WRITERS: Keith Champagne and John Ostrander
ARTISTS: various
COVER: Ethan Van Sciver

This collects the entire miniseries about Black Adam's war against the rest of the world, a war which pits him against dozens of DC heroes. The story is sadly, rather disjointed. One moment, Black Adam is facing Martian Manhunter, the next moment, we see Aquaman squabbling with ancient gods, then we switch to Amanda Waller harassing the Bronze Tiger. This isn't all the writers' fault. DC Comics clearly wanted to use the "52" miniseries to reveal how the DC universe was changed durin that crucial year. Yet they apparently ran out of space and were forced to jam a lot of the changes into the 'World War III' storyline-- even those alterations which did not involve Black Adam at all. So out of nowhere, we are shown how Aquaman was turned into a monsterous figure-- even though Aquaman was absent through most of the "52" storyline. Martian Manhunter spends whole issues exploring his past rather than hunting down Adam, all to explain.... somehow... why he switched his costume and look. And as for Black Adam, his rampage takes him all over the world, battling superheroes at various national monuments-- even though he knows that his real targets are in China. Why he didn't just go straight there is a mystery. Still, the portions showing Black Adam's rage are effective and gripping. Perhaps if the story had just focused on him, and the heroes' efforts to stop him, then it would have come across as a more solid, more moving tale.

The ending(s) are also rather problematic as DC Comics reprints both the version seen in the "World War III" miniseries and the version used in the "52" miniseries, so the reader actually sees two versions of the same event-- but with slight differences. This diffuses the impact of the ending since neither of the two 'versions' are complete in themselves.

The art, despite the many different hands who worked on it, is adequate although you can easily see the artists were rushing to meet a deadline. Perhaps this should be a lesson to comic book companies on the perils and pitfalls of these massive crossover "events" that try to do too much in too little space.

Two and a half stars out of five.