Mild Mannered Reviews - Specials
Batman and Superman: World's Finest #10
Scheduled to arrive in stores: December 8, 1999
Writer: Karl Kesel
Pencillers: Dave Taylor and Tom Morgan
Inker: Robert Campanella
"War of the Worlds"
Reviewed by: George O'Connor (LukeSky500@mindspring.com)
One year ago...
At both Stryker's Island and Arkham Asylum, the Riven Brothers break the criminals out and set up a war between the Metropolis and Gotham City villains.
In Gotham City, Batman meets up with Superman after Jimmy Olsen fails to get a video of the Batman in action. Both Superman and Batman learn of the break outs and head towards the Eastside Docks where Bloodsport and Deadshot have a standoff that is interrupted by Batman and Superman who make quick work of the two.
Meanwhile, the Metropolis villains come across a man that has accidentally walked into their hideout and kidnap him as their hostage. Before long, the Gotham City villains have found the Metropolis villains as well and wage all out war on them. Helgrammite grapples with Charaxas until Mr. Freeze freezes him. Meanwhile, Metallo fights with Poison Ivy and the Joker grapples with Riot.
All of a sudden, Superman, Batman, Robin, Azrael, Nightwing, Supergirl, Steel and Superboy arrive on the scene and fight off the villains, quickly taking out the entire lot. Meanwhile, the brothers meet up and take their hostage, who turns out to be Harrison Grey (the man that Batman and Superman "failed" to save in the 1st issue of World's Finest).
Batman and Superman track the brothers down and easily take them out, along with their boss, Two-Face, who kills off the brothers for messing everything up.
Presently...
Wayne and Kent attend the marriage of Harrison Grey, who turns out to be the actual Grey while the one that died was Grey's bodyguard that took Grey's place after he poisoned Harry. The reason Harry has been walking around for 10 years without telling anyone is that the poison gave him amnesia.
 Story - 2: YUCK!!! How stupid is that???!! Grey's bodyguard was killed, and the real Grey gets amnesia? I'm betting Kesel came up with that ending just as he was writing this issue, which to speak of, was absolutely awful. The only reason it doesn't get the lowest grade is that it was at least somewhat interesting to see Superman and Batman's rogue gallery roaming about, even though Kesel couldn't even pull that off well and made the entire battle between them one giant farce. Also, what was up with bringing in all the sidekicks? That was completely pointless! I was very, very upset with this issue. It was certainly the worst issue of the entire series.
 Art - 1: UGGH!! What happened? At the beginning, Taylor and Campanella looked great! As the issues came and went, Taylor got sloppier, but this is just plain awful and Morgan is no better either, if not worse!! This issue's art was just hideous and crippled the story even more... if that's possible.
Cover Art - 2: Yuck! I didn't even want to pick the issue up when I saw this cover. Both Superman and Batman look ugly and Batman's even wearing a mask! And what's the deal with them standing out in space? Is that supposed to mean something?
 Series Overall - 3: The series started out incredibly strong and looked promising. While the first issues didn't show much of Batman and Superman actually working as a team, the dialogue between the two heroes was fantastic and the art stood out strongly. As the series progressed, there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the series and no common themes whatsoever. Some of the individual stories were good, while most were adequate. The series ended incredibly weak with the artists changing around and a total lack of continuity in the underlying story of the series. As well, the issues seemed detached from each other and to the time period they were supposed to be involved in. Epic events in the hero's lives meant nothing and sidekicks either weren't mentioned in the series or were involved so much as to overshadow the Superman and Batman team. Looking back, I would not have bought the series if I'd known it would be as bad as it turned out to be. If you want a real World's Finest series, go to the three part World's Finest written by Dave Gibbons with art by Steve Rude and Karl Kesel. At least Kesel knew what he was doing in that series.
Other relevant reviews:
Mild Mannered Reviews
2000
Note: Month dates are from the issue covers, not the actual date when the comic was on sale.
January 2000
February 2000
March 2000
April 2000
May 2000
June 2000
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