Review: Worlds’ Finest Vol. 6- The Secret History of Superman and Batman

Quick Summary

Pros: Information revealed here helps explain and enhance story elements from previous comics.

Cons: The central narrative in this book suffers from poor pacing and a lackluster villain. The target audience for this book is a bit unclear due to the repetitive way in which it approaches history.

Overall: The final volume in the Worlds’ Finest series is more of a history lesson than it is a compelling comic book. It tells stories and reveals secrets that have been withheld from the Earth 2 comic book, helping to further enhance that world. However, the actual narrative linking together these pieces of information is mediocre at its best moments and downright dull at its worst. This book may be of interest to readers looking for additional background behind the Earth 2 series but isn’t really worthwhile for its standalone narrative.

Story

Worlds’ Finest Vol. 6: The Secret History of Superman and Batman, by Paul Levitz, is essentially a series of flashbacks to events taking place before the Earth 2 and the Worlds’ Finest comics ever began. This helps fill in details about the heroes of that world by further digging into elements of their history, such as Superman’s childhood, Batman’s family, and Apokolips’ initial attempts at invasion. These flashbacks form a singular narrative that helps show how the world of Earth 2 became what it was at the beginning of this series. However, this narrative is somewhat lackluster and doesn’t work well on its own. The pacing is too rapid, the conflicts are dull, and the entire story feels repetitive. All in all, this volume helps fill in some small pieces of interesting information but fails to define itself as a compelling standalone story.

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The positives in The Secret History of Superman and Batman come from the way in which it helps contribute to the history of the Earth 2 universe. This is mostly done by actually depicting scenes that have only been alluded to in the Earth 2 comics. In this way, readers learn the specifics behind Superman’s journey to Earth, Val-Zod’s capture, and Lois Lane’s death. Seeing these events take place, after only hearing about them in brief detail, helps enhance the Earth 2 series as a whole and further develop that already compelling universe.

However, problems start to rise when it comes to the storytelling tactics uses to tell this history, particularly the volume’s rapid pace. Throughout this entire book, the rapid pacing makes it seem as if characters are constantly making rash decisions and quickly recovering from intense discoveries. This takes the impact away from the individual moments throughout this book and damages the storytelling.

It also doesn’t help that the main villain in this book, who is the biggest element linking each of these flashbacks together, is rather dull. Her presence in each of these flashbacks barely contributes anything and, at times, feels entirely inconsequential. Even her ultimate defeat at the book’s conclusion feels as if it barely has any impact on the overall narrative of this work.

The final problem in The Secret History of Superman and Batman comes from the strange way in which it treads the line between revealing new information about the Earth 2 universe and reviewing old information. Many of this book’s flashback scenes spend a lot of time explaining elements that have already been explained in the Earth 2 series. This appears to be an attempt to make the book accessible to new fans, at the price of boring already established fans. However, since the main positives in this volume come from the way in which it enhances elements from the Earth 2 series, I can’t imagine it appealing to those who aren’t already familiar with what is going on. This makes the target audience for this book rather unclear and turns it into something that fails to truly appeal to any one group.

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Art

The artwork in The Secret History of Superman and Batman is pretty average when it comes to quality but ends up being a solid complement to the story. This is a book about the halcyon days of Earth 2, a time loosely based on the Golden Age of DC Comics. To further entrench the book in this setting, Jed Dougherty’s artwork and Chris Sotomayor’s colors create an aesthetic that matches this particular setting. It features slightly stylized characters that stand out against the simple, yet visually pleasing, backgrounds and environments. The effect helps the characters and their actions pop and gives the book a more classic feel to it. Overall, this isn’t the best looking book out there but it does work well with the narrative and helps provide a consistently pleasing reading experience.

Continuity

Worlds’ Finest Vol. 6: The Secret History of Superman and Batman tells stories from the past that fill in information that was not given during the Earth 2 series. The narration in this story takes place in the middle of Earth 2: World’s End Vol. 2 (Review), however, the flashbacks take place before Earth 2 Vol. 1: The Gathering (Review). This comic then goes on to reference events from nearly every volume in the Earth 2 series.

The events taking place around the narration portion of this volume continue on in the second half of Earth 2: World’s End Vol. 2 (Review).