Aw, a Thanksgiving present (or a Fourth Thursday in November present if you’re a furriner) just for us? You shouldn’t have, Mr. Winnick!

The gift we’ve been given, of course, is that Winnick is putting off talking about Ice for another issue. I’m dreading eventually having to get mired back in that mess, but in the meantime, I’m happy to have more Cap’n Atom time travel stuff. Actually, can we just turn this into an Atom time travel book for the remaining issues?

It’s possible that my DC-fu just isn’t strong enough, but it appears that this is not a previously-existing alternate future. Right? Because I am all for that. I complained in a comment thread recently that tying JLGL to Kingdom Come felt super-gimmicky, as if DC was going “Hey, kids! Remember that thing you like? Well, this new thing has a bunch of references to that thing, so you should like this, too!”

Well, now that Magog’s gone (and though I’m not a fan of the character, I’m not as ecstatic about his passing as everyone else seems to be), making KC the Official Bad Future of this book won’t work any more…not that it made a ton of sense before. Instead, we get this new Bad Future, and while it seems pretty generic right now, I’m happy that Winnick is at least branching out in his own direction. This issue wasn’t as good as the previous one, but it continues the bizarre trend of the Atom-focused issues being among the book’s strongest, and I’d like to see more done with the Bad Future presented here–especially as it connects to the one shown in issue six.

Also, Winnick seems to have a weird fixation on having Atom meet alternate versions of Power Girl. What’s up with that? Two times in eight issues is too much to be a coincidence.

Speaking of Power Girl, this version of her is obviously strong and well-endowed, but I didn’t notice a single leering shot of her. Lopresti is definitely the least-cheesecakey artist in the rotation, which is something I really appreciate. Like I said, his Peeg looks great, and the facial expressions he gives his characters are really good. Theoretically, if this was a monthly book, he’s the artist I would want on it.