Originally published on Patreon
I've been enjoying Batman/Superman: World's Finest since it began, in large part due to what feels like the perfect partnership of writer and artist. Waid is telling some really interesting and engaging stories, and Dan Mora is one of the best comic artists around at the minute, able to make any character and any design look awesome. And whilst I at first thought this was just going to be a fun series set in DC's past, it's set up some major events and stories that are happening in DC at the moment with both Batman vs Robin and Lazarus Planet being connected.
After that you'd think I'd have expected something big to come from the current story arc, the tale of Superman's forgotten sidekick, Kid Thunder. But I didn't. And even if I had I don't think I would have predicted the shocking final page in the last issue; where it was revealed that David would grow up to become the character Magog. Waid was the writer behind Kingdom Come, so him wanting to play with those characters and themes again isn't a surprise. And with those events kind of being pretty separate to the main universe continuity, bringing some of those elements into Earth-0's timeline makes sense.
And whilst we readers now know the shocking truth, the characters don't. As such, we get to spend much of this issue waiting for the inevitable bad thing to happen. We know that David is going to go down a certain road, but now we're left waiting to see how it happens. The result is an incredibly tense issue.
To begin with, David has badly wounded the Joker when he didn't have to, resulting in the Teen Titans, Batman, and Superman all confronting him and telling him what he did was wrong. This being the latest in a long line of things that show that David might be something of a loose canon, the decision is made to do something about it. Superman and Robin take him to the Fortress of Solitude where they'll remove his powers. And so this is the first moment where I was left on the edge of my seat. Was this process going to work, leading to him looking for new powers in the future? Was it only going to partially work? Would this cause him to hate Superman later in life because he did this?
But, this is Clark we're taking about, and he can't strip a confused and hurt boy of his powers, even if it is probably the smartest choice. He tells David that he's going to help him instead. But when The Key attacks the Fortress things spin out of control. The eventual end for David, the thing that takes Boy Thunder away from Superman, ends up feeling incredibly tragic. There's a sense of desperation as it happens, in which Clark just wants to save this poor, hurting young man, but is powerless to do so.
The final page of the book, in which David finds himself lost on another Earth, face to face with the entity Gog. Now, this means that the expectation that David ends up on Earth 22 for Kingdom Come was wrong, and that this is a whole new Magog in the making. This means that Waid gets to have his cake and eat it too, as Kingdom Come remains untouched and untroubled, and he gets to play with Magog all over again in this new incarnation. The fact that the text at the bottom of the splash page reads 'Not The End...' only hypes up things to come.
As I said earlier, Mora's art is absolutely gorgeous, and this issue looks great throughout . The Key looks creepy and terrifying, the old style outfits look wonderful, the Fortress is gorgeous. But more importantly, the characters really emote. You can see the pain and raw emotion on Davids face during the important scenes, and it just heightens the experience.
We get a small tease of what's to come in the next issue, and if things are like the first six issue's we're going to get a decent one-off story before delving into something bigger once again. With this book seeming to be laying a lot of the foundations for big events and shocking changes, I can't wait to find out what it could be.
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