The Kingdom

The Kingdom

by Mark Waid

Written by Mark Waid; Art by various Continuing to look at a possible future of the DC Universe and it heroes, the young boy who survived the holocaust that consumed the farmlands of Kansas has grown up and judged Superman at fault for the destruction that he lived through. Using newly granted powers, Gog has set out on a mission to remove Superman from existence throughout all of time. Now it is up to the children of Batman, Robin, Flash, and Plastic Man to work together to save the Man of Steel and the world from the madman's quest.

Collecting THE KINGDOM #1-2 and the one-shots NEW YEAR'S EVIL: GOG, THE KINGDOM: KID FLASH, THE KINGDOM: NIGHTSTAR, THE KINGDOM: OFFSPRING, THE KINGDOM: PLANET KRYPTON and THE KINGDOM: SON OF THE BAT.

Genres: Comics, Graphic Novels, Dc Comics, Superman, Superheroes, Graphic Novels Comics, Fiction

232 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Mark Waid (born March 21, 1962 in Hueytown, Alabama) is an American comic book writer. He is best known for his eight-year run as writer of the DC Comics' title The Flash, as well as his scripting of the limited series Kingdom Come and Superman: Birthright, and his work on Marvel Comics' Captain America.

Reviews

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes picking up a book and flipping through the pages I can get a sense as to how good or bad the book is going to be – way too many word balloons, crappy art - some sort of weird vibe emanating from the pages. This one, gave off a chemical stench (a mixture of my old gym locker and formaldehyde) I assumed was from the ink (it’s printed on real, un-shiny paper).

The odor was actually the rare smell of failure for usually reliable Mark Waid.

Here Waid seems to be picking the bones from his must-read collaboration with Alex Ross, the Kingdom Come saga – trying to emphasize the cool parts, the parts that worked best before and adding a few up-close-and-personal glimpses. Although it’s a hot mess, there’s a few things to recommend it.

Barely.

In Kingdom Come, Kansas blew up with only one survivor – a kid. The kid, now all growed up, thinks that Superman is a savior, when in fact, it was Superman and the indifference of the rest of the geezer heroes that kind of led up to the Kansas-kaboom. The kid, William, starts a Superman church, but old guy Superman fesses up that he isn’t a savior, but in fact at fault for Kansas getting all blown up. The dude goes into a rage, which is when these a$$holes (with an agenda) step in…



…and turn the aforementioned Superman-loving-now-Superman-hating dude into Gog. Gog sets off to kill Supermen all over the time line.



This isn’t a bad thing, but it gets strange.



Huh?

Two Grumpy Old Men and Bea Arthur (the geriatric trio of Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman) head off into the past to punch that crazy whipper-snapper Gog senseless.

This is where the story fragments with issues dedicated to different heroes.

Batman and Talia al Ghul’s creepy-assed son is featured with Nightstar, the barely dressed daughter of Starfire and Nightwing.



Plastic Man’s kid, Offspring, who he kind of over-protected...



…wants to do the right thing, even though he isn’t taken seriously.



There’s a glimpse at Kid Flash, Iris, whose daddy, The Flash has a bit of conflict with his son about the family business.



This and the Offspring issue offer a few heartfelt moments.



A funny concept in Kingdom Come was the superhero themed restaurant, Planet Krypton. Here it gets the spotlight and is, in fact, haunted. Jinkies.



The book gets resolved rather quickly…



…but not before the revealing of Hypertime.



Hypertime!! What!?! Multiple Earths and now HYPERTIME!! Gives the middle finger to that meddling Rip Hunter.

Bottom line: This one is just about three stars. Taken as a whole, I’d only recommend it to anyone who absolutely loved Kingdom Come. The comic book enthusiast might want to check out the Kid Flash and Offspring issues.



They’re worth reading.

[Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this almost as much as Kingdom Come when I first read, continuing the story with time travel and hypertime worked well. As epic as Kingdom Come was, getting into the specifics of the future generation of heroes was fun. Mark Waid has earned his place as one of the best superhero writers for both DC and Marvel.

