In this issue, the Justice League fights the Shadow Cabinet, the super heroes from the Milestone Imprint from DC Comics published in the early 1990s. As each character finds his match, the battle rages on the satellite that houses the Justice League. The objective of this fight is the retrieval by the Shadow Cabinet of a candle that powers a foe of the League. It’s a matter of life or death, for the heroes’ world. Will they get the candle?
It’s a classic story of two super hero teams facing off each other and all the odds and bets starting. As much as these are, it’s not as impressive when readers have no clue about the scope of one of the teams. I can’t even recall their names easily. Of course, I can’t blame McDuffie, I picked up this story without reading the one that came before. Oh, it is McDuffie’s fault! He forgot the rule about every comic book issue being a reader’s first.
While I can do some digging on the characters, I do have to point that there are a few interesting twists in the fight that opposes the heroes. For example, all is not as it looks on the surface, with Superman cooperating secretly with the Shadow Cabinet. It felt a bit too similar to a similar plot point in the JLA/Avengers mini-series, where Captain America and Batman let the heroes duke it out while they found a solution to the real problem. I’m not sure about the logic of continually pointing out that the Shadow Cabinet is inferior in power and experience to the Justice League. I thought the purpose of this crossover was to make them interesting to a new generation of readers, not a bunch of lame characters that aren’t worth the time of the Justice League.
Ah, artwork... I keep saying that I don’t like Luis’ work on this issue. He needs a better inker. His lines were too sketchy and weak in some places. He has a problem with proportions and the fact that he tries to mimic Ed Benes’ style, which to begin with, is not that great, is not a good thing.
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