Review: DCeased: War of the Undead Gods hardcover/paperback (DC Comics)

DC Comics could never do something like Tom Taylor’s DCeased in mainstream continuity, but what if they could? That kept nagging at me as I read Taylor and Trevor Hairsine’s DCeased: War of the Undead Gods, the last(?) chapter in the DCeased saga.

The conflict here is so heightened, the twists so unexpected, that clearly War is a better “event book” than Dark Crisis or Lazarus Planet or Knight Terrors. So why can’t DC rise to this level for their line-wide crossovers, the time it surely matters most? I imagine it’s the need to put the toys back in the box, to not sully the IP or have Batman Bruce Wayne be dead for most of the series — and whether we’d even believe it if he was — not to mention the five-year time jump. But surely all of that is solvable, a day-saving trip back through time or some other reality-bending deus ex machina.

These two elements — a willingness to break the toys, an the ability to let them grow — is what has made DCeased and Sean Murphy’s Batman: White Knight so compelling, and what makes me eager for Dark Knights of Steel and DC vs. Vampires. Sure we’ve had Elseworlds before, but rarely serial “Elseworlds” miniseries (all credit to Injustice, the fount from which I believe this all sprung). That these should be routinely better than the mainstream DCU stories is a bug, not a feature; that tells me whatever rules the mainstream DCU adheres to or whatever it’s protecting, that’s hurting rather than helping.

[Review contains spoilers]

The amount that Taylor throws at the wall in War of the Undead Gods sure makes it seem like this is the end — at what point would more Anti-Life zombies just get repetitive — as well as the back of the book rather definitively touting this as the “final chapter.” But War is long on finale, short on conclusion, if that makes sense — 10 pages of Batman Damian Wayne fading away to oblivion, and then just three pages until the end after that, two of those involved with Alfred mourning. We’re told “it’s done … We’re safe now,” but anyone who reads comics knows that unless we actually see the future, it’s never quite “done.” I can credit Taylor with leaving a variety of threads untied — such that DCeased is a living, breathing universe where we can imagine the adventures continue — but the final page felt more to me like “not the end” than “the end.”

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Arguably War is too full, though perhaps that’s the prerogative of the third chapter in the (increasingly inaccurately named five-part) trilogy. We’ve got Lobo in the mix, and Ares, and Darkseid, and Brainiac, and the arrival of Supergirl, and Mxyzptlk … and none of these even turn out to be the book’s ultimate villain! On the page, nothing is necessarily superfluous — Brainiac brings along the Kandorians, who save the day and reunite with Supergirl; Mxy killing Jim Corrigan made way for Alfred Pennyworth to become the Spectre — though I feel strongly at least some of this could have been trimmed. Any number of storylines that began earlier get short shrift — Batgirl Cassandra Cain has the powers of Shazam, for gosh’s sake, and yet another New God (here, Scott Free) sent his son away — such to make one wonder what this book could have done without.

I was surprised and pleased to see Superman Clark Kent resurrected from the Anti-Life virus with relative ease early in this book — what could have been War’s whole plot — though clearly this book belongs to the Super Sons. Taylor writes the grown-up Jon Kent as plucky and fearless as ever, and the whole of DCeased is something of a thought experiment that has Jon never been kidnapped by Ultraman, he’d still be … basically the same Jon as we have now. Taylor’s real star however is Damian Wayne, the book’s Batman and “last son” of the Bat-family. I’ve said since the original DCeased that I thought Taylor wrote young Damian too “nice” and well socialized, but by the time of the events of this book Damian would have matured irrespective, and he makes for a great Batman — both more emotional and self-aware than his father, but equally with his father’s crafty streak.

There’s a point in which Clark, newly returned to life and sporting an arm prosthesis, splits superheroing duties with Jon, the former going to save a planet in peril and the other remaining to protect the second Earth. As I really thought the plot of War would be undead Superman versus undead Darkseid, this seemed momentous to me, an unexpected turn that laid bare how far these characters had come.

Even as the mainstream DC Universe has the longest runway of them all, I don’t often feel that same sense of “how far we’ve come” as I did here or among the generations of characters in Batman: Beyond the White Knight. Again, I know the reasons why — not wanting to interfere with individual creators' titles, not wanting a reader to feel they have to read title X to understand title Y — but the quality of a book like Tom Taylor, Trevor Hairsine, and company’s DCeased: War of the Undead Gods suggests to me something’s in the mainstream DCU’s not working. Maybe it’s time DC’s regular continuity had a few fewer crises, a few more zombies.

[Includes original and variant covers]

Rating 3.5