If the previous chapter of D.C K.O. already had the tournament structure teetering like a wobbly Jenga tower, issue #5 is the gleeful kick that finally knocks it over and cackles at the pieces scatter. The so-called "competition" (whatever little of it was one) has unravelled faster than my New Year’s resolutions, and what’s left is another, oh-so-predictable Darkseid vs Superman finale where winning takes a back seat to just not getting obliterated. In theory, this is the logical endpoint of the story Scott Snyder and Joshua Williamson have been building. After all, the whole idea of D.C K.O. - heroes and villains brawling for ultimate power - was always destined to spiral out of control. But D.C. K.O. #5 doesn’t just go off the rails; it sets the tracks on fire for good measure, which is probably part and parcel by now for any Scott Snyder-led event.
The result is a blockbuster spectacle that rockets toward its endgame and, in the process, parades its biggest flaws front and centre: there are more plot threads that kind of get thrown out with the kitchen sink or set up ANOTHER cosmos crushing event at some future point, characters and references zip in and out like they’re late for lunch, and the plot escalates so aggressively you might need a seatbelt - and maybe even a flowchart. The result? A finale that’s huge, loud, and about as stable as a three-legged chair at a trampoline park. Sure, it’s thrilling when it works, and the visuals are eye-popping throughout, but good luck keeping track of what’s actually happening. Narrative discipline? Let’s just say it’s taking a much-needed vacation along with any semblance of logic. But hey? Superman punches Darkseid into the next life, so that’s fun, I guess.
An End is a Beginning of an Ending That’s Beginning…
How to summarize the plot of D.C. K.O. #5. Let’s start where things ended in the previous issue. Lex Luthor became King Omega. Now he’s taking on a resurgent Darkseid in the ruins of Earth. Meanwhile, there’s some shenanigans with the board game trinity club, who are somehow watching this while also being out of the realms of the tournament (since they’ve all been decimated already). During their rush to confront Darkseid again, Time Trapper finally shows up to Superman with his final gambit: to combat Omega energy, they need something to counter it. And Time Trapper – once known as Doomsday – who lived to kill is also the embodiment of life because he…couldn’t be killed or something like that. So now in his ultimate form and as the being whose sole purpose for existing was to kill Darkseid, Time Trapper shoots Superman up with the Anti-Anti-Life: ALPHA ENERGY OOOOOOOOOOOOHH! Oh and Doomsday dies to make this happen. Oh no, so sad. Can’t wait to see him next Wednesday. Anyway…
What does Alpha Energy do? Well, it turns Superman into the new King Omega…or should I say King Alpha, who knocks Lex Luthor into oblivion before facing off against Darkseid in the final confrontation. Superman uses this new power to tap into the very essence of creation itself (if I had a nickel for every time that happened, I’d probably be able to afford a new house by now) before he proceeds to beat and have the ever loving snot beaten out of and by Darkseid. In a last ditch attempt, Superman does the comic-bookiest of things by absorbing the literal Big-Bang (because something something fighting through time and space and here we are the start of creation something something) while the Heart of Apokalips cheers him on like a fight commentator from the early 2000s. But while the Heart wants him to keep beating Darkseid, Superman ultimately does the Supermaniest thing ever: he throws away the power and essentially yeets Darkseid into the cosmic void nothingness (until they need him for the next crisis)
We get a bit of an epilogue where Superman rebuilds the earth and the galaxy to what it was (though I’m sure there totally won’t be any teensy weensy continuity breaking changes here and there just for the lols), and then proceeds to disappear because he needs to “take care of things”, something totally not similar to Wonder Woman disappearing at the end of Death Metal before quickly returning to reality again in the amount of time it takes you to clip your toenails. But if that means I get to see more of Superboy Prime headlining a Superman book for even a little while, then that’s fine by me, folks!
Anyway, as for other stuff, there’s still some metaphors about the whole board game scenario which is still as shallow now as it was at the start of the story, and there’s still some remnants of weird stuff going on as fallout from the event. But the biggest, totally unexpected surprise, never saw it coming deal is at the end: Darkseid is still very much alive, biding his time and building his latest scheme. He’s got his Absolute Universe still in play, just waiting to use that some day to do some shenanigans. He’s also turned out to have multiple King Omega tournaments going on across multiple realities, with some of the worst and best winning to become the respective King Omegas of their realities. Of course, naturally, these winners will also play a part in the future…this Dark Multiverse (where have I heard that before) of different earths coming together for the biggest crisis of them all. An Absolute Crisis, you could call it.
