I'm a longtime reader of DC's super-hero comics. I love Tony Harris's artwork. I love Golden Age characters. And I loved JSA: The Liberty File, the limited series to which this new title is a sequel. In short, I am the target market for this book, and I enjoyed it. But this story lacks the unique qualities that made The Liberty File such a great read, and it relies too heavily on the reader's knowledge of the mainstream-continuity versions of the book's heroes and villains.
It's 1948, and the government has called upon war-time agents the Bat and the Clock to return to active status. It seems two superhuman Russian agents -- Steelwolf and the Parasite -- have been interrogating and killing America agents in Europe, looking for something called "the Trigger." The Bat is irked to learn that he and the Clock are being forced to not only work with a new partner -- Clark Kent, AKA the Super-Man -- but to obey his orders.
Harris's artwork -- not surprisingly -- is the greatest strength of the book. His dark, haunted settings establish the mood quickly, and the rich, realistic detail he brings to bear here is as stunning as always. His new designs for familiar figures are sharp and range in tone from plausibly realistic to chillingly horrific. Mettler's dark, muted colors maintain the gothic atmosphere nicely. And like all of Harris's painted covers, this one is amazing, though oddly split in two between the front and the back covers.
One of the best aspects of The Liberty File was how Jolley and Harris turned the usual Justice Society dynamics on their ear, and that holds true -- though not to the same extent -- here. The Batman and Hourman characters are good friends. Mr. Terrific wants to kill the Bat. Hawkgirl is a vamp, not a high-flying sidekick. The writers haven't just picked up familiar characters and plunked them into a different setting, as is sometimes the case with DC's Elseworlds line. They've changed the dynamics of the characters.
On the other hand, where this book goes wrong is that it leaves behind the espionage feel of The Liberty File and treats these characters just as super-heroes. We already get that in mainstream continuity, and it robs this corner of DC's Elseworlds of its novel nature. If one pays attention to the cover, we see that Sandman, Green Lantern and the Flash are all going to turn up in this story, and all seem to have the same powers they have in regular continuity. And with that greater proliferation of super-hero characters, the key to the book's success hinges on the reader picking up on plenty of references. For example, the impact of the full-page, one-word cliffhanger is a strong one... as long as the reader is familiar with one of Superman's deadliest -- though more obscure -- villains.
