I didn't set out to buy DC Universe Zero.  I would have ignored it, but my store was offering it as a giveaway.  Presumably they thought it would help drum up interest in DC's upcoming slate of superhero titles.

Now, the reaction to this book has been rather amusing.  The hardcore DC fans seem to be generally pleased with it, not to mention vociferously defensive about it.  And hey, if it meant something to them, that's great.  But given some of the arguments that have been put in the book's defence, it's perhaps worth spelling out what DC actually advertised it as containing.

The solicitation promises "a journey through the past and present of the DCU", "the emergence of the greatest evil in the universe" and "the stunning return of a force for good."  Meanwhile, in his DC Nation column, Dan Didio says that the book has "all the ingredients for a great comics event", which he specifically cites as including "a big story."  He describes the book as a bridge from Countdown to various upcoming projects, which "sets the stage" for those books.  He promises that "mysteries unfold and secrets are revealed."

And he says - I quote - that "best of all, whether you're a longtime reader or a casual fan, Zero is a book for everyone to enjoy.  We have built DC Universe Zero to be your primer for the greatest comic universe of all."

A book for everyone to enjoy!  Well, huzzah.  Surely this is the comic for me, built to introduce me to the stories that DC is most proud of.  Thank heavens that DC's notoriously convoluted, crossover-riddled continuity is finally to be explained to me.  And it's written by Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns, so it should be a decent story into the bargain, right?  A story.  Like they promised.

Or perhaps not.

Where to begin?  It isn't a story.  It's a series of three-page trailers for what seem to be largely unrelated stories, all tenuously linked by a common narrator.  The pay-off at the end, as you've surely heard, is that the narrator is hinted to be Barry Allen, regaining a sense of self-awareness after some time being merged with the universe. 

Quite how a casual reader is supposed to work this out, or what significance they're supposed to draw from it, I have no clue.  But that's a minor point.  Fundamentally, this isn't a story.  It's a trailer reel artificially bolted together with a framing sequence that adds nothing to the individual elements - or at least, nothing meaningful or discernible to me.  They advertised this as a story.  They failed to deliver one.  Bad start. 

But let's leave that aside and approach the book for what it is - a string of adverts.  Does it even work on that level?  Well, no, it does not.  Let's break it down.

The book opens with a condensed summary of earlier Crisis stories.  So far, so good.  Then, we get three pages of Superman and the Legion of Super-Heroes fighting bad guys in the future.  I have no clue what this is supposed to be about, why Superman is in the future, or what possible meaning I'm supposed to take from it beyond "some heroes team up and fight a villain I've never heard of."  It conveys nothing, absolutely nothing whatsoever, other than that Superman and the Legion will be in a generic team-up this summer.

Then, we get three pages of Batman and the Joker, plugging Batman: RIP.  I presume they're talking about stuff that happened in Grant Morrison's Batman series, which I dropped a while ago.  This one, to be fair, is at least comprehensible.  Batman thinks Joker is trying to warn him about something nasty; he tries to question the villain about it.  It's inoffensive, but doesn't really do much to sell the story.  Really, what does this tell us beyond "Batman will be fighting a villain this summer"? It's also a particularly strained inclusion within the framing sequence, and so it suffers badly from the format, which implies connections that it doesn't appear to have.

Next up is a plug for Wonder Woman: Whom the Gods Forsake.  In the course of three pages, this manages to feature six villains, without giving a meaningful introduction to any of them.  Shame they wasted a third of their space on a splash page, really.  In fairness, at least this one conveys the basic premise of the story: some bad guys want to wipe out the Amazons, and meanwhile the Greek gods (presumably) have decided that the Amazons have failed and so the boys should take over.  Now, that's not a story I have any particular interest in reading - I've always thought Wonder Woman is a godawful character - but as I say, at least these pages got their point across.

But then we have the book's undoubted low point: a Green Lantern plug which is literally incomprehensible.  Two out of three pages are given over to a bemusing montage sequence that casual readers have no hope whatsoever of understanding.  The best I can get from this is that it has something to do with the rainbow-coloured lantern corps that I vaguely recall reading about on a message board somewhere.  It is difficult to imagine how a "primer" for "casual fans" could fail in its remit so spectacularly.  Absolutely dire.

Following that, we have three pages of the Spectre, which goes the other way: it explains, broadly, what the Spectre is about.  It says nothing about the story it's trying to promote.

And finally, we have Final Crisis - a scene of a villain encouraging other villains to sign up to a new religion, and an incomprehensible page of a burning man falling through horizontal panels.  The dialogue seems to suggest that if I'd read a recent storyline about a war in heaven, I might know what was going on here.  Unfortunately, actually explaining any of this seemingly vital information appears to be beyond the wit of anyone involved.

This is a garbled mess.  It fails completely, both as a story, and as a primer for new readers.  Hardcore DC fans appear to have derived some enjoyment from it as a trailer reel.  Good for them.  I was left more determined than ever to leave DC's line well alone.  If this is what DC consider to be a primer for casual readers - and that's what they claim it is - then they have lost the plot to an unfathomable degree. 

I had always thought that, at the very worst, a teaser issue would simply leave me cold.  With DC Universe Zero, we have something completely new.  I got this thing for free, remember.  When I'd finished reading it, I was sorely tempted to bill DC for my time.  The best thing I can say for it is that (a) some of the art is quite attractive, and (b) it's saved me some money, by killing my last flickers of interest in Final Crisis stone dead.

Promoting it as a proper story may have been a large part of DC's mistake - the book is especially confusing if you try to interpret it as a story, and many of the clouds lift when you figure out that it isn't one.  But this is the definition of inaccessibility.  I have been reading comics for a good twenty years.  I have slogged through some of the most ill-thought out crossovers in history.  And never, never have I been as baffled, confused and outright annoyed by a comic as I was by DC Universe Zero.  I was left reeling, wondering how perfectly decent creators could have produced something so utterly misjudged.

And I'm a devoted comics fan, for god's sake.  If I can't make sense of it, what the hell is a genuine "casual reader" supposed to do with it?  At least X-Men: Legacy made sure to spell out the point - newcomers might have been confused by the barrage of detail, but they would have got there in the end.  With DC Universe Zero, they have no hope.

I really went into this book wanting to like it, and by the time I'd finished I wanted to kick something.  That is not the desired response.  This company really needs to get its act together.

Rating: D+

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