The Legend of Kingdom Come Explores How a 30-Year-Old Graphic Novel Changed Comic Book History Forever

Around 30 years ago, writer Mark Waid and artist Alex Ross joined forces for Kingdom Come, a graphic novel which, amid an influx of dark, deadly anti-heroes, introduced an elder version of golden age giants to spank them down. A new documentary called The Legend of Kingdom Come, funded by fans on Kickstarter, looks at the creation of this seminal graphic novel and the artist whose unique visual style made it so timeless. Alex Ross was a young man when he painted the golden age heroes of DC into being for a new generation. Today, he’s still revolutionizing comics and honoring the giants who paved the way forward for him and others.

In this exclusive interview with CBR, The Legend of Kingdom Come director Remsy Atassi and producer (and longtime friend and business partner of Ross) Sal Abbinanti discuss why this was a story that needed to be told. Abbinanti is a veteran comics fan from when the Silver Age turned to Bronze, while Atassi grew up in the era when comics gained legitimacy. Together, they shaped a film that highlights the importance of this timeless work that inspired so many. In fact, Kingdom Come is responsible for CBR’s existence. There are many classic graphic novels from the 1980s and 1990s, though they usually take a cynical view of the medium’s history and ideals. Kingdom Come is different because it looks at that cynicism and meets it with a stern but earnest counterargument. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and other Golden Age heroes weren’t past their prime nor lacking in relevance. If anything, the changing landscape of comics and the world they reflect meant these heroes were more necessary than ever before.

The below responses have been edited for brevity and clarity.

CBR: So, the most obvious question first: Why a documentary about artist Alex Ross and Kingdom Come? What was it that drew you both to the Herculean effort of making a movie about this 30-year-old comic book mini-series?

Sal Abbinanti: Well, that’s an easy one. I’ve been representing Alex and working with him as his business manager and partner for 26 years. We brought Remsy in and were just shooting content, and then as it evolved, we wanted to do something more and more ambitious. I was kind of in on the ground floor when he was making Kingdom Come. We were just friends at that point, so I kind of knew where the bodies were buried, and I think we had always thought the natural progression to what we were doing was to do a full-length documentary. We originally thought to do one on Alex, but that might be kind of predictable. So, we found that the fan base is there for Kingdom Come.

CBR: Remsy, as a filmmaker, how did the approach shift alter your plans? Was it exciting or a daunting challenge? Also, how much knowledge did you have about Kingdom Come, Alex Ross and comics in general?

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Remsy Atassi: I read comics when I was growing up. When I met Sal and Alex about eight or nine years ago, I came in more as a filmmaker. We were making content for Alex, and it was all good. But I just knew there was more there. As I learned more about his work and his process and his personal story, Kingdom Come seemed like a cool story to reveal and also to frame a lot of his career with. It’s a very personal book for Alex in a lot of ways. He reached a lot of heights with that book that he became really well known for. That was kind of a great jumping off point for us.

CBR: Beyond Alex, what about the characters themselves? Their legacy is an important part of the movie, but perhaps elaborate a little bit about how they relate to you as professionals and, if so, fans?

Image via DC Comics
Image via DC Comics
Image via DC Comics
Image via DC Comics
Image via DC Comics

Remsy Atassi: I read them, but I wasn’t the biggest comics person growing up. After almost a decade with Sal and Alex? I’ve learned a lot from the masters. I grew up with them in the same way that anybody my age would, in the American culture where comics and these heroes were part of it. Then, obviously, in the early 2000s, superheroes blew up into this whole huge pop culture phenomenon.

But seeing the way that Alex approached the characters and the way he put all their history into Kingdom Come, I got an education through the way that he created them and then his style, which is so distinctive. Even when I first started working with Alex, l could tell that his style is so unique. I viewed the storytelling of the book and the characters from that angle, and I learned even more about the history as we made the film. A lot of things clicked in place for the deep-track fans and we try to kind of tell the story for a more general audience.

