It’s hard to believe that this title is still chugging along at this stage in the industry. Sure it has the top two characters in the DCU, but it has lost it’s two main draws of creators (Loeb/McGuinness) for years now. This book can really be helpful for new, or lesser known creators to show their stuff to DC; especially on how they write the big guns of the company. In this case we have a well known writer for the DCAU and a fan-favorite Batman artist to draw yet another encounter with the big baddie from Apokolips: Darkseid.

Alan Burnett is no stranger to the characters. He’s been writing a ton of the DCAU cartoons and other WB animated classics such as: Batman the Animated Series, Superman the Animated Series, and Batman Beyond. While he’s written episodes for some of my childhood favorite shows, his take in actual comics is a bit rougher then you’d expect. It’s not like this is a bad read, far from it. There is a lot of great action involved and there is a ton of twists and turns in every issue collected here. I especially liked it that he had villains like Scarecrow and Dessad team up. You wouldn’t see that pairing at all in most comic books. Admist all of the action though, there is some funky dialogue doing on in the story. Batman is written a bit off here and I know this isn’t the first time he’s fallen in love before but….he went from being a hard ass to lovebird with no problem at all. It got quite annoying to see the words ‘my Bekka’ over and over again whenever it showed up. Plus the ending started to get a bit confusing to me and I’m still not quite sure how Superman saved the day. That and there’s a pretty lame dream sequence towards the end that doesn’t work for me at all.

The art though is a big highlight for me because Dustin Nguyen is doing the pencils. If you loved his work on Detective Comics, Batgirl, or Streets of Gotham then you’ll love this. It is slightly different then what you get now in his art. Not that he’s lost his sketchy style, but the pencils are a bit looser here giving us some bizarre poses and expressions. His take on Alfred is still pretty bad and whenever Clark is in his normal clothes he just doesn’t look right. Especially with his eyes, there are times he goes really bug eyed and it’s crazy to look at. Overall it’s a great looking comic with some slight hiccups along the way. I know I’d love to see him do a New Gods comic because he nailed Darkseid and Orion perfectly.

If you’re looking for an action packed, slightly out of continuity story involving Batman and Superman; then you have a pretty good choice here. It’s not perfect with some weird characterization and the art isn’t as tight as normal Nguyen work. But hey, you got a man who knows how to write a Superman/Batman story and some pretty good artwork in general by Dustin Nguyen. It might not be the best comic you’ll have in your collection, but it would be a nice rainy day read whenever you get the chance.