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Hopefully I'm not stepping on The Last Angry Geek's toes here, but I felt like doing a comic book review. DC VS Marvel was a series that pitted the most popular super heroes (They use the term loosely) against each other in an attempt to create more interest in comic books. There have been a number of crossovers, but this was the first huge one that they put all of their marketing abilities into.

In the beginning, there were two sexless "brothers" (The Marvel universe and the DC universe) that were so incredibly vain they thought if something like them exists, they have to destroy it. At the same time, they were so incredibly stupid that each didn't always realize he had a twin brother. Whenever they became aware of this, they got into a fight that relaunched creation. At some point they notice each other again, which caused a tilt in the cosmic balance, and then they decide to start a contest to determine who has the right to exist. They do so by pitting their world's greatest heroes, which somehow includes Catwoman, against each other in a cosmic showdown. Only some guy nobody has heard of or cares about can do... something. And it all happens in a bum's box in an alley.

...or some ridiculous shit like that.

I'll start with the good points. It has decent artwork that makes sense for both worlds. Each individual character has a number of artists and writers for their own series and certain styles work better for certain characters. While the pencillers and inkers weren't exceptionally known to me, they did a good job. It's good enough to keep you thumbing through certain fights years later. The fight between Captain America and Bane only lasted a few panels, but it was a brilliant idea having those two interact.

And that's all the good points.

What's wrong with it? Everything else. The matches were uneven. Even considering that, you often find heroes defeating heroes they stand no chance against simply because every outcome came to a fan vote. So Wolverine; a mutant who can heal freakishly fast, has an adamantium skeleton (in other words, nigh unbreakable), and is an expert at hand-to-hand combat; beats an immortal badass who can trade punches with Superman. Superman. You know, the guy that can juggle planets? Yeah, someone on his level lost a bar fight to someone who would have trouble lifting a car. Outcomes like this come from kids who want to participate, but don't know anything about the characters. They see the list and think, "Yeah, I like Wolverine. He's the dude with the claws, right? I don't even know who this Lobo is, so he would probably lose in a fight against Wolverine." I'm not saying I don't think Wolverine is badass, but what good would claws do against someone who could drop The Empire State Building on you?

Another problem is they aren't all heroes. I like DC a lot, but it really says something about them when one of their top heroes is Catwoman. They could have had a ton of decent, evenly matched fights only involving heroes. Off the top of my head, Steal VS Iron Man. See? It's not that hard. They didn't really have to resort to villains that the heroes occasionally want to screw.

The writing is terrible. Each side spent each fight trying to get the reader caught up with what the hero can do. This results in badass lines from heroes in the middle of throwing or taking a punch that include:

"I pack more of a wallop than you expected, right? Comparative strength of a spider will do that!"

"You're going to need more than bad weather to best an Amazon champion with the strength of the Greek gods!"

"Anybody mention to you that I'm a mutant? Got this healing factor that lets me take a lot of punishment. Almost as much as I can dish out!"

"I don't even know what I'm doing here. Nobody ever accused me of being a hero, so why was I picked as a champion?"

I'll let those of you who are comic book readers guess who said what. And I'm going to throw one more quote in here. If you don't want to read a big spoiler, then stop reading now. This is how the showdown ends:

Narrator: And a billion, billion years hence, the brothers... for the first time in recorded and unrecorded history... SPEAK. And they say the same thing. "You've done well."

That's it. Then they all go back, Robin punches a computer because he missed his opportunity to do Jubilee, and the end. There's this part where they all fly into each other and turn into mixtures of heroes and villains from both sides, but that really has little to do with anything. It was just an attempt to sell more comics and milk this for all it's worth.

So yeah. It's not the greatest of series. If you have a friend that has it, just borrow it, skim through it, look at all the cool pictures, then give it back. The only reason you should search and actually buy this is if you want to pay 15 bucks to see Batman beat up Captain America. Otherwise, save your money.

3 out of 5 stars for the artwork.