CBR: Sal, as you mention in the film, your history with comics and these characters predates your work with Alex. How did your love of superheroes take shape outside of working with one of the best artists to ever visualize them?

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Sal Abbinanti: I jumped in right away. I was a comic fan going back to the 1970s, and I was bitten right away with the spinner racks that used to be in the drug store. Thor #206 was my first comic, with the Absorbing Man! I got into Luke Cage and Spidey, too. I was never much of a DC guy. I was always a Marvel guy growing up. It hit me immediately. I knew right away — from the first time I saw the spinner rack, I’ve been in it ever since. And I had never looked back.

I didn’t jump on at any point when it was culturally acceptable, so to speak, like today. I was in from the get-go until I finally got old enough where I had to start hiding them in my notebooks at school. You were looked at like there was something wrong with you, or your parents were waiting for you to grow up. Until I finally started to make a living at it, and then they finally left me alone.

CBR: There was a clear shift in the late 1980s and through the 1990s where comics gained legitimacy in pop culture if not art and literature. People often point to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons with Watchmen, but there’s no doubt that both Marvels and Kingdom Come were also part of that, in large part because the realism in Alex Ross’s art elevated them beyond “cartoons,” no?

Image via DC Comics

Sal Abbinanti: Well, that’s what I told Alex! I think he felt that way because he’s always been very, very confident in his work and confident in the project. We’ve been working together for a lot of years, but I was an outsider. I told him, “Kingdom Come is one of the top five graphic novels of all time in my mind.” You know, you have Maus. You have Watchmen and, obviously, The Dark Knight Returns, but Kingdom Come is right up there in my mind. Even though we’re friends and we work together. I’m Captain Marvel! Still that book is something completely different. I said, ‘I’m a comic fan first, and I read it with everybody else when it came out. I think it holds up today and it’s as strong and as relevant today as it ever was.

Superman is Alex’s guy! That was always his favorite character. And I think what happened in the independent comic scene at the time and a lot of the speculative buying in the business got crazy. I mean, there were whole cottage industries of adult themes. It was really popular with the Verotik books and with Glenn Danzig and the stuff that they were doing. And they were making money hand over fist on a lot of the indie wave. I’m not saying what Jim Lee and Marc Silvestri and those guys were doing was bad, but I think a lot of people started to think of Superman as cornball. And Alex was like, ‘No, he’s the guy!’ I think he felt those characters were disrespected or they weren’t given their due. But he wanted to galvanize the comic industry say, “No. I think we took our eye off the ball with them. There’s something we could do with these guys, and Superman is the modern-day mythology of our generation.”

CBR: Remsy, as a kid in the 1990s, did Superman feel cornball to you compared to the Punisher or other anti-heroes? How did the work of Alex Ross, then or now, affect that view?

Image via DC Comics

Remsy Atassi: As a filmmaker trying to tell the story, I thought it was really interesting how Kingdom Come is very much a product of its time. It was a response to the stuff that was happening in comics at that time period. It was a very transformative time in comics that I think has so much influence on the characters and the stories, which now are obviously huge in pop culture. So, I thought this part of it was a cool story people would be interested in. The great thing about the book is it really does kind of stand on its own. You don’t need to have all that context. Like you can just read it as this cool story with incredible art, and I think it still speaks to people.

Because when you think of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and the iconic DC characters you think of them as these purely heroic figures. That’s how we see them. But at that time, they were all in cultural flux. I mean, this was a story outside [of DC Comics’ ‘Post-Crisis’ continuity]. It was an Elseworlds thing. Yet it’s still in print. It gets new fans every year. While working on this, we go to Comic-Con and people come up and they love these characters. I mean, people dress in the costumes of these specific versions of the characters. They continue to reference the way that you see them and the lighting.

Sal Abbinanti: And James Gunn, who used the logo [for the 2025 Superman film and the DC Cinematic Universe].

