DC COMICS
WRITER: Mark Waid
ARTISTS: George Pérez, Bob Wiacek
COVER: George Pérez

The Book of Destiny gives us a trio of short stories with a bunch of secondary characters most people barely remember. Amazingly, it works. The Metal Men and Dial H for Hero, the Newsboy Legion and the Blackhawks and the original Hawkman and the newest Atom, all appearing in tales that stand well enough on their own but which are also linked together by a mystery villain stalking the Challengers of the Unknown.

This issue succeeds partly because of the apparent fondness the creative team has for the old characters, making their personalities, their speech patterns and their sometimes comical appearances all shine. They actually make these old stereotypes into real people the reader can get interested in, whether it is the four-eyed nerd or a tough Brooklyn kid.

And while the characters and concepts may be old, the creative team uses them in original ways, whether it is the robot Tin becoming human or Hawkman and Atom combining Nth metal with White Dwarf Star material.

The art team deserves a medal for actually getting the complicated plots of the three stories into one issue. Of course, their abilities are clearly stretched to the limits with many of the of the panels in this issue clearly jammed together. Some panels are literally thumb-nail size. This is not an easy-reading comic and those used to the more decompressed-story telling or recent years may be confused or even irritated.

It is doubtful there are too many people still waiting for the latest adventures of Robby Reed or the Newsboy Legion but the very willingness of the creative team to use these characters is a point in their favour, at least in my book. They aren't just picking the most commercial characters to showcase and giving us SPIDER-MAN-meets-WOLVERINE IX.

This issue gets four stars out of five.