DC K.O. #1 // Review
Lois says Clark doesn’t like playing games that everyone can’t win together as a team. So he’s not really all that into what it is that he’s playing with Diana and Bruce. But it HAS been a while since the three of them have hung-out together to relax outside of...work. They’re not going to have much of a chance to do so, however, as duty calls in DC K.O. #1. Darkseid has arrived and he’s going to kill them all...a little. Writer Scott Snyder briskly slaps together all of the elements for the opening to a major crossover event with artist Javi Fernandez and colorist Alejandro Sánchez.
Diana, Bruce, Clark and everyone else are all killed by Darkseid in the first few pages of the issue. Don’t worry, though: they get better. It’s a whole time travel thing. Some of the biggest time travelers in the DC Universe assemble the most powerful champions on Earth to explain to them all that they’re quite doomed. Bruce comes-up with a strategy that sounds like something out of a one-on-one fighting video game and they all go at it. It’s going to be a competition. There are going to be NCAA-style brackets and everything. They’re all going to fight. One person is going to be crowned “King Omega.” Ugh.
It’s a profoundly silly idea in a lot of different ways. That doesn’t mean that it’s not going to be fun, though. Snyder has taken a very weak premise that seems more suited to a video game and fleshes it out in a way that feels as though it might turn into something. If Snyder can build enough narrative momentum to make it work, the K.O. crossover might actually have some thematic depth to it. Don’t bet on it, though. Mega-crossover events don’t have a great track record for being terribly well-executed.
The art team does a pretty good job of brining it all together Big crowd shots can be difficult to frame, but Fernandez and company make everyone look distinct. Everyone has their own personality clearly in place on the page as the conflict opens. The rush of action from cover to cover feels like it has a gravity to it that carries enough energy to open the whole crossover event. There might not be a whole lot of subtlety to the story, but it’s fun to watch it run, jump and bash its way from page to page.
There’s a whole lot of love that’s been crammed into this opener. That love generates a great. deal of fun, but there’s little question that the crossover event runs the risk of being profoundly silly if it doesn’t find the right way to frame a very childish concept that rests at the heart of it all. Still...there IS hope. Marvel’s Secret Wars in ’84 turned out to be a much better story than DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths...and Secret Wars was created to sell toys...so...y’know...it’s possible that this could turn into something good.
