DC KO #5 review

Posted on by martingray1

It’s the finale to DC’s latest event, and Superman is in trouble.

Well, he’s dead, killed by Lex Luthor.

But that’s only one Superman. It turns out that the ‘games night’ flashbacks we’ve been seeing as asides while heroes bashed each other in a cosmic clash to become the King Omega weren’t the flashbacks they seemed.

A pocket universe! Time Trappers have form there, as Legion of Super-Heroes fans know. So while Superman is dead, he’s also alive. Schrodinger’s Superman? A sliver of the regular guy who’s now taking over his role?

This comic doesn’t care. The series has gloried in being stupid, an unashamed excuse for good guys – and sometimes bad – to bash seven bells out of one another. So, in Superman last week Doomsday learned he wasn’t, as believed, created to destroy, but to resurrect the Man of Steel, and then vanish from reality. Better get on with it, then.

It’s time for Superman to rebuild Earth, lately turned into a mini-Apokolips by Darkseid.

His work done, Superman fights Darkseid, falling backwards through time, until finally he looks set to deliver the winning blow, cheered on by the Heart of Apokolips, the machine that arranged the reality busting bouts between the King Omega contenders. And which is absorbed into Superman’s chest, upping his power levels.

Rather than kill his foe, Superman rips out the Heart, causing a blast that send Darkseid back to the Absolute Universe he’s been lurking in of late. It also makes all the heroes and villains reappear

Everyone can get on with their lives… except the Man of Steel.

‘You did good’? Awful grammar, not something Diana would say.

Tell us more!

‘Next Level’ is, of course, the successor to the current DC cover phrase, All In

Perfection gives way to, well, it looks like regular DC Earth, though an epilogue does hint at changes.

And back at games night, which seems to have been reabsorbed into the regular reality.

Does the game ever stop? It’s one darn event after another, and wouldn’t you know it, Darkseid is already plotting new mischief, with former Flash Barry Allen getting the first clue.

A laughing Darkseid reveals to the reader his true plan.

There’s going to be an Absolute Crisis.

Give me strength. DC KO has had some fun moments, but can’t it also have a happy ending for heroes and readers alike, at least for a few months? The Mr Terrific panel nods to solicitations telling us heroes are getting new powers, exactly as happened at the end of the Absolute Power event.

And the Absolute Universe is part of an Absolute Multiverse? Of course it is… well, I won’t be following their Crisis, and fingers crossed it won’t cross over into the regular DCU. I tried a few Absolute books, they’re not my cup of tea.

Darkseid’s evil Legion, which last week’s Superman hinted would turn on Darkseid, are absent for all but one panel. When they do appear, it’s with the hint that they’ll be back. Why? They’ve served their story purpose, bring on a shiny, good Legion. Could Superman’s mystery mission be to ensure the birth of a classic Legion, like the one hinted at during his perfect world scenario?

I can see Superman not killing Darkseid, perhaps thinking – stupidly, to be honest – that exiling him to Absolute space would mean he’d see the back of him, but it means ultimate Evil goes unpunished.

I didn’t love Doomsday Clock start to finish, but liked a lot of it and loved the idea of a Metaverse centred on Superman; it’s good to see it referenced here, with wiggle room for readers to believe it or not.

Why does Superman remake Earth and then fight Darkseid? Why not beat him first, then go straight to the second do-over, if ‘perfection’ isn’t what you actually want? There is something about him having the whole world in his hands…

The worst thing about this mini-series has been the super-chatty Heart of Apokolips, which has somehow gone from being the Arcade-style gamesmaster, out to trick the heroes, to Superman’s number one cheerleader. The voice given it by writer Scott Snyder is hugely annoying. What the heck is it all about? That panel with Cyborg is a near guarantee it’ll be back – wasn’t nicking Boom Tube tech enough for him?

I get that for the readers DC KO is meant to be akin to a pro-wrestling match, but Superman saying ‘Ding Ding’ to Darkseid, and talking of ‘tagging in’ the good and bad guys near the end of the book – who then do nothing – is a bit much.

