Each Friday, we'll be letting a different DC.com writer share what they'll be reading over the weekend and why you might want to check it out. Here's this week's suggestion for a perfect Weekend Escape!
 

Who doesn’t love a team up? When you see the words “Brave” and “Bold” on the cover of a DC comic, it usually means one thing: that Batman is reaching out for a little help on this one with a special guest star. But what if Batman was only the beginning? That was the premise of the 2007 relaunch of The Brave and the Bold, where each issue would bring characters together in pairs you wouldn’t find anywhere else. Two of DC’s most legendary titans, Mark Waid and George Pérez, came together to launch this book with an idea so ambitious it could have only come from the people who gave us Kingdom Come and Crisis on Infinite Earths—all while setting the tone for what a cohesive DC Universe can really look like. They call this story The Lords of Luck.
 

THE PREMISE:

Our saga begins, as many dramas often do, with a murder. An unremarkable man with a gunshot wound to the chest is found floating in Earth’s orbit by Green Lantern. The strangest part? The same dead body has been found in 62 other locations across the Earth. Batman and Hal Jordan’s pursuit of the truth behind this mystery will literally open an investigation on the impossible, taking the heroes and their unexpected allies to the edges of the cosmos and beyond the bounds of time. Before too long, Supergirl and Lobo, Blue Beetle and the Legion of Super-Heroes, and even the Challengers of the Unknown all find themselves involved in a scheme to manipulate the fundamental forces of the universe for fun and profit.

LET’S TALK TALENT:

Ask any DC writer who knows everything about every character in the DC Universe, and the odds are they’re going to say Mark Waid. There’s a reason he’s the one who wrote New History of the DC Universe. Ask any DC artist who can draw every character in the DC Universe, and the odds are they’re going to say George Pérez. After all, he was the one who drew the original History of the DC Universe—not to mention Crisis on Infinite Earths, Legion of Three Worlds, JLA/Avengers and countless other feats of fortitude that would make any mere mortal artist break down in tears. Together, they’re the ideal team to take you to corners and configurations of the DC dugout that you’ve never imagined before.
 

A FEW REASONS TO READ:

• Ride the Unlimited: If you’re following Mark Waid’s Justice League Unlimited right now, you know the magic is in how it presents such a broad picture of an entire universe all at once. As such an ambitious team-up title, Waid’s Brave and the Bold almost feels like a precursor to Waid’s later title. And if you’re all caught up on JLU, this is the next best thing.
   
• Expanding Your Horizons: This series begins with two of DC’s biggest stars. And then, like so many good Brave and the Bold stories, it expertly uses that familiarity to get you interested in the unfamiliar. Can’t tell what makes the Fatal Five such deadly criminals of the 31st century? Not sure what makes the Challengers of the Unknown so important? This is where you’ll start to discover your new faves.

• When Kara Met Lobo: Hey, so maybe you’ve heard about this new Supergirl movie coming out in a couple months and how she’ll be taking the infamous space bounty hunter Lobo along with her for the ride. But did you know this won’t be the first time they’ve teamed up? You’ll find the origins of their unlikely partnership right here, on a high-profile mission from—if you can believe it—the personified concept of Destiny itself.
   
• A Symphonic Structure: This run of Brave and the Bond as a whole is always fun in the pairings it puts together, but these first six issues are something special—stringing each team-up to each other like a fractalizing daisy chain, with all points eventually meeting at the end for a grand conclusion. The story’s structure almost feels like an extrapolation of the team-splitting format of the original Justice Society stories, or even a condensation of the many-tendriled structure of Grant Morrison’s Seven Soldiers. Every piece is here for a reason.
   

WHY IT’S WORTH YOUR TIME:

We end all of these with a “why it’s worth your time” final pitch. But maybe this time, I can tell you why this book was especially worth my time. If you know anything about me as a writer and fan of DC Comics, it’s that the 2006 weekly series 52 is one of the most formative comics to my fandom. It was a weekly series that illustrated the disparate DC Universe as a whole, an inhabitable place where people lived and struggled and intersected with each other’s lives. It’s what moved me from being a fan of individual characters to being a fan of a universe.

One of those instrumental writers on 52 was Mark Waid. Once 52 was over, many of the writers involved moved onto books that continued its stories, or its spirit. But while not narratively tied to 52, it’s this volume of The Brave and the Bold which, to me, followed up the most on the premise and promise of 52, in presenting a world where all these stories were connected and all these characters mattered to each other. This comic isn’t just a story, but a roving window into a world. Trust someone still gazing through it: once you catch your first glimpse of that special connection, you’ll never want to look away.
 

The Brave and the Bold: The Lords of Luck by Mark Waid, George Përez and Bob Wiacek is available in bookstores, comic shops, libraries and digital retailers as a softcover graphic novel. It can also be read in full on DC UNIVERSE INFINITE.

Alex Jaffe is the author of our monthly "Ask the Question" column and writes about TV, movies, comics and superhero history for DC.com. Follow him on Bluesky at @AlexJaffe and find him in the DC Official Discord server as HubCityQuestion.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Alex Jaffe and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.