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Similar to episodes of The Simpsons (1989-) that have proven themselves to be clairvoyant in recent years, Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s seminal 1996 work Kingdom Come is an oddly prescient tale for this particular moment in history that the world finds itself in. The future that Waid and Ross envision is one that looks strangely similar to that which exists today, a world suffering from the consequences of 20th-century excess, desperately hoping that those who lead it finally evolve to address unprecedented times.
Yet, amid all of the chaos and strife that ensue throughout its two hundred-plus pages, all of the turmoil and tragedy, Kingdom Come proves itself to be a story about hope and the belief that the world can always change for the better, as DC stories so often do. This moment in history, perhaps more than any other warrants a (re)visit to the world of Earth-22.
The Story So Far…
Imagine a world that was once filled with hope and light, where mighty champions fought and sacrificed to make the world a better place for the common person. A world whose headlines rang out with stories of good triumphing over evil and a world made better thanks to those hard-fought victories. Now imagine as that world grows increasingly darker, extreme, and violent, replacing the heroes of the old with new, more aggressive, and less principled attempts at heroism.
This is the state of the DC Universe in Kingdom Come.
Must There Be A Superman?
In this alternate version of the DCU’s future, the world has grown beyond a need for Golden Age heroes such as Superman and Wonder Woman, instead embracing a new generation of anti-heroes like Magog and his Justice Battalion. Unlike their predecessors, these metahumans, each their own personification of 90s comics excess (( Burlingame, Russ. “20 Years On, Mark Waid Looks Back on Kingdom Come.” DC. ComicBook.com, May 21, 2016. )), are willing to do whatever it takes to put an end to evil, even going as far as murdering captured supervillains.
By the time the story begins, Superman has been in self-imposed exile for ten years, and crime has been so thoroughly dealt with by the new generation of heroes that they have taken to fighting each other in the streets out of sheer boredom. The chance of metahuman violence breaking out causes the masses to live in a constant state of fear. The environment is on the verge of collapse, thanks to a climate catastrophe caused in no small part by the impetuous nature of these rash, young metas. The world is run in secret from board rooms high above the streets where the general populace struggles every day just to survive, surrounded by near-daily reminders of the world that once was. The threat of war beyond human comprehension looms constantly overhead.
If this place sounds familiar, that’s because it runs eerily parallel to the state of this planet, Earth-Prime, in 2023. The world faces social and economic collapse, the planet’s climate is being beaten to death at an ever-quickening pace, and the chance for a random act of violence to occur seems to increase every day. Vigilantes run through the streets, storming government buildings and enacting their own sense of radical ‘justice’ (( Chang, Alvin. “Every mass shooting in the US – a visual database.” The Guardian. TheGuardian.com, February 1, 2023. )). People across the globe grow more disillusioned, convinced that their voices don’t matter. They look for relief to come from somewhere, anywhere. They look to people like Norman McCay.
We Are All Norman McCay
The events of Kingdom Come are told through the eyes of Norman McCay, a human pastor struggling to find meaning in his own world, one at the mercy of apathetic, negligent gods. The Spectre, DC’s Spirit of Vengeance, appears soon after Norman has been struck by prophetic visions of an apocalyptic future while praying at the deathbed of the Golden Age Sandman Wesley Dodds. As the coming cataclysm approaches, the Spectre seeks a human host to assist him in rendering judgment.
Throughout the rest of the story, Norman travels with the Spectre a la A Christmas Carol’s (1843) Scrooge and the Ghosts of Christmas, witnessing events as they unfold yet incapable of affecting them in any way. Along the way, they witness a nuclear accident that devastates Kansas and kills millions at the hands of the Justice Battalion, the return of Superman, secret cabals forming in corporate boardrooms, and an all-out war between the heroes of this Earth.
Those With Power Should Act
For much of Kingdom Come, the pair travels in a plane between worlds, one where they bear witness to every event that shapes this tale, but they cannot be seen, heard, or felt by any of the forces involved. Norman bears witness to some truly horrific tragedies throughout the course of their journey together. Tragedies that he believes are completely avoidable, should someone with power, be it super or institutional, merely listen and act.
On multiple occasions throughout the story, Norman challenges the Spectre, arguing that were he truly an agent of God, the Spectre would not allow these things to happen. For Norman, those who bear the burden of judgment in this story are clear. Ultimately, for all of his begging and pleading, Norman is just screaming into the void.
A Man Among Gods
The voice of the people is largely absent in the world of Kingdom Come. It is true that Norman and the Spectre visit many events that are populated by humans, but the power and the ability to incite change in ways that Norman and others like him do not make them in a sense superhuman.
Early in issue one, a newspaper poll asks whether ‘UN (human) intervention will curb metahuman violence’, which is answered with a resounding ‘NO’. Norman McCay is the embodiment of that hopelessness, spending his time screaming at forces beyond his comprehension to step in and resolve situations that they simply won’t, for some reason or another. Instead real change in this story occurs in spaces in which the general populace has no real, meaningful representation. Norman’s plight is not dissimilar to that of the general populace living on Earth-Prime. (( Edwards-Levy, Ariel. “Most American’s Don’t Feel Well-Represented By Congress. Huffington Post. HuffPost.com, December 11, 2018. ))
Secrets, Secrets Are No Fun
Throughout the events of Kingdom Come, any real change, any decision that affects the lives of the people of Earth-22, happens in secret, behind doors closed to the general public. Super-powered beings like Superman and Wonder Woman become world leaders with the power to make decisions for all metahumans, at little more than their insistence that it be so. Batman keeps Gotham City in line with an army of mechs that patrol the streets, inciting fear in everyone, not only criminals.