Scott Snyder doesn’t write the whole issue, Joshua Williamson handles the games night scene and coda. Snyder certainly keeps the story moving, while Williamson lays down the hints/threats at what’s coming up.

Most of the art in this extra-length issue is pretty decent to great, illustrator Javi Fernández and colourist Alejandro Sánchez do an especially good job with the Darkseid fight scene, giving us an imposing dark god and a majestic Superman, complete with glowing Omega crown. Other highlights include Doomsday doing a Superman-style shirt rip, the creation of ‘Earth Paradise’ and a happily temporary King Lex.

Xermanico draws the games night pages as he has throughout the mini, and they’re pretty decent, but what really lets the book down are the scrappy stylings of Wes Craig in the final pages – the montage of moments, Barry Allen carrying comic books that look like compact discs, the peek into the Absolute Universe. I’ve seen a lot better work from him – he’s currently drawing Absolute Wonder Woman – so I can only assume he was rushed. Very, very rushed.

Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou does a good job with a lot of different fonts; I hate the Heart’s hysterical typeface here as much as I did when it first popped up, but that’s a stylistic choice for the story – someone might love it.

The cover image by Fernández and Sánchez is so hidden by the cut-out style DC KO ‘peepholes’ it may as well not be there.

All in all, this mini-series has been very frustrating – some fun moments along the way, but far too much ‘this happens then this happens and ooh, here’s a new rule for the tournament, and why don’t we kill everyone and bring them back and kill them again and blow up the universe…’ Without known parameters, a strange sports story is more frustrating than entertaining.

But, my tastes aren’t the same as everyone else’s; how was it for you?

26 thoughts on “DC KO #5 review”

  1. Just glad i skipped it, but frustrated its outcome along with the Absolute books will continue to haunt me and push me further and further from liking comics

    -Matthew Lloyd

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  2. I read a short while ago and need to go thru a 2nd time to absorb it. I like how Superman refused to be seduced by the idea of being the center of everything. He denied the heart and did not mold the universe or multiverse in his image. Luthor would have. Darkseid has. I thought the obvious plug for upcoming series was kinda tacky, though. And yeah – deep sigh – the promise of another Crisis… I mainly bought this because I’ve been getting Waid’s “Justice League Unlimited” and it kind of felt essential given that series built up to and tied into KO and appears to be greatly tied into its aftermath based on solicitations. I’ve skipped other JLU-linked books but this didn’t seem like an option. So as a chapter of JLU it’s fine. Entertaining. Taking some big swings. Not paint by numbers. I’m not quite sure I really grasp what Darkseid wants, though, and this journey the character has been on since the All In Special. He wants to be everything? Is that it? Starting with the Absolute Earth and branching out I guess into the multi-verse? I appreciate that KO was a pretty self contained reading experience. Ex.You really didn’t need to know Booster Gold was lost on Absolute Earth and rescued by Superman. According to KO, Darkseid wanted to possess someone to be on the inside and so he chose Booster. Simple. It was odd though that Darkseid’s Legion was such a major focus of other tie-in books, yet barely appeared in KO proper. And when those characters briefly did it was kind of jarring – like the writers realized they hadn’t been used yet and crammed in a scene or 2. -Brian

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    1. It’s true, Superman did reject being the centre of the universe, but the last we see of him he’s still in giant God mode, fading off to do goodness knows what. Snyder and Williamson might have tried to make that make sense.

      I so agree about the lack of use of the dark Legion, I was expecting a massive role for them, but they were literally an afterthought. Once Darkseid lost, they should’ve been returned to the future of the Absolute world to deal with what they did while corrupted.

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  3. Have to agree with Brian on Darkseid. The worst thing that has happened to the character is for him to be considered the main villain of the DC universe and a Superman villain. The original Kirby version of the character was more subtle and interesting than a frothing at the mouth character who wants to be the only god. And we get told he’s been defeated but he pops right up again, like the Joker.

