Originally published on Patreon
It's a shame that the final issue of the Dark Crisis: World Without A Justice League is possibly the worst one in the series, the one that kind of fails to fulfil the entire point of the series, and the one that fumbles things the most; both because it's the final one, and a bad ending can ruin a series, and because it's the Batman issue, the one people will have been waiting for the most.
The first story in this issue, the one that for some reason takes up 75% of the book rather than it being split equally, focuses on Batman. If you've been reading the main Dark Crisis title (which why wouldn't you if you're reading this book?) you'll have seen a bit of what Bruce's dream world is like; with him as some weird clockwork looking version of Batman.
Here we learn that his ideal dream world is a world where a psychic Joker virus swept across the globe and killed almost everyone alive, transforming them into violent Joker monsters. The last survivors of humanity are held up inside a highly advanced clockwork city ran by the mysterious Mr Wax. By day things are wonderful, but when the artificial sun goes down the less savoury come out to play.
Luckily, there's someone there to stop them doing too much damage, the vigilante killer called The Night. As we meet The Night, he thinks he's tracked down the person who killed his parents, but when it turns out to be a false lead he scans the city for clues and discovers something strange, he and MR Wax share the same DNA. Kidnapping the peaceful ruler of the city, the two men remove their masks and discover that they're both the man once known as Bruce Wayne. Working together, they discover how this is possible, and learn the disturbing truth of their origins.
So, these are supposed to be these heroes ideal worlds, the places where they can find peace and happiness. This has varied from person to person in how happy that can be, with some absolutely wonderful dream worlds, and others that do still see the heroes having to fight crime. But for the most part there are nice things in them that the heroes can find peace in. Not the case for Bruce.
This is a nightmare world. A world where people suffer, where the world is mostly dad, and neither Bruce nor Batman seem to be happy here. The way the story ends, it sees the characters locked in some endless cycle of violence, learning the truth, and losing their memories over and over. I'm sorry, but this seems to go against everything this series is supposed to be about, what these prison worlds are supposed to be. I also refuse to believe that Bruce's ideal world is him murdering people in the post-apocalypse, rather than having a decent life with his extended family. It just doesn't fit the character for me.
Added on to this, the world created here feels kind of bad. There are some interesting ideas, but not many of them seem to executed well. The narration feels like it's trying to seem more impressive than it is by putting intentional vagueness into things and overly flowery language. The designs are mostly dull and uninspired. The plot has some grains of an interesting idea, but just ends up being depressing and dark for the sake of it, with none of these versions of the characters feeling like who they're supposed to be. In short, I absolutely hated this.
The Zatana story that rounds out the issue is relegated to only getting ten short pages, and in those pages we have no idea what Zatana's dream world is actually like. Zatana has godlike magic powers, and we see her reshaping her world, having a quick chat with Constantine, who's actually her in disguise, then she finds her father, has a quick hug with him, then gets picked up by the League who're escaping these fake worlds.
What is her world actually supposed to be? It feels like we jumped in right at the tail end of things, right as she was messing with the fake world around her before she left, but I have no idea what this world was supposed to be, unless she was dumped into a void and created it all herself using her magic and was only there for 20 minutes; which if that's the case it doesn't seem to match up with any of the others at all, and makes no real sense.
Sadly, this entire issue feels like the writers either didn't understand what the series was supposed to be about and how the rules for these fake worlds have been working every other time, or simply just didn't care. Maybe it's because the main title is almost done and the series is nearly wrapped up, but it just feels like very little effort was put into this, and that it was essentially just phoned in. A real shame the series ended this way.
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