Absolute power corrupts absolutely … maybe?

That’s the question that lies between two tensions in Scott Snyder’s DC K.O. There is on one hand the idea that times are so dark (in the DCU and metaphorically) that what we need is for someone to rise up, to take control, to fix everything for us. (Some even think they’ve already found that person.) On the other hand is whether anyone can hold that power benevolently, whether anyone can save us without also destroying us.

It’s heady stuff for a book that, distilled down to its basest elements, might (unfairly) be called “just a fight comic.” But then again, what more fundamental element is there to the mainstream superhero comics than the fight scene?

Perhaps that’s why the DC heroes — except Superman — so quickly agree to what must be the most harebrained scheme in decades, that they will fight each other to the death with the expectation that the final winner will gain from the Heart of Apokolips the power to both defeat Darkseid and resurrect the others. It’s treated too glibly (I hope at least some of the tie-ins acknowledge that this is a readily accepted suicide mission), but it’s in line, at least, with the fighting game genre with which DC K.O. shares so much aesthetic — kill your opponent, and there they are again when the game restarts.

DC K.O. is part Mortal Kombat, part Survivor, and, just under the wire, another entry in the pantheon of continuity-bending DC events. Here, the world cries out for a hero to save us … and that hero whispers, “No.”

[Review contains spoilers]

Neither Superman nor Batman quite advocate the right positions in DC K.O.. Snyder’s Superman comes off milquetoast, the Kansas farm boy who can’t even compete against his friends in a board game out of concern that “everyone wins.” But also Bruce Wayne can’t leave work at the office, using Clark’s hesitancy as an opportunity to chide him about not taking more heavy-handed actions as Superman. It’s Batman who’s the first to glom to the idea of a hero taking on the ultimate Omega power to fight Darkseid, and the idea of the heroes battling it out for supremacy doesn’t seem to faze him.

Throughout, Superman is pressed to accept his inner Omega. Batman verily gives his (tournament) life keeping Superman focused on the goal. Hal Jordan rejects Superman’s apology for a blow, reminding him it’s the Omega energy that matters. And Superman himself, faced with visions of how peaceful the world could be if he only took control, begins to cave, bringing Billy Batson back from having been voted off the island eliminated and then sacrificing him for the win.

Lex Luthor slices off Superman’s hand as he reveals he hates Superman not for doing too much for humanity, but doing too little, and calls him a coward. Luthor guesses, correctly, that Superman’s initial goal was not to fix the world with the Omega power but simply to do as little harm as possible. “Maybe,” Luthor says, humanity didn’t want Superman to rule “in another time, but they do in this one. … In this era, people are begging for a hero who will fix the problems, the wars, the death, the misery, the terror of it all.”

Comics are often written well outside the time they’re published, but it’s hard not to see the political here. Depending on your persuasion, some have already accepted a demagogue (though no one who does so would call it that), believing as Luthor says that “things have changed. The center has fallen apart.” For others — where I think the comic is pointing — the rise of a demagogue makes finding one of our own all the more tempting. “With the world falling apart, the doomsday clock at midnight,” the Heart of Apokolips asks, don’t you want someone “to save us all?”

That Superman doesn’t, in the end, succumb to temptation is not truly in suspense, though it might have been interesting to see how Snyder justified Superman giving in. But it is poignant that the catalyst for Superman regaining his direction is none other than Doomsday, the character epitome of “all fight” comics, renouncing his violent ways and breaking “the cycle,” this time granting Superman not death, but life.

And so Superman gains the power of King Omega but doesn’t, in the end, become all-powerful, sharing the power because “when one person wins, none of us do. What we need is not one hand to save us … but many. Every hand. Their hands. And yours, too.” It’s true, of course, and probably the only answer Snyder could have gone with — that Superman doesn’t save us, but rather we all save ourselves together. Longtime fans of Snyder’s work may find this populist, humanist refrain repetitive, however, the well that Snyder often goes to, in his Batman run and Dark Nights: Metal, among other places.

That power-sharing burst of Superman’s gives DC All In one of its hooks going into its second act, not unlike the power-switching at the end of Absolute Power or the wishes granted at the end of Snyder’s own Metal. Like Metal, too, DC K.O. is magnanimous (or opportunistic) in floating the whole line at the end, with in-story teases for the Next Level books and events in a variety of other titles.

Page-to-page, the DC K.O. miniseries is less fun when it’s simply about punching and kicking and more when it’s about the familiar accoutrements of the DC Universe, the race to grab notable weapons from across the DCU or Superman falling backward through DC history, from the New 52 to Crisis to the formation of the Justice Society to Anthro. What continuity changes may have happened are not explicit, but Snyder certainly gives himself basis should the writers decide to develop them later.

That more isn’t made of the first meeting of the DC and Absolute Universe characters in this book is surprising restraint on DC’s part. A “meeting” without actually meeting is clever of Snyder and co-writer Joshua Williamson — later the Big Three can recognize the Absolutes as those doppelgängers controlled by Darkseid. In all the Absolutes comport themselves well, Absolute Batman on-brand goring Superman with Kryptonite Bat-ears and then the final moment of fellowship between the two Wonder Women. I do think DC twists themselves too much in knots with a backup story explaining exactly where in Absolute continuity this all happens (arguably Absolute purists … don’t care?), though artist Xermánico and colorist Alejandro Sánchez depict a fearsome Darkseid in it.

I also thought it showed surprising restraint that DC put Javi Fernandez on the art in this book and Xermánico on the “interludes,” instead of vice versa. I’ve liked Xermánico for a long time, drawing in DC’s house style, and that would seem the kind of thing DC would want on an event miniseries. I enjoyed Fernandez’s sketchy art on the moody mystery Batman and Robin: Memento; his work on DC K.O. seems out of place, but also perhaps a deserved star turn. If there’s some idea that DC K.O. is not a fight comic disguised as a fight comic, or is in some way the deconstruction of a fight comic, Fernandez on the art might be a clue.

Having been “King Omega” will still plague Superman for a bit, we know, but I’ll be curious to see whether anyone returns to Superman’s central conflict in DC K.O.; it’s Scott Snyder’s book but Joshua Williamson’s got Superman, and even if it’s collaborative, I wonder how far the “should Superman do more?” question might travel. “No, of course he shouldn’t” is the easiest answer, but then the easy answers aren’t ever the most fun. We’ve seen a President Superman across a few different continuities and it hasn’t turned out so bad; maybe it’s time to try one in ours, too.

[Includes original and variant covers]