Way back in a review of issue five, I said that dealing with the Wonder Woman reboot wasn’t JLGL’s problem. It still shouldn’t have to be, but Winnick has managed to weave it into his story in a logical, interesting way. I don’t really get why the JLI would still remember Wondy, but I’m willing to roll with it.

There’s a lot of good stuff in this issue: Max’s increasing desperation as he realizes that Wondy somehow doesn’t exist any more, Booster reminding Captain Atom that just because Max painted him as a murderer doesn’t mean he gets a free pass to actually commit murder, every single thing that comes out of Rocket Red’s mouth.

There’s also (sigh) a few talking-head pages with Fire and Ice. The stupid stuff is handled fairly tactfully, but changing her backstory to a more generic one (The Generic X-Men Backstory, as a matter of fact) doesn’t make her a more compelling character, so I still don’t see the point of it. Actually, when I was trying to think of characters who have a similar backstory to Ice’s old one, the first person who came to mind was Wonder Woman… Who also had her backstory revised with extra unnecessary tragedy. What the heck, DC? I’m not saying that characters should never have tragedy in their history, but I like the occasional character who decided to become a hero just because s/he wanted to help people, with no motivating tragedy. Having a tragic past doesn’t automatically make a character more interesting, and in my experience, it’s too often a substitute for making them interesting in the present. Which is what’s happening here.

Sorry, that got away from me a little bit. Overall, the Bea-Tora stuff was a small percent of this book, and it was handled well for what it was.

I’m also not too happy with the way this issue ends, but that’s more future dread than anything. It looks like the book is headed for another wheels-spinning fight issue, and as cool as their opponents look, JLGL has a bad track record with fight issues that involve people other than Captain Atom.

Art-wise, I feel pretty weird saying this, but I don’t have many problems with Bennet’s art in this issue. Sure, Max looks weird, but Max always looks weird. In a couple panels, he even realized that Booster’s goggles aren’t completely opaque! The one panel of DBZ-Ice looks even sillier than the last time we saw her (now she looks like she has dreads and talons, in case you’re curious), and he can be darn lazy with backgrounds, but overall, it’s not bad.