Originally published on Patreon
Dark Crisis is almost wrapped up, so it feels like an odd time for another one-shot comic to come out, but as we wait for the final issues of the event to come out we get to see what Damian Wayne has been up to during the final battle, as he sneaks off with a specialist team on a secret mission.
Damian, along with Doctor Light, Power Girl, Sideways, and Red Canary, head off into the multiverse looking for clues and insight that will give them the chance to destroy the Dark Army, hoping to break the chains that are enslaving people to Pariah's will. Damian wanted a bigger team, but gets told to take the bare minimum, picking out those he thinks will get the job done. He also accidentally brings Red Canary along with him when he saves her; giving readers the first real chance to get to know her.
Red Canary has been built up for months now, and now that we get to see her for real, there's not really much about her that's too impressive. She sees to be a fairly normal vigilante hero, with no powers or abilities, and other than a couple of fancy sticks she grabbed during the battle, she doesn't even seem to have much training or skills. Whilst this isn't a bad thing, and there's always room to improve and build, there's nothing to her that sets her apart from dozens of other vigilantes; other than her inexperience. She feels like a bit of a strange character, especially included here.
Over the course of this one shot the team will travel to different worlds, with a different writer and art team handling each one, and ultimately end up freeing the Justice League Incarnate from Pariah's control, giving them some powerful new allies. They also manage to power-up Doctor Light, giving her a cool new outfit and the ability to destroy the dark chains. I'm guessing her now power will be coming into play in the final issue of the event, probably to stop Deathstroke in some way, but if not this does feel kind of pointless.
One of the biggest problems with the issue is the different creative teams working together. Damian Wayne is a great character, and when given to a writer who knows what t do with him he's fantastic (his recent solo title shows this in spades), but there are writers who don't seem to understand him, who only see him as arrogant ass-hole; and we get some of those writers here. The result is a Damian that's thoroughly unlikable, rude, and condescending. It doesn't fit with any of the other current depictions of him, and feels like people who don't care about the character were writing him. The art style also changes dramatically too, and in one part of the book he's the short, lithe Damian who looks to be in his mid teens, and the next page he's a 6ft tall muscled adult. If he looked that way through the entire book it'd be bad, but the fact that there's no consistency in the same issue is laughable and insulting. Please put people who care about the characters they're working on on these books DC.
How the main title ends, and if anything that happens here really matters, will determine how this book goes. It could end up being an important, yet flawed, issue of the event; but it might also be pointless nonsense that added nothing. Time will tell I guess.
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