Written by Becky Cloonan,
Michael Conrad, Jordie Bellaire
Art by Travis Moore, Paulina Ganucheau
Published by DC Comics
Another fun issue, even if it’s mainly more of the same.
And, quite frankly, it is.
Diana, with Siegfried and Ratatosk, is hunting down Janus to end her attempts to destroy the godsphere and multiverse and reshape them in her own image.
Now she has abducted Deadman, hoping that he’ll tell her the way to Earth. So far he’s keeps his mouth shut, and she has wandered through Asgard, Elphame and Earth-11. She just cuts a slit into reality with the God Scraper and hops through to another plane.
And Diana comes tumbling after.
Each realm brings a change of appearance for our heroes.
Earth-11 fooled them and the reader early on because it was their modern looks. But now they’re in a void of sorts, dressed in Golden Age/classical garb.
Siegfried thinks they’ve landed in the heaven of what Diana calls the “Abrahamic god.” I don’t know, Siggy, this place looks awful green and barren.
Soon we find out it’s decidedly not heaven, but a place familiar to DC readers as its own kind of living limbo.
But just as you think this issue’s going to hunker us down in this place as Diana solves some kind of problem or helps someone or saves the realm, the issue picks up steam and the heroes keep chasing Janus through multiple dimensions across the DC multiverse.
That includes the Fifth Dimension, as promised on the cover! Yes, Bat-Mite is here, as is Mr. Mxyzptlk, and all the great self-referential nonsense calling on many versions of Batman.
It’s as if Michael W. Conrad and Becky Cloonan are aware that this story is repeating itself a bit, so they steer into that and ramp up the reality-hopping to absurdity.
Travis Moore draws a pretty fantastic Silver Age Wonder Woman in the Fifth Dimension, by the way. And kudos to another issue in which he draws multiple styles across one issue and an absolutely gorgeous Siegfried.
We also get some solid speechifying by Diana about the need for the past in order for the future to be better, because the past is the source of wisdom. The flipside, however, continues to make Janus into not a compelling villain, more of a petulant child whining about “burning it all down.”
The issue ends on a cliffhanger that may break us of this current cycle of chasing Janus.
The endgame on the proper Earth has to arrive sooner or later.
Right?
