Cover by Jae Lee
Art by Jae Lee & Yildiray Cinar
Written by Greg Pak
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Beware of spoilers!
Don’t you love when you’ve gotten a little behind on your comics and then you all of a sudden completely find yourself hooked on a new title and get to read a couple of issues basically back-to-back? Well that’s how I feel about ‘Batman/Superman’.
I was not keen on issue #1, I got a little hooked during issue #2 and thankfully only had to wait a couple of days to pick up issue #3.
This issue breaks from the format of the previous two and introducers secondary artists Yildiray Cinar who masterfully represents a flashback story of a when a young Clark Kent met a young Bruce Wayne.
The change in art is a massive departure from the highly stylised work we’ve become accustomed to in this title and it is a little jarring. Both artists have an individual style and both have incredibly strong merits I’m just not convinced that they belong mixed together in the pages of one issue.
Lee continues to use silhouette and shadow to block out scenes but with less scenery in this issue the gothic dial has been radically dialled down from the last issue.
In comparison to the stark blocks of colour in the present timeless the flashback illustrated by Cinar has a much warmer tone to it. There’s a lot of reds and yellows to match the autumn countryside feel that make this side story feel more homely.
The story in this issue follows on directly from the climax of issue #2 with Lois Lane having been possessed and Wonder Woman making an entrance.
There’s a huge amount of exposition in this issue rather than an abundance of action. Pak’s story is as complex as the accompanying artwork and so there’s a lot of explaining to do here to make sure the uninitiated reader is keeping up.
Much like I mentioned in my review of issue #2 this story is continuing to burn relatively slowly and although this issue does pack in huge amounts of information in terms of the time which lapses from start to finish this issue is merely a matter of hours in the lives of the characters if that.
The cover gives away a rather massive plot point which isn’t revealed until late on in the issue but it’s not a point that any of us didn’t see coming at this stage.
I will admit that I wasn’t quite as gripped this month and I did find my mind wandering a little from the story and instead becoming lost in the artwork alone but this is still a brilliantly different title which shouldn’t be ignored for its ‘high-brow’ artwork.
6/10
