WI: No Kingdom Come

Simple premise: The DC comic Kingdom ome s never published. That comic basically ended the Dark Age of comics. That's not to mention the impact on Mark Waid or Alex Ross's careers. Your thoughts?
 
Well, I don't think Kingdom Come alone ended the Dark Age. You still had the speculator boom, the decline of Image, and Marvel's bankruptcy. Had Kingdom Come never been published, yes, the tone of comics might not have gotten reconstructive rather than deconstructive at that moment, but a book like it would have been published. Perhaps Kurt Buisek'sAstro City could take its place.
 
Well, I don't think Kingdom Come alone ended the Dark Age. You still had the speculator boom, the decline of Image, and Marvel's bankruptcy. Had Kingdom Come never been published, yes, the tone of comics might not have gotten reconstructive rather than deconstructive at that moment, but a book like it would have been published. Perhaps Kurt Buisek'sAstro City could take its place.
Hopefully. I love Astro City!
 
Kingdom Come didn't really end the Dark Age so much as make sure it wouldn't be seen as a positive thing. A lot of the trends and ideas of the Dark Age were deconstructed in Kingdom Come, and I think without that deconstruction it'd be a few years before everyone started talking about how cool early Image was.
 

Heavy

Banned
James Robinson had already done The Golden Age and began Starman the same year as Kingdom Come. That's another comic that was built heavily on Golden Age and Silver Age nostalgia, and it was a very important book for DC in the late 1990s. Likewise, there's little reason to think Grant Morrison wouldn't still get a shot at JLA in this scenario.

As for the two main creators, Alex Ross's reputation had already been made in 1994 when he did Marvels with Kurt Busiek; KC was a pretty big feather in his cap, but I imagine he'd have other projects in the pipeline. I'm less sure about what it would mean for Mark Waid; it might have changed how he's seen in the wider context of the industry, but his reputation was already guaranteed by the impact of his work on the Flash and, to a lesser extent, the Legion of Super-Heroes (though he was mainly an editor on that series). He'd probably still need to have something on the same scale as KC to ensure he enjoyed the same profile he does now.
 
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