    I didn’t bother with the mini-series, mostly because Snyder – similar to Grant Morrison when not on form – tends to write elliptically in terms of plot. I’m sure in his head he knows what’s going on but he fails to make it clear to the reader what is happening. With distance I might check it out.

    The bigger problem for me over the last few years is that the crossovers are all same-y. Marvel has had the same problem where every crossover was designed to pit hero against hero, and DC is constantly revising its history and killing/reviving the multiverse to the point where it doesn’t seem interested in building anything new. It would be nice to have a Millennium or a Final Night, where the crossover is a worldwide event that also allows for different stories to be told, but nobody seems to have that in them any more. And the regularity means that any regular series tied into them gets derailed for several months. I was enjoying Layman and Wood’s Titans until it was hijacked and wish they could have had several years of just telling Titans stories. I am getting to the point where I get more joy out of back issues than what I get out of new ones.

    But not to be too negative, I’ll likely check out Ryan North’s Flash and I like the current Batman run and Supergirl.

    Stu

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    1. Thanks Stu, I’m glad it’s not just me who finds gaping narrative gaps on this series; I realise this series was sold as a fun romp, but the bones of the story should still be there to see.

      I’m so sick of Darkseid and Joker and Luthor (oh my, will you, please just go! Yes, writers may avoid creating new characters due to poor equity deals or whatever, but there must be existing ‘properties’ with untapped potential.

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  4. Ok, so gave it another read last night.

    I very much like Snyder’s work on “Justice League,” “Metal” and “Death Metal.” And I’ve watched plenty of interviews with him and Josh Williamson. Both seem like really nice, passionate creators. And I think DC in general is in a very good place right now with them helping to steer things .

    That being said, this final issue didn’t totally satisfy me. Some of it is I just am struggling with what happened. Maybe I need to give it a third read, but I feel the storytelling and art could have been clearer/offered better explanations.

    I liked the part about Darkseid and Superman representing dueling realities. That was appropriately epic.

    But end of the day I’m not sure this was all that different from how Death Metal wrapped up. That was Wonder Woman versus Perpetua (or maybe Batman Who Laughs?) on a grand cosmic scale, with everything then being put right when WW prevailed and “died.” Here it’s kind of the same, right, but with Superman versus Darkseid.

    But it’s just sort of harder to grasp… I guess the pop culture word I’d use is “hand-waving” – there’s a lot of “just go with it” to me, at least, happening here. At the end of “Crisis on Infinite Earths” there were obviously lingering questions and subplots but you could grasp the outcome – the multiverse was no more, with lots of aspects of it merged into one Earth. With “KO” the finale and results just feel more nebulous to me – like I have an IDEA of what happened but the storytelling doesn’t make it as clear as it could.

    And instead of a couple pages promoting upcoming books/storylines, couldn’t they have spared at least a few panels showing all the evacuated populace returning from space? Or did that technically never happen and the general public doesn’t remember the events of “KO”? But Luther is shown seeking publicity for his “heroism” so it seems that everyone experienced it..

    Also while I do think it’s cool that there is a brief in-universe reference to Barry Allen and his new “History of the DC Universe” that in our reality was recently penned by Mark Waid, that scene was too confusing. What was happening to Barry’s file? Was Darkseid infiltrating it? The Heart of Apokolips? Again – not sure if it’s supposed to be a mystery or just muddy storytelling, but to me it felt like the latter.

    -Brian

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    1. Thanks for the great points and insight. The Barry scene really is a headscratcher, I hope it’s followed up on soon. More likely it’ll be three years down the line, unless it’s directly connected to the Absolute Crisis thingie.

      A couple of pages of epilogue centred on the people of Earth really would’ve been great. I think you’re right to suspect it’ll all be waved away in a mindwipe sense, which would be a good idea – you can’t have the regular folk all experience something as mindblowing as the end of the world and temporary resettlement on an another world/in another realm/on a spaceship and remember it.

