The Dark Knight and the Man of Steel head back to Earth-2 for a mash up of It’s A Wonderful Life and Ghost Dad in “Batman/Superman” #12.
Written by Greg Pak
Illustrated byJae LeeTom Raney and Ken LashleyA new arc begins following the events of FIRST CONTACT. The worlds of Batman and Superman come to an explosive clash as something terrible happens to the Worlds Finest team, and a Dark Knight who is not quite himself must team up with Lois Lane to find a missing Man of Steel. Meanwhile, Selina Kyle encounters a person of amazing strength who has no idea who he is.
Note: That solicit has nothing to do with the actual issue.
“Batman/Superman” has just survived one of the most dangerous threats to any superhero: the Company Mandated Crossover. With the ‘Doomed’ storyline still weaving its way through various Superman comics, the creative team wastes no time jumping right back into another adventure with the DC Universe’s favorite bromance as they ponder the mysteries of interdimensional time travel.
Fresh off a team-up with Power Girl and Huntress, Bruce and Clark both get a tingle in their spider-senses. The echo of their previous adventure to Earth 2 has been stirred up in their brains, and they piece together what happened when they met and subsequently beat up alternate versions of themselves. It suddenly occurs to them that they learned of Darkseid’s eventual arrival on Earth-2 and the resulting destruction of that world, and they did nothing to prevent it. Determined to change the alternate past, this is the exact moment when the demon Kaiyo the Chaos Bringer, the mastermind behind their initial journey to Earth-2, appears and offers the pair a chance to travel back and change one thing about the past.
This issue is absolutely a mixed bag from top to bottom. Writer Greg Pak seems to be stalling for time with this book, as everything that happens within is a repeat of something that’s already happened. The first scene has Batman and Superman literally standing around and discussing the story-arc of the first four issues of “Batman/Superman”, and once they end up back in the other dimension, the main characters walk through the plot of “Earth-2” #1. Sure, that issue came out two years ago and the series itself has not been the most popular book coming out of DC recently, but just the fact that Pak retells such a recent story seems very odd. The fact that the Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman of Earth-2 were killed by Darkseid is the hook that the entire series is based on, so the chance that those deaths repeated here would shock and surprise the reader is rather slim.
Story sourcing aside, if there’s one thing Greg Pak has proven he can do very well, it’s really go for the reader’s heartstrings. The heroes arrive in Earth-2 and they find themselves invisible and intangible, just in time to see a horde of Darkseid’s forces storming down on the Kent farm. This is a moment when Pak uses the alternate universe setting to his advantage, and it really feels like the reader is about to see Jonathan and Martha Kent get brutally killed. It is simple and heartbreaking at the same time; Superman pointedly asks Batman what he would do if he had the chance to save his parents, even if they were from an alternate universe. While it seems like another demon-induced time jump back to the Crime Alley might be in store, Pak plays with expectations by placing Batman in a situation where he must choose whether or not to save Alfred. In an interesting twist, Pak has Batman make what could be seen as the selfish and rash choice, while Superman airs on the side of altruism and the greater good. Of course Pak also has enough of a firm grip on Batman’s character that he knows the Dark Knight is still going to come up with a brilliant plan to save the day despite using up his one chance to physically interact in Earth-2.
The first thing that must be said about the art is that the solicits are completely wrong. Jae Lee doesn’t appear anywhere in the book, and instead the impromptu team of Tom Raney and Ken Lashley handle the art duties. Jae Lee’s gothic and surreal images were the most gripping things about “Batman/Superman” when the series debuted, setting it dramatically apart from the plethora of Superman and Batman books at DC. Whenever the artist takes a break, the quality of the book declines despite the best efforts of Greg Pak.
Continued belowTom Raney handles the majority of the art and while the book opens quite strong, consistency soon becomes a problem. The opening page actually looks very good, as Bruce and Clark pour over recordings of their meet-up with Huntress and Power Girl, but problems emerge when closeups of their faces have proportions that change from panel to panel and strange angles. On page 7, for example, Superman takes off into his classic flying-into-a-fight pose, but it looks like his chin suddenly grew three times as large as he pushes his head into his shoulder for no apparent reason. On the very next page, Superman’s big action moment, his arm is the same size as his waist, and about a foot longer than the other one. Raney’s art is not uniformly terrible, it’s just so different from page to page that it makes the whole issue feel rushed.
The feeling that this issue was a rushed filler becomes even more apparent when Ken Lashley shows up to pencil the last four pages, and starts right in the middle of the big climax. Batman and Superman are climbing to the top of Darkseid’s machine and just as they near the summit, everything looks different. But one page later there is a giant explosion, so maybe they were hoping no one would notice. Lashley’s art does have a bit more of a darker, shadowy vibe to it, harkening back to the Lee drawn issues, but suffers from the same odd facial contortions. Superman’s scrunchy face aside, the sequence where he saves Huntress from the exploding Batplane, and fades back into intangibleness as she plummets into a boom tube is hands down the best looking page in the whole issue. The potential for great art was here, but the whole thing seems like it had to come together at the last minute.
Final Verdict: 5/10 – Greg Pak does his best to create emotional and character driven moments, but inconsistent art and the fact that the story is basically a retelling off the first issue of a completely different series makes “Batman/Superman” #12 a textbook middle of the road installment.
