A Fitting End to the First New Elseworlds
The Good: Cover is very nice. It's a good representation of all of the tension that's been building and the collision of all the events thus far.
The artwork's improved a bit. I didn't notice as many constipated looking happy faces this time around. Luthor especially seemed to have a lot of nicely drawn expressions.
One of the very first things was a look at how the El's presence foiled the creation of 4 major heroes. That was kind of awesome to see just what larger effects their coming would have on the grand scale of things.
The plot takes a lot of really awesome twists and turns. If you know your Superman none of it should be terribly surprising, but it is Elseworld's so there's an element of surprise there regardless.
As for the plot itself, I thought it was brilliant. All of the various plotlines were all tied neatly together into the thrilling climax. Every character was used to their maximum. The ending was a very emotional conclusion, with some excellent character development on all fronts. Valora seemed really underused last issue but everyone got an equal amount of development here and I absolutely loved the ending.
The Bad: The big battle itself seemed a bit weak. I mean, it was totally awesome, it just felt over a tad too quick. I mean, that's not really what this has been about for the most part, it focuses on all of the emotional turmoil and tribulations of the El family instead of being another story where Superman punches his way through everything, but I still felt the climax was cut short just a smidge.
I know they insisted on having a caption with the word 'El' on every cover but come on, 'War Is El?' You guys can do better than that.
I felt like the whole Doomsday Cult kind of ceased to be important. I was looking forward to seeing some kind of 'Doomsday' monster thing but they hardly had much importance at all in the grand scale of things.
The guardians can see possible futures? Really? That seemed WAY too omniscient of them. And if they were THAT omniscient, they would not have caused nearly as many problems as they did in the regular universe. It seemed downright bizarre to me.
In Conclusion: 4/5
I hope to god they decide to make more Elseworlds after this because this was absolutely excellent. I hate Superman, and I love action, and yet 2 issues worth of story every time still managed to keep me completely engrossed every month. There's a lot of really nice stuff you don't always see in a superhero comic. There's a lot of really good emotional stuff in here, and more importantly, it manages to end without completely destroying everything, but also doesn't leave you wanting more. There was a clear story told, and trying to do anything else with this really would feel cheap and tagged on unlike some other Elseworlds which could totally be continued. I'm looking at YOU Gotham By Gaslight.
