Justice League: Generation Lost #1

Justice League: Generation Lost #1: Writers: Keith Giffen & Judd Winick. Pencils: Aaron Lopresti.

Review: With Maxwell Lord alive and on the loose again, Superman and the Justice League call a press conference to warn everybody in the world to be on the lookout for Max, telling the gaggle of reporters present that Max's capture would be their number one priority. While the JLA did have some leads on Max's whereabouts, they always seemed to be one step behind him. These near misses have begun to try Booster Gold's patience, as he, possibly more then anybody else, wanted to see Max brought to justice. As such, Booster began to disregard JLA orders and began to play the lone wolf in an attempt to locate and stop Max before he killed anybody else. The other members of Max's old JLI team(Fire, Ice and Captain Atom)decide to join forces in order to find Max, since they all felt that the time they spent with him could lead to some insight into where Max may have been hiding. The trio actually manage to uncover one of Max's old bases, but it is rigged with a massive bomb, and only Captain Atom's control over energy saves the trio from certain death. While that was going on, Booster figures out that since Max had always been insanely arrogant, he'd probably be hiding in plain sight, so Booster heads to the JLI embassy in NYC, and sure enough, he runs into Max, who was expecting Booster. Max shuts down Booster's force field(with one of Ted Kord's old weapons no less)and then proceeds to beat the hell out of Booster with a concrete covered pipe. Before Booster loses consciousness however, he manages to hit his JLI distress button, which brings Fire, Ice and Captain Atom to his side. The trio finds Booster lying in a pool of blood, but Booster tries to tell them that it wasn't his blood, it was Max's. Before the trio of heroes could figure out what Booster was trying to say, Max pushes his powers to their absolute limit, which causes him to lose a massive quantity of blood, while sending out a telepathic shockwave across the entire planet. The shockwave knocks out Booster and company, and when they awaken, they call for Superman so they could tell him what had happened. Supes arrives and Captain Atom tells Supes that Max had been there, which leads to Supes quizzically asking, “Who's Max Lord?”... This issue ends with the four former members of the JLI realizing that Max had wiped his existence from every living being on the planet and escaped off to parts unknown.

What I Thought: This was a VERY strong opening issue to this mini-series. The writers did a great job of setting the stage, putting all of the main players in position and giving Max a way to rebuild his powerbase away from the watchful eyes of every hero on the face of the Earth. It would have been nice if the Brightest Day mini-series was this coherent... I for one can't wait to see what Max decides to do now that he believes he is free to operate however he feels, as well as seeing what the former JLIers do to try to stop Max before he embarks on whatever his next evil act will be. A villain with all of Max's knowledge of Earth's super-heroes, free to do as he pleases could be a very scary thing!

Score: 8 1/2 out of 10.I always like a villain who is 100% convinced he's in the right and everybody else is in the wrong.