DC's K.O. Event was, in fact, very dumb

illustration by Aaron Humby

DC line-wide events are very, very seldom any good.  And even if the main titles are worth reading, the ancillary pile-on is almost never worth the effort or cost.  At best the events have a decent starting point, but usually by the time you hit the end it's a confused mess of abstractions yelling at each other and forcing some new editorial mandate, and this was the long way around to get to, say, "now Superman *doesn't* wear shorts over his tights".  

The last big event I recall feeling particularly worth it or well written and which had a spectacular ending that DC absolutely flubbed, was probably Infinite Crisis or maybe, just maybe, just the Morrison issues of Final Crisis.  And I attribute my enthusiasm for those projects now to my general enthusiasm for comics writ-large at the time.  I don't know how they'd actually hold up.

I can't say much about Marvel because the last time I bothered with a cross-over was the OG Civil War, which led, within 45 days, into Secret Invasion.  And I say this as a comic reader of many years before that moment and an equal number of years on the other side of that moment - Secret Invasion #1 was when I tapped out of Marvel comics as something I followed with any seriousness.  

Yes, I was rolling my eyes that we were being told that "oOOOoo!  Maybe your favorite character has secretly been a Skrull for 15 years!", essentially making it The Clone Saga on steroids.  But, also, I had just put an ungodly amount of money into picking up what I thought was necessary to follow Civil War, and I came out the other side thinking "I really just needed the main series and like three other floppies".  But there's no way to know that going in.

Add in the rising cost of comics, and I just tapped out.  I haven't picked up any Marvel title with consistency since.  

DC, of course, tried our patience with numerous efforts since Final Crisis.  Blackest Night was... fine?  You really, really only needed to read the main title, but after it was over DC immediately trashed almost everything set up by the series making it moot.  On the flipside of "not mattering" - Flashpoint was dumb as hell and then managed to usher in the worst era of DC in my lifetime.  On the plus side, I saved a lot of money for a few years there.

I won't list all of DC's events, butfor twenty years  they've all basically had one thing in common - they're mostly entirely skippable.  For decades, DC just hasn't had the narrative coherence or nuts to make anything matter.  Even Infinite Frontier - which sure seemed like it might matter - did not.  

But, this was specifically about DC's K.O. event.  

This story had build up for months over in the Superman titles and in Justice League.  Darkseid!  Doomsday as the Time Trapper (a character that has been rebooted and is part of a storyline that's been rebooted so many times no one cares anymore that I wondered why they bothered with this trick)!  A Dark Legion!

But, really, this was D.C. wishing they could play Mortal Kombat on the page with absolutely zero consequences.  And, look, I get that a lot of people love Street Fighter and a lot of people love Mortal Kombat,.  But, I don't know how to tell people this who are on their fourth John Wick movie and still think this is a neat franchise - but it's not exactly gripping storytelling watching characters just punch each other. 

It's not even interesting.  

Comics are full of what Grant Morrison dubbed "mad ideas".  I am fully in support of his decision to have Superman defeat Darkseid with a multiversal note.  I am not against Darkseid doing Darkseid things.  

But DC K.O. is bad comics.  It is the anti-life equation of mad ideas.

It's the kind of comic you can flip through and get the gist and it doesn't matter what anyone is doing or saying.  It's just comics-splatter, which is what many event comics turn into, anyway, while trying to fill out that eight-issue count or whatever they decided to sell (DC K.O. was mercifully five issues). But it's basically I guess Scott Snyder playing in the sandbox and having DC characters do truly horrible things to each other, but only after they've all abandoned their actual well-established principles and character and seem to take delight in the carnage.  

It's also ugly and garish art with no basic sense of design or style.  Which is odd for artists Josh Williamson.  Neither illustrative nor cartoonish, it's just scribbly design that looks rushed at best and incompetent at worst.  And I've seen this guy work before and he can be very, very good.  So I don't get it, unless he either had no time or he just didn't give a shit.  The color palette can best be described as "unimaginative".   Which, frankly, is the general vibe of the series.  

This isn't a story so much as videogame staples thrown onto comics using/ abusing others' work.  And I know that makes me sound old and cranky, and fine.  I don't care.  But don't fool yourself - this is shitty comics.  Jack Kirby would be embarrassed to see his ideas used like this.  But it's no secret that no one at DC, maybe minus Morrison, has had an idea of how to use the New Gods well in decades.  Or really seems to understand the concepts.  But this sure isn't it.  It's borrowing Kirby (by way of Morrison) and insisting this is edgy, but the edge is "dude, have you played Tekken?"

The New Gods were steeped in the notion that Kirby clearly understood mythologies at a very fundamental level and was trying his hand at creating some for the modern era - not in a "oh, Batman and Superman are modern myths!" way that gets tossed around.  Instead, he was telling stories that worked on a primal. primordial level with his tales of New Genesis and Apokolips.  There's a reason DC keeps coming back to the Fourth World concept - it's because at it's core it's the most resonant world building concept within the DCU since "space savior arriving on Earth in an interstellar basket" and "revenge-man showing up to keep punching mental patients".  Even Wonder Woman kind of struggles against the rich conceptualization of New Gods.

I don't know how much K.O. impacted the stories line-wide.  It's impacting Superman titles for a bit, but I suspect it's otherwise being ignored.  I wasn't really asked to buy much more than the K.O. event books themselves, and whichever "All Fight" issues I wanted, which was just like one or two with Superman in them.  I figured I'd pick up the collections - and I've decided there will be no purchase of any DC K.O. event collections.

But what's depressing is really that this is the best DC thinks it can do right now.  Forty years on from Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen, we're back to people in tights punching each other, only this time, there's a prize for whomever punches the most.  There's a lot in modern comics that makes me embarrassed to be here, but this sort of thing is truly the antithesis of where I thought we were headed 25 years ago with comics, even at the Big 2.  We really have turned comics into what my friends who've always been skeptical of my hobby accused them of being - characters just smashing against each other like a two year old got ahold of some action figures.

But I also bet it sold like hotcakes and someone will point to that as proof it was good stuff.  And at that cover price and with multiple covers for each issue, what a cash grab.