[Baba · Rating 3 out of 5]

The critically loathed sequel to Kingdom Come, where Gog is created from the Kansas event by the Quintessence, and sets about trying to kill Superman literally everyday. Introduces the concept of Hypertime. Not as bad as the Amazon reviews indicate. 6 out of 12.

[Supratim Dhar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Introduction to hypertime, which is going to be very important in DC.

[Paxton Holley · Rating 3 out of 5]

I just finished re-reading Kingdom Come, but I’d never read any of the spinoffs or sequels to the book despite it being one of my favorites. So I started with this one, as it was one of the earliest.

This was pretty good. Mark Waid delivers a prequel/sequel/epilogue to Kingdom Come and at the same time introduces Hypertime to the DC universe.

Gods like Shazam, Orion, Zeus, etc, give a man unfathomable power and he is corrupted by it. Blaming Superman for the world’s problems, he uses his powers to travel back through time killing Superman over and over again. We see the Kingdom Come Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman chase after this man, known as the villainous Gog, after he captures Wonder Woman’s and Superman’s newborn baby.

It’s a tour of alternate realities. And it’s a lot of fun. The one-shots in the middle of it all are okay at best, but the two issues of The Kingdom are really good.

[Felipe Díaz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Si bien considero que la historia de Kingdom Come no necesitaba una secuela esta historia ayuda a extender la mitología de una de las obras mas espectaculares qué se hayan creado.
Y pese a que no haya sido dibujada por Alex Ross aún así es absolutamente disfrutable y recomendable.

[Hrishabh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The story is not as satisfying as Justice & Kingdom Come and it definitely suffers greatly without the art of Alex Ross

[Earl · Rating 2 out of 5]

Don't get me wrong. I loved the concept; however, I believe Kingdom Come does not need any sequel, and any attempt to do so would be a substandard attempt.

[Drew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not nearly as good as Kingdom Come but still somewhat interesting,

[Rod Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

#ThrowbackThursday - Back in the '90s, I used to write comic book reviews for the website of a now-defunct comic book retailer called Rockem Sockem Comics. (Collect them all!)

From the May 1999 edition with a theme of "DC Rules!":

INTRODUCTION

DC rules! DC rocks!
Marvel fans can chew my socks!

EVENTS WORTHY OF THE NAME

THE KINGDOM #1-2 (DC Comics)
THE KINGDOM: SON OF THE BAT #1 (DC Comics)
THE KINGDOM: NIGHTSTAR #1 (DC Comics)
THE KINGDOM: OFFSPRING #1 (DC Comics)
THE KINGDOM: KID FLASH #1 (DC Comics)
THE KINGDOM: PLANET KRYPTON #1 (DC Comics)
ALL STAR COMICS #1-2 (DC Comics)
ADVENTURE COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
ALL-AMERICAN COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
NATIONAL COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
SENSATION COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
SMASH COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
STAR SPANGLED COMICS #1 (DC Comics)
THRILLING COMICS #1 (DC Comics)

Once a quarter I look forward to DCs newest "Event Week." It's a week when no regular titles are scheduled to ship. To fill the gap, DC has given creators the chance to put out six to ten comics all related to a new concept or a title relaunch. "Tangent Comics," "Girl Frenzy," and "New Year's Evil" have all been fine efforts but the most recent two events have been the best.

THE KINGDOM allowed writer Mark Waid to bring the Elseworlds alternate future of the KINGDOM COME limited series that he created with painter Alex Ross into contact with the regular continuity of the DC Universe. Though THE KINGDOM did not have Alex Ross handling the art chores, it did have Hypertime -- the theory of interwoven and diverging timelines which effectively restores the DC Multiverse. With Hypertime, all stories ever told in a DC Comic have happened in continuity. To find a world where Hal Jordan is still Green Lantern, you simply need to find the right branch of time. Those old ridiculous super-ape stories that littered the DC Universe of the Sixties happened, but in a diverging timeline that no longer intersects the timeline of the main DC Universe. So even if particular stories are not official parts of the current timestream, they still happened and are out there somewhere in the flow of time. Sure, it's a bit goofy, but I'll take what I can get.

