vs. My Patience
This past week finally saw the end of one of the most god-awful series DC has ever produced. Surprisingly, I’m not talking about Final Crisis or Batman RIP, rather the horrid horror/superhero mini-series Superman & Batman vs. Vampires & Werewolves.
How bad is it?
Apparently the entire story has been about finding a cure for vampirism and lycanthropy.    Oddly, the way to do that is to kill that Lovecraftian horror that escaped from Superman four issues ago, even though the vampires and werewolves were around long before this creature appeared. BRILLIANT!
Yes, Superman does stick around this issue to put up a fight, but he is so emo over the loss of a vampire child, it isn’t like any version of Superman we’ve seen before. Cry me a river Kal, you just spent a great mini-series on another planet with your cousin explaining to her how you can’t save everyone, and you come off really brave, strong, and smart, yet this series reduces you to a less than super man who looks likes he’s about to cry at any moment. This kind of character development might work in Twilight, but in a Batman/Superman comic, I would expect the heroes to be a little more… well… heroic.
Is the action good? Not really. There are fight scenes between monsters and heroes, but it is so murky it is hard to make out what is going on at times. The staging will have your head spinning faster than Linda Blair’s as you try to figure out how the choreography of this fight scene is actually supposed to play out. It’s like watching a fast paced and edited fight scene that takes place in an underground bunker with one light source. Sure, you can see something is going on, but what, you have no clue.
Who is the hero of the day? None other than Etrigan the demon. Apparently Jason Blood, someone who has versed himself in the mystic arts, and offed many a vampire and werewolf in past issues, can’t recite the proper incantations to open the portal to send the monster back from whence it came. Of course it is all a ploy of the writer to wedge in one more guest appearance in a title that barely featured one of the title characters.
And what about that wily mad scientist Dr. Jeffery Combs, who has eluded capture for five issues? Do Superman and Batman finally catch up to him and bring him to justice? Well, maybe, and maybe not. While the chase of this n’er-do-well spanned each of the six issues, with the doctor escaping each time, the epilogue finds Combs being put in a cell in Arkham, with no mention how he was finally brought down. Surely Superman would have wanted to bring the hammer down on the head of the guy who caused the death of the vampire kid Superman was so upset over, right? Guess it wasn’t important to the story.
The end of the series leaves open the possibility for a sequel, and the final page does ask for fans to write in to let DC know if they want to see another installment of this dreck.
There are fans of this series?
Here’s the short answer.
NO!
Want me to make it more clear?
Readers have put up with a lot of poor quality material from DC over the years, but to even suggest a followup to this P.O.S. series is simply crazy. In a time when really good content is being shelved, having something like this resurface only proves someone doesn’t know what is going on with their company. Do not do a sequel to this series. Don’t even consider it. The only consideration you should be making right now is whether or not to assign the writer and artist to your any of your other books.
I can’t even give this final issue a rating.
91/91
3 Comments
why wasn’t it on your top 5 goats of the year?
It would have been had Jenna Jameson’s Shadow Hunter not beat it out.
Is it possible that this book was released by DC at the same time as Final Crisis and Batman RIP just to make those titles seem, you know, not quite that bad?
“I mean, yeah, Final Crisis sucks and Batman RIP was not only hard to read but entirely unfulfilling and pointless, but have you read Superman and Batman vs. Vampires and Werewolves … ?”