DC Returns to World of Kingdom Come in New Comic

Mark Waid and DC will return to the world of Kingdom Come, the fan-favorite 1997 miniseries scripted by Waid from a story by artist Alex Ross, later this year. While it isn't Waid's first time back in that world -- Kingdom Come's first follow-up was a 1999 story called The Kingdom, which Waid worked on with a number of artists -- returning to the Kingdom Come timeline is fairly rare. In most cases, appearances by Kingdom Come characters tend to be fleeting -- just an acknowledgment that "yes, this story still exists out there in the DC multiverse."

Kingdom Come centers on a near-future dystopia, where Superman's retirement left a generation of violent, young antiheroes without a moral compass. After a metahuman called Magog causes a catastrophic nuclear accident in the midwestern United States, Superman returns, only to find himself drawn into a complex metahuman civil war. The series was a commentary on the excesses of the 1990s comics industry, as well as an answer to the question of why the world still needs Superman, even when there are hundreds of other costumed adventurers.

Kingdom Come was also a very self-contained story. While it set up a new status quo that wasn't quite as dark at the end, the story of Kingdom Come did not need embellishment, and hasn't really benefited from attempts to return to it. It's complicated by the fact that the defining characteristics of the Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman of Kingdom Come are all wrapped around the hoplessness and violence of their world. Once there's a happy ending, they segue into being a fairly standard take on the classic versions of those characters -- just slightly older. 

Some stories have ignored that issue and played as direct sequels to Kingdom Come -- see The Kingdom -- but others, like Alex Ross and Geoff Johns's Thy Kingdom Come, pulled Superman from the middle of the Kingdom Come story to make him interact with the current time. This creates some potential continuity or logic headaches, but preserves the unique feeling of Kingdom Come. It's also what it sounds like Waid is doing, if you read the official synopsis for Batman/Superman: World's Finest #20 below:

BATMAN/SUPERMAN: WORLD'S FINEST #20

Written by MARK WAID
Art and cover by DAN MORA
Variant cover by BJORN BARENDS
1:25 variant cover by DAVID NAKAYAMA
1:50 variant cover by DANIEL SAMPERE
Embossed Foil Magog Helmet variant cover ($7.99 US)
$3.99 US | 32 pages | Variant $4.99 US (card stock)
ON SALE 10/17/23

The return of Boy Thunder! To find and save Superman's former protégé, the World's Finest duo bridges the dimensional gulf between their world and an Earth with a jaded Superman, a broken Batman, and a war-hungry Wonder Woman—the world of Kingdom Come!