By Koppy McFad
December 27, 2004 - 14:35
When we last saw our anti-heroes, they were about to engage the JSA in a major battle. Too bad the creative team drops the ball on this one. Instead of a slugfest between two powerful groups, the story opens with the fight already over-- and then recalls the fight in a series of flashbacks. Talk about downers. Of course, Kelly has been intentionally writing stories in imaginative ways that aren't easy to follow but after awhile, he reaches a point where he is sacrificing clarity just to look clever.. Dialogue that is just a pinky short of being lucid does not help. So a simple fight between superheroes becomes more complicated than a Swedish art film, leaving many comic readers feeling they were shortchanged. There are a few genuine surprises thrown into this story but after awhile, it becomes hard to remember why these new developments are suppose to surprise us in the first place. Even the usually-excellent art of Manhnke and Nguyen seems less crisp and more murky in this issue.