Even a decade after abandoning his (human) Bruce Wayne persona, he’s still able to leverage the influence that comes with the Wayne name to align himself and his allies with the Mankind Liberation Front, a new iteration of the Legion of Doom, led by Lex Luthor and other classic DC supervillains.
Having essentially adopted the most extremist version of their terroristic ideology, the MLF works in secret to escalate a war between the various factions of metahumans. As Luthor puts it, they’re willing to let the world burn so that ‘humans have no choice but to reclaim the reins of world power. In a world such as Earth-Prime, where policy is often written on a check, it’s not difficult to imagine that someone like Lex Luthor — a super-wealthy, morally corrupt businessman/ex-politician, does not intend for all of humanity, or any of it for that matter, to have control over their own destiny.
Might Makes Right?
That is supervillain 101 — the quest for unimpeded, fascistic power, but the Mankind Liberation Front is not the only superhuman entity in Kingdom Come willing to use its power to exert control over the situation. Superman and Wonder Woman, Batman, and The United Nations, each attempt to exert their own will throughout the course of Kingdom Come, and each one claim to act in humanity’s best interest. Yet, how can that be possible when every single hero, villain, or powerful being in this book has lost touch with their humanity?
In fact, when Norman McCay, the only truly human character in the entire story, tries to intervene on behalf of humanity, he is completely ignored by anyone with power, including Superman — the people’s greatest champion. It is not until the gods stop ignoring their humanity that anything changes and even then it comes too late and at a tremendous cost.
The Might Of Nostalgia
In the end, the arrogance of the gods leads to all-out metahuman war. Gratitude in no small part to the maneuvering of the Mankind Liberation Front, the Justice League of Earth-22 finds itself face to face with an army of re-monikered supervillains, led by a brainwashed Shazam.
Throughout Kingdom Come, Billy Batson has been kept from uttering his magic word by Lex Luthor. Even in issue three though, he has shown to remember what life was like before the world changed, back when he was still able to call forth the power of Shazam. Even as Luthor attempts to obscure and rewrite Billy’s memories, he holds onto the thought that things could be better, things will be better if they can just go back to the way they were. What Billy doesn’t realize, what he deludes himself into thinking in a way, is that things can never be what they were. The world has been changed forever and the only way to return to that “better world” is to move forward.
Nostalgia Weaponized
Shazam, in a sense, represents a form of nostalgia, weaponized against the very people that benefit from it the most. Twisted into a tool of the ruling class, who use the memory of something that might have been great once to impede any progress into the future. To them, he is a weapon, used to incite the masses and then turned on the very people for whom he was champion. Never one to shy away from xenophobic rhetoric, Lex Luthor makes Shazam the figurehead of his populist campaign and uses his twisted memories of the world before to return the world to the status quo. On Earth-Prime, this nostalgia the “utopia” that was a world that exists only in the twisted memories is one of the factors that has led to the rise and public prevelance of populist, xenophobic movements. (( Poushter, Jacob. “Worldwide, People DIvided on Whether Life Today is Better Than in the Past. Pew Research Center. PewResearch.org, December 5, 2017. )) Shazam’s current and original names (Captain Marvel) are similarly weaponized in certain online spaces (( Bacon, Thomas. “Why The Original Captain Marvel is Now Called Shazam.” Screen Rant. screenrant.com, April 3, 2019. )), frequently by users who share ideologies with these same types of movements.
Always Darkest Before The Dawn
This all paints a very grim picture and makes Kingdom Come seem like some macabre tale about the end of the DC Universe. A depressing jaunt where everyone’s favorite heroes become tainted distortions of themselves until they die. In this day and age, it’s easy to look at Kingdom Come as a tale about an oncoming apocalypse and the failure of those with power to act. Perhaps the people of Earth-Prime may as well abandon all hope now?
This, however, is simply not the case. If there is anything that makes a DC story truly great, it’s that no matter how bad things get, no matter how lost everything may seem, there is always hope. The hope that things can be better, and with enough hard work and cooperation, they will be. In the end, it’s when the heroes finally listen to the pleading of the humans they swore to protect that they are able reconnect with their humanity, take a step back, and realize that perhaps they have taken things a step (or a few) too far. Finally, for the first time in this entire story, humans have influence over the situation and are able to finally make the gods realize their folly. From that point on, Earth-22 changes, and where once was cataclysmic war, are now the seeds of hope, sewn by the very people always thought to be the most hopeless.
In the end, there are many lessons that one can take away from reading Kingdom Come. Might doesn’t make right. The world and it’s people can’t be understood if you’re sitting high above it. Nostalgia can be a great escape when the world seems too much, but too much of it can be a dangerous thing. The most important lesson, however, is that it isn’t the power or influence that a person holds that makes them great. Like in all truly classic DC stories, what makes someone truly great is their humanity.