Trapped on the parallel world of Earth 3 that’s run by evil versions of themselves, Batman and Superman must turn to familiar but unsettling faces if they have any hope of getting home in one piece. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #49 continues to execute Silver Age zaniness with modern sensibilities at an extremely high level.
Not letting a mystery linger for too long, we finally learn how and why Batman and Superman are trapped on this parallel world. When the World’s Finest heroes were fighting the coolest looking version of Brainiac (Superfriends fans, rise up), they fell into an energy rift he was observing. Unconscious and barely surviving, they’re pulled to safety by a version of Niles Caulder (Doom Patrol fans, rise up too, I guess—it’s only fair). Imprisoned and under lock and key by their doppelgängers Owlman and Ultraman, things seem bleak for our intrepid heroes.
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Until they’re rescued by… the Riddler, who leads them to a hidden group of heroes in the wreckage of Gotham City. Mad Hatter, Toyman, Scarecrow, Silver Banshee, and Catwoman round out this team of people brave enough to stand up to a world gone pure evil.
Together, they devise a plan to get Batman and Superman back to Earth 0. Fighting ensues, sacrifices are made, and before you know it, this little two-parter is wrapped up just in time to celebrate the big 5-0 next month.
This book is beautiful to look at. It paradoxically takes an incredible amount of effort to make something look simple, and not only do the characters effortlessly pose to perfection in every panel, they just look right when they do it. Marcus To on pencils and Tamra Bonvillain on colors create the platonic ideal of these characters to me now. With details everywhere you look, but never so many you feel like you’re going crazy trying to take them all in, you won’t feel like you’re missing the forest for the trees or vice versa.
Mark Waid has proven over the last 47 issues that this is the ideal kind of project, where he gets to take everything he loves about the Silver and Bronze Ages of comics, distill them down to their core tenets, and reinterpret them through a modern lens that often shows them in a more charming, tender, and inspiring light.
Often, but not always. While not nearly as violent as the previous issue, Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #49 nonetheless has some brutal moments, replete with body horror, sadism, and general villainy presented so plainly it’s jarring (complimentary). Waid wastes no time telling you who these Earth 3 doppelgängers are, what they want, and what they’re willing to do to get it, Batman/Superman be damned.
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While that expediency works well in the beginning, explaining how the heroes came to be here, that same pace unfortunately makes the ending feel a little premature. One minute Superman is fighting Ultraman and Superwoman and the next he’s getting ready to hightail it back to Earth 0. The logic the two heroes use to convince Riddler and others to help them also feels a little underbaked as well. Mad Hatter at one point says something like “once you get back to your Earth you can come back with the calvary and help us, right?”. Superman responds to the effect of “Wellllll, interdimensional travel is pretty new to us, but we’ll do our best”.
It’s Superman. I should trust him implicitly. Something about that response didn’t feel genuine, it felt rushed and swept under the rug. The final page however gives me hope that there’s more meat on the bone for Earth 3 stories. Despite facing huge threats in previous issues like a Luthor/Joker hybrid or the Devil Nezha, this feels like it could be their toughest battle yet.
All said and done, I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t enjoy this book. Batman/Superman is breezy, weird, and it’s so beautiful it’s quietly setting the standard of how I want DC superheroes to look all the time. Despite a quick resolution to a story that feels like it could’ve, and maybe even should have, lasted significantly longer, I don’t really care. This book explodes with charm in every panel, and that final page reveal gives me confidence this story, thankfully, isn’t over yet.
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