Kingdom Come #2

History

The series originated with artist Alex Ross, who conceived a 'grand opus' for DC characters while completing Marvels for Marvel in 1994, drafting a 40-page handwritten outline and pitching it initially to writer James Robinson before DC paired him with Mark Waid, chosen for his encyclopedic command of DC history. Ross contributed significantly to the story's concept and character designs — illustrating all four issues in gouache — while Waid shaped and scripted the narrative, though the precise division of creative credit became a source of public dispute between the two. The editorial team under senior editor Dan Raspler and executive editor Mike Carlin, with Jenette Kahn as editor-in-chief, shaped the project into a four-issue prestige-format Elseworlds series published between May and August 1996; the collected edition later expanded the story by several pages, adding an epilogue included in every subsequent printing. Waid and Ross consciously designed the story as a rebuke of the violent antihero archetype that had come to dominate 1990s comics, particularly those associated with Image Comics.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Issue title is 'Truth and Justice'; cover-dated June 1996, it went on sale June 12, 1996 (DC Fandom records an earlier ship date of April 12, 1996 — sources conflict slightly on exact dates).
• This issue depicts Superman publicly reforming the Justice League, appearing before a United Nations press conference alongside returning heroes including Green Lantern (Alan Scott), Hawkman, Red Robin, and others.
• Batman, Green Arrow, and others refuse to join Superman's revived League and instead form a covert third faction aligned with Lex Luthor — a political fracture that drives the series' conflict forward.
• Key Collector identifies this issue as the first appearance of Kid Flash (Iris West), daughter of Wally West, within the Kingdom Come timeline.
• Phil Sheldon — the photojournalist protagonist of Alex Ross's earlier Marvel series Marvels — makes a cameo at the U.N. press conference, an in-universe cross-company Easter egg Ross inserted as a nod to his prior work.
• The nightclub scene in this issue is densely populated with DC deep cuts: a Kingdom Come analogue of Rorschach (from Watchmen) appears next to the Question, aged versions of Weather Wizard and Captain Cold are depicted as bar owners, and the Human Bomb holds a beer branded with a 'Q' referencing Quality Comics, where the character debuted.
• A Spectre-guided flashback in the issue visually echoes the cover poses of the heroes' debut comics — Action Comics #1 for Superman, Detective Comics #27 for Batman, and Wonder Woman #1 (1942) for Wonder Woman — a deliberate visual homage to DC's publishing history.
• The issue has been reprinted continuously in the Kingdom Come trade paperback, hardcover, the 2006 Absolute Kingdom Come slipcase edition, the 2016 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, and international editions including Brazilian (Panini, 2004) and Polish (Egmont, 2005) printings.

Full credits

Key issues in Kingdom Come

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#1 1st appearance — Mister Terrific

Variants (1)