The Kingdom - Worth Reading?

[spaz]

Kingdom Come was a great Mini series but I was wondering if you thought the sequel is worth reading. Was it intended to be an ongoing series or just a mini?

[Qolt QuaZar]

I was a die hard fan of Kingdom Come from the beginning. Never got around to the sequel partialy because it lacked Ross' art. Doesn't really answer your question, hope someone else does cause I've been wondering the same thing.

[Bat-Mite]

Gog #1: So so.

The Kingdom #1 has horrible art, but I really like the concept of a time traveling villain who kills Superman every day of his life, making a big mess of the space time continuum.

Offspring: Lovely art from Frank Quietly and a nice story about Plastic Man and his son.

Nightstar: I don't remember a gosh darn thing about this one, so it was probably not all that good or bad.

Planet Krypton: This one doesn't take place int he future, but the present. Mostly a Waid Nostalgia trip. It's OK.

Kid Flash: Don't remember much either, so... same as Nightstar.

Son of the Bat: Pretty good. Batman's son captures Luthor, Brainiac and Ra's Al Ghul to try to save the multiverse. My second favorite after the Offspring one.

Krypton #2: Even worse art than the first and the way they defeat Gog makes no sense.

[Gingold]

The Kingdom event had its ups and downs. If you can get past the idea of Waid doing a sequel to Kingdom Come without Ross's participation or blessing,you may enjoy it. I thought the first "bookend" issue was strong,with good art from Ariel Oliveti, and I liked the oneshot specials, particularly Frank Quitely's work on "Offspring" and Kitson's work on "Planet Krypton." The final bookend special was weak, though. Mike Zeck is a fine artist, but he was the wrong guy for this book, and Waid was trying too hard to be Grant Morrison without success and the hamfisted introduction of Hypertime and the Jonathan Kent/Phantom Stranger reveal weren't executed particularly well. It was cool to see Kal-L again, but we had to wait 8 years for the follow up.

[IPW]

No.
Some of character one shots where okay, but the book ends where pretty boring. The hypertime thing seems to have been a waste. TPTB seem to be trying to restart the multiverse without undoning COIE. And it just doesn't work.
Just read Infinite Crisis

[Chris Thomas]

if you are reading it to read a great story with strong plot, satisfying resolution--then no.

if you are reading it to see what a writer with a fascination for dc history has to say, then yes. I suggest you find it cheap--definitely a comic that can be found cheaply.

[Bored at 3:00AM]

Offspring by Mark Waid & Frank Quietly is definitely worth reading, the rest is a waste of time in my view.

[davids]

Wonder woman giving birth. The joy on present day superman's face when he found out his son. and the saddness on future superman and wonderwoman when he says," lois and I will have a son."

present day wonderwoman covering her ears and making a face when she was informed she would be a mother one day. [like she didn
t want to hear it?]

future wonder woman swaering revenge for the death of her son.
jonthan handing himself as a baby to his mother.
confussing isn/t it :evilangry

[Bat-Mite]

confusing isn/t it

The Kingdom has many things wrong going on with it, but being confusing is not one of those.

[dancj]

The story's fine for the most part, but the ending was truely terrible.

Dan

[MythicBrawn]

If you're a completist then get it otherwise you can pass it by. Wonder Woman was probably covering her ears because she knew that Superman was going to be the father. She's been fighting it for awhile, only to find out that they wind up together. Why fight the inevitable?

[SlightlyMad]

No.

Save youself the time & money.

[davids]

you should be able to find the whole thing on e-bay for a good price.

[longshot7]

are all the Kingdom books available in tpb??

[Kid Kyoto]

Kingdom Come was a great Mini series but I was wondering if you thought the sequel is worth reading. Was it intended to be an ongoing series or just a mini?

No.

thank you for asking.

the way to approach this is to buy the rather cool first issue where a cosmic villain named Gog is travelling back in time, one day at a time, killing Superman in all sorts of interesting, inventive and quite painful ways.

Then put down the book and imagine a really cool story that has the Kingdom Come Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman team up with the modern ones to battle Gog and in the process restore the DCU multiverse.

feel free to doodle some stick figures and make some notes on the back of an envelope.

it will still be better than the anticlimatic second issue.

[Bruce Wayne Jr.]

are all the Kingdom books available in tpb??

Ya, all the one-shots are included in "The Kingdom" tpb.

I (for one) enjoyed it thoroughly. As a return to Kingdom Come characters and the introduction to Hypertime, it isn't half bad. Anybody expecting a 'true' sequel to Kingdom Come will be disappointed.


I'd be curious to know what Alex Ross had in mind for a follow-up. Does anyone know anything about his premise?

[jadegiant77]

That crap was so mind-numbingly awful, it made Dark Knight 2 read like Shakespeare. You should definitely pass on this one.

[IPW]

Wizard, one of the better things Wizard ever did, put out a special on Alex Ross that had all his sketches for the series. You can see most of them on his website.

http://www.alexrossart.com/archives.html

Go to the Kingdom Come section then scroll down to The Kingdom

Ross's idea was for a series that would be a prequel, that would lead up to KC, because Ross's saw KC as the end of superhero age. It would focus on the heroes in the secret identities. Gog would have been a survivor from the world that split to make New Genesis and Apokolips. Gog would go around kill gods from the DCU, creating some of the KC charcters. Sueprman would start having vision of the future. The series would become about the heroes trying to stop the future as seen in KC from coming true. Magog would have killed Gog at some point in the series

[Bruce Wayne Jr.]

Very interesting, IPW. Thank you

[Buried Alien]

It wasn't terrible, but it was a letdown. The way I see it, THE KINGDOM (like ZERO HOUR before it) was a kind of unsuccessful dry-run for INFINITE CRISIS. It had some interesting ideas, but didn't fully exploit them. Taken on its own terms, THE KINGDOM was just average, but it didn't live up to the hype surrounding its buildup and release.

Buried Alien (The Fastest Post Alive!)

[Apathy Boy]

I liked the first issue a lot. Dramatic and creepy set-up with some nice art.

The one-shots were fairly disposable.

The second issue was the most awful thing I've ever read. And that's coming from someone who used to read FORCE WORKS.