52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen
© DC Comics

Mania Grade: D
Written By: Keith Giffen
Art By: Pat Olliffe
Publisher: DC Comics
Pages: 144
MSRP: 19.99

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Trade Paperback Review: 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen

While I had kept to the core series of 52 in single format, I avoided reading any of the other various little books that popped up to support it outside of the World War III series. With a book like 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen, that mentality is certainly quite justified. Written by Keith Giffen with artwork by Pat Olliffe and John Stanisci, the book is quite simply a self contained story that doesn’t really do all that much good in any department.

 Its central purpose seems to be two-fold. The first is that it takes the Four Horsemen characters from the 52 series and provides some amount of closure for what happened to them. After the events of 52 and the way they were handled there, it’s really little surprise that the Horsemen have ended up in Bialya where there is so much room to maneuver with what they do. The Apokoliptan heritage is something that continues to define them but they’re also adapting nicely to what’s available on Earth which adds a bit more danger to them. With the amount of pain and suffering that’s ongoing in Bialya as well as the natural conditions that are in such distress, the Horsemen that operate out of there have the perfect home from which to rebuild themselves into something even better.

The second purpose of the series is to take the holy trinity of the DC Universe, Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, and give them a chance to interact with some element of the entire 52 storyline. Unfortunately, their lack of involvement in 52 is what made that series so enjoyable for me. Seeing them come in to essentially provide mop up for the series with the Four Horsemen sort of devalues the characters in general as well as what had gone on during 52 itself. After all that everyone had gone through to work over the Horsemen in that series, the challenges that they present here are in classic form; they have to become bigger and stronger in order to be proper villains for the trinity to take down. And sadly, the do this in a way that makes them even more uninteresting visually.

Where this series provides the most interesting moments isn’t with the big action fights nor with the core trio of superheroes. It comes in the form of the smaller characters that support the series. While she was relatively underused in 52, Dr. Cale has managed to become quite interesting in this series as she’s set herself up as a ruler in an autonomous area and is working to solve the Horsemen issue herself to make amends. Of sorts. Cale isn’t the kind of woman to do something without some benefit to herself, but there are deeper issues here that have her pursuing it. That gives her some interesting moral standing when she has to deal with Wonder Woman who isn’t quite sure that Cale is really on the level with this.

The other nugget that was quite enjoyable was the reworking of Snapper Carr into someone who knows quite a lot about the lead characters and is in the position of essentially being a spy on them. This brings in the entire Checkmate angle and that organization is just pushed harder into an ugly position because of what Carr knows and does in this series, one where it’s easy to see that there’ll be another confrontation someday. Sadly, the Checkmate series itself ended up spiraling down hard after its writer left so where the organization will end up likely won’t be pretty. In the general hands of the DC Universe, it’ll sway between a good and bad organization depending on the gotcha needed for a particular writer on a particular book.

By and larger, 52 Aftermath: The Four Horsemen is a big action piece that focuses on giving the lead trio a chance to investigate, pontificate and act heroic against an ugly group of villains. Keith Giffen is usually a writer I like but much of this fell flat when it came to the leads. It almost felt like he was bored of writing these characters and was just going through the motions. Even worse however was Pat Olliffe’s artwork which in this series embodied what I dislike about subsequent spinoffs from event books. Olliffe’s interpretations of the main cast comes across as rather off throughout. Batman looks decent enough, but when he’s shown as Bruce Wayne he’s far too thin and off-model. Superman looks bad in general, seeming more like Mr. Incredible from the Incredibles. Wonder Woman makes out alright, but many of her panels have her without much detail to give her any sort of presence.

When you have lackluster writing and mediocre at best artwork combined with a story that doesn’t have much impact in the end, it’s easy to come away from this with an empty feeling. Nothing about this book made any real difference in the overall 52 storyline and it was simply a way to tie the big three into it since they were gone for the year. About the only thing enjoyable with this book was Ethan Van Sciver’s cover artwork, which was unfortunately blotted out in places by the chapter logos placed on it, and even then it was welcome simply because it told me I was closer to the end of the book. This is really one for the completist fans. If you enjoyed 52 in general, it’s an easy book to avoid in any form, especially at a $20 list price.