This feature documentary is an origin story about the beloved 90s-era graphic novel Kingdom Come, going behind the scene | dG1fc2E1MzBOT3Y5ZmM
Category
đ„
Short filmTranscript
00:00I fell a great star from heaven, and I beheld and heard an angel.
00:12I remember when the Dark Knight Returns came out.
00:15I remember when Watchmen came out.
00:17So of course I remember when Kingdom Come came out.
00:19Kingdom Come is four separate issues, 48 pages apiece.
00:23It was an all-immersive kind of lifestyle for me.
00:26It blew people away.
00:27I mean, this was the most sought-after book there was.
00:29This was something very new, very different.
00:32No one had seen anything like that at that scale before.
00:34It was amazing.
00:35I never thought from anything that people would still be talking about this book 25
00:39years later.
00:40There were voices, and lightnings, and thunderings.
00:45This was my dream.
00:46What makes Alex Ross's art stand out from the others is his approach to realism.
00:51You think of a Superman, you're thinking of the Alex Ross Superman.
00:55It almost looked like Renaissance paintings that we were told these were the masters.
00:59Alex was taking some of those techniques and applying them to superheroes.
01:041938, DC released the first issue of Action Comics, the magazine that introduced Superman.
01:11Gives you motion.
01:12It gives you expression, all in a little magazine that you can afford.
01:17Comic art would abstract the human form in a way that was very inspiring to me as a young
01:22person and something I would imitate for my whole life.
01:25Wish fulfillment.
01:26This is power fantasy.
01:27If I just had the abilities to do these things and make the world a better place, I could
01:31do it.
01:32He makes them look like real, live superheroes.
01:36They look like Olympian gods.
01:42You gotta have the balance of the eyes.
01:44Perfect.
01:45Let me tell you the story of Kingdom Come, page for page, panel for panel.
01:49It's such a huge, epic story.
01:52The DC fans, when he did their favorite characters, and then they came back to save the world
01:57one more time, you know, just minds blown.
01:59I see a shot that is, I know, since it was like a pencil layout through final rendering,
02:05and then I see it on a bus ad or a poster or a shot set up, I'm going like, oh, totally,
02:11totally.
02:12You totally see Alex's influence.
02:13The way material folds the shadows, the angst of the character, the history of the character.
02:19I mean, he's like Stellar Adler.
02:21He's the master class of how you approach comics.
02:26This is a true art form.
02:29It would weigh on us the way it would be perceived, but I always had this sense of like, oh, I'm
02:37making a legend right now.