Review: Worlds’ Finest Vol. 2- Hunt and Be Hunted

Quick Summary

Pros: The action here is fun and adds to the overall storytelling. The mystery here enhances the narrative of the series. Huntress gets some great character development.

Cons: Power Girl’s character development is a bit lackluster. The artwork is mixed in a few places.

Overall: After an average introduction, the Worlds’ Finest series begins to truly come into its own with this volume. It effectively enhances the compelling elements from the first volume while managing to minimize the negatives. There are still a few negatives here and there but they are defiantly outnumbered by the collection’s positives. Those who enjoyed the first collection or who are looking for a unique character team-up will likely enjoy this book.

Story

Worlds’ Finest Vol. 2: Hunt and Be Hunted, by Paul Levitz, sees the Worlds’ Finest series start to capitalize on its own potential. This volume improves upon the action, character development, and general storytelling from its predecessor. All of this makes for an exciting and fun comic all the way through. The only significant problem is that Power Girl’s character is depicted poorly in places. Overall though, this is still a very worthwhile volume and an interesting development for this series as a whole.

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Right from the start, Hunt and Be Hunted improves on its predecessor by enhancing the action. Instead of a singular, drawn-out fight sequence, this volume begins detailing a series of shorter and more compelling encounters. This includes Power Girl demolishing a heavily armed group of soldiers and Huntress teaming up with her “brother” to fight some genetically mutated wolves. Later on, this collection ups the stakes even further by having the duo go head to head with one of Darkseid’s minions. These battles are each compelling in their own way and add plenty of excitement to the collection.

It also helps that these battles aren’t simply action for the sake of action, they also each add to the larger narrative behind this series. As Huntress and Power Girl fight their way through waves of villains, a pattern starts to appear. Something from Apokolips has clearly been working against them, something that shares a deeper tie to the heroes’ past. Hints at this villain build until Desaad is finally revealed in a wonderfully dramatic fashion.

Hunt and Be Hunted also improves on character development, especially when it comes to Huntress. In this collection, Huntress makes her first friend on this version of Earth, Damian Wayne. Their strange connection to one another is unique and makes their friendship even more interesting. Damien’s status as one of Helena’s only friends also gives additional significance to his death, which appears to truly impact Helena. Alongside this, readers also get another peek into Helena’s troubled upbringing and into why she does what she does.

The only problem with this character development is that it is primarily devoted to Huntress and leaves Power Girl out to dry. Karen ends up spending most of her time either battling villains or participating in a number of heiress stereotypes. This makes her character seem like a complete airhead whose only positive trait is her physical strength. There is a brief moment where Karen explains how her past influenced her current behavior but this moment flies by so quickly that is does not have quite as profound of an impact as it could have. Hopefully, upcoming volumes will manage to rectify this portrayal.

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Art

Hunt and Be Hunted starts out with an artistic quality level similar to what was seen in the first volume (Review). George Pérez and Kevin Maguire craft a stylized book where action stands out well against a crisp, clean background. There are a few moments where the art is structured in strange ways, such as when Power Girl kicks Robin, but these moments are pretty rare.

Unfortunately, the quality of the artwork descends as the volume progresses. Other artists take over and the crisp, clean artwork from earlier is lost. Instead, heavily inked characters end up blending in with the heavily inked backgrounds. These pages are then randomly juxtaposed against earlier styles, causing a number of jarring artistic style changes. All of this hurts the overall appeal of the visuals in this collection.

Continuity

Worlds’ Finest Vol. 2: Hunt and Be Hunted continues the story from Worlds’ Finest Vol. 1: The Lost Daughters of Earth 2 (Review).

The story here continues in Worlds’ Finest Vol. 3: Control Issues (Review).

This volume also makes references to other comic books, detailed below:

• Michael Holt’s mysterious disappearance is brought up a number of times. This disappearance is explained in Mr. Terrific Vol. 1: Mind Games (Review).
• An event in Damian Wayne’s life is mentioned here. This event is detailed in Batman Incorporated Vol. 2: Gotham’s Most Wanted.