D.C. K.O.: Boss Battle #1 // Review
Grodd and World Forger survey a grim lanfscape. The sky is red, lit by occasional shocks of lightning. Buildings are decaying and sinking into the ground. It’s ugly and it’s going to get a whole lot uglier in D.C. K.O.: Boss Battle #1. Writer Jeremy Adams writes a story featuring art by Ronan Cliquet, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Kieran McKeown and Pablo M. Collar. Color comes to the page courtest of HiFi. Adams drects the flow of traffic in a big multi-universe mash-up between the DC Universe and properties from a whole bunch of other companies. It’s almost fun.
The Omega Energy that can save the world can only be acquired through conflict. And maybe what's called for is a diversity of different types of conflict which might play out over a numerous different parallel universes. Black Lightning and Plastic Man square-off in Mortal Kmobat ad Wonder Wman enters n arena with Red Sonja. Bat Woman face Vampirella while Star Sapphire goes to hang out with a teenaged witch. Superman squares off a against a twisted mutation of himself with a milk fetish while the Joker...has tea with a little doll. Hopefully everytone plays nice and it all resolves before everything crashes together and falls apart.
Adams doesn't have a whole lot of time to set up any of the conflicts that he's working with. For the most part, the issue gets a lot of traction on simply presenting the pairing of heroes or villains, and letting the readers imagination move with it from there. This is a little fun in places, but isn't particularly satisfying. And it doesn't really allow the characters the kind of complexity that makes them appealing.Homelander and Red Sonja and... just about everyone else coming in from outside the DC Universe is really short changed in the process.
For their part, the art team does a pretty good job of the juggling all of the action and energy. The distinctive energies of some of the properties don't necessarily make it to the page all that well. There's something very specific about the visual style of., for instance, Mortal Kombat that doesn't quite make it across on the page. This is a pity as the contrast between that style of combat and the distinct personality of Plastic Man could have been a lot of fun to see on the page. (The Anthony Starr version of Homelander lacks a lot of the distinctively slimy personality of. Anthony Starr.) On the whole, though, the overall energy is maintained, which is quite an accomplishment givien how much the narrative jumps around.
More than merely a childish roll throug the carpet with different action figures, D.C. K.O. has been experimenting a little bit here and there with different ideas of how to present traditional superpowered action sequences. There's been a great potential to really get into that in a way that would be a lot of fun. But the potential experimentation with this is largely left off the page. This is too bad as it really does have the potential to be something really interesting.
