•
Rating: Kingdom Come (Thy Kingdom Come) by Mark Waid and Alex Ross (U.S.A.) Miniseries in 4 Volumes 1996 DC Comics. In Italy originally published by Play Press in 1996 (in 4 volumes), it is now also available in a single volume published by De Agostini.
No peace for the Gods: not even to do their will.
Twenty years into the future in the DC Universe: Nearly all the old Superheroes have retired. The only Batman, now old and disillusioned by the ideals of justice pursued by the old Justice League, mentors a new generation of superhumans lacking the moral prerequisites that animated their predecessors. Soon, the hyperviolent methods unleashed by the new recruits render them almost indistinguishable from criminals, throwing into anarchy a world already corrupted by a shadowy government that only thinks about curbing the power of the superheroes and neglects the well-being of humanity.
The old Justice League, worried about this state of affairs, tries to reunite and find a remedy, but too many years have passed: they have changed, and so have interpersonal relationships, and it will not be easy to find the necessary unity in the face of an enemy now unknown whether it resides among the good or the bad, among friends or foes...
A new way to conceive Mythology.
The United States is a relatively young country, and although its origins can be traced to the customs and traditions brought by the first European settlers (especially the British ones driven more by personal desires than the political will of the mother country to find a different world to live in according to new ideals) first and then by various migratory flows, the peculiarities of its historical development and growth combined with the relative speed in which these have occurred have led to a partial nullification of the mythological tradition (especially orally transmitted) of the peoples who lived there in previous centuries or were born there.
This sort of clean slate and the mixing of different experiences from all over the globe have contributed to the growing desire to recreate a customized Pantheon at home since traditional ones could no longer satisfy the fantasies of the new nation.
With the development at the beginning of the twentieth century of new forms of communication (such as radio first and television later, also passing through cinema), aimed at capturing popular attention more, the impulse to "simplify" the way of interacting through the written word and the influence of new Pop artistic movements sparked that creative flame necessary to definitively kill the old gods and give birth to some (increasingly new) new ones (the "comic book" superheroes precisely) that over the century enriched the imagination of the minds of readers who mostly belonged to the target: children and young people.
Needless to say, among these young consumers, others were born (more or less good, more or less intellectually honest) "creators of Gods" who developed new universes adhering to the different historical periods involved in an imaginative spiral that has reached our days enough to be able to affirm (taking one, almost at random, for example) that, in the States, Batman as a god is much more representative than others with much more "noble" and ancient stories. (If you are interested in the topic, read the beautiful novel by the Englishman and comic book writer Gaiman).
Creators of Universes.
The curious thing is that if we continue to talk about Pantheon and various deities (mentioning in the beginning the various Kane, Finger, Siegel, and Shuster, perhaps I will dwell another time), the personalities that have most contributed to enriching its meaning even revolutionizing it and making it what we read now (in 2008 almost 9) are not American but British (almost finding a fil rouge with the first Pilgrim Fathers...): to name two, the already mentioned Gaiman and, especially, Alan Moore.
It goes without saying that after "Watchmen," no American comic has been the same, and this one I am talking about is no exception, if it weren't too metaphysical, I could assert that Moore has been for comics (at least the American ones) what Einstein was for Physics, but pretend you didn't read this last sentence...
In "Thy Kingdom Come," themes dominating the very history of the art of "balloons" are treated (albeit sometimes too intimately and darkly): the human-superhero contrast (with the various degrees of responsibility of the latter towards the former), the dilemma of those endowed with supernatural abilities between intervening (divinely) or leaving men at the mercy of their free will, the contrast itself between the various ways of seeing and conceiving different superheroes (here the dualism between Superman and Batman dominates: sharpened by the differences of being divinely born for the former and technologically human for the latter) in a meeting/clash of different "theological universes." All this is seen through an additional dichotomous lens provided by the two protagonists/narrative voices (a human, an old Protestant pastor, and a "god," the Spectre).
The epic dimension is further enriched by the visual form drawn by Ross (Waid only took care of the subject and screenplay) with a technique much closer to painting than to traditional comic book art.
And Peace on Earth.
Twelve years after its creation, "Kingdom Come," despite all the formal imperfections such as the hermetic excess in various passages, remains one of the best comic book renditions in the history of American popular communication as well as an interesting aesthetic experience lived through the extreme elegance of image transposition. Reading it is like reliving 50 years of pop mythology in rapid succession, and this is no small feat, even though we might want far more definitive answers from the gods, but perhaps in the end, even they are all too human to give them.
C.G. (Girlanachronism)
Loading comments slowly
