Is it nature or nurture? When it comes to talent, it may be a little of both, as revealed by superstar artist Alex Ross, who posted one of his childhood superhero drawings to Facebook yesterday, and compared it to more recent work.

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Drawn by a then-12-year-old Ross, the image depicts the Golden Age versions of a number of DC superheroes, including Superman, Wonder Woman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Hawkman. It bears more than a passing resemblance to his iconic work in on the 1996 classic, “Kingdom Come.”

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Originally published as part of DC Comics’ Elseworlds imprint, “Kingdom Come” was a four-issue mini-series that takes place in an alternate future; it tells the story of an older generation of traditional superheroes clashing with its younger, amoral counterparts in an all-out effort to prevent a superhuman war.

Although Mark Waid is credited as writer, “Kingdom Come” was in fact based on a forty-page handwritten outline created by Ross, and inspired by his work on “Marvels,” an epic that spans the years 1939-1974, and which recounts the history of the Marvel Universe from the street-level perspective of news photographer Phil Sheldon.

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Ross is known for his painterly style and for intricate tableaus that often depict masses of costumed heroes in heated battle. It is clear from this early work that, even as a boy, he had a knack for, and a love of, the grandiose.