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  5. The writing seemed to try and be too operatic and too serious. I also ageee with everyone that Darkseid is being used far too often and is the default big villain in the DCU. One of the reasons he worked so well in The Great Darkness Saga is that he was not overexposed and was a genuine surprise.

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    1. Exactly. It was a surprise – well, to most of us, I think the Legion letters page mentioned one or two correspondents had worked it out – but it made perfect sense in terms of the Servants of Darkness.

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  6. I think I’ve got pretty much the same tastes as you on this one, Mart. Fight scenes can be fun, but a steady diet of them for five months with pretty much zero actual stakes feels like empty calories. (Sure, the fate of the universe and all that, it’s not like this was going to come down to anyone but one of the big three at the end, so a Swamp Thing/Cyborg fight was always going to be window dressing.)

    I’m very happy DC decided to put the main chapters of this on Ultra on day of sale, though, so I could join in the conversation. I just wish there was more to talk about.

    I *do* very much like what Brian says about Superman not being seduced by the Superman-centric universe. That Morrison idea might be correct as a story-analysis paradigm, but putting it into the text itself is narrative death. It’s good to see it rejected by Superman himself.

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    1. I’m so peeved that I forgot this would be on DC Infinite, I could’ve save some dosh!

      Talking of Cyborg, when he bigged up Conor (Conner? Connor?) Hawke in some tie-in or other I had hope there would be a surprise winner. Silly me.

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  7. So was there any doubt that Superman would save the day? 😉 Well, yes! I know how Superman is the center of the DC Universe, and writers want to deliver opposite that keep things “fresh”. So, they’ll sideline Superman so Green Lantern can save the day a la “The New Frontier”. Snyder seems to understand Superman’s overall meaning to the DCU and tends to thread that needle pretty well. . .and did so again here. As much as I would like to see a world created in Superman’s image, it’s not what he wants in the slightest. A world where we all can win, what is more Superman than that? My only issue with the series, is the non-ending. So now we have an Absolute Crisis. Eh, I’m on board. DC has earned my patronage with good storytelling and good marketing in the Absolute Universe. The rumour is always that DC is going to go bust, so why not let them take a victory lap and milk Absolute, absolutely? 😉 Great review as always.

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    1. Wouldn’t it be weird if ‘a world where we can all win’ meant the villains too? Instead of them just getting away with things all the time.

      Yep, the non-ending. It’s like a horrible creative tic whereby the next thing just has to be advertised in the other, rather than a few months down the line, when it’s about to come out. I’d love the next event to be advertised for 12 months from now and the DCU allowed to enjoy a relatively quiet time before then.

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      1. Or have the the next event appear as an advertisement facing the last page of the story at least. I posted on a story about The Will Of Doom the following: This is the Event that never ends. It just goes on and on, my friends. Some people started reading it, not knowing what it was and they’ll continue reading it forever just because. This is the… I’m sure most of you know the tune to it.

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    2. I think in one interview or another, Snyder said that “this is essentially a Superman” story, or something to that effect. And if you want to make the final chapter of a giant tournament a surprise, that’s exactly the wrong thing to say. Snyder just can’t stop spoiling his own stories.

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      1. And as Anthony Desiato points out in the new Digging For Kryptonite on DC KO, Josh Williamson had Lex predict, early on in Superman, what the Man of Steel would do if he rose to the top of the Omega pack, and that’s exactly what he did.

        Also, Happy Anniversary of a historic meeting!

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  8. I’m alright with the Will of Doom — that seems like a natural consequence of the end of the event, not a way of prolonging the event.

    This, on the other hand, was a lot of sound and fury signifying 8 more months of crossovers.

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    1. I read the One World Under Doom crossover but wasn’t inclined to read the next bit, it looked like lovely PKJ doing more Marvel body horror, which isn’t my cup of cocoa.

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      1. I think that might be Dungeons of Doom, which is related, but not the same thing (and something I skipped too). Will of Doom was a one-shot, I believe.

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Published by martingray1

Journalist, comic reviewer, theatre critic, film lover, biscuit fan, cat indulger