CBR: Sal, you said Alex was always confident about his work, and Kingdom Come was something like a defense of these iconic heroes during years in comics when some thought their time had passed. Did Alex realize he was in the process of making something this iconic?

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Sal Abbinanti: Alex was always tremendously ambitious about this stuff. He took it very, very seriously. From the jump, when we were just friends before we started working together, that was the one thing that kind of stuck out to me — that he wasn’t apologetic about comics. He wasn’t apologetic about his love for this medium. Fortunately, now it’s okay to be into comics, but don’t forget that for a long time it was almost frowned upon, whether it was that there’s something wrong with you or that you’ve never grown up or any of that kind of nonsense.

Alex always took this stuff very seriously. When the book came out, did I think we were going to be talking about it 30 years later? Not necessarily. But I knew it was a relevant piece of work. I knew it would stand the test of time artistically. I always felt that there was never a need to ever be apologetic for this stuff because some of the most creative people in the world work in comics. Whether it’s Jack Kirby or Neal Adams or Bernie Wrightson or Bill Sienkiewicz. I think we’re going to look back 25 years from now and say Alex Ross, Bill Sienkiewicz, Neal Adams, Jack Kirby and so on were some of the greatest artists of the 20th century. I think that Alex belongs up there with those guys.

CBR: Absolutely Alex Ross has a place in that pantheon of greats. His style, which The Legend of Kingdom Come touches on and the special features on the Blu-ray examine in depth, is unique in a way many readers haven’t seen before or since, right

Remsy Atassi: That’s one of the things as just a filmmaker and an artistic person, I was really attracted to when I first met Alex. Because one of the first things we did with him was spend an afternoon while he was painting and capturing, just seeing him bring the image to life. It’s kind of crazy because he goes so quickly. People are surprised a lot of times that he’s able to render the characters pretty quickly. Now some of the backgrounds and stuff? They take time. At this point he can really see the image in his head. He’s got that kind of vision.

So, I think there is a craftsmanship to it that is definitely a huge part of it. When you combine that with like his inspiration, the fact that he still is inspired by these characters, I think that’s something that jumps out. And we’re just not used to seeing the characters like this that often. Not just painting but specifically in his style. Seeing him at work is pretty amazing. And it was cool in the documentary. We tried to show that because we were able to capture a number of pieces with him start-to-finish. I think people are always blown away at how fast he’s able to actually work on that stuff.

CBR: Lastly, does The Legend of Kingdom Come feel like a capstone on a legendary career for Alex, or is this just one more milestone for him? He’s always posting art and seems to still love doing the work, after all.

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Sal Abbinanti: I don’t think Alex really concerns himself with it, because I don’t think he’s done. I don’t think he feels he’s anywhere near done. I think he’s proud of paying homage to his heroes, whether it’s Kirby or Neal Adams or John Romita Sr. or Norman Rockwell, for that matter. I think he’s proud of the fact that he’s a comic artist. That was always important to him.

There was no ‘grab-ass’ with Alex from the minute we started shooting photo reference for Captain Marvel. It wasn’t a bunch of guys just kind of laughing and joking. Alex was very serious. He was setting up his shots. He was setting up his composition. Now, he is setting up his next projects. He is always looking down the road. There’s a lot that he still wants to do. I just feel that he feels these characters are important and they’re not just meant to be, you know, kind of casual pop culture.

Remsy Atassi: I think if you’re an artist or a creator, you can’t really concern yourself too much with how people are necessarily going to receive what you do. Because you’re never going to get anything done if you’re too worried about that. Also, some of these guys like Jack Kirby are now well-known and well regarded, but throughout their lives, never really got their due. You can’t control that, all you can do is just do the work. So, Alex is like the perfect example, despite the fact that a lot of people obviously love his work. He’s very well respected. He’s very well known in the industry. He just plugs away and does the work. That is really the best way to be an artist or a creator at all. You just can’t concern yourself with anything else.