Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen #1 // Review
The year 2019 is almost over, but it seems that there’s no end in sight to DC’s Year of the Villain. That banner was meant to cover four different storylines, two of which (City of Bane over in Batman and all the Leviathan stuff over in the Superman titles and its own miniseries) have pretty much wrapped up. The other two plotlines covered in the Year of the Villain are still going, however: Lex Luthor and the Legion of Doom’s efforts in service of Perpetua in Justice League, and the misadventures of the Batman Who Laughs and his Secret Six in Batman/Superman and various other titles. The new four-issue miniseries Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen tells the story of the collision between Luthor’s forces and the Batman Who Laughs’ squad.
The first issue begins with a flashback to the Batman Who Laughs’ brief time in Luthor’s captivity, then moves to the present day on Earth-3, where the Crime Syndicate of Amerika hopes to curry Perpetua’s favor. The Batman Who Laughs tortures Rip Hunter for some reason, and then the Secret Six comes after Luthor.
James Tynion IV is a solid writer, and he’s been writing many of these characters recently in his work on Justice League. Still, he doesn’t manage to make this story feel anything other than superfluous. Nor does he give us a reason to care about these characters--this is a book of bad people doing bad things to each other, and there’s really nobody to root for.
The art by Steve Epting is good, but his restrained, realistic style is at odds with the over-the-top villainy of the book. The colors by Nick Filardi are appropriately gloomy. Letterer Travis Lanham does solid work, although he doesn’t manage to make the Batman Who Laughs’ dialogue any more readable than it is anywhere else.
For its first issue, at least, Year of the Villain: Hell Arisen seems to be almost entirely unnecessary. Worse than that, it’s pretty dull as well. Unluckily for us, there are three more issues left.
