Written by Roberto Recchioni
Art by Werther Dell’Edera
Covers by Gigi Cavenago
Published by DC Comics
So, this was a lot better than expected. I love when Batman teams up with different heroes or fights different characters but Dylan Dog?
Batman has had some interesting meeting with characters from different companies for sure (fighting Matt Wagner’s Grendel for instance), but I wasn’t sold on this one.
Fortunately, the people over at DC put together a top notch creative team on this. It was a riveting and entertaining book from start to finish.
The story starts in London. The Joker has made his way there to make a pact with the city’s biggest villain who is inexplicably named Mephistophelian Xabaras!
The scene where the two of them first meet in a scene of complete lunacy.
Yet, they both each have something that the other one wants.
Thus, Mephistophelian Xabaras agrees to the Joker’s terms and they are ready to work together! The thing is, this is not just a plot point that is thrown in. Mephistophelian Xabaras is a character who has now had a part in the Joker’s origin. To say anymore will spoil it, but it is really cool!
Their new evil scheme starts to get some legs and they start getting things ready. Dylan Dog start to become aware of the evil plans and starts to look into it. It is here that Dylan Dog and his partner Groucho are introduced to the reader.
If you’ve read Dylan Dog comics, they are both very familiar. If not, the creative team does an excellent job of making them accessible characters to new readers. You know everything that you need to know about them from this first chapter.
Bruce Wayne then catches wind that something js happening overseas and he decides to make his way over London. He starts to investigate the Joker and Mephistophelian Xabaras‘s plans. It is then that he comes across Dylan Dog, who is doing the exact same thing. The two of them meet and exchange a few words. Is is decided quickly that in order to solve this case, the two of them have to work together. We see then that we are off to the races as these two have to stop their respective villains nefarious plans.
What is really cool about this book, is that Batman comes across as a secondary character.
What I mean by that is Dylan Dog is definitely the focal character of the story and Batman is helping him out. It is a cool way of doing things as you would expect the opposite almost. Catwoman and Groucho get attacked and have a zombie like affliction which the two heroes have to cure. That is when Groucho fills them in on the villains and their ultimate plan. It is a crazy one too.
They want to resurrect the serial killer Christopher Killax.
Killax has a terrible and terrifying power which I am not going to discuss here. But suffice to say it is all about the human soul and it is pretty terrifying. At this point Dylan Dog and the Dark Knight Detective have to try and find out how to stop this from happening. The investigation takes them all over the place until it leads to someplace that the pair weren’t expecting. It is pretty horrific what happens from there.
All of this leads to the concluding beats of this story. All of the player come together and pretty much fight it out in various ways. In a story like this, the toys or characters really can’t be changed all that much. That being said, the creative team does a great job of getting past that and make some truly thrilling scenes instead. Some of the action sequences are pretty great.
The creative team also did a pretty spot on job with the characters. This wasn’t an easy story to get right or to get the tempers of the characters right, but they did a great job of it.
Overall, this was well written and drawn and it suspenseful enough to keep you entertained throughout. This is an interesting oddity, one worth delving into and enjoying. It would be cool to see what the characters could get up to after this story ended. I would absolutely give it a look, if there were any further adventures with the characters.
RATING: B+
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