DC has released a first-look preview for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20, which sees Mark Waid return to the world of Kingdom Come.
Written by Waid and illustrated by Dan Mora, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20 hits comic shops next month. As announced back in July, the issue sees Batman and Superman travel to the universe of Waid and Alex Ross‘ seminal Elseworlds story Kingdom Come. DC has now revealed four unlettered preview pages from the issue, which features a main cover by Mora. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20 will also ship with variant covers by Björn Barends, David Nakayama, Daniel Sampere, and Chrissie Zullo — plus a foil variant featuring the helmet of Magog.
Check out the first-look preview for Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20 below:
What to expect from Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20
Per DC, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20 kicks off the five-issue story arc “Heir to the Kingdom” — which “teams up The Dark Knight and The Man of Steel with a jaded Superman, a broken Batman, a war-hungry Wonder Woman, and the other reimagined super heroes” from Waid and Ross’ Kingdom Come. The arc also features “the return of Superman’s protégé, Boy Thunder.”
“It’s been exciting to revisit the world of Kingdom Come with this prequel,” Waid said. “Dan, [colorist] Tamra [Bonvillain], [letterer] Steve [Wands] and I have the chance to show how some of its characters originally evolved and to account for some that were missing from the original series. Even if you think you know the ending, there are massive surprises in store!”
The legacy of DC’s Kingdom Come
DC originally published Waid and Ross’ Kingdom Come as a four-issue limited series in 1996. The comic takes place in an alternate future where aged icons like Batman and Superman have fallen out of favor and been replaced in the public eye by a new generation of reckless, amoral superheroes — the biggest and baddest of them all being Magog. Waid and Ross crafted the story in response the excess that permeated superhero comics in the 1990s.
DC has revisited the Kingdom Come mythos numerous times over the years — including earlier in Waid and Mora’s Batman/Superman: World’s Finest run. Issue #7, which released last September, marked the debut of the aforementioned Boy Thunder. December 2022’s issue #10 soon revealed that Superman’s newfound sidekick was actually destined to become Magog.
Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #20 goes on sale Tuesday, October 17 from DC.
