Justice League: Generation Lost #5

Justice League: Generation Lost #5: Writers: Judd Winick and Kieth Giffen.

Review: We find out in this issue that Max Lord had indeed been the driving force between the former JLI members getting back together, and that he wanted them to remain a team and do good in the world, so long as they left him alone. Needless to say Booster doesn't buy Max's spiel, and Super-Perfect-Fake Beetle uses his powers of Mass Perfection to trace Max Lord's signal, even though it was established that Skeets(who is from several hundred years in the future)couldn't trace Max... Yeah, and then people wonder why I hate this series. Blah blah blah, stuff happens and Booster decides to take the fight to Max.

What I Thought: Yeah, I think it's safe to say that I won't be collecting this series anymore. I just can't stand the direction it's gone since the arrival of our Lord and Savior, Super-Fake Beetle. I mean come on! He's pretty much now used as a skeleton key to get the writers out of any sort of jam. You're being hunted by dozens of OMAC's? Don't worry, Super-Fake Beetle will shut them all down. Can't find Max Lord? Don't worry, Super-Fake Beetle can trace him no problem! Yep, that's enough for me, so long Gen Lost... See you in HELL!!! BWA-HAHAHAHAH

Score: 6 out of 10.It's an explosion. Whatever.

Justice League: Generation Lost #4

Justice League: Generation Lost #4: Writers: Judd Winick & Keith Giffen. Pencils: Joe Bennett.

The JLI(or the Justice League of Misfits if you will)arrive in Russia during a battle between a rogue Rocket Red and a mess of other Rocket Reds. The team decides not to intervene, since it looked like an internal Russian dispute, at least until they began endangering innocent civilians. The JLI steps in to halt the fighting, which leads the rogue Rocket Red into believing that the JLI was teaming up with him. The JLIers try to convince the rogue Rocket that they were just trying to help the innocent bystanders, but they meet with no success. With the rogue Rocket sticking with them, Booster Gold begins to realize that somebody was obviously manipulating events in order to gather the entire old JLI together. And who would do that other then the man who brought the old JLI together the first time, Max Lord. Booster begins to demanding answers from Max(which worries his teammates), and after a while, Max(through Rocket Red's radio)responds that he was indeed behind recent events. And what was Max up to? For some reason, whenever Max uses his telepathic powers on somebody they transform into Black Lanterns and die...

Well that was kind of weird... This comic was pretty much an extended battle between a bunch of Rocket Reds, while the JLI members stood around and watched. I guess this comic was okay, it's just that the story isn't really doing anything for me. I just want to know what the hell is going on here! Now Max can transform people into Black Lanterns? Weird... On the plus side, Super Fake Beetle didn't bother me all that much, so I guess that's something...

Score: 7 out of 10.C-List heroes unite!!!

Justice League: Generation Lost #3

Justice League: Generation Lost #3: Writers: Judd Winick and Keith Giffen. Pencils: Fernando Dagnino
Last Issue: 9 out of 10.

Review: We open things up with Fire heading to the base of the Checkmate organization and demanding to know why she was thrown out of Checkmate. The Black King of Checkmate(think the Hellfire Club I guess)tells Fire that she was let go because she failed two psychological fitness exams. Fire tries to convince the Black King that Max Lord doctored her records, but since nobody remembers Max Lord, she continues to look loco. Eventually, Max Lord himself shows up and taunts Fire, before running back into the Checkmate compound. Needless to say, Fire doesn't take kindly to THAT, and chases after Max, with a small army of Checkmate soldiers trying to capture her. Eventually Fire catches Max, who reveals that he was just playing with her head and that he was never there, and Fire realizes that she was torching an innocent Checkmate agent. Realizing that she was in some VERY hot water, and wouldn't be able to talk her way out of this one, Fire vacates the premises. From there we head to... *sigh* El Paso, Texas, where we find the fake Blue Beetle fighting off an army of OMACs. Fake Beetle is helped out by Booster Gold, Captain Atom and Ice, but the heroes(and Fake Beetle)are unable to defeat the OMACs, that is until the Fake Beetle manages to apprehend several dozen OMACs with magnetism?!? Okay, that does it. Review over.

What I Thought: Sorry, that's absolute nonsense, and I REFUSE to finish this review. This comic was okay until Super-Fake Beetle managed to squash a BATTALION of OMACs!!! What the HELL is THAT all about!? Jesus, I can remember when a single OMAC was able to take on and defeat Firestorm, Cyborg, as well as giving characters like Superman a run for his money, but Super-Fake Beetle can just wave his hands at them and beat them all? So what is Bruce Wayne, the world's biggest jackass or something? It's my understanding that Bruce(and then Brother I and Max Lord)designed the OMACs to be able to scan, study and then counteract whatever super-power they came in contact with. Am I supposed to believe that when Bruce began the OMAC Project he NEVER took Dr. Polaris into account(since Super-Fake Beetle defeated all of the OMACs with magnetism, and Polaris is DC's master of magnetism?)? What a load of crap. I'd better stop this review before things start to get R-rated here...

Score: 3 out of 10.Never fear, Super-Fake Beetle is here.........

The Best of the Rest!!! June 5th edition.

