With its Infinite Crisis series, DC Comics has been making changes that affect its entire pantheon of superheroes, across its entire fictional universe. This has a downside: with a lot of stories and characters to follow, it’s easy to get bogged down in the detail. However, there’s no such problem with this book, which hones in on the pre-Crisis antics of DC’s three big-hitters – Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman.
Despite the individual strengths of these three mammoth superheroes, it’s as a team that they’ve taken on many of their biggest jobs. But with Superman giving both Wonder Woman and Batman a severe battering while under the influence of criminal genius Max Lord’s formidable mind controlling power; Wonder Woman having to step over the line in order to solve the problem; and Batman slipping into a justifiable state of total paranoia; the world’s most powerful threesome manage to decimate their friendship.
There’s actually little in this book that hasn’t been covered in previous Countdown to Infinite Crisis volumes, with a key chapter in this story having already been published in The OMAC Project. However, this enriches the story, focusing on Superman, bringing out the differences between him and the friends he’s made amongst what used to be a superhero fraternity.
Collecting stories from four different monthly comics – Superman, Wonder Woman, Action Comics and Adventures of Superman, this is a great way to pull all the disparate Superman strands together. Rucka, Simone and Verheiden do a master job of working around one another while still keeping the plot interesting and readable, though the mixture of artistic styles (22 artists on this one volume!) can be a little distracting.
But when it comes down to it, it’s got the heroes that count, a story that makes remarkable sense, and three of the world’s most powerful super-people punching the living daylights out of one another and falling out, making it compelling reading for superhero fans.
Other titles in the Infinite Crisis series:
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