Batman/Superman: World’s Finest, written by prolific comic writer Mark Waid, with artwork from the similarly prolific Dan Mora, debuted in 2022, and has built up a sizeable fanbase since. Taking place in DC’s past, it’s meant to tell canonical stories that don’t overlap with the brand’s current plotlines, while harkening back to the Silver Age of comics. This review covers the first five trade paperbacks.
So, what’s the verdict? On the whole, it’s quite positive.
Volume one, The Devil Nezha, is rather indicative of the whole series. Without spoilers: Batman and Superman realize something strange is afoot when Poison Ivy ventures out of her usual turf in Gotham City to attack Metropolis, with the trail leading back to a powerful new enemy called Nezha. The titular devil is one of the story’s strongest elements: my favorite comic villain in ages, he’s an immortal wizard warlord, building an army of supervillains and using mind control to get superheroes and civilians to do his bidding. Indeed, Nezha feels like such a threat that his reign of terror could have been a crossover miniseries, which is what this volume occasionally feels like. Not that that’s a bad thing, necessarily; it’s just that there’s a lot going on. In addition to Batman and Superman, we’ve got a time travel subplot with Robin and Supergirl, along with the Doom Patrol and several other heroes and villains taking roles of varying importance.
And that leads into my only real hangup: why, I wondered, after finishing the book, was I not more enthusiastic about a story in which there was hardly anything I disliked about it? The answer came down to expectations: I had gone into the comic expecting to see Superman and Batman Lethal Weaponing it up, on center stage almost constantly, and didn’t realize the supporting cast would take such a prominent role.
This is fairly common throughout the series; the Teen Titans, the Metal Men, other members of the Justice League, and so on often appear as guest stars, at times making the series more of an ensemble piece than would seem obvious going into it. While it’s usually strongest when the focus is on our two headliners, I don’t think this will dampen readers’ enthusiasm, so long as they know what to expect. It might help to think of this as a series of well-told superhero stories, as opposed to something that revolves entirely around Big Blue and uh… Big Bat?
Realizing I didn’t want to let my inadvertently subverted expectations rob me of something I might enjoy, especially since the first arc had been such a great yarn, I trusted my instincts and read the second volume, Strange Visitor, and the gamble paid off.
Probably my favorite of these first five collections, Strange Visitor kicks off with a boy escaping a dying world, landing on Earth where he begins to develop amazing powers. If that sounds familiar, well, Superman thinks so too, and the parallels with his own life lead him to take the new arrival, a kid named David, under his wing. Unfortunately, David isn’t entirely stable, and when the Joker gets involved, things take a hard left turn.
I wasn’t totally sold on this initially: I feared it would be like one of those TV westerns from the Sixties, when an angsty guest star appears on the ranch, causes all sorts of mischief, then rides away on the stagecoach at the end, never to be mentioned again, but luckily, David was integrated better than that, and I soon found myself sucked in. A little leaner and meaner than its predecessor and utilizing its characters’ superpowers in cool ways to make for creative action sequences, this is a great ride that made me an unabashed fan of the series.
Volume three, Elementary, involves Metamorpho becoming the prime suspect in a murder, and since I didn’t find him a particularly compelling character, this one was a slight step down for me. Still, all was not lost: as Bats and Supes investigate, not sure if they’re going to end up busting Metamorpho or clearing his name, things escalate from a mere murder mystery to a bona fide robot apocalypse, and as the stakes raised dramatically, so did my enjoyment. It culminates in a truly epic final battle that pushed my feelings for this arc firmly into the positive.
Book four, Return to Kingdom Come, is another high point, revisiting the universe created by Waid in his acclaimed miniseries Kingdom Come. I’ve never read Kingdom Come, starting it once but setting it aside after it failed to click. (Yeah, yeah, I know. I’ll pause while you throw tomatoes.)
A lack of Kingdom Come knowledge shouldn’t be an impediment, however: this is a multiverse story, and that’s really all you need to know. Once again, I’ll be wary of spoilers, because discussing the setup would give away the ending to Strange Visitor, to which this book is a direct sequel. Suffice to say, Superman and Batman journey to a reality much different than their own, where they run afoul of the spectacularly-helmeted Magog, who runs the place, and David is once again in the mix, and once again proving to be a wild card. I enjoyed the tighter focus of this volume, keeping things moving briskly along as the “World’s Finest” rush to stop Magog from enacting a plan that will take things to a whole new level of yikes.
And then we get to the discordant note that is volume five, Secret Origins. Its problem ultimately stems from the fact that unlike the previous trade paperbacks, which each collect a single storyline, this is a collection of various stories by a few different writers and as usually happens in compilations, the quality is uneven. The first story, a two-parter that gives the book its name, depicting Batman and Superman’s first mission together, is a highly enjoyable superheroic adventure, before things take a nose dive. We get another short story about, sigh, Metamorpho, another about the Challengers of the Unknown, who frankly I’d never heard of, and a third depicting the first adventure of Bumblebee, one of the Teen Titans. Things perk up with another story about the first meeting of Lux Luthor and the Joker, which ends in an unexpected and satisfying way. Finally, the book ends with the prologue of the next arc, involving the Imps of the Fifth Dimension. (If all that sounds a little confusing, well, Waid clearly enjoys plumbing the depths of DC history for material, and usually it’s hunky dory, but now and then it prevents these books from being entirely new reader friendly.)
I suspect your enjoyment of this final chapter will depend on your level of tolerance for the Imps’ wacky antics, and the turn to pure comedy is jarring. And yet, it sort of works, as events abruptly go from silly to deadly serious, ending on a cliffhanger.
And not to worry: Secret Origins may have brought down the average, but World’s Finest was rapidly becoming one of my favorite ongoing comics, and I’m not going to give up on it because of one clunker, especially since future volumes look to return to more straightforward storylines.
Special mention should go to artist Dan Mora and colorist Tamra Bonvillain, whose artwork is warm and colorful and nostalgic and simply perfect for these stories. (Another reason Secret Origins doesn’t quite take off is its use of various different artists, and while the art is by no means bad, it throws off the vibe we’re used to.)
The bottom line: World’s Finest is fun, fun, fun and worth a read for anyone who considers themselves a superhero fan. I can’t wait to get back to it.
