Brian Truitt

USA TODAY

%22Forever Evil%22 No. 6 comes out on March 5

Dick Grayson comes to the fore

Batman teams with Lex Luthor

It stands to reason that it'd take a pretty phenomenal situation for Batman and Lex Luthor to enter a relationship that didn't involve one punching the other repeatedly.

That strange team-up is what writer Geoff Johns has presented in Forever Evil, however, and the seven-issue DC Comics event series has been full of odd alliances formed to take on the nefarious and powerful Crime Syndicate from Earth 3.

"What kind of world do you create that forces Lex Luthor and Batman to work together, but also Catwoman and Sinestro and Captain Cold and Black Manta? That's the fun for me in all this, the character stuff," says Johns, the Justice League writer paired with David Finch, an artist who's "just made for villainy."

Out Wednesday, Forever Evil No. 6 "really is the pedal to the metal as far as the series goes," Johns adds. As the Dark Knight and Superman's greatest arch enemy lead the fight against the Syndicate, "they're going to uncover a lot of new facts: what they're doing there and who they are.

"As we saw the last issue, the battles go very differently when it's villain vs. villain."

Johns and Finch have made heroes out of major-league bad guys such as Black Adam, Bizarro, Sinestro and some of the most powerful, vicious and brutal characters in the DC Universe by taking the real heroes off the board and giving them intriguing motivations and enemies even worse than they are.

The alternate-universe Justice League analogues of the Syndicate — Ultraman, Superwoman, Owlman and their antagonistic ilk — have come to rule this Earth and imprisoned the real League within Firestorm, telling the world they're dead. The Syndicate's also outed Nightwing as Dick Grayson as well as captured and tortured him — though to what extent readers will find out in the new issue.

With the Justice League no longer a threat, the prominent character is Grayson, Bruce Wayne's former ward and sidekick Robin who's been a hero since he was a kid.

"Everyone turns to Dick Grayson and he takes that leadership position," Johns says. "So the idea was the Syndicate was going to target him, and specifically Owlman is because Owlman has an emotional connection to Dick Grayson, whether he's from his world or this one.

"We talked a lot about it — what's going to send Nightwing on a different journey and impact him in a way that we haven't seen before."

Batman escaped the Syndicate's trap and to save his old partner and the world, he becomes an uneasy ally of Luthor and other villains to form a Dirty Dozen-esque squad that goes on the offensive against the Syndicate in the new issue.

Batman and Luthor are two of DC's oldest characters, yet even though they're two businessmen and guys who have a lot in common, fans haven't seen them interact much.

"Anytime I'm with Batman and Lex together, I could live there for a long, long time," Johns says. "Instantly there's tension and mistrust and envy and admiration – all these different emotions you would never expect to have between these guys, and they bring out a lot of different things within each character.

"Luthor doesn't know as much about Batman clearly as Batman knows about Lex Luthor, but together they're a very formidable team whether they want to admit that or not."

Johns, who's soon taking over the Superman series, is tackling Luthor for the first time in a big way in Forever Evil, and he's found himself connecting with the baddie in a deeper way.

"I didn't really know Power Girl that well. It wasn't until I actually wrote her where I discovered she was a fantastic character," Johns says. "Luthor I had always liked, but I didn't realize how deep he goes and the depths to where we're taking him.

"The things he's going to go through, it's definitely taking me places I didn't know Luthor could go."

Eventually in the post-Forever Evil landscape, Luthor is going to be — oddly enough — at the heart of Johns' Justice League series, but there's still some stuff that he has to endure to get to that point in issues 6 and 7 of Forever Evil, which offers more revelations that Johns teases "are going to turn the DC Universe on its head."

He feels Forever Evil No. 6 especially "is like a nuke going off for us," and it's his favorite issue so far. "Everything hits the fan and it ratchets it up to Def Con 55," Johns says.

"The conclusion is going to become with a lot of ramifications, twists and turns, and a mystery solved and other mysteries solved. Once you have the players on stage and you send them at each other, they've all got their own wants and needs, and now the fun part is paying it all off."

There quite a few secrets being harbored as well by the Syndicate, which is starting to show some cracks in its dominance. "There's something that happens in issue 6 that again will challenge the Syndicate in a way they weren't expecting," says Johns, adding that while many of the group has been revealed, Superwoman (aka Lois Lane of Earth 3) is still a mystery.

"There's a reason for that. There's more to her story that I don't want to reveal quite yet."

The Syndicate is a little freaked out when it appears a powerful force has followed them from Earth 3, though fans are probably more interested in finding out the identity of the captured man under the hood that the Syndicate themselves brought to our world.

He will be introduced, though the reveal isn't what people might think, Johns says. "There's been a lot of guesses — some are kinda right, a lot of them are wrong. But we have a couple of tricks up our sleeve that people haven't gotten onto."

Johns has loved working with every member of the Syndicate, and he was "super-bummed" to have to kill off the cowardly Earth 3 Green Lantern, Power Ring. (His ring is now flying around and looking for a new wearer — an extremely important plot point, Johns says. "And what the ring does to a new host and what it's programmed for, that all plays out in Justice League.")

"David's like, 'Does he have to die?' " Johns recalls about crafting Power Ring's last stand. "And I was like, 'Yeah, he has to.' He cannot go up against Sinestro and survive. It's just not gonna happen.

"This is not the Justice League taking on the Syndicate — they don't put handcuffs on people. When we killed him, it was a bad day for us."

Johns' favorite Syndicate member, though, is their version of Superman, Ultraman.

"As strong and as impervious and as brutal as he is, he's still a very weak person," the writer says. "He's paranoid and also so unsure of himself — it's never going to be enough for him. What happens to him through this series, I really like where he ends up.

"We fell in love with these characters, but we do pretty bad things to them."