Pick of the Week

Written by JUDD WINICK
Art by JOE BENNETT
Variant covers by KEVIN MAGUIRE

Size: 32 pages
Price: 2.99

Whereas last week I had a lot of trouble finding anything to really love out of my stack of comics, this week I was over-flowing with good stuff. I had so much good stuff, in fact, that is made narrowing down the Pick of the Week a tough task. This was a good problem to have.

Justice League: Generation Lost #15 is the Pick of the Week because this bi-weekly series just gets better and more fun with each issue. It’s as simple as that. When it was first announced, I was excited for Generation Lost purely out of nostalgia because the old books featuring the Justice League International are amongst my favorite comics of all time. (I was also excited because I’m a big fan of Winick, but mostly it was the nostalgia.) I had no idea just how good this series would actually be. How good is it? I’d put it in among the top five to ten books that I am currently reading in single issues right now.

For those who aren’t in the know, Justice League: Generation Lost spins right out of Blackest Night and follows the story of Booster Gold, Captain Atom, Fire, and Ice as they attempt to capture Maxwell Lord, who was among those resurrected by the White Lantern light. Maxwell Lord is, of course, their old friend and Justice League benefactor who turned evil and murdered Ted Kord, the second Blue Beetle. He, in turn, was killed by Wonder Woman during Infinite Crisis. Max had Superman under his considerable mind control and was wrecking havoc and the only way to stop him was for Wonder Woman to turn his head 180 degrees. Now newly resurrected, Max used his mind control abilities in the time honored tradition to make the world forget he ever existed. He has been wiped from every database and no one has any memory of his existence… except for Booster Gold, Captain Atom, Fire, and Ice (who have since added the new Blue Beetle and the new Rocket Red to their team). This new Justice League International has been up against an unenviable task: they are trying to take out one of the most dangerous men on the planet and everyone thinks they’re crazy.

In Justice League: Generation Lost #15 the tables have been turned on Maxwell Lord. Now that he has returned from the dead he has decided that it is finally time to focus on his primary goal: getting revenge on Wonder Woman. There is only one problem with that: no one knows who Wonder Woman is except for Max, and again: Booster Gold, Captain Atom, Fire, and Ice. Why? Because over in her solo series, Diana is off in a parallel dimension or something running around and finally wearing pants. She too has been wiped from existence in the DC Universe. The man who made everyone forget who he was has no been robbed of his revenge because his intended victim has been wiped from existence! This revelation made me laugh. Oh, it must be tough living in a comic book when reality is constantly shifting. Makes it hard to plan any sort of long term revenge strategy when you never know if you or the person you’re after is going to get wiped from everyone’s memory on Thursday.

I really liked this Wonder Woman twist. Up until the moment I read this issue I hadn’t even thought about what the ramifications of the events in Wonder Woman’s series were for the rest of the DCU. Were people just wondering where the hell Diana had been lately? Or had she been “erased… from existence”? (Brown, 1985) Apparently it was the latter. Continuity can, more often than not, be a crushing burden but when it works it’s satisfying and fun. Right now, Winick is doing a good job juggling continuity through the multiple books he’s writing (and a few other books as well).

But Winick’s not just integrating Wonder Woman’s continuity into his book. He’s also weaving a few other interesting plot lines for his main characters. In the last two issues we’ve seen Ice’s origin get a complete retcon (she’s no longer a magical ice princess, she’s just a girl with ice powers) and watched in horror (really — it was horrifying) as Maxwell Lord framed Captain Atom for the very public murder of Magog (finally!). In this issue we deal with the fallout from those events as Fire and Ice have a heart to heart about Ice’s history and Captain Atom gets increasingly angry and partially despondent about his new status as Public Enemy #1.

And if all of this great character work wasn’t enough, the Creature Commandos attack the Justice League International and the issue ends with one of those classic comic book cliffhangers that finds one of our heroes gut shot and bleeding on the floor.

Because Justice League: Generation Lost is bi-weekly there is a rotating team of artists who work on this book. The do a really good job of keeping their styles similar to the point where I can never tell who is doing which book when. This week it’s Joe Bennett on pencils and he does a fine job of having the characters convincingly act in the quiet character moments while also keeping the action moving.

There is a lot of (rightful) moaning about the state of Justice League of America and how bizarre it is that DC Comics has let its (and comics’) flagship team book languish for so long. (Has it been ten years now since Justice League of America has been consistently good?) I hope that those who are moaning are reading Justice League: Generation Lost. It might not feature the big guns of the DC Universe, but it is a great Justice League book.

Conor Kilpatrick
Parenthesis!
conor@ifanboy.com