The Kingdom #1

History

The Kingdom originated as a sequel-and-prequel project that Mark Waid and Alex Ross began developing together off the back of their celebrated 1996 Elseworlds miniseries Kingdom Come. Ross's original conception included a significantly different version of Gog — envisioned as an alien from the planet Urgrund that split into Apokolips and New Genesis — and a very different role for Magog. Creative differences over character directions and the story's broader goals led Ross to leave the project; he later aired specific objections in a Wizard magazine special, including disagreement over several characters he intended to be dead in Kingdom Come being alive in The Kingdom. Without Ross, Waid revised the project substantially, introduced the Hypertime concept (which he was developing alongside Grant Morrison), and proceeded as sole writer with Ariel Olivetti on covers and interiors for issue #1 and Mike Zeck on interiors for issue #2.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Cover date: February 1999; The Kingdom #1 was released December 16, 1998, written by Mark Waid with art and cover by Ariel Olivetti, colored by John Kalisz, and lettered by Phil Felix.
• The issue is part of a two-bookend limited series plus five companion one-shots: The Kingdom: Kid Flash, Nightstar, Offspring, Son of the Bat, and Planet Krypton — all written by Waid and published in the same February 1999 window, with New Year's Evil: Gog #1 (February 1998) serving as the storyline's prologue.
• First appearance of the Kingdom Come Superman and Wonder Woman's son (Jonathan Samuel Kent of the Kingdom Come future), whose existence had only been mentioned in the epilogue of Kingdom Come #4.
• The issue's 40-page story, titled 'Never Ending Slaughter,' depicts Gog marching backward through time killing a new Superman each day; the concept of Hypertime — formally described as 'the vast, interconnected web of parallel timelines which comprise all reality' — is fully unveiled in The Kingdom #2 but is initiated by the events set in motion here.
• Hypertime was co-created by Mark Waid and Grant Morrison as an intentional response to nearly 15 years of DC continuity strictures following Crisis on Infinite Earths, designed to allow all prior DC stories to coexist as valid rather than forcing retroactive erasure.
• Alex Ross departed the project amid creative disagreements with Waid and editorial direction; he subsequently co-created Earth X for Marvel with Jim Krueger, a thematically parallel future-of-heroes story for the Marvel Universe.
• The companion one-shot The Kingdom: Planet Krypton contains a cameo of the Red Son Superman within Hypertime — predating that character's full appearance in Superman: Red Son — as well as appearances of pre-Crisis figures like the Earth-One Batwoman rendered as 'Hypertime echoes.'
• The entire storyline was collected in a trade paperback (ISBN 978-1-56389-567-8) and later in The Kingdom: The 25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (February 2024), which adds a new introduction by Waid and reproduces the original series outline.

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