In addition to Hypertime, THE KINGDOM was gifted by some of Waid's best scripting ever. OFFSPRING, about the son of Plastic Man, was funny, yes, but was also the most touching tale of father and son I've ever read in the realm of comics. Likewise, KID FLASH was a wonderful tale about a daughter coming to terms with her detached and distracted father. PLANET KRYPTON was simply haunting, figuratively and literally. And SON OF THE BAT and NIGHTSTAR were compelling bookends following the separate adventures of a highly romantic pair of star-crossed lovers: the son of Batman (Bruce Wayne) and Talia (villain Ra's Al Ghul's daughter) and the daughter of Nightwing (Dick Grayson) and Starfire (Koriand'r).

Following on the heels of THE KINGDOM was the low-key but well-executed "The Justice Society Returns!" Digging up old lapsed titles from DC's long publishing history, "The Justice Society Returns!" tells a tale of the original superhero group -- the Justice Society -- when it was at its peak near the end of World War II. ALL STAR COMICS #1 and #2 tell the beginning and ending of the tale. Following the traditional format of Justice Society tales wherein the heroes split into teams for separate adventures in the middle chapters of the story, the other seven books feature random team-ups of two or three Justice Society members.

Featuring a who's who of solid DC writers but mainly spearheaded by writers James Robinson and David Goyer of DC's excellent STARMAN series, "The Justice Society Returns!" is a straightforward action/adventure tale. What raises it above average fare, however, is the nostalgia it evokes in the old comics fan. All the little character touches, bittersweet allusions to the fate of various heroes, and various in-jokes may be lost on newbies but I don't care. This story is for me and the dozen other Justice Society fans that are still alive. Oh, all right, the story is good enough that newbies may actually start to figure out why us old fogies are so attached to the heroes of DC's Golden Age.

My favorite aspect of the Justice Society Event is the recurrent theme of the underdog persevering. In almost each title, the most unlikely hero or guest star plays a pivotal role in defeating the supercharged bad guys. I hope Robinson and Goyer bring this same gumption to their revival of the Justice Society in the regular JSA title next month. Selling the Justice Society in today's market is going to be a longshot, but I think these guys have the mettle to pull it off.

Thank you, DC, for make these Events eventful, enjoyable, and eminently readable. I can't wait to see what comes next!

THE KINGDOM - Grade: A-
"The Justice Society Returns!" - Grade: B+

[Lexie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay so I took a break from Marvel's Exiles to read this (as I just found my copy)...which is actually very similar to Exiles.

When I originally read this, back in middle school (I think) I hadn't yet read Kingdom Come by Waid & Ross. Well. Not the COMIC. I had read the novelization and it made me sad enough that I didn't think I wanted to read the comic.

(I would read it years later and indeed need tissues)

So when I read this originally, I took everything at face value. It was pretty deep into DC's love of Elseworlds, so it was easy to convince myself the individual issues were like them.

Of the individual character issues, "Kid Flash" was my favorite. Not just because it confirmed my negative feelings towards Wally West, but also Iris was so cool to me. She refused to back down, refused to give in, refused to just...let things work out how they will. She became a hero worthy of the Fladh mantle (for good or ill).

"Nightstar", about the daughter of Nightwing & Starfire finding her own path to udnerstanding the intersection of heroism, sacrifice and mortality, was gut wrenching when I was younger and my own parents had freshly split. Now it reads a little...immature.

"Son of the Bat", about the son of Batman & Talia al'Ghul (yes...ironic considering his current son, Damien) is...honestly kind of a brat. Unlike Nightstar, who clung to an admittedly childish, but sincere belief that her father was an invincible hero and could not truly fathom a world where that wasn't true, Ibn...was a brat. Essentially, back in the late 90s Waid gave us Damien before Damien was a thing.

