DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1 is a Fun But Limited Detour (Review)

After months of waiting, the DC Comics crossover special promised to us back at New York Comic-Con is finally here. For months now, fans have been watching as the greatest heroes and villains duke it out in a high-stakes cosmic tournament for the chance to gain cosmic power in order to save the DCU from Darkseid. But DC wasn’t just going to leave it at the DCU fighting itself and decided to produce DC K.O. Boss Battle #1, a special one-shot that sees various DC K.O. participants fighting characters from other franchises.

This special comes to us from Jeremy Adams, who has already written two DC K.O. tie-in issues (Green Lantern Galactic Slam and The Kids Are All Fight). And Adams is joined by a murderers’ row of amazing artists, including Ronan Cliquet, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Kieran McKeown, and Pablo M. Collar. This is certainly the most ambitious of all the DC K.O. tie-ins so far, and I really do give everyone here an ‘A’ for effort. However, even for what was billed as a fun ‘bonus stage’, DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1 is more of a whiff than a knockout.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1 Gives Us Crossovers…But Not Much Else

This issue picks up right where DC K.O. #3 ended, with the Final Four about to fight Darkseid and the Absolute Universe Trinity. However, the World Forger interrupts the match, claiming that the fighters don’t have the Omega Energy needed to win. But by fighting champions from other worlds and gaining even more Omega Energy, they stand a shot. So the Final Four and a handful of resurrected heroes enter different fissures of reality to take on the champions of other worlds. It’s a thin justification, but it gets the DC icons out and into the realms beyond.

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From there, we get DC characters meeting non-DC characters. Star Sapphire meets Sabrina, the Teenage Witch, Joker meets The Conjuring’s Annabelle, and Superman meets Homelander. And while all of those sound neat, the book is so stuffed that few of these moments get to breathe. These realities eventually all collapse into one another, and we get one giant splash page before the World Forger collects the Omega Energy from everyone involved. Lex, Wonder Woman, Joker, and Superman are given the buff they need, and their fight with Darkseid’s forces continues as if they were never interrupted in the first place.

DC K.O. Boss Battle #1 Does the Best It Can with One Issue

Honestly, I think this was neat. A giant crossover smack dab in the middle of an event series is such a wild idea, so I can’t fault anyone for lack of creativity. But I do find fault with the execution of it. There’s no other way to say it, this book had too much going on. I mean, Vampirella shows up in one of the earliest pages, but she doesn’t show up again until the final battle. These crossovers feel very uneven, and truth be told, I think a smaller cap on characters could have done wonders for this story.

To be fair, the crossover matches that do get time to breathe are pretty good. Black Lightning and Plastic Man’s tag team battle against Scorpion and Sub-Zero was cool, and there was a lot of great action during Wonder Woman’s fight with Red Sonja. But the more fleshed-out scenes paired with the lesser-developed crossovers made me wonder why they stuffed this book in the first place. Four crossovers for the Final Four would have been enough to give us a satisfying spectacle. Instead, it’s needlessly packed with additional crossovers that take up time and ultimately drag the book down.

I will say this book knows what it is. It’s a fun read that doesn’t take itself too seriously, giving readers a break from the action of DC K.O.. Adams is a wonderful writer in that regard, and he’s paired with some really fantastic artists here, and I can tell that this was fun for everyone involved. Execution-wise, though, this book bit off a bit more than it could chew. I mean, it had Superman fighting Homelander, but it doesn’t really do anything with that other than let us look at them together for novelty’s sake.

All that said, DC Comics did the smart thing and made this book an optional read. It’s more action if you want it, but it’s completely contained and not necessary to the overall DC K.O. storyline. It’s far from a perfect story, but it does have some value. It’s an interesting experiment, and while not everything about it lands, I applaud it for swinging for the fences. I’ll always give points to a series that tries something different rather than never trying anything at all, and DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1 certainly tries something different.

What did you think about DC K.O.: Boss Battle #1? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts on the ComicBook Forum!