Two sets of the World’s Finest heroes must confront Gog and Magog to stop the ancient god and his servant from leading the heroes of Earth-22 into a war on Apokolips they cannot win in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #22, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Steve Wands.
The next stop on Catwoman’s tour of suicide missions, made possible by her nine lives, is Markovia, where she wants to steal the most radioactive isotope in the world from a melted down nuclear reactor. Nope, nothing horrible can happen here. Catwoman #61 is written by Tini Howard, drawn by Stefano Raffaele, colored by Veronica Gandini and lettered by Lucas Gattoni.
Did you miss out on the sold-out first couple issues of the Justice League’s big fight with giant monsters from another dimension? Well, lucky you, this week DC released the Justice League Vs. Godzilla Vs. Kong Monster-Sized Edition, reprinting the first two issues of the series. See the Legion of Doom bring the monsters of the Monsterverse to the DC Universe and lay siege to its many fictional cities. These issues are written by Brian Buccellato, drawn by Christian Duce, colored by Lis Guerrero and lettered by Richard Starkings and Comicraft’s Jimmy Betancourt.
Will Nevin: OK, this is not Batman content per se, but how about these moves Jason Aaron is making?! Action Comics and TMNT? Who coulda guessed that one?
Matt Lazorwitz: I can actually tie this in with this week’s column! So, TMNT is published by IDW. IDW currently has the Godzilla license. Jason Aaron likes writing stories where heroes fight God or at least gods. The TMNT are going to have a crossover where they fight Gamera, the giant turtle that is one of Godzilla’s rivals, who is kind of the god of turtles. Synergy!
Will: As I said on the formerly cool platform known as Twitter, these are about to be some man-ass Turtles. Looking forward to what he does with the series.
Magog’s Choice
Matt: This is the penultimate chapter of the “Return to Kingdom Come” arc, and the last-page reveal here definitely establishes enough story for one more part, but it made me curious because of pacing. The big climactic fight this arc has been building to what happened this issue. I’m very curious how Waid handles the story in the last part, because he knows his storytelling too well to just have another slobberknocker with escalating bosses.
Will: But this slobberknocker was so good, I think I’d be fine with another one. I’ve been hard on Chip Zdarsky’s Batman run for too much action, but part of the problem there is that there aren’t any emotional stakes. Here, it felt real and meaningful — even though David/Boy Thunder/Magog is a new character, we’ve seen his evolution and we understand Batman and (especially) Superman’s connection to him, so the big set pieces with Batmen and Supermen and various Gogs hit a little bit harder than what we’ve been getting lately.
And let me just say, the lettering here was a real treat. To get over the idea of volume and anger, what did they do here? They only made the letters bigger and bolder. Not weird colors or weird balloons. Just big ass bold letters. Keep it simple, stupid.
Matt: I absolutely agree about emotional stakes in a fight scene. Both of these fights had a lot of dialogue, and they both informed the story. And the reveal of exactly what Gog’s motivation is to lead the heroes of Earth-22 on a suicide run to Apokolips? That’s seriously screwed up. And not entirely unrealistic. Sure he’s a god, but the idea of glorious deaths leading to paradise is something we’ve seen in lots of cultures around the globe (and on Qo’noS).
Will: If you didn’t bring up Klingons there, I was going to be disappointed.
Matt: I also have to wonder where Waid will leave David at the end of this. He got his big damn heroes moment in this issue, but we know that can’t stick. This is still the guy who is going to kill Joker in cold blood. Something is going to get him to break bad-ish again. There are plenty of questions left to be answered.
And I think that’s for the good. If next issue ends with him choosing to stay behind on Earth-22 because he’s spent more time there than any other world, and we don’t get answers to why he becomes a killer, I’d be OK with that. Not every question needs an answer.
Will: If anyone could convince you to become a killer, it’s the big bad stepping (literally) onto the scene. Perhaps we’ve seen the big physical fight — our next issue is going to be an emotional one that the heroes will lose.
Cat Scratch Fever
Will: Uhhhhh … this got real dark, real fast.
Matt: Did it ever. As we got near the end of this issue, I honestly felt my skin starting to crawl. I love horror, and am usually pretty good with body horror, but that accelerated decay that we get here, and how realistically it was portrayed? *shiver*
Will: Love, love, loved it. If you can’t make a trip to Chernobyl as horrific as you’d like, make a new Chernobyl! What a fantastic idea … and one that would certainly take one of your extra lives. What I really liked here is how Catwoman contemplated a cycle that she couldn’t get out of, waking up each day for a week or so only to die the same gruesome death. Man, we don’t get that good bleak shit every month, Matt!
