Batman/Superman #19
Scheduled to arrive in stores: June 22, 2021
Cover date: August 2021
“Across Worlds!”
Writer: Gene Luen Yang
Artists: Emanuela Lupacchino, Steve Lieber, Barick Robertson and Kyle Hotz
Cover: Ivan Reis, Danny Miki and Sabine Rich
Variant Cover: Greg Capullo, Jonathan Glapion and Fco Plascencia
Reviewed by: Craig Boehmer
Earth-0 Batman and Superman are facing off against Auteur.IO. The villain has unleashed a Phantom Zone Crystal and the two heroes are sucked in. Superman, Batman, Robin, and Dr. Atom from alternative realities witness the capture of the Earth-0 heroes. Dr. Atom leads an attack against Auteur.IO, the attack is futile, and Dr. Atom detonates. The detonation damages Dr. Atom forcing him to flee from the heroes. They track him down first to an alternative Rann, and then to the old west. Each time they must face him and defeat him. They are able to get his armour off of him in the old west. Underneath the armour is an old god of tale that has been forgotten, he is being controlled by the armour to create a perfect world. Before they can fully save the old god, the armour returns and whisks him off again.
Story – 4: Earth-0 Superman is pretty dumb. Batman is getting sucked into the Phantom Zone Crystal and tells Superman to leave. Superman says he wont leave Batman by himself so they both get sucked in. Seriously? How dumb can you get? He’s going to leave this guy unchallenged to destroy earth. He’s going to leave Lois, Ma, Pa, and Jon unprotected so that Batman doesn’t face the Phantom Zone Crystal alone. How about you grab Bats and escape and then create a plan to defeat Auteur.IO? Brutal logic failure to start the issue, but thankfully it gets better. The time on Rann was just ok, but the adventure in the old west was quirky, weird, and amazing! The appearance of Etrigan on the last page is also exciting to see.
Art – 2: The art suffers a major drop in quality without Ivan Reis. Just overall it seems a little sloppier, with misshapen faces and contorted anatomies. Superman’s face changes quite a bit, even in the sections drawn by the same artist. I also do not like when the artist chances in the middle of the story. I understand why they did that in this issue, but with each world change the artist changes and it has a drastic impact on the feel of the story.
Cover Art – 5: I loved everything about this cover. It looked like the cover to a John Wayne movie. The costume designs were great, the poses of our two heroes in the sky were so true to their characters. And to top it off, we get a great scene of Superman and Batman riding horses with Superman’s cape billowing behind him.Variant Cover Art – 2: This cover is another in a long line of Batman Superman variants that solely shows Batman and Superman and the city skyline. Batman looks great, but the Superman design just does not do it for me.
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The change in art took me right out of it and I had been enjoying it up to this point. Comic companies grossly under estimate how disruptive and jarring it is to change the art mid-stream like that. I know they’re just trying to keep cranking the stuff out and hit ship dates but could they at least have some eye towards visual consistency in what is an inherently visual medium? Maybe at least get within the ballpark of a compatible style.