If DC K.O. #1 was a bit slow to set up its premise with much of the issue leaning hard on exposition, then DC K.O. #2 is where the action really starts to pick up, complete with the second round of casualties. Though fans can already predict from the roster which characters won’t be making it to the third round, this doesn’t mean Scott Snyder and Javier Fernandez don’t make it fun.
As the title suggests, much of the issue plays out like the “next level” of an RPG, which is once more captured by Fernandez’s artwork. Here, the heroes and villains who made it to this first round race to collect the artifacts they need to make it to the next round. Much of the humor in DC K.O. #2 draws from the outlandish tactics the characters use to one-up each other in collecting the artifacts.
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Guy Gardner, for example, gets consistently “outgunned and outsmarted” by characters he thinks he can beat, like Harley Quinn and Hawkman. Likewise, the Joker uses the Atom’s size-changing powers to literally squash and eat his competition for kicks and giggles. Snyder and Fernandez even go the extra mile on the humor by bringing back Starro to fight Lobo. Of course, the latter’s overconfidence quickly becomes his Achilles’ heel when the giant alien starfish uses it to his disadvantage. Starro even one-ups Lobo by using his “clones” to invade the minds of other powerful heroes like Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Power Girl.
In addition to going all-out on a “battle royale” contest among super friends and foes, Snyder and Fernandez also don’t neglect the actual heart of the story: Superman. If Dark Nights: Metal was a Batman story, Dark Nights: Death Metal a Wonder Woman story, then it only makes sense that Superman would be the focal point of DC K.O. – a story in which Darkseid is out to destroy Prime Earth, similar to what he did in Earth-2: World’s End, but with a different objective. In fact, much of the issue seems to be building towards a Darkseid and Superman showdown, with the latter becoming the titular King Omega.
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The way Snyder and Fernandez set this up is nothing short of brilliant, namely by juxtaposing the scenes in which Superman battles Lex Luthor with an earlier scene in which he, Batman and Wonder Woman play a tabletop RPG at his home. The two storylines are glued together by one central question: who is Clark Kent without Superman? Though Clark doubts he has it in him to be a world leader (like being President of the United States), his battle with Lex consistently shows that he does have what it takes to be that kind of influential leader.
Darkseid himself recognizes this potential in Superman, with DC K.O. #2 confirming that the leader of Apokolips will himself be stepping into the ring to confront the Man of Steel at some point. Other ways that Snyder and Fernandez hint at Superman becoming the titular King Omega is by showing his tendency to self-sacrifice to protect the people and world he loves. This is what he shows in his battle with Lex, just before the surviving 16 heroes and villains progress to the third round.
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While the buildup of Superman’s character by Snyder and Fernandez to take on a much bigger role than he expected is good, at the same time, it’s not a development that does anything new with the Man of Steel. Aside from Superman’s innate goodness being a staple of his character since his conception in 1938, his importance to the DC Universe was also the message of Doomsday Clock by Geoff Johns and Gary Frank. In the same way Doomsday Clock posited that the DCU revolves around Superman, DC K.O. is similarly conveying that this is still the case, with Superman being primed to save the DCU’s future.
Though not a bad message to reinforce by any stretch, it also shows the limitations of gridlocking the DCU into maintaining a status quo. Aside from the fact that it prevents the heroes from truly moving forward in terms of story and character growth, it also prevents talented storytellers like Snyder and Fernandez from being able to say anything new about these characters. If DC K.O. is looking to once more spotlight Superman’s innate goodness and importance to the DCU, fans can very reasonably ask, “what else is there left to say?”
Of course, Snyder and Fernandez still have time to pull the rug from under everyone, and make another (perhaps unlikely) DC character the King Omega. That character, for example, could be Lex Luthor, given the epiphany he had inside the Phantom Zone. The King Omega could also be the Absolute Universe version of Superman, who is himself born out of Darkseid energy. Whichever way the story goes, Snyder and Fernandez will inevitably make it fun – but it will still need to come up with a new message about the Man of Steel that isn’t retreading what fans have known for almost a century.
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