Crime Syndicate #3

Crime Syndicate #3

DC Comics 2021

All Written by Andy Schmidt

Pencilled by Kieran McKeown

Inked by Dexter Vines

Coloured by Steve Oliff

All Letters by Rob Leigh

Backup Feature

Illustrated by Bryan Hitch

Coloured by Alex Sinclair

With the Crime Syndicate’s forces combined for the first time, seeds are sown to change the world forever. But before that can happen, Ultraman, Superia, Johnny Quick, Atomica, and Emerald Knight must survive a final battle with the biggest Starro of them all-and each other! Plus: Earth-3’s Alexander Luthor makes his debut!

Question of the month: On Earth-3, are Starros friends or foes?

And in the backup story, witness the origin of Superwoman in tale illustrated by superstar artist Bryan Hitch!

The narration this issue by Superwoman is probably the best I’ve seen thus far. There is a lot of information being presented this way about Donna herself as well as the Starro’s and the Overlords of OA and their Emerald Knights. It kind of gives us these answers to a lot of questions we’ve been asking ourselves about this new Earth 3 and the dynamic that is on the planet itself. I like that we see some things being kept the same and sure there are others that are drastically different but overall the theme remains the same.

I am a fan of the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented in a really strong way. The character development we see is fantastic to see. How the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction and how they act and react to the situations and circumstances they encounter do wonders in really fleshing out who they are as people. The pacing that we see is great and as it takes us through the pages revealing more and more of the story it’s easy to get fascinated by the events.

The way we see this being structured and how the layers within the story put the spotlight on various characters at any given time is the way that we really should see things happen in a team book. No one feels neglected and that’s amazing to me given the size of the cast as well as the new ones introduced. The way that everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is extremely well achieved.

The interiors here are partly why I tend to gravitate towards DC Comics. Always some of the more superior work in comics and the way the pencils and inks work together is pretty amazing to me as it looks line one person did it all. The fact that the attention to detail is so crisp, clean and tight isn’t a coincidence its something that I’ve come to expect to see. The way that backgrounds are being utilised and how they enhance the moments as well as bring us depth perception, a sense of scale and that overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a remarkable eye for storytelling. The colour work is divine. How we see the various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work shows a brilliant eye for how to utilise colour.

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With the backup feature and the brief mention that Diana was seen as weak, meaning she’d have been heroine instead of villainess, which actually explains a lot. Well aside from the fact that we don’t know if Donna was born the same way as Diana or from Diana, regardless, it is a pretty sweet origin of sorts. The Crime Syndicate would actually make a great monthly series as we see how many other metahumans seem to be emerging on this world. I haven’t been this excited about a limited series in a long time and each issue just gets better than the one before and that’s how it should be.