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World’s
Funniest Review
-by Andrew Goletz
Rating: 9 out of 10
In my opinion, most of DC’s ‘Elseworlds’ books have
fallen on the latter side of hit or miss. It’s a great idea to have a
line like Marvel’s former ‘What If?’ where creators could tell
whatever kind of stories they wanted with popular characters without fear
of it affecting continuity. ‘Superman and Batman: World’s Funniest’
gives the best reason for the existence of an Elseworlds line. It’s a
hysterical idea, executed almost flawlessly and is one of the best comics
to come out this year.
Two characters people love to hate, Bat-Mite and Mr.Mxyzptlk,
are on hand as the story begins to try and take credit for who was a
bigger pest to their respective rivals, Superman and Batman. Of course,
the argument ensues and they begin to battle. Mxyzptlk accidentally kills
Batman, which enrages Bat-Mite, who retaliates by killing Superman.
Mxyzptlk then ‘offs’ the caped crusader’s partner, Robin and
Bat-Mite responds in kind, killing most of Superman’s supporting cast.
To describe any of these death scenes is to take away from a huge part of
the book. They’re done in such a whacky, creative way that you can’t
help but smile at these antics. And you’re supposed to.
The book is over the top completely. Eventually, the two
little jerks wipe out the entire DC Universe and take their battle to the
cosmos. One of the best parts of this series is seeing these two go
through different DC Realities causing havoc. We’re get to see the
Superfriends animated series style, ‘The Dark Knight’, ‘Crisis on
the Infinite Earths’ and ‘Kingdom Come’ among others. It would have
been nice to see Dorkin’s take on ‘Zero Hour’ or ‘The Watchmen’,
but the material presented here is great, nonetheless. A lot of the
enjoyment comes from the fact that writer Evan Dorkin has assembled some
of the top creative people to lend their talents to the book. In
alphabetical order: Mike Allred, Brian Bolland, Frank Cho, Stephen
DeStefano, Dave Gibbons, Joe Giella, Jamie Hernandez, Stuart Immonen, Phil
Jimenez, Doug Mahnke, David Mazzuccheli, Frank Miller, Sheldon Moldoff,
Glen Murakami, Norm Rapmund, Alex Ross, Scott Shaw, Jay Stephens, Ty
Templeton, Bruce Timm, and Jim Woodring handle the art with Chris Chuckry
assisting David Mazzucchelli with colors and Tom Orzechowski lettering.
Anyone who’s a comic book fan needs to pick this book up or
they’re missing out on one of the most unique, creative and fun stories
to come out in quite some time.
Evan Dorkin: Writer
Pencillers and Inkers: See Above J
Prestige Format One-Shot Available from DC Comics
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