Graphic Novel Review: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross

Graphic Novel Review: Kingdom Come by Mark Waid and Alex Ross.

Quote: According to the word of God, the meek would someday inherit the earth.

Someday.

But God never accounted for the mighty.

Once I was talking about Superhero comics, a question that was put forward to me was, why does humanity always want a saviour why can't it protect itself? That's the core ideology of Bruce Wayne's entire character development. Kingdom Come tackles this very question: does the world need Superman? Set in an AU offshore earth, where the second generation of superhumans who roam the planet. They are powerful and reckless, and have no respect for life and leave behind a trail of destruction. I began reading this book last year expecting a narrative that will explore the void left behind by the big three, but the book turned out to be just another Superman story. The event that leads to the chaos in this world is because Superman has exiled himself to the life of a farmer in Kansas. He is like the missing moral compass for next-generation metahumans to learn from. He has shut himself up last of the world's breadbasket. And because of him, the yesteryear superheroes have retired too. The book is observed from the point of view of Norman McCay. Who is a clergyman and inherits the power from Wesley Dodds, the sandman, to witness a journey to the apocalypse with a mysterious being called the Spectre. Norman is the Greek Chorus to this very straightforward four-act play. A timid man observing the final days of the planet! But soon enough he becomes part of a grand pallet of splash pages, gorgeous to look at, but if we take him out of the story, the narrative is still intact. The art is glorious but it is dense! It's so detailed and compact that a reader is bound to miss out something or other on every page. It is also filled with just too many easter eggs which make me angry. Big action pages make one feel the fear that the metahumans are rampaging through the world without a care. It was craftily done, but the impact of that art gets lost soon. As within few pages, metahumans buzz into the pages like flies on a carcass. But what I felt was highly problematic in the art was that despite its beauty, it couldn't catch the actions or the intensity of this world. Instead of having a sense of motion in images, they looked like photographs of an event that happened long past. Technically I read the book twenty-three years after it's a publication, for me it is a relic of the old. I personally didn't like Wonder Woman's weird dress she was wearing. It's not practical from the waist down, but when has comics ever considered women's clothing to be practical? Nor did I like what they did to her character! The Wonder Woman I grew up reading, mind it the issues I got India were aimed at kids below 12, was kind, protective and fiercely kind. She respected the value of life, even of the weakest creature. But the lady in these pages was a tyrant, she would gladly blow up chunks of earth to control these metahumans. Superman is not a leader, so when he returns from his exile on Wonder Woman's request, he tries to use dialogue and rebuild justice league to tackle the problems of metahumans. Metahumans don't care about the sanctity of life or preservation of the planet which is ravaged by radiation. And when they go to seek help from Bruce Wayne, who has aged and uses exoskeleton to move doesn't like the lack of haphazard planning on their part. He prefers to stay on his path. Batman has turned his Gotham into Police State and he very much notices that Superman and Wonder Woman are more focused on the metahumans than humanity. Both Wonder Woman's urgency at ethnic cleansing of the metahumans and Superman's redeeming the directionless by imprisoning them was annoying. That's not logical, who puts a bunch of overpowered children in the same correctional facility! that's lame and ticking time bomb right there! And who thinks that wiping out the metahumans is the best course of action for the planet? When clearly the problem is that villains have given up the sky and prefer the lands to exploit. And they play right into it! The metahumans are not evil, they just don't have the role model to look up to, they have blurred the lines of vigilantism and exhibition of power. This behaviour of theirs also serves as the fertile ground for Lex Luther to sow his plan against superheroes. Kingdom Come has many issues and themes which have been presented with such nuances, that I need separate threads of discussion for each of them. The main begins the topic of the sanctity of life. Who made Wonder Woman the judge of that? Just because you got excommunicated from your island doesn't mean you can go around moral policing others! As for Superman, he chose to be the saviour he has to deal with curses that come with responsibility and what happens when you give up on the only task you are best suitable for. I mean I am sure Clark Kent can farm, but who is farming for if he behaves like this? I really loved the part where Superman finally realises he has always been treating humanity as an infant that needs protection and that's where Norman McCay's role in the story comes of age. But it could easily be done with Batman because he unveils the plan of Lex Luthor and takes preventive measures to save the planet. In essence, both Lex and Bruce see superheroes as disturbances to humanity's growth. So when the story tries to end on a positive note of Superman and Wonder Woman having a baby and asking Batman to be godfather, it feels forced and toxic positivity. Their kid won't be Metahuman, it will be bag potential deathtraps.