Writer: Scott Snyder
Artists: Javi Fernandez / Xermanico
Colourist: Alejandro Sanchez
DC Comics, December 2025
For decades, fans of the American superhero genre have loved watching heroes fight each other. It never used to be like that. Prior to 1980, the closest we ever saw to those sorts of green-on-green battles were Justice League of America #179-180 (1980) where the male members of the Justice League are mind-controlled by a villainess called The Satin Satan to fight their female colleagues (plus Supergirl), and 1985’s Secret Wars by Marvel Comics, where the mutant do-gooders the X-Men were regarded as a third force in the fight between the publisher’s mainstay superheroes (the Avengers, the Fantastic Four and some add-ons) against a chaotic and misaligned bunch of supervillains. That all changed in 1986 with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and its crescendo of Batman (with the assistance of Green Arrow) fighting Superman. After that, superheroes fighting superheroes became de rigueur.
American superhero comics publisher DC Comics and writer Scott Snyder, then, embark upon an exercise of appeasement to readers who like their superheroes at each others’ throats, with this new title, DC KO. Once again, our heroes face an existential cosmic threat and once again, Darkseid is behind it. (We have complained about the over-use of this villain before. What about Krona? Trigon? X’Hal? Maitresse from Chris Claremont’s long-forgotten Sovereign Seven?) Here is DC Comics’ promotional copy:
The Heart of Apokolips has transformed Earth into a hellscape in preparation for the return of Darkseid! The end of the DC Universe is here! The Justice League’s only chance to defeat Darkseid is to enter a deadly tournament, an epic and over-the-top battle royale that will surprise you! The World’s Greatest Heroes fight to become the champion to enter the ring against Darkseid, but there’s a catch…the closer you get to the Heart of Apokolips, the more it corrupts you, changes you into something dangerous. Which DC character has what it takes to make it to the end? Who is willing to do what it takes to win it all, even if it means taking down their friends and family? You want to get nuts? Let’s get nuts
(… the last lines demonstrating the enduring appeal of Michael Keaton’s cinematic appearances as Batman.)
The characters speak with a time-travelling quadrumvirate calling themselves the Quantum Quorum, who say that the obvious way to avoid inevitable death and the imposition of Darkseid’s evil into every atom of the universe is to re-boot. (DC Comics frequently integrates continuity reboots into its storylines, mostly using the time-travelling powers of The Flash to do so.) Some of this is explained in a sugar-hit issue called Justice League: The Omega Act Special #1, which we have decided not to review.
But the superheroes are offered another way: one person could seduce a sentient thing called the Heart of Apocalypse (who also serves as the issue’s smug and seething narrator), which would then enable that person to control the Omega Force which fuel’s Darkseid’s power.
Confused? So were we. It is a very tenuous plotline by which to set up a contest between some of DC Comics’ superhero characters, with some villains thrown in as last-minute wildcards. Just before the finish line, the Joker somehow manages to pot Batman with a rock-propelled harpoon, piercing the character’s asymmetrical Iron Man-like armour (weirdly, Batman’s left hand is sheathed in a giant spiked mace). With that, the game’s favourite to win is taken off the board.
We are very unsure how Harley Quinn and Lobo qualify as “superheroes”. Perhaps moral ambiguity is enough.
In the back pages of this first issue is a knock-out table, with some interesting match-ups where the outcome is very uncertain: Lobo v Plastic Man, for example, is genuinely intriguing, as is Cyborg v Batwoman (we think Batwoman is not to be under-estimated). Others were obvious pairings: the Red Hood v Damien Wayne, Aquaman v King Shark. Lex Luthor v Black Lightning harkens back to a time when Black Lightning was Lex Luthor’s Secretary for Education and Lex Luthor was President of the United States.
Writer Scott Snyder cannot help but engage in his usual exposition, and in order to keep the readers guessing reveals to us that Darkseid himself is participating in the game, in disguise. We will reluctantly fall into that trap, and guess that Darkseid is secretly Firestorm, if only because of a similar power set.
Apparently, we will not learn the ultimate outcome for five months – March 2026.
Mr Fernandez’s art is pleasantly contemporary without being cliched, and his widescreen depiction of Darkseid laying waste to Gotham City is grand and purposively overwhelming. During the melee as the characters try to get to the starting gate of the tournament, Mr Fernandez cleverly forgoes traditional panels in favour of images crazily winding through the pages, conveying both the chaos and the sense of a race. It is an inspired set of pages.
This panel arrangement is in contrast to the copy of the issue we purchased, which features a four-panel by four-panel grids on the front and back covers, each containing headshots of the combatants who were successful in the run to the portal finish line. (Why there are only 32 combatants – 31 with Batman’s premature death – is not explained.)
Justice League of America comics from the 1960s to the 1980s used to feature a roll-call of the characters appearing in each issue, with a little disembodied head of each character floating above each name. Below is a 2025 version of that:
For long-standing fans, there are some surprise appearances. Connor Hawke, a character who once played the role of Green Arrow in the 1990s and who has recently returned in an ancillary role, is one of the combatants. World Forger is a character created by Mr Snyder for the 2017-2018 series Dark Nights: Metal. And, in the biggest surprise, Ambush Bug, a very goofy by character from the 1980s, breaks the fourth wall as he is tripped by the alien bounty-hunter Lobo (typical behaviour from them both) and mushed by an inexplicably present “goliath”: “Look out! Obscure character in a massive line-wide event coming through! I’m at extremely high risk of death!” True on both counts.
