Batman / Superman: World’s Finest #17 // Review
Amazo has a new name. Y’know what it is? The villain’s new name is Newmazo. Really. It’s so bad even Batman winces when he hears it. And HE hangs out in Gotham City with some of the worst alter egos in the whole of the DC Universe. It’s going to be a tough slog for Bruce and Clark as they reach the end of their current storyline in Batman / Superman: World’s Finest #17. Writer Mark Waid draws the World War A.I. storyline to its climax in a story brought to the page by artist Dan Mora and colorist Tamra Bonvillain.
Honestly, it might not just be the name. It might be the fact that Newmazo has Batman tied up in a glowing lasso at the time he mentions his name. The android in question is very powerful. And as tough as Bruce is, he's no match for someone with all the powers of every member of the Justice League. Luckily enough, he's going to be rescued just in time by a couple of off-worlders. A Martian and a Kryptonian are going to be a welcome distraction so that Bruce can regain his footing, but they’re not exactly going to have an easy time with someone of Newmazo’s capabilities.
Waid’s dialogue can be pretty bad in places. And the basic slugfest he’s setting up in the issue isn’t all that much different from what Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky had done in creating Amazo back in 1960. It may not be very original, but Waid DOES make the climax of the storyline quite a bit of fun by pointing the action in the right direction and allowing the artist to go to work, delivering a very appealing physical conflict with a lot of cool guest appearances by a number of different heroes along the way.
Mora really blasts the action into the page. With clean lines and a clear sense of the intensity of everything, Mora is capable of really letting the action loose on the page. Waid seems to know exactly what kind of talent he’s got in Mora and allows him plenty of room to throw some very powerful and cool-looking heroes across the page. A very sophisticated plot with clever dialogue can be fun, but sometimes the best thing a writer can do is toss a few things into a script and get out of the artist’s way.
Intricate plots are fun. A war with AI could be maddeningly sophisticated given the right angles. Waid and Mora keep the complexity out of the way, allowing for a really fun action climax with well-directed aggression that seems to be moving across the page in the right way. It might be big, dumb action on one level, but it’s big, dumb action that is very smartly executed with a sharp sense of style. Waid and Mora ARE working with a large group of heroes in the book, and none of them seems to get enough time on the page or nearly enough credit for being as powerful as they are, but then...that’s always the problem with a superhero party that’s as big as the 17th issue of Batman / Superman: World’s Finest.
