Comics Review: Batman/Superman World's Finest #17

Previous review.

I had gotten raving reviews of the current version of the title from Wes at Thinking Critical.  I wasn’t sure I really wanted a standard superhero comic, but I decided to take a chance on it.  It was between this comic and another indy title that I can’t remember.  I lucked out and made the right choice.    

He has all of the combined powers of the Legion of Superheroes, but none of their looks.

My previous experience with the World’s Finest title in the 80’s and involved the Composite Superman.  That was enough to scare me off getting any more issues in my youth.

My favorite page.  This is beautiful artwork.

This title takes place outside of regular DC continuity and instead focuses on classic DC continuity.  In other words, the real DC continuity.  (That’s not a snarky, throwaway line.  The Post-Crisis DC setting is something of a baseline.  Modern DC is this weird, non-functioning divergence from that.  Occasionally, classic stories, mostly Batman, have come from the Modern, but then they get incorporated into the mainline and diluted.)  This comic features real Batman and real Superman.  You tell this because they’re wearing their underwear on the outside the way God intended. 

 

This issue was the finale to a five-issue storyline.  I cheated and used a comic book “archive” site to read the previous issues afterward.  First, this comic was fun.  It was classic superhero comic.  The formatting was a bit of a hybrid.  The storyline was “made for the trade,” but the pacing was not “decompressed.”  If anything, it was frenetic. 

 

The storyline starts small with a murder and climaxes with a world-wide AI/robot rebellion.  In modern DC, this would be a major crossover event lasting for months and touching every title.  In the span of five issues of one comic, this feels a bit rushed.  One the other hand, it’s much better to leave the audience maybe wanting a bit more than overstaying your welcome and yearning for an ending.

World’s Finest is essentially its own little corner of the DC universe, but has the full universe to play with.  The JLA guests stars.  Other superheroes, other supervillains, and the whole toybox of robot characters from all of the history of DC comics appear.  This is a lot to cram into one issue.  Still, Mark Waid does a good job writing it.          

This two-page spread worked.

This one, not so much.

What doesn’t help are some two-page spreads, especially the totally unnecessary all black title intro pages.  (Those were in all the issues, unfortunately.)  The one spread showcasing all of the foes was effective.  But, some of the odd formatting of the fight scenes made them a bit confusing.  Dan Mora’s character art is excellent, but it seems like backgrounds weren’t his specialty.  The action takes place mostly in a featureless environments. 

 

Batman and Superman aren’t in this issue together a whole lot, but the duo has to work to their strengths which often means working apart.  (Earlier in the series, Batman was incapacitated, so Superman worked with Robin as his deductive partner.) 

 

I'm sure Jimmy will be okay.  Don't worry.

Overall, this issue was lots of fun (in spite of all of my criticisms).  I especially liked this bit at the end with Jimmy Olsen.  Unfortunately, this title is a bit of an anomaly on the comics rack and it shouldn’t be.  This should be the norm.  I concur with Wes that everyone should be picking up this title.  There should be more like it at DC and Marvel.