"Planet Krypton" didn't resonate with me as an early teen, but as an adult almost 20 years out of HS and looking back at the 'what might have beens', Rose's doubts and feelings ring fucking true.

"Offspring" and "Gog"...I just hated. So let's skip past those.

So we get to the core of this mini-series sequel to a momentous comic book event. "The Kingdom". The kind of 'hey so maybe we didn't fix this so much?' question no one asked after Kingdom Come.

It was...okay? Later Hypertime, which this whole mini-series seemed to REALLY be about, would later be importantish to the DCU. As much as anything really matters in DC before multiple reboots.

Overall this isn't horrible. There are still interesting moments strewn throughout and I certainly wish for certain ideas to come to fruition Nightstar let's goooo, but largely this isn't essential reading. Fun, but easy to miss.

[R.C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm into Kingdom Come more for Mark Waif than Alex Ross to be honest: I'm one of those writer-followers, not artist-followers. I won't *not* read a comic if the art is great and the writing middling (Tradd Moore's recent Doctor Strange mini, Ales Kot and Marco Rudy's Winter Soldier come to mind), but I want to enjoy what I'm reading, not just what I'm looking at. Bad art will make me cringe or grimace (sorry, Humberto Ramos, it was not meant to be!) but I find it way more worth pushing past.

I saw the average rating for this one right before starting it and thought "Oh...." And was halfway through it going, "Is the ending going to be complete shit? When does this get bad or middling??"

The Kid Flash, Planet Krypton, and Offspring issues are, I think, the obvious standouts, but there wasn't a bit of it I was not all for. It wasn't the greatest thing ever, but Imit wasn't ho-hum, either. Waid has said (to my very own face, when he was hanging around a local shop that was slow at the time, offering to sign my enormous pile of books written by him that I guilty said I didn't want to trouble him with) that he struggles to be interested in writing characters he didn't grow up with—but here we are with all legacy characters, and he does phenomenal work with them, folding in those legacy ideas brilliantly.

I haven't read a lot of Plastic Man or anything, yet I was deeply involved in the young Offspring's plight in trying to be a hero instead of a joke, all the while seeming to appreciate the joke. Kid Flash (Iris West, natch) is in a similar position, yet almost the opposite: Wally has become detached, and only expects greatness from her brother Barry, and she desperately wants his validation. Planet Krypton is about a server who questions her life decisions, deep regrets, and assumptions about the people around her.

All of these tie into overarching themes of excess hero worship, continuity cop-ing (which is sort of amusingly weird, coming from an aficionado like Waid!), and how to appreciate and accept the totality of comics history in all its weird (especially Silver Age) oddities (okay, that part's a little more clearly Waid).

I know a lot of the worship for Kingdom Come comes back to Ross (who was apparently upset by this story), but as neat as it is to see "realistic" superheroes, it's the characters I give a shit about, and this has character in abundance.

[Rizzie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is supposed to be a sequel to Kingdom Come, but it feels more like a weird afterthought. The structure is pretty strange, with the bulk of the pagecount dedicated to standalone one-shots that explore various characters in the KC universe. Those are bookended by two issues which tell the actual larger scale story. The relationship between the standalones and the bookends is thin at best. The bookends would be better served without the standalones, to be honest. Unfortunately, the standalones are also the best part, because the main story is pretty bad. Kid Flash in particular was enjoyable, which should be expected from a Mark Waid Flash story. And Frank Quitely's art (in the Offspring issue) is always a delight.

Kingdom Come had such a grand sense of scale and gravity, even in its sillier moments. None of that is present. The art, while competent and potentially enjoyable in any other context, is one of the most severe downgrades in a sequel I've ever seen. It really cheapens the KC universe when you see these characters depicted in the same old cartoony house style instead of that signature statuesque Ross style. Then again, maybe it's better to cheapen these characters than to cheapen Alex Ross' talent by wasting his time with this lame story.

