I’m not exactly sure the why of Christopher Cantwell’s DC All In Challengers of the Unknown, which may prove the biggest factor in whether this is the start of a renaissance for the Challs or just a bit of event-driven fluff.

Challengers follows a too-repetitive structure (though one with some good precedent), and the conclusion is considerably less surprising than I’d hoped. That said, I’m a sucker for all the ways this book awkwardly fits between the other DC All In titles and also how Cantwell, like other DC writers recently, folds together the disparate Challengers histories to make a whole, cohesive or otherwise. Cantwell makes the Challengers likable, and interesting, and posits a place for them in the DCU that I don’t think has been offered lately. This one is a little rough, but if its loose ends actually get followed up on, then I’d be more than happy to overlook that.

[Review contains spoilers]

The classic Justice League/Justice Society meetings, among others, had a structure where groups of heroes would team-up, they’d go off and fight some threat, that would come to a cliffhanger, and then our perspective would change to another team. So there’s nothing particularly wrong with each of these issues featuring an individual Challenger teamed up with a couple Justice League members — and indeed, a lot right with it, as the Leaguers are wonderfully “Challenger-ified” in purple costumes (action figures, anyone?). But in the trope of “go investigate an anomaly, see your dark self,” by the third issue we’ve rather gotten the shape of this, and so there’s not much suspense to whether something bad will happen or what form it’ll take.

That’s offset pretty well by the fact that the book is just fun. Everyone’s game here — again, Cantwell’s got Batman in a purple Bat-suit and loving it — such that even if you’re not so familiar with the Challs, the respect that the League has for them is so present as to be infectious. I recall knowing about the test pilot friendship between Hal Jordan and Challenger Red Ryan, but Cantwell portrays it especially well on the page, in an issue among the others with a sharp horror movie vibe.

Some parts take place in the day to day of the League’s floating space station, which I also love, and there’s a bevy of “out there” guest stars, from Miss Martian to the Sea Devils, Anthro, Captain Comet, and Cave Carson. Not to mention that Cantwell imagines a variety of different Challengers incarnations from over the years and different continuities as all existing simultaneously together as a “Challengers Operations Unit,” the same thing kind of “everything happened” aesthetic we’ve seen lately in the DC All In Batgirl and others. Woe be to who tries to make sense of all of it, but it’s wonderful.

Here at the beginning of DC All In, Challengers is a good team player, flitting in and out of at least The Question: All Along the Watchtower, Justice League: The Atom Project, and the new Aquaman series. It’s almost immediately revealed as nonsense — Challenger Kenn Kawa seemingly has to keep being re-injured to explain, unnecessarily, why he’s mainly in Question and not here, letting alone that, if we posit Question and Challengers together, that’s twice the new Watchtower almost destroys reality in about a week. But I’m a sucker, of course, and when Omega-controlled Challengers start chanting “Absolute,” well, it’s hard not to get enthused by that.

Over the course of the story, as each Challenger is seemingly negatively affected by a Darkseid anomaly, Mr. Terrific proceeds to imprison them; each issue is also punctuated by Terrific’s increasingly paranoid journal entries. As such, as the League becomes more and more militant — and the conflict seems to be between the superheroic League and “regular people” Challengers — one might expect the reveal would be that it’s the League being controlled by the Omega force and not the Challengers, or something. But indeed, yes, Terrific’s been saying something’s wrong with the Challengers for five issues and, lo and behold, something’s wrong with the Challengers. There’s plenty weirdness in the end that makes the ending quite gripping, but plot-wise it’s not particularly strong.

Among that weirdness: Hal and Red find Cave Carson’s dead body on an asteroid in deep space with no clue how he got there, and then Red sees a vision of Black Manta, otherwise absent from the story, holding a child. Furthermore, when the Challs discuss this later, they reference that Manta killed Aquaman’s son, but that was “years ago.” Granted there’s a bevy of Challengers in this story who never “existed” in this continuity, but I still thought Manta killing Arthur Jr. in the 1970s Aquaman: Death of a Prince was devoutly out of canon, especially since Aquaman and Mera have another child now, daughter Andy, seemingly for the first time.

I’d wonder if that’s just Cantwell’s mistake, except the whole of including Manta here can’t just be writer’s fiat; that’s either a crossover point Cantwell was asked to put in or fodder for a sequel, right? Not to mention the cameo by Skeets, last seen in the DC All In Special, and Challenger Rocky being stranded in the past. If there’s a good answer for all of that — Rocky appears in the next DC event or the next midway-to-the-event event — then all good, and Challengers is an essential piece of the DC All In puzzle. If not? That makes Challengers a lot of sound, fury, and confusion over nothing.

But again, I do like how Christopher Cantwell positions the team in Challengers of the Unknown, the human watchers of the watchmen, as it were, the closest non-powered people to the League. In cases like Hal and Red, there’s even some suggestion that Red is essentially who Hal would be without powers, or vice versa. The book kicks off with a short story with art by Jorge Fornes, who also makes a couple contributions within; had I my druthers, the main series artists' work is more over-expressive, less serious than Fornes, though I was impressed with how Sean Izaakse and Amancay Nahuelpan handled the scary stuff in the fourth chapter. Hopefully this is the beginning and not the end.

[Includes original and variant covers]