Dear lord, end my torment now.
A Snyder Event By Any Other Name Would Be Just as Frustrating…
To keep the board game analogy going, it’s genuinely astounding to me in D.C. K.O. #5 just how gleefully Scott Snyder tosses aside the original structure, like someone flipping a Monopoly board after landing on Boardwalk with hotels. Earlier issues at least pretended there were rules. Characters showed up for their scheduled smackdowns, the stakes were clear, and everything marched along in neat tournament brackets. Fast forward to issue #5 and those rules have vanished like snacks at a comic book convention. What’s left is genuinely the best and worst of Scott Snyder’s event-running traits on full, diabolically ecstatic display for the world to see: damn the torpedoes and all!
Honestly, by now this isn’t really a bug - it’s more of a feature. The story’s been hinting all along that the King Omega concept was going to be something supremely familiar at the start, but then turn to something utterly convoluted by the end. Of course things, would get out of hand, with crumbling alliances, randomly wild power levels spiral, and the idea of actually “winning” is about as relevant as a floppy disk. Especially when the shallow sleight of hand of maybe having Lex Luthor actually being in the driver seat to take things home in a different way would’ve been infinitely better than say Superman being the most predictable heroic final boss who wins in the most predictably Superman way of all time. It would be almost charming if it wasn’t so eye-gougingly frustrating (by that I mean I want to gouge my own eyes out, not Snyder’s because I still like his non-event work and still want him to do his best on Absolute Batman). But even if the chaos makes sense, it leaves the story stumbling along without its trusty GPS. The momentum is all wild energy, but keeping track of what’s happening? Good luck - bring breadcrumbs and then find even those missing by the time you reach the end of the book.
Spectacle has always been DC K.O.’s bread, butter, and maybe the whole bakery—and issue #5 delivers it by the truckload and just doesn’t know when to stop. The conflict keeps growing until it feels like it needs its own zip code. Superman and Darkseid aren’t just throwing punches - they’re debating cosmic philosophy with every freaking fisticuff. The result: big, bold themes everywhere you look, with every face-off turning into a metaphorical and literal heavyweight bout that’s just all spectacle. It actually works best when the comic takes a breather and lets the symbolism stretch its legs, but even that can be shallow as all hell. In these more quieter epilogue moments, Joshua Williamson tries his best to reconnect the wild action of Snyder to his more solemn metaphorical approach to the quieter moments.
Superman really does get his moment to shine in some of these, lending some much-needed gravitas to the chaos – like a responsible adults making sure the party doesn’t burn down the house. Which would be fine any other time, but right now maybe the house does need to be torched and have something different built for once. When Snyder has every single page is cranking the stakes up to eleven, things stop building and start blurring together. There’s a lot of talk about Alpha Energy and Big Bang and Absolute Crises and this and that, but not a single concept feels like it was given enough room to breathe without feeling like a toddler throwing a handful of darts at the board: it’s scattered, innacurate and someone’s clearly going to get hurt. Decisive battles? Ha! Nothing’s decisive when the supposedly greatest stakes of them all are not just handwaved away by a Superman powered by creation energy x 100000000 (keep adding zeros), but that it turns out that there’s ALREADY a new crisis by Darkseid brewing at the end of this one.
Basically, the story keeps piling on new layers, but sometimes it forgets to check if the bottom ones are still holding up (Spoiler: they’re not.) It’s not surprising for a spectacle-driven event comic, but it does mean a lot of wins and losses feel as emotionally impactful as a wet sock. Ironically, every so often the comic teases us with glimpses of juicy character drama - little flashes of inner conflict and ideological beef that could be interesting, if only the story would stop sprinting and monologuing long enough to notice. To their credit, Snyder and Williamson make the multiverse look so fragile, you half expect someone to sneeze and accidentally erase a timeline. But with just so many convenient plot bombs, from Time Trapper’s ultra Alpha Energy powered Deus Ex-Machina, to Superman knocking Darkseid into an easy win, and so much more…that you can help but feel that ultimately, Darkseid’s promise of worlds shattering, energies clashing, and everyone tiptoeing around the edge of total disaster felt about as real as the stripper telling you that she loves you. The comic nails the spectacle, don’t get me wrong there, but it’s far too skin deep to really mean much of anything at this point.