The truth is, this is one of those stories that wasn't told because a writer wanted to say something. It was written to explain away continuity problems in the Post-Crisis universe, which was starting to accrue just as much baggage as its predecessors. It's really not a good sign for your worldbuilding when every other event has to rewrite the rules of how continuity works just so every writer can feel like their favorite childhood story is still officially canon somehow, no matter how many decades have passed. Kind of pathetic, actually.

There's no real meat here. It's less of a sequel to KC, and more of a combination of an epilogue, side stories, and walls of exposition about the new rules of continuity in the DCU. Very disappointing.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

An enjoyable read which began much more layered and ended decidedly less so, this still has some strong stories. The most necessary and human of this collection of “Kingdom” stories follows a decidedly unheroic sounding waitress who finds she is the hero she needed all along. Outside of that tale, the idea of Supermen being killed throughout time is a great premise that begins strong but seems to burn out as it reaches an end that seems to lower the stakes considerably. As a read, it is fun and light enough and long term fans will love the images that appear near the end that offer glimpses of classic tales before the various Crises, Zero Hours, etc. etc., but as a follow up to the Kingdom Come storyline, this feels like a lowered stakes manner of connecting the then current DC Universe to the harsher Kingdom Come universe.

It is enjoyable, but the most heroic story is the human waitress, while the rest seems to be just a bridging story between two universes, with a strong start and a lot of homage, but a somewhat disengaging finale.

Completist and nostalgia fans will enjoy it and I did like it in that way, but as a vein of Kingdom Come, it fell flat. As a professor once quipped to me, “The arguments are so strong because the stakes are so low,” and this book seemed to echo that sentiment as it ended.

[Pryder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Mark Waid should have left well enough alone. This doesn't have the same impact as Kingdom Come and almost serves to water down the original. I can see why Alex Ross declined to do this over creative differences.

It's a mixed bag some of the chapters are really good when you take them on their own merits. Some of the artwork really stands out and is excellent. Ariel Olivetti does a great job as usual and Frank Quitely's art is perfectly suited to the Offspring chapter. Overall I thought the story was a 2 and the art a 4 out of 5 when taken as a whole.

Unfortunately this proves to be another example of the law of diminishing returns (or sequels in this case).

[James Bowman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can see why some folks (including, apparently, Alex Ross) don't like this sequel to Kingdom Come. It's definitely not as iconic or memorable as the original story. Still, there's a lot here to appreciate - the villain's backstory (and his complete disregard for time travel rules), the insights into the next generation of heroes, some neat callbacks to earlier stories (such as the first Crisis), and the introduction of Hypertime (not that it was used as well as it could have been, before the DC multiverse proper returned years later). The best story in here is probably Planet Krypton, which interweaves the story of a woman regretting her past with literal ghosts from the DCU's past. (A-)

[Daniel Santos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Muito distante do Reino do amanhã e protagonizado por um vilão caricato
apesar de uma origem interessante Gog não tem background desenvolvido para sustentar uma saga , suas ações e motivações são genéricas e as soluções encontradas pelos heróis para lidar com ele tb são ingenuas e pouco inovadoras. as demais edições especiais apresentam variantes dos filhos de alguns heróis com destaque para mais filho do Batman com thalia que aqui não é o Damien
no geral uma história spin off pouco necessária com algumas boas ideias apenas

[Marina · Rating 1 out of 5]

Rubbish. Rubbish rubbish rubbish. Senseless time travel plot, confused character motivations, hurried narrative - a very poor sequel to one of my favourite DC comic book stories, Kingdom Come.
But the art was cool, I guess.

[Trevor Dailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

This has the misfortune to be an attempt to sequel/prequel the amazing Kingdom Come. The art is ok but not awful. I like the look into the next generation of heroes, but the main part is kind of lackluster.

[Ali · Rating 3 out of 5]

Silver fox Superman tackles early retirement, parenthood, and the space-time continuum. LOTS of questions about Jonathan's parentage. #shady

[Brian Dyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very poor sequel to the excellent Kingdom Come. Avoid.

