Some thoughts about Superman/Top Cat Special #1

Who will help Superman to defeat an alien threat?

A mysterious creature has arrived to Earth to avenge their people and now Clark will be forced to join forces with Top Cat to try to stop it.

The Hanna Barbera crossovers return and I have to say that, while the previous crossovers where ridiculous, at least there was certain logic between their team-ups since the protagonists shared a similar theme.

That's not the case here sadly. Dan Didio offers a story featuring the encounter between Top Cat and Superman and honest to God, I don't understand the point of putting Top Cat here. I'm not talking about Top Cat being too silly since that's the point of these crossovers after all, I'm talking about how his personality and concept don't have anything to do with this premise and Superman.

The story is about how alien vegetable is trying to avenge its kale people, that's it, how is that connected to Top Cat? How does that make him a necessary character to include here? Most importantly, how can he relate to Superman? Basically any other Hanna Barbera character could have been included here in his place and nothing would have changed.

That being said, Didio manages to do fun stuff with his inclusion mostly because he has a cartoony sense of comedy that is nice suit for this kind of books. The dialogue is funny, there are a few entertaining references to classic Superman mythos (even Top Cat being called "Streaky") and the story comes to a satisfying enough resolution.

Shane Davis handles the art and is pretty decent due to the solid expressions, although the storytelling could be better.

There's a second segment written by J.M. DeMatteis about Secret Squirrel and is actually a much more appropriate story for the character due that it touches classic ideas from the cartoon and mixes them with more realistic scenarios and adversaries. Tom Mandrake's artwork is also much better than the one we see in the main section thanks to the good storytelling and beautiful style.

Not bad but not the best, at least the second feature was worth checking out.