Now that the finish line’s in sight, D.C. K.O. #5 has to set the stage for far too much stuff in the near future, and sadly that’s come wildly at the expense of the here and now, I feel. I love a good punch up with godly/ungodly stakes as much as anyone – and in some ways, Snyder’s loud and proud vision has accomplished this task effectively. But here’s the catch: after cranking the spectacle dial up to “absurd,” we’re left with a finale that’s not just focused on topping every page before it, but in topping the event itself with the promises of completely new cosmically challenging events that are yet to come when the dust here hasn’t even settled yet? I’m genuinely kind of tired of Snyder doing this for almost ten years now, and seeing the same old eyes repeated over and over again till my head spins.
One Shining Beacon in the Fog
On the art front at, D.C. K.O. #5 is a visual rollercoaster, thanks to the real unsung heros of this book: artists Xermanico, Javi Fernandez and Wes Craig, as well as colorist Alejandro Sanchez. They truly give this event the mythical aura it’s trying to convey and the artwork dives headfirst into the chaos, somehow keeping things readable even when the page looks like it should be a mess. Action scenes go big and stay big, with some of the panels in the Superman vs Darkseid fight being some of the most brutal and stunning we’ve ever seen of the two tussle.
What’s most impressive is how the art juggles the spectacle without dropping the ball. Even when every panel is packed, you can still tell who’s hitting who with the force of a million galaxies and what not. It’s great punchy stuff, and even the quiet moments are given their due, even if the human faces are once again a little too watery and wonky now and again. In the end it’s all about the earth-shattering spectacle of it all (using that word a lot here) and the art absolutely delivers on that front for this swan song. There’s some wildly entertaining panel work that genuinely pushes boundaries, literally, when Superman and Darkseid are literally battling across time and space. It’s truly something to behold.
Sanchez’s color work does some major heavy lifting too - explosions of brightness for hope, moody shadows for doom, and a few shades in between for “Oh no, not again.” He gives some real weight to biggest of cosmic events, with pure hellish reds of Darkseid’s energy to the glowing might of life energy when Superman fights for the future. If there’s any downside whatsoever, it’s that every page tries to out-epic the last, which is less of a fault of the art team and more that of them trying to keep up with the script. Subtlety doesn’t stand a chance; emotional beats get trampled by the stampede of spectacle. But if you’re here for that energy, then my, oh my: what a spectacle it is!
A Crisis of Infinite Frustrations
D.C. K.O. #5 is a comic that is so ambitious, yet so full of smoke and mirrors, that you’d half expect it to run for political office. By the end of the event, whatever semblance of rules has been thrown into the void and gone full blown into cosmic chaos, both in terms of action or any semblance of plotting logic. The scale is off the charts, sure, the art brings the fireworks, undoubtedly, and the sense of impending doom is impossible to ignore, as much as we want to.
But this finale also puts a big spotlight on the event’s biggest weaknesses: the plot gets crowded, character arcs blur together, and clarity is sometimes left gasping for air under a pile of spectacle. This is Dragon Ball Super with a Grant Morrison Lite energy when it should have just been Dragon Ball Z, and it’s genuinely frustrating watching another Snyder-led event end up in the exact same mess that has genuinely haunted his events for close to a decade now. Still, there’s something weirdly compelling about watching Snyder and company try to wrangle this mess into some semblance of fun, while having fun all along the way. Even when the whole thing wobbles, at least they’re swinging for the fences. I just wish that we’d finally have that without it coming at the expense of any real shift in the status quo.
Final Verdict: DC K.O. #5 is a finale that feels less like an earth-shattering change to the status quo and more like another Scott-Snyder patented event - a lazy stay of execution with painfully rehashed tropes, frustrating set-ups for the next “apocalyptic” event, and bombastically fun fights that still somehow manage to make the unexpected into something disappointingly predictable by the end of it all.