Everyone’s favorite 10 year old crime fighter is back and this time he is teaming up with Metropolis’ own Guardian in the second entry of the four part “World’s Finest” miniseries. Before I get to the nuts and bolts of the book (and how lucky Guardian must feel to be working with Damian) allow me to address the title of “World Finest” itself.
The title “World’s Finest” to me means the very best our planet has to offer in the way of super hero crime fighters. And for our trouble we are given Guardian and Robin? Please! I just hope the fate of mankind doesn’t come down to a ten year old terror with daddy issues and the cloned head of the Science Police who admits to not knowing much about science.
Yes, the premise of the “World’s Finest” books is to bring together heroes from the spheres of Batman and Superman while the aforementioned are either off world or trapped somewhere in time. The idea, apparently, is to fill the void left by those men. But don’t you think the Dick Grayson Batman would be just a little more than miffed to learn he doesn’t qualify for some reason? Ah well, at least in the next book of this series we get the compelling match-up of Supergirl and Batgirl.
As far this book goes I’ll make it as brief as possible. Not being an artist sometimes I find it difficult to judge someone else’s art work. However, I can only say the cover to this edition was truly uninspiring. As for the art work inside I thought it drifted between overly simplistic to slightly better than average. Perhaps DC is trying to entice a younger newer readership with less sophisticated tastes. The dialog also followed this same basic template. Which to be fair, again may be geared to the younger set with less discerning tastes.
As far as the story goes, which is all I am really interested in, we find Robin in all his petulant ten year old splendor in hot pursuit of a stolen device from Wayne Tech. Damian, as usual, pushes the boundaries of normal crime fighting discipline which leads him to bump heads with the Guardian. In typical boilerplate style the two heroes work against each other more often than with each other. Fortunately they have the Parasite and Mr. Freeze to unite them in their quest to solve the crime. It helps that Parasite and Freeze are easy to track and act like a couple of B leaguers themselves. A battle ensues and the baddies are easily vanquished. Damian gets the Tech back and Guardian gets to lock up the evil doers.
The MacGuffin you ask? We don’t get to see that till the final two pages. Toyman resurfaces from the first World’s Finest edition of this series and with the help of his trusty “Toyboy” Mr. Freeze is hijacked from his impending incarceration as his abilities are apparently integral to the Toyman’s latest contraption an impossibly large Superman/Batman robot that spells nothing but trouble for Supergirl and Batgirl in the next issue. Good luck to them.
World's Finest #2:
Reviewed by Dark Knight Dave
