BATMAN/SPAWN #1: Reign in Blood (Spoiler-Free Review)

In line with Freddy vs. Jason, Batman/Spawn serves up a heaping amount of fan service while keeping in line with their perspective universes. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen the caped cousins appear side-by-side, but this time around, we get a bit more bloody, and we dive into their minds and missions, giving us a stellar look at their similarities.

Now, as this review is spoiler-free we won’t get into too much detail about the overall story, however, for those familiar with these two universes and how they operate you can throw some theories together and come close to hitting a bulls-eye. Now that’s not to say this story wasn’t entertaining, quite the contrary, it’s everything we needed this to be! With that being said, did the powers that be take the safe route with the creative team? YES! And that’s okay, because again, this is what it needed to be. It needed Uncle Todd and his cousins Greg, Dave, and Tom to make this ship leave port and destroy all in its wake. 

With the amount of low-hanging fruit in this book and not having a dull panel in sight, this is the ultimate time warp. In the age of reboots and retelling, messages and meanings tend to get lost in the shuffle and accidentally cast aside. This isn’t the case! Both Batman and Spawn’s reasons for being in Gotham are handled well with solid storytelling and phenomenal visuals. Batman/Spawn may be a nostalgia trip for us ’90s kids, but it also stands out as a testament to these two icons’ very different approaches to heroism – and why those approaches make them iconic in very different ways.