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SEQUENTIAL CULTURE #20 26 Jan 04 |
The DC Canon, Part 3: The
Justice League’s Kingdom Come |
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JULIAN DARIUS |
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THE DC CANON Read Part 1: Batman. Read Part 2: Superman. You are reading Part 3: Kingdom Come. Read Part 4: The Justice
League. Read Part 5: Superman: Red Son. Read Part 6: Alan Moore’s Swamp
Thing. Read Part 7: Neil Gaiman’s The
Sandman. Read Part 8: Vertigo, Part 1. Read Part 9: Vertigo, Part 2. Read Part 10: Vertigo, Part
3. |
DC Comics’ super-heroes star in a plethora
of ongoing series, mini-series, specials, original graphic novels of various sizes,
and collections every month.
Characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman are more iconic
than any other super-heroes around.
Yet for all of their sales, some have not explored the best that these
icons have to offer. This, then, acts as a guide for those new
to DC’s characters, for those who may be missing a classic of one of them,
and for those who simply wish to argue what merits such concern. Lists of such a nature are always a matter
of some debate and always involve some subjectivity. They are, nonetheless, not without their
purposes of stirring thought, guiding future reading, and solidifying the
canon. Take this one as you will. The Justice League |
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It is worth noting that the Justice League’s early success
inspired Marvel to launch a super-hero team book -- a little title known as Fantastic
Four. |
The Justice League has a venerable
history. It is worth noting that its
early success inspired Marvel to launch a super-hero team book -- a little
title known as Fantastic Four.
Marvel’s The Avengers, if anything, felt like a closer copy of
the Justice League. Most importantly,
the Justice League in theory represents the most world-spanning tales of the
DC universe -- those threats too large for any single hero to effectively
combat. While the team began as the best of DC’s
characters coddled together as a team, the line-up changed over the years,
most notably in the 1970s, when characters like Gypsy took prominence. The post-Crisis DC Universe of the
mid-1980s saw the title relaunched as a humor book staring mostly
second-stringers with a few super-stars.
The mid-1990s saw the title return to its original line-up, only to
slowly morph. |
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The greatest Justice League story is Kingdom Come. |
The greatest Justice League story is
1996’s Kingdom Come -- a four-part prestige format Elseworlds (i.e.
out of continuity) series, expanded by several pages for the trade paperback
and hardcover collections. To some, Kingdom
Come’s inclusion here might seem an error of categorization: many think of it as a Superman story, and
he is indeed the most prominent character.
But the story prominently features Batman, Captain Marvel, Wonder
Woman, and others as well -- giving each far more time than they would receive
in a Superman tale. And the real
story of Kingdom Come is the story of the Justice League’s proactive
future war against super-villains and its consequences. The series featured painted art by Alex
Ross -- then fairly recently off his collaboration with Kurt Busiek on Marvels,
the Marvel mini-series that (it is not too much to say) redefined
super-heroics. And, indeed, his
artwork was really the star of the work.
But while Kingdom Come is not as important historically as Marvels,
it would not make this list without a hell of a story. Who exactly wrote that story, however, has
been the source of some controversy.
Mark Waid is credited as writer, although Alex Ross not only designed
characters but reportedly laid out the plot prior to Waid coming on board as
writer. In the wake of the series’s
spectacular success, Ross publicly repudiated Waid for claiming too much
credit for the story. Others have
pointed out the similarity between the story, featuring heroes and villains
coming together in larger groups before an apocalyptic battle, and Twilight,
a DC Universe-wide crossover proposed in the mid-to-late-1980s by Alan Moore
prior to his departure from the company.
