DC K.O. #5 // Review
It’s the ending of the series. The end of the event. All of the battles have been lost and won except for the last one. Darkseid faces the King Omega who has survived all of the other battles. However, it’s not as easy as a single slug fast at the end of the crossover. There’s a lot more at stake here. So there’s going to be a lot more going on as writer Scott Snyder and artist Javi Fernández draw the story to a close in cosmic fashion in DC K.O. #5. It’s a story that’s very ambitious and really attempt to write itself into the heart of the nature of conflict.
Clark was defeated by what it was essentially a sucker punch. He didn’t see it coming. He didn’t have a chance to react. And so some iteration of a nemesis which had killed him in the past, besides to resurrect him. There’s a whole reason for this. And it has to do with a lot of different things. But maybe it’s just boils down to the fact that Clark is probably the nicest guy and the only one that the powers that be would really want wielding that kind of power.
There is some degree of poetry in Snyder‘s script. This is absolutely essential as the level of conflict that’s hitting the page is really difficult to draw in a way that feels anywhere near as intense as it should. Is it like a conflict between universes. It’s kind of hard to frame that for the comic book page. Though many have tried in the past. And show the writer tends to fall on the idea of poetry. There is some creative use of astrophysics as a way of understanding the conflict. But it’s largely superficial. Not that it needs to be all that deep or anything like that. It is just a combat between Superman And Darkseid after all.
Craig does a respectable job of framing massive power on the page. The poses being struck by so many of the ancillary characters around the edges feel like they’re echoing a tradition that goes way back. There’s something big going on and they all have to look meaningfully off into the distance. Or perhaps just run really fast and look really aggressive. And that works too. It’s really difficult to frame the central combat between hero and villain in a way that feels like it’s capturing the momentum of the action being described in the script, though. Craig does a pretty good job with it, though.
Amidst everything else, the final issue in the slightly strange and childish series is a real tribute to the spirit of the DC universe. There are echoes to crossovers past. There are echoes into the central conflict which have continued to be the central engine for the DC universe for so long. And it all feels like it’s brought to the page with some kind of coherence. Which is pretty impressive in of itself.
