I actually enjoyed that swerve a lot.

Enjoyed the reveal but I think the tone shift was too suddem.

The backup was excellent as always, but the main story uneven.

This is literally the eleventh hour and it works great, in the Gotham story, the action ramps up, but the twists and turns keep coming up and Barbara's team will have to face Nightwing. Green Arrow's story is a bit more low-stakes, yet it looks like it's the one carrying more hope.

And Kara and her team finally manage to reach the much needed sunlight, but there's a last minute cliffhanger!

And I've been loving the beats alogn the way. Kara is great, and so are Jayna, Steel, Barbara, Dinah, Damina, Ollie... And it's always a delight when they have to face the vampire antagonists, I find their smug yet grounded ("it's what it is") attitude to be very entertaining and a good break of the generally sour alternate evil versions of these characters.

At this point, the story can end in so many different compelling ways it'd be impossible for me to guess. Do they win, do they get turned, a bit of both? I'm going to miss this series when it ends next month. more

Another good one. This side-story has been steadingly getting better with each and every issue that passes. Mary Marvel continues to be, by far, the most interesting character in this story and putting her fun and innocent (yet mature whenever necessary) personality in contrast with the horror story backdrop works very, very well.

And the best part is that it does so in ways that earn its cliffhangers and are creative and not easy to predict thatnks to going for smaller, more personal stakes. Hopefully, the ending is similarly creative.

The backup is pretty good as always. Admittedly, I'm not very well versed on the characters (other than Apollo, and that's because I read him alongside Midnighter), but the story does enough to tell you who they are and why their characteristics are special, gives a couple of hitns of how the story might end and ends on a pretty hopeful note (for the Elseworld in general) all things considered. The artwork is amazing and I wanting Haining to do more for this series because she's a pro at depicting this world. more

I really like how Mary is being written in this. She's hopeful, altrustic, has that old school Golden Age trustfulness with everybody and the same time she's serious, independent, mature, knows perfectly well how terrible the situation is and the kind of terrible people she's had to work with.

And her scene with Billy felt like something out of a Stephen King story in the best ways.

This was very good again. This series is ending soon and it's been a wild ride. We finally get into Gotham. The little character moments packed with the dialogue, between Supergirl's team, Green Arrow and Hawkman and specially Barbara and Damian are just so very well done, it's a series that keeps you entertained just with those bits.

But it also knows how to pack a lot of content in a single issue. The heavyhitters are distracted and we discover how Gotham functions. Green Arrow has surprising plan to save everybody. We find out Damian isn't necessarily that "good" perse, more interested in having revenge. Kara has found the way to get to space, now we'll see what opposition she might face and Barbara decides what limits she wants for herself in this fight and reveals her all-out atatck plan. more

The main story has gotten strong. First time both the main story and the backup are pretty good.

After what I thought was a bit of a haphazardly written end of the first arc and a good but otherwise forgettaable denoument in issue 6, we go back to this series and we get a very strong start of a new arc.

The humour works well because it doesn't undercut the drama and drama works well precisely because it's contrasted with the colorful settting.

The backup was again much better than the main story, but overall still a fun read.

First of all, please DC, continue that Nightwing prequel story with the same creative team because wow! That backup was excellent, both Vieceli’s writing and Haining’s art. I loved that, despite how short it was (reading both parts) everyone was in-character, the betrayal hit hard and it was presented with a good level of intrigue. I want to see how Nightwing becomes the new King and starts his infiltration of the super-hero community while the other heroes are non the wiser, it’d be a great contrast to the first part of the story and we could see some characters that aren’t players in the main line (because they haven’t appeared or have been killed off).

But the rest was good too!

I really liked the “apocalyptic fairy tale” vibes (dark forests, a haunted castle, castle, a captured princess and a group of evil knights…) this issue went for and I hope they continue with them. The story is picking up pace and I’m at least midly intrigued on who Baron Cinder is, he was also portrayed in a more interesting way tan the other vampires in this spin-off.

If I have done complain is that there’s a scene between Deathstroke and another character where they are presented as friends that felt too out of character (as neither Deathstroke seems the friendly, protective sort nor is the situation presented in a way that would make two sowrn enemies behave like that) and admittedly took me out of the story.
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This issue is firing on all cilinders and it's just great.

The characters are pitch-perfect. That "lone hunter" Green Arrow works like a charm and found his conversation with Grifter (nice cameo) pretty hilarious as does Damian finding the Birds of Prey at the end of this issue's cliffhanger.

The pacing is great and each tale compliments the other, the dialogue works very well and I like they are keeping the intrigue and the emotional confrontations: the heroes have already lost and this series is *very* good at making you care whether they'll be able to gain something or simply succumb and join the horde.

But what I loved the most was the Supergirl section. I really like how Kara and Steel are written in this, with John showing his paternal protection to keep her safe no matter what (even if he looks harsh towards others), I love that Kara is still a hopeful person and even after everything that's happened she still tries to talk with her enemies, I loved that reveal of who was under Black Manta's mask, that's exactly the kidn of emotional gut-punch this series excels at. And I loved its own cliffhanger. more

Well this was a perfect low stakes "calm-before-the-storm" issue. I loved how all the characters are set, not jsut their external missions, but also their internal conflicts. I'm specially curious about Kara, who literally has the weight of the world on her shoulders, yet seems to be unconvinced and the story implies, via Ryan Choi, that there's something else in play. I also like that Barbara seems like it's going to be a bit more complicated than originally expected.

And the rest is great too. The writer-artist combo are great at creating mood. I loved the humour at the beginning with the exploding vamp, the scene with Green Arrow and Black Canary. All in all, I loved this one :D more

We go back to this macabre world and this chapter wastes no time in setting the new status quo, atmosphere, stakes (no pun intended) and objectives of our new main characters (who are immediately endearing).

I love that Green Arrow priorizes saving people, Supergirl's mission is tied to her nature and family (I smell a confrontation down the line) and Barbara's is personal (even if she won't admit it to herself). The issue is smart in concentrating on a relatively small set of characters so as not to spread itself too thin. The vampire superheroes are delightful villains and I love everytime they appear on screen. The series overall has done a very good job keeping the tension of what's going to happen to who.

This is frankly one of the better Alternative Universe stories DC has put in a long time. more

Enjoyed this one-off quite a lot. Harley Quinn is a difficult character to write but I think they nailed the balance of showing her as a person who isn't heroic by any means but who isn't completely devoid of conscience either. I like evil-vs-evil stories so I liked the setting and I liked that the story was pretty low stakes (no pun intended) with most conforntations being emotional ones specially at the end.

And I liked the twists. There was this one character whose voice I felt was a bit off at first, but it was actually foreshadowing a twist so nice.

SO YEAH, loved the writing here. I take points away because of the artwork though. It wasn't very good to be honest and given how dark and low-key most of the story is I thought it was simply too bright and cartoonish (and frankly, not that good at that either, there are some pages in the middle that look much crispier). more

This was just incredibly, amazingly, stupidly (and it has its fair share of stupid) COOOL.