Elseworlds: Kingdom Come

I thought it would be appropriate to do today's post on a Elseworld that was so groundbreaking, so amazing, I literally read it through cover to cover four times in one afternoon. Kingdom Come is without a doubt one of the finest pieces of Elseworld material I have ever picked up. The basic plot is this, published in 1996, it is set 10 years into the future of the DC Universe. After the death of Lois Lane and the staff of the Daily Planet those 10 years prior by the Joker, Superman just... well in a single word, quit. He hung up his cape, and disappeared. And without him leading the charge in fighting the good fight, his friends, the other heroes of legend, Batman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, they all either quit as well, or stopped being active in the world's eye. Now flash forward back to the present. The world is in chaos, overrun by young, vicious metahumans, the successors of the originals to keeping the world safe. But all they do is fight themselves, not to save the world, but for the sheer thrill of fighting. And in the midst of it all, a legend dies, right at the beginning of the book. Wesley Dodds, once the crime-busting mystery-man known as the Sandman dies. The nightmarish dreams that once aided him in his war on crime as the Sandman have now become apocalyptic visions, and have passed on to his friend, Pastor Norman McCay. McCay is disillusioned in a world without Superman, without apparent hope. He is then visited by the Spectre, in the DC world this being is the physical manifestation of God's vengeance. He then proceeds to take Norman on as witness to the visions that Wesley passed to him, and see them become true. And in the midst of it all, Superman and his friends, or what remains of them by the end, manage to right things again, and come out of retirement to live amongst the human population and help them, work with them. Now for all my friends who I hope will read this blog, I am not going to spoil the entire book for you, but I urge you to go out and check any bookstore near you, check your local library, wherever, just find a copy of this amazing work by the genius team of Mark Waid and and Alex Ross. Well, I've said my piece, and that's that.