to Interupt your circle jerk ... , I just got off of work.

Seriously though ..., having not read the Actual Kingdom Come story, but only a few yrs back ..., it leaves me at ok. I wasn't around when the hype was delievered, and I liked the follow up in this actual time line better.

I can understand that. Back in the day, it was a huge metaphorical response to what was going on in the industry at the time, as well as Waid and Ross' love letter to the Silver Age.

Couple that with Ross' mind blowing art, and most folks had never seen anything like this prior.

Now there is an entire cottage industry of utra-realistic artists that Ross has inspired. I just noticed that a bunch of covers that I would have sworn up and down were Ross', are in fact by a guy who does old school nineties Ross better than Ross himself does these days (particularly since he's almost completely done away with any solid blacks in his paintings in favour of dayglo palettes in his silhouetting).

Watchmen, Dark Knight and Kingdom Come would not seem as edgy or innovative to anyone reading the work now side by side with comparable material that has been published more recently.

[samurainoir]

What was interesting about Thy Kingdom Come was that Ross finally got to introduce HIS version of what Gog and Magog were supposed to be. The same idea he outlined for his original proposal for The Kingdom immediately after he was flush with the success of Kingdom Come in the nineties.

Gog as an old god of the Fourth World, that were replaced by The New Gods. He even got in the bit where Magog was forced to take down his creator/mentor Gog. Of course according to Kirby, the subtext for his New Gods was always his way of thumbing his nose at Marvel. He considered the "old gods" to be Thor and all the pantheons he created and left behind at Marvel, replaced by his new creations, the New Gods.

[madmarva]

Man, calling Waid and Ross journeyman creators is a fairly cynical view of their careers.

While I certainly appreciate Kingdom Come, I'm not sure it's either of the creator's best work.

Ross was basically the Neal Adams of the 1990s. While he was exactly prolific, his artistic choices with the characters of Superman and Batman are still influencing the characters. For the better part of a decade, he was the biggest name in the industry. He could still work on whatever character he wanted at Marvel or DC or anywhere and call his shot. But the guy has made so much money, he only works on what he wants to do.

Waid put Wally West on the map as a character, and he had runs on Captain America and Fantastic Four that are highly regarded, just to mention a few. As the chief at Boom, he's truly ushering a diverse line of books onto the shelves and up until recently contributing solid if not fine work on Amazing Spider-Man.

Their names sell books. Their projects get press within industry based on their reputations popularity not a PR push by their publishers. That makes them stars in my book, but I guess that view is subjective.

They're not Kirby or Eisner or Lee or or Siegle and Shuster. They've basically played with the company toys rather than creating pillar-like characters, but that's basically been the case with the big two since the 1980s.

[DC_Guy]

I think it was a bit of a mistake for both of them to revisit the work once it was finished.

This.

[kingdom warrior]

This, Marvels,Watchmen,Origins of Marvel comics and a few others are always on my personal coffee table.