Broken Frontier

When Batman and Superman discover Predators and Aliens living on Earth they are placed between a surprising rock and a hard place.

Batman. Superman. Aliens. Predator. DC. Dark Horse. This should be one of those ultimate, steel cage, grudge match, no holds barred, comic book fights, right? Both Superman and Batman have faced off individually against Aliens or Predator but this marks the first time for an all-out melee. So....where’s the melee?

A team of vulcanologists goes missing in the Andes mountains and Clark Kent gets assigned to cover the story but not before Superman has a strange encounter with something below the streets of Metropolis. Likewise, in Gotham City, Batman is investigating a mafia takeover of a union when he runs into an alien presence he has met before. There are Predators on Earth. The two heroes meet in the Andes to discover a lost, completely self-contained culture, living under the mountains. These creatures are facing a certain extinction, though, and Superman and Batman face a moral dilemma – do they find a way to help the Aliens and Predators live or do they let them die? The clock is ticking and the enemies are mounting.

These sorts of inter-company crossover stories are usually tricky. Some work well, some do not work at all, and some come through being somewhere in the middle. This is an example of one that falls somewhere in the middle. Mark Schultz does a good job with the Predators, showing them as a kind of noble, anti-hero, alien culture. When it comes to Batman and Superman, however, things feel a little bit off. The dialogue is stiff (particularly with Superman, who monologues everything including that which is extremely obvious) and the action lacks spark and chemistry. Although Schultz does make the reader feel for the plight of the Predators here, at no point in time does there feel like there is a palpable threat – none of the characters ever feel like they are in real danger nor does this feel like a major threat to the Earth. Schultz just does not sell the stakes in this game to the point where they feel high enough to care. Perhaps worst of all, my favorite group of monsters, the Aliens, feels shoehorned into the story. They contribute very little and, in fact, only appear in two short scenes.

The slick, amazing artwork by Ariel Olivetti, however, does help push this comic up. Olivetti gives the figures a rounded, 3-D look and even bolsters that by playing with panel borders in a number of places to make the reader think that the characters are actually coming out of the panel and off the page. The art has the look and feel of a painting and is a feast for the eyes all around.

This is a two-issue prestige format series (hence the higher price tag) but hopefully the second issue will turn up the heat. In a story featuring this many high-profile heroes, anti-heroes, and monsters, the stakes should feel sky high and the intensity of the threat should smother the reader. These are the type of things that make the Predator and Aliens movies such a thrill to watch and these are the things that this title is still looking for.