It's Saturday, which means it it's time for me to give my uninformed, overly sarcastic and at times offensive opinion on comic books and their creators, that's right, it's time for a new installment of The Best of the Rest! Ahh, that run-on sentence never gets old! And thus begin the excuses... So you see, I only have three pseudo-reviews to bust out tonight on account of my busy week(in other words, I've been lazy...). Now I'm sure you're probably thinking to yourself, “Well shucks, if he only has three reviews to do, these here reviews are gonna be DY-NO-MITE!” Sadly, that's not the case... No, be it thirty-seven reviews or three, I'm not going to bother putting together a really good Best of the Rest, I just can't. Nope, this post will be as bad(or maybe even worse!)then all of the other Best of the Rest posts, or my name isn't BENDIS! Um, I mean X...

Deadpool #22: So Deadpool is on a bus to Georgia as a part of his seemingly never ending quest to become a better super-hero... I'm not really sure how he expects to learn the finer points of super-heroics in Georgia, but whatever. DP's bus winds up getting hijacked by a bunch of slack-jawed redneck types, and DP decides to put a world-class whooping on them(that's how you say, “He's going to beat them up” in redneck). So DP is showing up the hillbillies when a really large redneck wearing a big ol' battery pack moseys on over to DP and blasts him full of electricity(That's redneck for, “They shocked DP up but good!”). DP wakes up and after finding a police radio realizes that the robbers had to be local police officers. So DP heads down to the station house and finds one of the yokels who robbed his bus settin' behind his desk(that's redneck for, “sitting behind his desk” yeah, it's not much of a difference, but still)DP locks up the crooked cop and discovers a rather attractive female cop also at the station. The female cop tells DP where he could find the rest of the crooked cop posse(that's redneck for, “crooked police officer gang” that's right, I'm going to BEAT this gag into the ground!), so DP heads out to shut those lousy cops down hard, but not before he locks up the female cop after he figures out that she was the brains of the operation... This is actually revealed at the end of this comic, but since it's my review(or pseudo-review)I don't have to follow a linear path! Hell, one day I might just review a comic backwards! Anyway, back to the story... DP tracks down the crooked cops, and shuts them down. The end... What? That's more or less what happened here. DP beat up the crooked cops, left them for the ATF(because the crooked cops were also making moonshine)and leaves town with a spring in his step and a song in his heart. The real question is, what's up with Daniel Way and the state of Georgia?! Ah reckon he ain'ts like's 'em folks much(that's redneck for, “I don't think he likes those nimrods much”)... Score: 6 1/2 out of 10.Is he even speaking English!?! Sheesh...

Thor #610: And so we pick up after the Siege storyline... Who the HELL opens up a review(or pseudo-review)by saying, “And so”? What horrible sentence structure... Anywho, Balder(who is the current king of Asgard FYI)is roaming around the ruins of Asgard thinking about what a crappy job he's been doing as king... Well, considering you allowed your people to be pretty much spanked by Norman “Freaking” Osborn, I'd have to agree. Thor arrives to tell Balder that he's done an admirable job as king(um, really?), and that Balder should remain the king of Asgard, but with Thor as his advisor. So yay, Thor is un-exiled from Asgard(“un-exiled”?)and Balder the Jellyfish is still the king. All is right and good in Asgard... Or is it?!? I'll answer that one myself, no, everything most definitely ISN'T good in Asgard! Thor's deranged clone, Ragnarok, climbs out of some rubble and decides to beat down some Asgardians in an effort to get Thor's attention... Man, for gods, the Asgardians are being trounced by just about everybody lately! Thor confronts his wacky clone, and after a few shouts of “verily”, “thou” and “Pretender” the two battle, with Thor pretty much demolishing Ragnarok in quick fashion... Huh, that was... pretty anti-climatic actually... Oh, and that was also the end of this comic... Score: 7 out of 10.HEY!!! What's Green Arrow doing in Asgard!?!

Justice League: Generation Lost #2: This issue kicks off with the former JLI members(or the c-list members of the JLA, if you prefer)trying to convince Superman that Maxwell Lord had erased knowledge of his existence from every person on Earth(and maybe Mars too, who knows). Supes(being an a-lister)doesn't have time to humor a bunch of losers, and pretty much says so(but in his non-offensive, Superman sort of way)before leaving. The c-listers decide to split up and see if they can convince anybody that they're telling the truth... You know, if the world's biggest boy scout won't believe you, I don't think anybody else will... Booster Gold heads to the Batcave, where Batman won't believe him, while Fire learns that she was fired by Checkmate by Wonder Woman, who insists that she had never killed anybody by the name of Max Lord. But she did! I read it!! Oh wait, Max Lord must have erased her memory! Of course... Ice tries to convince Guy Gardner that Max Lord is trouble, but Guy refuses to listen, since Max had put some false memories in his head making Guy think Ice was crazy... Wait, so Max Lord was able to alter the mind of a Green Lantern?!? Huh... Captain Atom heads to his military base and spots Max Lord, and immediately attacks him. Atom beats up Max, and during the beating, Atom realizes that he wasn't beating up Max, but that he was pummeling his commanding officer! Whoops!! Atom runs away from the military base, and meets up with the other JLI members, and the c-listers share their sob stories. They all figure out that Max was discrediting them(ya think?!?)and Fire and Ice leave, deciding that they didn't want to deal with the situation anymore. Atom and Booster are told by Skeets(you know, that little sassy robot thing that's always haunting around Booster)that they were being monitored by something in El Paso, Texas. So the two heroes head to the great state of Texas to find... Oh come on... the fake Blue Beetle being beaten up by a bunch of OMACs. Way to ruin a perfectly good comic there guys! Score: 9 out of 10.Isn't it funny how I didn't even mention Magog in this review, but then I posted a page with him? And THAT ladies and gentlemen is why I call them, pseudo-reviews!

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.