Iconic comic book artist Alex Ross’ has his own DC Comics head canon, and it has a definitive end in the 1970s. Fans who have familiarity with his work such as Justice and Kingdom Come might not find it surprising that Ross has a preference for DC’s past.
Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ explored future of the DC Universe in Kingdom Come has been an intriguing premise since it released. Although it came out in the ‘90s, perceptive readers notice that many mainstream versions of characters are missing. For example in Kingdom Come’s depiction of DC’s future, Dick Grayson takes on the Red Robin persona instead of Nightwing, which he had in the comics at that point in time. Such details reflect Ross’ own personal head canon, which he once referenced in an interview.
In an archived interview with Newsarama highlighted by Reddit user nightwing612, while speaking about Justice, Alex Ross elaborated on the book’s setting and his own take on the DC Universe. He revealed that he imagines continuity lasting into the mid 1970s, giving reason for his traditionally designed characters. Ross explained his perspective on the DC Universe in Justice:
To be very true to it, it's keeping things with where I wanted to set them, they're in this place which is a combination of the continuity of the comics and what was on television back in the 70s or so. As such, the perpetual state of the characters then reflects where they are in Justice - the unmarried Superman, for instance. Lois Lane is a part of this as well - she's the focused love interest in his life, and even though she's not his wife in this, there is that bond in there.
Although the Teen Titans aren’t a major part of Justice, Ross even had an idea for where the Justice League’s crimefighting partners are during the series. Despite being a fan of George Perez and Marv Wolfman’s take on the teenage superhero team, he still relegates his iteration to its original founding members. Ross spoke on the Teen Titans, as well:
Dick Grayson is Robin in this, and there are no other Teen Titans, save the originals: Wonder Girl, Aqua Lad, Speedy, Kid Flash. That doesn't mean I don't love the Perez/Wolfman ones, but that's just a different age. The cutoff for me is about when the first modern-age hero is introduced to the Justice League, who I consider to be Firestorm.
It might seem regressive to some fans who are committed followers of DC’s ongoing titles for Ross to maintain the mid 70s as an end point. However, he views the era to have the most creative freedom, as certain characters hadn’t been killed off or married to one another. “For me, it's important to pick this time in history, before they started killing people willy-nilly. Once you start making that alteration, which I think was around 1976-1977, wherein months of each other you're killing off Aquaman's infant son, Flash's wife, and some others, things start to definitely change.” Alex Ross' insistence on DC Comics remaining in the past reveals his reverence for the versions of characters he grew up reading.
Source: Newsarama (via Reddit)