3 out of 5

I didn’t know that Batman/Deadpool was happening until Grant Morrisson was on the Comic Book Couples Counseling podcast to talk about it, and I have no idea if I’d “get” it without the background that was provided there. I mean, I don’t get it, in the way that I never get Grant Morrisson comics – existing in some space where I’m not sure if they’re entirely referential, or referring to previously non-existing worlds Grant has conjured for that sequence, or Burroughs-ed up to add complexity to otherwise linearity, or maybe they’re just badly written but effect quick-cut snark in a very convincing way… …But at least this time I know some of the references are real, and that, like a lot of Grant’s DC work, are attempts at reconciling confuzzled comic histories, this time with the extra gag of a character – Deadpool – who also gets to be in on the confuzzling. Or actually, Grant makes Batman in on it too, thanks to the MacGuffin the writer rescues from back issues.

Now with some Grant awareness, I think I’d still get it, even without prior-knowledge of this decades-back Suicide Squad nod, as the characters do kind of spell things out for us – using the framing of cosmic gods bonking as the reason for a DC / Marvel crossover, Bats and Deadpool are stuck in a dreamscape, trying to secure the MacGuffin from crossover-enabled peril – but the book is still a mess in those classic Grant ways, except without the guardrails of an ongoing narrative to fill out. And Deadpool. Making for some very self-aware gags (including ones that try to point out some cringe of a now older Grant aiming for hepness), and also quite a bit of stuff I just don’t know the exact point of, and also hyper-condensed visual storytelling that requires artist Dan Mora to drop tiny details into frame which become relevant, and Mora is a great designer but I get stuck on his panel-to-panel storytelling sometimes, and this nonsense-amped version of Grant is especially hard to tame.

In short: I think this is what I would want from this kind of crossover, and Grant was a good choice to make it happen. It rides a line between brilliantly wacky and dumbly confused. It’s not necessarily memorable – it’s not laugh out loud, or revelatory in any regard – but I have not read anything else like it.

After, we get four shorter DC/Marvel combos from other creative teams, struggling to tell full tales in their limited page space, and sequenced to somewhat diminishing returns.

James Tynion IV, Joshua Williamson, and Scott Snyder team up for Constantine and Doctor Strange, and this is mainly interesting thanks to Hayden Sherman’s art and Mike Spicer’s delightful colors, enlivening a battle of occult-empowered wills with great layouts and expressive visuals. It’s the most “fun” of the shorts, but only because of John’s and Stephen’s banter (and the art), and the rest of the tale is just a prop for that.

Tom Taylor writes the most well-rounded of the entries with Bruno Redondo on art duties, having Nightwing and Laura Kinney track down Laura’s sister. It’s normal stuff. It reads like a wholly standard short story; two heroes pair up and fight Killer Croc. The “twist” is that Taylor gives us the cooldown after, with everyone getting pizza and chatting, and it’s a charming interaction.

Mariko Tamaki and Amanda Conner aim for goofy with pairing up Harley Quinn and Hulk. Conner’s art gets the energy, but Tamaki writes in search of a point, perhaps tasked with using these two characters and going with a random notion of a killer hotdog attack and seeing what would / could happen. That description is about as amusing as it gets. I don’t really hold Mariko responsible for that, but this and the next story feel like they’re getting more in to YA territory; it reads like an Archie gag strip. If the whole book was like that, maybe this wouldn’t have fallen as flat.

Lastly, G. Willow Wilson and Denys Cowan pair Static and Ms. Marvel for… I mean, no real reason. They have minimal pages to make them say hi to one another, mid-battle. That’s what happens. Of interest mainly for seeing Klaus Janson’s inks giving Cowan’s art a kind of rough, Romita edge.