The first issue of this ongoing team-up series really caught my attention. Jeph Loeb offered up not one but two strong characterizations of super-hero genre icons, granting them grounded, believable voices. Subsequent issues weren't as strong, but I enjoyed their celebration of the diverse array of characters that the DC Universe has to offer. That enjoyment faded with this issue, though, as a clunky plot, haphazard approach to extraneous character use and artwork that's too exaggerated for the grim tone that's called for in the script eclipse what I found entertaining about the book before.
President Lex Luthor has put a price on the Man of Steel's head, blaming him for the approaching Kryptonite meteor that threatens to decimate the Earth. Teaming with the Batman, who feels Superman is needed to stop the threat, Superman sets out to uncover what Luthor is really up to and to find a way to stop the meteor. Unfortunately, they're pursued by a team of metahumans -- many of them former allies -- assembled by the President, and when its efforts are met with limited success, another duo is dispatched, and they'll prove far more of a challenge.
McGuinness's lighter, cartoony style certainly is well suited to rendering such colorful characters, and he handles the action in the book quite well. The extreme nature of the characters' powers are reflected in the frenetic and energetic qualities in McGuinness's artwork. Unfortunately, he fails to capture a grim tone here. The exaggerated quality in the art and the inherent brightness in the penciller's style works against the atmosphere of crisis and tension called for in the script. The Kryptonite meteor looks rather silly as well.
Kryptonite meteor? Superman on the run, blamed for something he couldn't possibly control? The Claw of Horus? Some of these story elements and plot devices are worthy of the crude writing from the Super Friends cartoons of the late 1970s and early '80s. On top of that, Loeb tries to foster an air of mystery around an unseen boy in Japan who holds the key to solving all of the heroes' problems? The writer stretches the reader's ability to suspend disbelief beyond its limit on more than one occasion in this issue.
It seems clear to me that all is not as it seems in this story, as was the case in Loeb's "Hush" storyline in Batman over the past year. I'm getting something of a "it's all a dream" vibe from the story at this point, and it's still not easing my qualms about the plot. This story arc has been all over the place. At first, it was about a shared enemy, then a warning from the future. And now it's a super-hero royal rumble that requires some of the players to act out of character for it all to work.
