DC Comics is the best place they’ve been in years. 2024’s DC All-In #1 kicked off a new era of the DC Multiverse, one which brought readers the Absolute line of titles and many of the best DC comics of the 21st century. All of that has come to a head with DC K.O., a new story that sees the heroes and villains of the prime Earth enter into a tournament where the winner will gain enough power to defeat Darkseid, who has the entire universe in his grasp. It’s a story that revolves about heroes mostly fighting heroes, with some villains and comic characters from outside the DC Multiverse entering the fray, and this fact has made some readers trepidatious about the book.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Marvel has killed the hero vs. hero comic over the last twenty years, starting with Civil War. As a story, Civil War only works because it ignores a lot about various Marvel characters to make the story work. However, looking at the announcements made at New York Comic-Con, DC K.O. is looking to be nothing like Civil War, and that’s a great thing. DC K.O. is going to be something special, and here’s why.
DC K.O. Is a Completely Different Beast from Civil War
DC K.O. #1 is the perfect first issue for an event comic; it drops readers into a basically hopeless situation, and then sees the heroes figure out their next steps, coming to terms with what they have to do to win. The issue goes out of its way to show that Superman, at least, doesn’t want to have to fight his friends in order to defeat Darkseid, and how he’s only convinced that it’s really a game where everyone but Darkseid wins. Right off the bat, this is completely different than Civil War.
Civil War only worked because writer Mark Millar made Captain America and Iron Man go completely against who they are as characters, with other heroes from across the superhero community joining them in out of character actions. DC K.O. isn’t doing this at all. The book is giving readers a hero vs. hero comic that works within the boundaries of DC and who the characters are. So, while heroes do have to fight to get to the next round, it’s not because they hate each other for flimsy story reasons, it’s so that one of them will win tourney overall and fix the universe, defeat Darkseid, and fix the universe. That’s the most DC way of doing a hero versus hero event.
At New York Comic-Con, DC announced numerous non-DC characters involved in the story, including Homelander, Sub-Zero, Annabelle, Vampirella, and Samantha from Beneath the Tree Where Nobody Sees, and this places the story even further away from Civil War. We don’t really know how these match-ups are going to affect this story, but they are completely different from anything that Marvel has ever done. Marvel has obviously had crossovers with other publishers, but they never include them in their events. It’s an added bit of spectacle for a series that is all about spectacle, and it’s exciting in a way that Civil War wished it could be.
DC also announced the match-ups in “Fight Month” in December. Superman is going to take on Captain Atom, Wonder Woman is going against Lobo, Aquaman and Hawkman, Harley Quinn and Zatanna, Jay Garrick and Guy Gardner, and Red Hood and Joker. While are grudges there — Superman and Captain Atom don’t like each other and there’s obviously Red Hood and the Joker — these are mostly just really cool fights. Marvel used Civil War to start grudges between characters that would be used for years; DC K.O. is using the fights to give readers some awesome and entertaining comics to tell a blockbuster story.
DC K.O. Takes the Idea of Hero vs. Hero to Another Level
Marvel’s Civil War is monumentally important. It set a course for five years of Marvel stories, and served as the inspiration for one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most beloved films. However, fans don’t really love the comic because of what it did to the Marvel Universe. It sold so well that Marvel thought this was what they should be doing with superhero event stories, and it led to some bad places. Many DC fans were rightfully afraid that the same thing was going with DC K.O.; that the creators were going butcher the characters to make their stories work.
However, the announcements made at New York Comic-Con showed that wasn’t going to be the case. Bringing in non-DC characters show the directions that DC wants to take this book; it’s meant to be big fun action, a summer blockbuster movie of a comic book. Add in the announcements of the tournament’s second round in December, and suddenly, it’s showing that this story is going to be unlike Civil War completely. This isn’t DC copying a Marvel idea, this is DC doing what they do best — superhero spectacle — and doing in it big new ways.
What do you think? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
Most Viewed
-
Image courtesy of Lucasfilm
