This Comic Kicks Your Ass!

Geoff Johns is DC's answer to Ed Brubaker these days, it seems. Just as Bru seems to write about half the Marvel titles I buy right now, Johns is starting to own most of the excitement among DC titles every month. You've got the Sinestro Corps War, and Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes in Action Comics, but the cherry on the sundae may just be Johns' current "Thy Kingdom Come" storyline that just kicked off in Justice Society of America.

About a decade ago, Mark Waid and Alex Ross dropped everyone's jaws to the ground with their prestige 4-issue mini-series, Kingdom Come. This intricately-written and fully-painted masterpiece posited a DC Universe of the near-future, in which young heroes began popping up more and more, with less and less guidance from the old guard, and things quickly got out of hand. A Superman-in-his-50s had quit the superhero game a few years earlier, due to a turn-of-events come wrong, and Kingdom Come was about his return to action, among many, many other things. Leave it to Geoff Johns (and Alex Ross) to take advantage of the return of DC's Multiverse to find a home for the Kingdom Come story - Earth-22! - and then come up with a way to bring that world's Superman right into regular universe to shake things up!

One of the things I love about how Geoff usually composes his comics is that he gives you the scenes you want to see! For example, he's playing off the fact that Power Girl's put out of sorts by KC-Superman's arrival, because he bears more than a passing resemblance to the old Earth-2 Kal-L, who was Power Girl's cousin (just as Supergirl is the current Kal-El's cousin). Yes, that sounds about right! And the next issue of JSA promises a meeting between the two Supermen, young and older, which is also something that makes fanboys lick their lips. And finally, Johns is using this opportunity to underscore the importance of the Justice Society right now, as its existence seems, more than anything else, to be preventing the Kingdom Come scenario from coming true. The JSA provides the kind of mentorship and guiding hand that was lacking in the tale told by Waid and Ross back in 1996.

At times during its previous run, JSA managed to be the best superhero comic on the stands. With this issue, it may be poised to reclaim that position for the first time since the current series launched last year.