DC's 1989 Elseworlds is a comic book concept that's not quite like anything else. The best Elseworlds comics slightly obscure characters that readers know by heart. Marvel has their What If? series that involves self-contained, single-issue tales, but Elseworlds tells enthralling stories that can only exist in a format that's removed from regular continuity.
One-off stories and non-canonical adventures aren't new to comic books. They're a great way for readers to see their favorite characters in new, outlandish situations, but the Elseworlds imprint offers more than a mere chance for Superman and Batman to dress up like cowboys.Â
In stories like Kingdom Come, DC was able to push its heroes to the status of modern myth. The story of how the Elseworlds imprint came to be and where it fits in the many DC Earths is something that every comic book fan should know, especially since Elseworlds has made its way to the DC TV universe.Â
During American comic books' Silver Age (1956-1970), Imaginary Stories was a way to tell one-off adventures with DC superheroes that were silly or had a villain who triumphed - something that never happened at the time. These stories were, in essence, similar to the Marvel What If? comics from the same era.
The final Imaginary Stories issue, Alan Moore's "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow," came out in 1986 and put an end to Superman's wildly complicated backstory before DC ditched the Multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths. As with many of his books, Moore commented on the history of comics - and Imaginary Stories in particular - by opening the two-issue arc with a pointed intro:
This is an IMAGINARY STORY (which may never happen, but then again may) about a perfect man who came from the sky and did only good... This is an IMAGINARY Story... Aren't they all?
The First 'Elseworlds' Story Was 'Gotham By Gaslight'
Initially, Batman: Gotham By Gaslight was simply a one-off story about a Victorian-era Batman chasing down Jack the Ripper after he appeared in Gotham City. It's a cool little detective story, one that served as a blueprint for many of the best Batman-centric Elseworlds stories.
The book was so popular that DC retroactively brought it into the Elseworlds fold, declaring it the official first book of the imprint. However, the first story that bore the Elseworlds logo was Batman: Holy Terror. This story reinterprets the Batman origin story as if Bruce were a kind of wealthy Dickensian orphan living in an America that's more puritanical theocracy than a democracy.
‘Kingdom Come’ Stands Out As The Most Important 'Elseworlds' Title
There are plenty of Elseworlds tales to explore if you're just now getting into the alternative stories. However, the biggest and most influential Elseworlds story is Kingdom Come. Published in 1996, this four-issue story took place 10-15 years in the future and echoed the themes of Alan Moore's groundbreaking Watchmen. On this Earth, Superman has retired, and the rest of the Justice League followed suit, having gone their separate ways as a series of new, younger meta-humans showed up to fight each other without considering the consequences of their actions.
Written by Mark Waid and illustrated by painter Alex Ross, Kingdom Come offers an apocalyptic story about some of the most well-known superheroes and asks whether or not these gods among men owe a responsibility to the regular people of Earth.
Kingdom Come’s story is epic, but the continuity-breaking and world-destroying plotline wouldn't be as affecting without the art of Alex Ross. His work stands out in the comic world since he uses a detailed, photorealistic style that's more often found on cover artwork instead of interiors. Much of Ross's work is done in mighty splash pages that give the story the epic scope it deserves, allowing the artist to add a series of visual Easter eggs to humor longtime DC fans.
[The artists who came before me] were much more involved in breaking new ground and being elaborate illustrators who pushed the medium of comic books in a direction that wasn't centered around corporate-owned superhero properties. I came in as a fan saying, "Hey, I really love those painted covers I grew up with featuring Superman or the Hulk or things Marvel did in the '70s, and I'd like to see whole books like that."
The Story Is Told From An Omniscient And Human Perspective
Some may find stories about Superman difficult to get into because he's almost like a god. It's a challenge for the audience to identify with the story, but Kingdom Come fixes this problem. A pastor character named Norman McCay serves as the audience surrogate in the story. He's chosen by the Spectre - an antihero/supernatural force who’s also a fallen angel - to act as the harbinger of the apocalypse.
As the Spectre leads McCay through time and space, the pair watches the old heroes come to terms with their place in the world while villains plot against them and inter-dimensional gods witness the whole ordeal unfold. Even though he gets a cosmic view of the action, McCay's everyman status grounds the story, keeping it from getting out of hand. And since he's a pastor, he keeps the Revelation narrative on track without making it feel too on the nose.
‘Kingdom Come’ Is A Reaction To Edgy '90s Heroes
Comic books from the '90s have some killer storylines, but that era is just as defined, if not more, by its bad ideas than its good. The early '90s saw the rise of Image Comics, Deadpool, and a ton of edgy titles that blended together into a morass.
According to writer Mark Waid, Kingdom Come was a reaction to the over-the-top, extreme heroes being introduced. Waid told Comicbook.com:
A lot of what we were reacting to was the gestalt of the mid-90s in superhero comics, the idea that all of the new characters who were harsh... and beating up on each other without a real sense of humanity to them, that somehow those were more popular and more vital than what was perceived as the old-fashioned bar. Your dad's superheroes, Superman and Batman and Wonder Woman and those old fogies.