Although DC rejected that proposal, it briefly circulated on the
internet (before DC ordered the websites that posted it to cease and desist)
and continued to circulate in rumor as a great never-completed project. However comics historians parse the
writing and origin of Kingdom Come, the writing remains notable for
its ominous tone. As Marvels
told its story through an unpowered human reporter, Kingdom Come
focused on an elderly religious man who is shown the story as it happens by
the Spectre -- thus providing a mouthpiece to comment on the events in ways
the protagonists would not. Visions
of apocalypse set the tone from the start, leading almost inexorably to the
detonation of an atomic bomb and the elimination of most of the heroes and
the villains in the conclusion -- a scene complete with a graveyard of
bizarre skeletons. Set in the future, Superman has retired in
the wake of a new wave of violent heroes while Batman rules Gotham City with
an iron fist. This represents rather
obviously the turn, in the wake of Watchmen, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, and other “revisionist”
or “deconstructionist” works of the 1980s -- or, more precisely, their effect
on mainstream, less artistic super-hero comics. The Superman titles, for example, dramatically increased their
violence and depiction of civilian casualties after Superman returned from
his much-publicized death in 1993.
While such violence was seen as a move towards realism, the
fulfillment of a path begun in the social commentary of 1970s super-hero
comics (such as at least superficially addressing drugs and racism), many in
the 1990s increasingly felt that this trend had reached a dead end. Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid, and Alan Moore had
publicly sought a new path, one uniting the intelligence revisionism had
given super-heroics with the unbridled imagination and joy of the Silver
Age. Marvels, which retold
Marvel’s Silver Age history from a newly unified and humanized perspective,
had articulated this complaint in fictional form for the first time. Set in the future with a unified
narrative, Kingdom Come would both more fully and less satisfactorily
address the same concern. This is, then, a Justice League story
about the super-hero genre itself -- deceptively cast as an entertaining,
dramatic, and unified narrative. |
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The world of Kingdom Come is one of a plethora of violent
super-heroes and super-villains. The
sky is literally clogged with them, as seen early on in the series -- an
image both horrifying and wondrous. |
The world of Kingdom Come is one of
a plethora of violent super-heroes and super-villains, all of them the
descendents -- literally and figuratively -- of DC’s various characters. The sky is literally clogged with them, as
seen early on in the series -- an image both horrifying and wondrous. Indeed, horrifying -- particularly the
horrifying genius of narrative super-hero implications -- can easily be seen
as the central emotion evoked by revisionism. Wonder, on the other hand, is classically the emotion that
reconstructionism -- this “new path” -- is designed to evoke. These two emotions and super-heroic
narrative patterns battle for dominance over Kingdom Come, ultimately
producing a work of mixed results. Following the irresponsible pursuit by
super-heroes of a super-villain, the hero Captain Atom is literally torn
apart, causing a nuclear explosion that renders much of the American Midwest
-- including Kansas, Superman’s boyhood home -- a radioactive wasteland. Spurred by this to come out of retirement,
Superman begins to put both super-heroes and super-villains in their
places: specifically, joining him or
being imprisoned in enormous, overflowing gulags. This proactive action may be seen as a prefiguration of The
Authority’s philosophy of the same under writer Mark Millar; it has its
roots, however, in Marvel’s Squadron Supreme, knock-offs of the Justice
League who -- in the 1980s Squadron Supreme mini-series -- took over
the world in the wake of global devastation. While many super-heroes -- prominently
including Wonder Woman, a newly archetypal Green Lantern, and a newly
archetypal Flash -- side with him and his new Justice League, others form an
alliance for freedom against this well-thinking Gestapo. This includes Batman, ever the staunch
individualist, and the likeminded -- such as Green Arrow. This also includes Lex Luthor and other
prominent villains, who control Captain Marvel and who form a separate
group. Tensions mount until the final
battle -- between the Justice League and those who will not trade their
freedom for safety -- a battle terminated by a U.N.-launched nuclear strike,
designed to eliminate these gathered super-powered beings, made newly
dangerous by their proactive policies. In the most important sequence in terms of
the book’s statement on super-heroics, Superman holds the cracked roof of the
United Nations, furious over the nuclear deaths he witnessed and openly
contemplating collapsing that roof to kill the humans within. Pushed to his limits, Superman
contemplates an action that would place him on the road to world
dictator. Almost needless to say --
“almost” only because the story, while ultimately conservative, is so good --
Superman regains his senses. Following this, Superman and the other
survivors pledge to live among humans, to guide and use their power but not
as a separate force -- and not behind masks.
