This Is Not The Greatest Comic in the World, It's A Tribute
The Good: Overall, the cover looks pretty great. I don't like the clashing style of David Finch to Aaron Lopresti, and I don't think the cover is totally fitting, but I can't say its a bad cover in and of itself.
Oh yeah, and speaking of Aaron Lopresti, his artwork is still a perfect fit for this series, and some of the most consistently good superhero artwork I've seen. It's not J.H. Williams III, Frazer Irving, or Greg Capullo, but as a standard art style, its heads ad tails above the others of a similar style.
The team splits up, yeah its kind of cheesy, but it works pretty well. The choices of the pairs are carefully thought out. We have surprisingly born leader Booster Gold with cold commander Batman, 2 men who's respect for each other is surprisingly even; fiery lovable goofball Rocket Red and nervous introverted Ice; dual dark skinned thrill seekers chicks Vixen and Fire; stoic calculator August General In Iron and flirtatious live-in-the-moment free spirit Godiva. All of this serves to set the foundation for some deep character bonding, which itself serves to create a framework for a strong focus on the characters as JLI is known for.
And finally in the character department, we have an essential JLI figure, the completel loose cannon Guy Gardner. He's behaving quite intelligently, which he has been for a few years now, so it'll be interesting to see how the Guy Gardner of today will fit in with the JLI of today. Also, points for having Guy use the ring like he does, creatively and specifically.
I don't see why people are denouncing the plot as generic, these giant robots AREN'T behaving as giant robot steriotypes, they're actually standing there seemingly doing nothing. It's the odd sort of tension where nothing's happening, but this actually makes things more unnerving.
The fuctionality of the team is just spot on. Its really great to see this melting pot of characters and personalities function as a whole so well. Again, it lets the focus on the characters shine through as JLI should.
The roster has rotated from the original, and it reflects the times well. People know Captain Atom from JLU, Black Canary's gotten big recently, Captain Marvel's known, Blue Beetle is riding a pretty nice high point right now; so we get cycled through to a different group of obscure internationals thrown into the mix. Godiva, August General In Iron, and Vixen are welcome additions to the team, and I'm already finding things to like about them.
The Bad: Peraxxus has a weird and ugly design.
Due to the repetition of seeing each time, the issue feels a little slowly paced.
In Conclusion: 4/5
Overall this was a solid enough issue, it took things a little slower, and didn't have quite as much of the superb character interactions due to the divide, but it set the framework well. Justice League International continues to be a great tribute to the original series, even if it doesn't quite yet live up to Generation Lost. I guess this works because it IS JLI. It's not Generation Lost, it's International; and it feels definitely enough like the original. Give this series a chance, it'll make you care about a bunch of B-Listers.