The cover of this issue is pretty much a perfect metaphor of how I feel about this series as a whole: Overall, it’s striking, but everyone’s a little washed out, and Tora completely gets the shaft.

I’m not sure if that last part was intentional on the cover, but it sure reflected this month’s contents. For the first half of the book, I don’t think Ice says a single thing that’s not sullen or whiny, and I find myself intensely disliking her, even though I’d usually call myself a mild fan. It’s probably notable that this is the first issue where Judd Winick is credited as the sole writer without Keith Giffen’s breakdowns, which at least allays my fears that Giffen (who should know better) was the one writing Tora so badly.

The character who stands out in a positive way this issue is Rocket Red, who continues his predecessor’s tradition of being completely hilarious and adorable. I know this is a Brightest Day book, which means grimness, but I fell in love with these characters when they were funny, and there’s no reason they shouldn’t be able to hunt down Max and be funny, as an absolutely fantastic fight scene in the bowels of Checkmate aptly demonstrates.

Speaking of Brightest Day, there’s a scene in this issue that really equates Max with the other resurrected characters–though, for the record, I’m not reading BD, so I can’t say if it’s a direct reference to anything that happened in that book. I’m not sure how to feel about this. On the one hand, it was an interesting scene, and there’s no reason Max should be any different than the other resurrected heroes and villains, but on the other, this book is doing fine with its own plot and, in my opinion, doesn’t need to be dragged in to the main event.

I wasn’t a fan of the art this issue. JLI books live and die by facial expressiveness, but all of Joe Bennet’s faces looked weirdly flat (and are Booster’s goggles trying to eat his head? Those things got huge!). He does, however, do a good job differentiating between Bea and Tora when the two of them are in disguise, though, which could have been a big problem.