Review by Ian Keogh

This second volume of Tales From the Dark Multiverse follows the pattern set by the first. We’re presented with variations of five pivotal moments in DC’s history followed by reprints of the original material from the 1980s onwards showing how matters played out then. The character prominently featured on the cover’s background is Tempus Fuginaut, the only person able to view alternative dimensions, so the Watcher in all but name, and a drawback of gathering what were originally five separately issued comics, is that he needs explained in each story.

Batman opens this volume as he did the last, with Phillip Kennedy Johnson and Dexter Soy looking at Thomas Elliott, here not Hush, but a senator. So who’s the bandaged Batman? It’s a viable alternative history featuring many allies, but one that plays out relatively predictably once secrets have been revealed.

Batman’s also on hand when the Speed Force returns someone to life as in Flashpoint, except under Bryan Hitch it’s in a universe where Barry Allen remains deceased and Reverse Flash survives. It’s a jumpy piece, but the thought behind what the Flash can do is solid, which keeps up the interest as Bruce Wayne attempts to set things right. Hitch the artist sometimes struggles to accommodate the word count supplied by Hitch the writer.

An attack by Amazons features in Hitch’s story, and Wonder Woman is the focus of a variation on the 1980s War of the Gods from Vita Ayala and Ariel Olivetti. At the start all seems to have ended as well as in the original story, but that’s not the case, and it takes a while to play out.

On their own all three of the first stories might have hit the spot, but following each other and each fairly well taking the theme of a familiar hero acting with bad intentions sucks the originality away.

Steve Orlando and Mike Perkins take on the biggie: Crisis on Infinite Earths. Orlando’s variation is clever. It’s the Justice League who disappear, not the far older Justice Society, and when the fire demon Surtur comes calling, they’re not up to stopping him. Stunning art and a fall and rise arc make this the collection’s highlight.

It’s followed by Scott Snyder returning to the world of Dark Nights: Metal, although the suspicion is that it’s the form of a plot then scripted by co-writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly. As was the original, it’s unrelentingly grim as Batman’s only surviving sidekick faces perverted versions of the Justice League. These are nicely designed by Karl Mostert, deliberately incompatible, whose art is good all the way through with a great eye for a dynamic image.

Some reprints date from even further in the past than those in the first volume, but the quality is higher overall, although George Pérez isn’t best served by other artists working from his layouts or the incredibly muddy reproduction of his Crisis pages.

Despite the thematic similarity over the first three stories, this is a better selection than the opening volume, with the reprints matching the quality rather than dragging it down.