Justice League: Generation Lost

With Blue Beetle's recovery, the Justice League International finally start catching some breaks against Maxwell Lord in an issue that feels very satisfying after all the team has been through in the course of this series. Unfortunately, the story has to stumble its way around DC's current status quo for Wonder Woman. 
 
Books as consistent as this one get increasingly hard to praise. How many times and different ways can I talk about Judd Winick's excellent grasp of all these characters and the team dynamic or how well this book balances its humor and drama? This is simply a consistently well-written book. It has a cast of characters that play off one another better than most other teams currently out there. It has great humor without becoming a comedy book. It does great work with the characters without becoming a "talking heads" series. The team's reactions to Blue Beetle's recovery is a great scene, as is the arrival of Batman. 
 
The downside of this issue is something I mentioned in an earlier review being concerned about. Because this story is taking place at the same time as JMS' alternate reality Wonder Woman story, it has to address that directly. This is the issue where that starts to happen. I know Winick has said in interviews that having to use this version of Wonder Woman turned out to be a positive, but that is really not true. This Wonder Woman had nothing to do with Max Lord's death, so there is nothing really satisfying about her involvement. Instead, we are cheated out of having the real Wonder Woman's response to the conspiracy Max has carried out. It is also just confusing, because it has to tackle the continuity issues of Wonder Woman while other titles have managed to just avoid it. Why is any of this even happening if Wonder Woman was never around to kill Max in the first place? Why do Max and most of the JLI remember Wonder Woman when no one else does? It overcomplicates the story to have this secondary memory loss syndrome going on at the same time as Max's, and it is annoying that this title has to suffer for the sins of the Wonder Woman title. 
 
This is minor, but the big image of Batman's arrival is killed by the art hiccup of having him wearing his black underwear on ths outside with his new costume. One of the great things about the new Batman costume is that it got rid of that silliness. Editors? Hello? It would not have been that hard to fix if anyone was paying attention. 
 
Like I said, it is getting hard to find new ways to say this is a series worth reading. It is probably the best superhero team book DC has right now.

Blue Beetle awakens to find the team in joy over his impossible return, creeping him out a bit. After talking with his scarab he explains that it shattered the bullet before impact but the shock injured him to the point where the scarab had to insert enzymes into him to recover, putting his body in stasis, thus, the death-like state. Beetle explains what Max'd plans are while Max himself is putting them into action. 
 
The JLI are shocked that they were duped into helping Max get Checkmate and that's when Batman (Bruce) and Powergirl show up to assist them in stopping him. Beetle says he's out to kill Wonder Woman and they rush to her aid after Batman explains that the White Lantern restored his memory and that she's in New York. Batman and Booster Gold try to explain the danger she's in when Max activates an army of giant OMACs to come after her. 
 
This was a spectacular issue which explains how Jaime survived his gun shot to the head and the inserting of Batman and Powergirl into the story. Many will think the major flaw is that it still hasn't been explained why Max and the JLI remember her, but they can't. I read in an interview they intended to put it in the comic but they could never find the room to put it in to make it work. Iloved how excited Rocket Red gets when Blue Beetle is revealed to be alive and when Batman shows up. First the JLI and then Batman, he really loves his heroes. Even Captain Atom breaks into laughter at Beetle's survival. A great start to the end of the comic. A 5 goes to the comic that will hopefully continue some time in the future.

Issue # 22 of Justice League: Generation Lost. 
 
The Story: The team is ecstatic that Jaime is alive,Batman (Bruce) and Power Girl come in to help the team to find Wonder Woman (JSM version) and they find her in New York and Max unleashes his plan. 
 
The Good: It's cool to see the two issues that came out this month have a Ying-Yang thing going on.Issue 21 was the team mourning Jaime'S apparent death and here it is just hilarious from start to finish.From Jaime asking Nate to put him down,Gavril showing the team his cloaking device of how Wonder Woman looks based on what everybody told him and the look is simply hilarious and there are a bunch of other good moments.Also it is nice seeing Batmna respecting Booster as leader of the JLI,he doesn't say anything about it but he doesn't take over so that counts for something.Also the finally is going to be awesome with the OMAC's.And the art by Bennet is good. 
 
The Bad: Wonder Woman feels forced since her new version is not well defined in the universe. 
 
The Verdict: This is a hilarious issue with the plot thickening with Max unleashing the OMAC's and the art does it's job but Wondie just feels out of place.This is a buy.