KINGDOM COME 351
worsens as relations between members degrade due to ideological diff erences; Batman
creates a separate, more clandestine group and begins negotiating with Lex Luthor and
his Mankind Liberation Front to discover alternatives to Superman’s prison. Issue #3
escalates this confl ict as the prisoners riot and breach the prison walls, recalling the re-
maining superheroes to defend against the prisoners’ escape. Batman confronts Luthor
about Captain Marvel , whom Luthor has been brainwashing, and stops the supervil-
lain from unleashing his forces to aide the rioting superhumans. Yet, Captain Marvel
himself escapes and stops Superman from pacifying the mob, leading to an all-out war
between the older and younger generations of heroes in issue #4. As the war threatens to
spill into populated areas, the United Nations sanctions the use of three nuclear bombs
to be dropped into the heart of the battle in order to destroy the planet’s superhuman
population. Superman hears the bombs falling but realizes, as the Spectre did in em-
ploying McCay, that he is too out of touch with humanity to eff ectively decide whether
he has the ethical right to intervene. He leaves the world’s fate in the hands of Captain
Marvel, who divides his time between living as a normal human and as a superhero
endowed with the power of the gods; Captain Marvel thus knows better than any other
hero what it is like to be both mortal and superhuman, and is thus in a better position
to decide between the two sides. Captain Marvel destroys the bomb, but it devastates
the superhumans, wiping out most of them out. Th e climax of the story occurs when
Norman McCay convinces the Spectre to let him intervene in Superman’s enraged, vio-
lent confrontation with the United Nations. McCay tells Superman that his perspective
has shown him that the mistake of the superhumans was to think of themselves as gods
and distance themselves from humanity. Th e book ends with Superman pledging to
work with humanity, hoping to break down the false opposition between humans and
superheroes; he ushers in a new age without secret identities where superheroes are
more conscious of their place within humanity.
Kingdom Come responds to works such as Watchmen and Th e Dark Knight Returns ,
which brought a new standard of violence and realism to superhero comic books. Like
both of these works, Kingdom Come begins with an older generation of superheroes
having retreated from the modern world, and the contrast between the modern world
and the era of the superheroes is a paramount motif presented in the work. Another
centrally important issue explored in both Kingdom Come and its two predecessors is
the hegemony of their superheroes. Concerns about fascism dominate all three titles,
and each, in its own way, asks how much of a right do these superheroes have to fully
exercise their power. Th e characters in Kingdom Come , however, are less morally am-
biguous and closer to their respective traditional depictions than in Th e Dark Knight
Returns or Watchmen. Kingdom Come has a brighter ending, also, as the heroes only
need to make shifts in their behavior to rejoin society. Th e knowledge that they must
work together with humanity seems enough to temper their use of power.
Kingdom Come was originated from Alex Ross’s designs and storyboards; the
preacher, Norman McCay, even being modeled directly in look and character from Ross’s
father, Clark Norman Ross, himself a minister. Th e religious imagery of the book and the