Matt: This is Stephen King at his darkest levels of bleak, and I am here for it on occasion. Especially in the context of this story. If you know you can come back from the dead, why not? But that same dark contemplation has Selina also realize that she has died already, but they have been quick deaths. The slow, lingering death of radiation poisoning, even accelerated as it is, is something she hadn’t considered. And it can be argued that level of not thinking ahead is out of character, but if you’ve ever watched a cat just decide to make a leap to get something they want and fall flat on their face? Yeah, it’s very catlike behavior.
Will: Incredibly on point analogy, Matt, but it’s usually pretty funny watching one of those little derps crash and burn. Outside of the cold open, though, we didn’t get many laughs here. And normally, I might be against Supes showing up out of nowhere, but that gave us such a tender moment. Really beautiful.
Matt: Tender in the moment, and when you pull back and think about it, it just shows what a great guy Superman is. Selina is his best pal’s girl. Clark can keep his ears open and hear people all over the world, but he does his best not to. But there are voices he just knows to listen for. The fact that Selina is on that list is sweet.
Will: You definitely wouldn’t want to hear … uhhh … inappropriate things between the two of them. That would just be weird.
Matt: Yeah, no.
Another positive point for this issue: I love when a writer inserts real science into their superhero comic. It would have been easy to make what Selina is looking for Kryptonite, or Promethium, or Nonsensium. But corium is the real byproduct of meltdowns, and it’s cool to learn a science fact in my funny books.
Will: And I just assumed it was a fake thing! Now I learned something, too!
The Kaiju League
Matt: Swinging back to a point we talked about up in World’s Finest, and one we’ve discussed in regards to other comics: I usually want my fights to have some kind of emotional stakes on both ends. The exception to this is when Godzilla and kaiju are involved. Then I just want monsters smacking shit around.
Will: This is a comic that goes down easy, innit? In this monster-sized (yeah, I went there) double issue, we have a lot of lightness, specifically with Clark getting ready to propose and all of the banter surrounding that in addition to the fun bickering in the Legion. But when the monsters show up, shit gets real … but still not real serious. I think we can safely assume the monsters are magic, right? That’s the conclusion I came to by the end of the second issue.
Matt: Magic might be involved. It can also be some type of radiation along the same spectrum as red sun energy. That is a Kryptonian weakness that doesn’t get exploited as often as magic and Kryptonite.
This finds a way to both barrel along and build if not slowly then at least at a reasonable pace. We’re two issues in by the end of this monster-sized issue, and we’ve gotten one of our two creature leads, but not the second in the DC Universe, and that feels reasonable. Let’s roll out the big guns at a pace that lets each of them get a spotlight.
Will: And we gave Kong and Grodd a nice little moment that teases a lot more. But this is maybe not a story for Jason Todd fans. How did you feel about him getting the Guy Gardner treatment?
Matt: Some of these characters aren’t quite how you’d expect them, and that’s especially true for Jason. Also, Bill clearly had the wisdom of Solomon turned off when he decided to try the lightning trick while flying around a giant lizard.
Will: I thought that was a good moment because it got across the point that everyone is trying whatever they can think of — it’s a good way to beat our heroes without driving them into the dirt and getting into the really serious stuff.
Matt: A good point.
I don’t know all my Godzilla creatures, as I am at best a Godzilla tourist (although I will say this past year’s Godzilla Minus One was tremendous), so I don’t know if the giant bat monster is just a kaiju I have never seen before or one who was created for this series, but I loved how the Bat family, plus their friend Black Canary, beat it with science.
Will: That one was name dropped, right? Feels like that has to be a thing. And a licensed thing too, apparently. The wonderful world of intellectual property, Matt!
Matt: Quick research tells me yes, he is an existing character created for the tie-in comics for the Monsterverse Kong comic, and is named Camazotz. Camazotz, and I know this one, is a mythological creature from Mesoamerica who was a Man-Bat type demon. The more you know.
Will: Me? The more I know? I know that you’ve been reading ahead on this one. Aquaman has to show up, right? That was one notable absence that I picked up on.
Matt: He has not as of issue #3, and issue #4 just hit this week as well, so I haven’t gotten to it yet. But at some point Godzilla has to do his trademark underwater walkabout, and I can only hope for him getting a little too close to Atlantis and seeing Aquaman, because that totally does make sense.
Will: This series is making me long for Aquaman. What the hell is that?
Buy Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong: Monster-Sized Edition #1 here.
Bat-miscellany
- Patreon backer Josh Weil is back to talk three times Batman got superpowers in this week’s BatChat podcast.
- I saw the trailer for the new Godzilla and Kong movie this week on the big screen, and it looks dumb and fun. Sign me up.
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Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