[Nicolas · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kingdom Come is a series that is only hurt by sequels. While there was some cool elements to this, I think they should have left well enough alone.

[Nicholas · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is not good. The Offspring and waitress stories are ok but the rest is drek. The art is terrible across the board. Pretty disappointing overall.

[Diego · Rating 2 out of 5]

Para ser la secuela de uno de los mejores cómics de DC, esta obra se queda lejos de la mitad del camino.

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as Kingdom Come.

[Brady Powell · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hard to follow up the greatest comic of all time (in my opinion), but man this is an odd one. 2.5/5

[Tony Laplume · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange thing happened to Kingdom Come on its way to becoming the next landmark in comic book storytelling. It was so heavily hyped upon original serialization in 1996 that it became easy to ignore in the years that followed. That's the kind of mindset the culture took with the new touchstones of that arts, starting around that time. The more heavily hyped and celebrated and successful something was from the very start, the more skeptical people became, the more reluctant they were to keep its memory alive. That's why all those movies that win Best Picture at the Oscars these days make so little money, compared to blockbusters, because this is the era of backlash, and protecting the achievements of the past. Nothing can prove so successful today that it can't be easily deflated.

Funny enough, Mark Waid helped bury his own masterpiece with a fairly rapidly-developed follow-up that didn't share the sensational art of Alex Ross, whose previous Marvels project had taken an elegiac look at superheroes and helped define a new standard in comic artwork. While fans will recognize one of Waid's collaborators in The Kingdom as a continuing standout in the field, Frank Quitely (his lasting claim to fame has since become All Star Superman with Grant Morrison, which came about a decade later), most of them were either nonstarters (who nonetheless produced excellent work for this project) or well-respected veterans (who otherwise did work that looked nothing like Ross's lush pages).

Worse yet, The Kingdom purports to be a follow-up but ultimately addresses a different matter entirely (which DC would later rephrase, with more success, in Infinite Crisis and the landmark weekly series 52). The best that can be said about it is that Kingdom Come's original writer came back to play in the same sandbox, which is something DC had long and desperately wanted with a different work and writer entirely (Watchmen, Alan Moore, and we all know how that turned out).

For all that, The Kingdom succeeds wildly in embracing the themes of legacy that its predecessor had only brushed on. Standalone issues collected in this volume explore what amounted to a second attempt at what DC had attempted to do in the '70s, produce a second generation from the classic Justice Society characters, this time mostly featuring more fan-friendly editions: the son of Batman, the daughter of Dick Grayson and Starfire ('80s fans of the massively popular New Teen Titans never gotten anything better as a reward), even the daughter of Waid's own Wally West, whom he helped become a third generation icon in the '90s. It's perhaps telling that the comparatively obscure Plastic Man, and his son (this is the segment drawn by Quitely), has the best material in the volume, and that the closest rival is a street-level, normal girl's struggles to reconcile with her past.

The story of The Kingdom is otherwise a cautionary tale featuring Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman, who had emerged as the heart of Kingdom Come, the old guard that had finally buried its differences and become, once and for all, a family. As in Marvel's later Civil War, however, great tragedy had to happen to make it possible. Waid envisions further biblical allusions (that was one of the famous undercurrents of Kingdom Come, with a preacher as the nominal lead character), a Gog to his previous Magog. Where Magog had been a prop, Gog was about the limitations of the human experience, his misconceptions and mistakes translated to massive scale as he becomes a powerful foe only defeated when someone (viewers of DC's Legends of Tomorrow will recognize the name Rip Hunter) points out, essentially, that he didn't realize that he was in a comic book.

Taken as a whole, The Kingdom is a perfect and also perfectly flawed vision, the more earthbound version of Waid's Kingdom Come, not just what the same story looks like without Ross's art, but when comics conventions are not only acknowledged but relied on. If you've never read Kingdom Come, just know that it's the next great literary superhero phenomenon, twenty years old this year and still waiting to be rediscovered. If you feel intimidated by that thought, have a look at The Kingdom instead, and just know, Kingdom Come is better, but what makes it work is inside The Kingdom, too.

