Justice Society of America #33

Writers: Bill Willingham and Matthew Sturges. Artist: Jesus Merino.

What Happened: This issue begins with the JSA attempting to defend the JSA Brownstone from a small army of super-villains. Mr. America rushes into the room where All American Kid was being held and asks for his aid in taking down the baddies. AAK can't wait to help, and once America turns his back he gets KO'ed by AAK! Called that one! Anyway, the heroes begin to rally and AAK arrives on the scene and takes out Wildcat(from behind naturally). King Chimera sees what AAK did and confronts him, holding him at gunpoint. Unfortunately for Chimera, a large girder falls between him and AAK, revealing the gun to be nothing but an illusion. Upon learning that, AAK runs off. Dr. Fate arrives on the scene, which pretty much spells the end of the villains. The heroes wrap the bad guys up and begin digging through the wrecked Brownstone looking for any injured teammates. AAK digs out Obsidian, who is still trapped in a shadow egg, and presents him to a strangely clad woman. After AAK hands Obsidian over to the strange woman, she teleports away. Before AAK can go after the heroes again, he is confronted by Mr. Terrific, who obviously survived his mystical surgery from last issue. Terrific reveals that he has figured out AAK's true identity, Kid Karnevil from Salvation Run(!!!). Karnevil admits that his team knew Terrific would have eventually figured his identity out, which is why Karnevil tried to kill Terrific as soon as possible. Karnevil goes to kill Terrific(again)but is knocked out by one of Terrific's T-Sphere's. Afterwards, the team begins to bicker over tactics and what could have been done to have prevented Karnevil's betrayal, as well as the attack from the villains. In the end, the team decides that they have no choice but to split up, which ends this issue.

What I Thought: Well bravo, very nicely done Matthew and Bill. When Geoff Johns stopped writing this series, I was expecting the absolute worst... To be honest, I figured things would get so bad I'd probably wind up dropping this title altogether. Instead of dropping this book, not only will I be buying the regular JSA series, I'll be buying the spin-off comic, JSA All-Stars! I was quite happy with this comic, it wrapped up nicely, while leaving a few storylines dangling for the future. Although Karnevil's ploy was uncovered and he was defeated, we still don't know what his true mission was, nor why he was ordered to capture Obsidian. The same holds true for the band of villains who attacked the JSA. We don't know who was behind them, or why they were ordered not to attack Star Girl. Yep, much to my surprise, not only is this series still going after Geoff's departure, it's still going strong!

Score: 9 out of 10.See, now this is how Dr. Polaris should be! The guy has the powers of Magneto, he should be nearly unstoppable!