4 out of 5

You probably already knew this, but Tom Taylor – side-stepping into the comics world post his scripting work on the Injustice video games – is your new all-star.  A story-by-story title like Superman Batman – i.e. rotating creative teams – prompts tales that have to be one-and-done and thus can suffer from plotting hiccups depending on how compacted they are.  And Tom Taylor’s entry succumbs to that to a certain degree.  But those degrees are smartly shushed to less noticeable parts of the tale, presented such that you’d buy that there’s an explanation waiting if Taylor’d had the room.  Which is evidence of grand comic writing in the tradition of Waid or Morrison, dudes who understand how to write pure comic pop episodes.  Not that this little ditty – a space murder mystery where the deceased leaves a moonside-message carved for the duo – is a clear copy of either writer’s style, but the notes are there in the best of ways, such as banter regarding the oddity that Bats would know reptilian biology, or Supes giving B a jokey hard time about not asking for help.  This comfort with the characters precludes any reaching for morals or forced insight, and allows Tom to work our inherited familiarity with these guys to string up a worthwhile tale around them, and one in which their roles feel smartly considered and not just plugged in.  When a villain pops up at first issue’s end, it has the same confident vibe, and we’re doled out well-sequenced and paced jibes, battles and twists for the pages after.  As mentioned, the Big Picture style plot creates a couple of pockets of Why? questions, but Taylor properly neither lampshades or over-explains these; he offers a line of reasoning that works to keep things moving.  This wouldn’t pass for an ongoing, but for these classic-style tales?  Works just fine.

Robson Rocha’s art competently tells the story and understands body language for working with the tone, but the shifting inkers – besides offering a lesson in how much inkers can change the look of a book – somewhat radically shift between Ed McGuinness-type streamlining and Gary Frank detailing.  It’s separated out by issue or by scene, so it’s not super distracting, but it adds an element of unevenness all the same.  Thankfully, Blond’s slick color treatment – which finds a lot of richness in the mostly grays, blacks and browns of space – smooths things out, and Rob Leigh is a lettering champ, handling the constant stream of dialogue without any confusion for the reader, or disruption to the art.

So in case you didn’t realize Tom Taylor was the new champ, go grab these super fun back issues before the rest of the world catches up and makes them collectors’ items, causing you to return here to read my review, over and over again, in hopes of experiencing the joy second hand.