[Dovile · Rating 2 out of 5]

Despite this book being a sequel to Kingdom Come and having the same characters, it's just too different both in art style and in the quality of the story itself to be a worthy follow-up. While Kingdom Come was a real piece of art both in its stunning art by Alex Ross and in the poetical story which both set it apart from other superhero graphic novels, 'The Kingdom' is drawn in a customary comics style (while it's decent, still, there are better drawn graphic novels from the same period), and the story... well, if you've read Zero Hour: Crisis in Time or DC One Million events, you might have some general idea about just how little logic and character development it has.

In short, a man, whom Superman has saved from death, worships Superman as a kind of a god to the point that he builds a Superman church, but later the man becomes disilusioned with Superman, looses his faith and the meaning of his entire life, and at that point a bunch of very wise (insert sarcasm here) cosmic superbeings for some reason, that I'm not sure I completely understood, decide to give this guy god-like powers and the whole knowledge and history of the universe (or something close). The guy goes nuts, calls himself Gog, decides Superman is not a messiah but an antichrist and sets off to get the universe rid of Supes by killing him over and over again by going back and back in time, in the process of which Gog also abducts Superman's newborn son. Of course, the great three DC heroes and a selection of hero offspring can't have that and come after Gog to stop him. Thankfully, this story is short (as compared to, say, the mess called Crisis on Infinite Earths) and has better dialogues (no idiotic shouting or repetition of what powers the character has and what he/she is doing).

The only parts of this whole story that I actually liked were the part featuring Nightwing's daughter (story 'Nightstar') and the waitress' story ('Planet Krypton'), both of which had very little to do with the main Gog storyline. Also, the bit about hypertime was not bad either, because it ties in DC's Elseworlds stories into one universe, and if you've read any Elseworlds stories, look closely and you might recognize images from some of them.

Don't expect much of this graphic novel and you won't be disappointed, and maybe even find a few good bits within. Better yet, consider this a fanfic based on 'Kingdom Come'. Also, some Kingdom characters and events appear or are later mentioned in Superman, Superboy, Teen Titans issues (and maybe some other comics that I haven't read), so may want to read 'The Kingdom' just for this reason.

[Max Solis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Esta secuela de Kingdom Come está bastante cool. Es un cómic enorme y bien elaborado. Mark Waid nunca queda a deber cuando se trata de escritura.

Si bien el dibujo no es tan épico como el dibujo del cómic antecesor a este, ya que Alex Ross es insuperable y Ariel Olivetti hace lo que puede, el dibujo neoclásico de los años 2000 hace un trabajo aceptable para lo que la historia requiere.

Me gustó ver el regreso del Superman de Tierra 22 y notar de primera mano su relación con la Wonder Woman de su Tierra. Además, qué grata sorpresa ver que se hayan casado y procrearan un hijo, Jonathan, el cual será el centro y protagonista de la historia, aunque sea un bebé. Bueno, tampoco es que lo veamos solo como un bebé, gracias al avance y desembocadura de la historia. Otras historias paralelas, como la de Iris (no la esposa de Barry, sino la hija de Wally), Nightstar, Offspring y otros, complementan muy bien esta trama maravillosa.

[Victor Orozco · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad at all.

Mark Waid made a wonderful story that earns great praise to this day. This story continues the story. But it's not so much a sequel or a spin-off but more like a long epilogue.

Superman is caught up looking for a man that ends up being an enemy, so in order to stop him, several young heroes must go back in time to stop this foe. From the children of Flash, Plastic Man, Zatanna, Big Barda, Nightwing, and Batman are involved as well as the mighty forces of several beings do their part to save the day. It’s okay, could have been stronger. I really wish they could have kept the story in the Kingdom Come Universe instead of going to the main DC Universe.

Still, I do love reading about the children of Flash, Batman and of course my favorite pairing, Superman and Wonder Woman. Could have been stronger though.

C+