The idea is the eradication of the boundary between human and
metahuman, but this idea -- however noble -- inevitably produces
friction. The redemptive denouement
provided for the collected editions -- in which Superman and Wonder Woman are
having a child and are fully reconciled with Batman -- only adds to this
friction. The whole is one denouncing
violence in super-heroics while containing some of the most violent acts in
super-hero history. The story is one
showing how truly different super-powered beings are from normal
humans -- through touching upon the radical implications of those beings’
powers and even through focusing on those beings -- that nonetheless
concludes with a promise to eradicate that division, a promise the narrative
itself never fulfills. The work seems
to want to be a reconstructionist work (along the lines of Marvels,
Kurt Busiek’s Astro City, or Alan Moore’s Supreme) -- and
espouses those values -- but that feels equally revisionist or
deconstructionist in its violence, realism, and concerns. Like a classic revisionist work, the world
changes radically from super-heroic presence. But behind the scenes is a genuine sense of wonder -- cast in
the form of nostalgia: panel after
panel are filled with unnamed characters without any dialogue about whom, by
their very costumes, one can guess their parentage, inspiration, and even
some of their backstories. Whereas
many full reconstructionist works wallow in nostalgia, Kingdom Come
places all of this nostalgia in the backgrounds, hardly distracting the
unfamiliar reader. The result can be
schizophrenic: nostalgic backgrounds
and character designs mixed with a violent, revisionist narrative that argues
precisely against such narratives. |
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Perhaps even at the expense of its status as a unified work of
art, Kingdom Come’s contradictory urges make it all the more tense,
all the more gripping, ponderable, and dense a work. |
It is, nonetheless, a classic. An intellectual patchwork, perhaps, but a
gripping tale. Perhaps even at the
expense of its status as a unified work of art, Kingdom Come’s
contradictory urges make it all the more tense, all the more gripping,
ponderable, and complex a work. The series’s success demanded a sequel,
but Alex Ross refused to participate -- much as he earlier had refused a
possible sequel to Marvels. In
December 1998, DC offered The Kingdom, a sequel consisting of two
bookend issues and several one-shots focusing on various characters -- all
written by Mark Waid but illustrated by a variety of artists. Featuring Kingdom Come’s characters
interacting with the present-day DC Universe (breaking the rule against
mixing Elseworlds stories with in-continuity tales), the series concluded
with the introduction of Hypertime, a concept allowing such interaction in
the future (and essentially returning a limited form of the multiple
dimensions which abounded prior to DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths). Most expressed disappointment with the
sequel -- which in its very appearance was inferior, lacking painted art or
the prestige of Kingdom Come’s prestige format (printed on paper of
higher quality in thin books with spines rather than on pamphlet-style
comics). Even if the whole remains an
artistic failure, certain issues had greater or lesser merit. Most notably, Alex Ross pointed out that
the sequel -- which featured numerous heroes in costume running around
together -- contradicted the spirit of Kingdom Come’s conclusion,
which promised an end to masks and to the division of the super-powered and
the human. While this excellent point
demonstrates the errors made in the thinking of the sequel, it also
demonstrates the contradictions inherent in the original. After all, promising such integration in a
dramatic scene is one thing:
delivering it in narrative form, which neither original nor sequel
accomplished, is altogether another. |
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Read more about Kingdom Come on Sequart.com. |
To Be Continued Although this essay represents only an
evaluation of Kingdom Come, that work in particular really deserves
such an unprecedented consideration.
Given this and the length of this essay, our examination of the
Justice League’s classic stories will have to be split into two columns. Watch for the second part on Sequart.com
sometime next week. |
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Read every Sequential Culture on
Sequart.com! Read about the author on our About page. Julian Darius can be reached at julian@sequart.com. Discuss this column online on Sequart.com’s messageboards. |
Read more about the
Justice League on Sequart.com. |
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