Rating: **

Here is another series that started off great, but is slowly going downhill.  The one saving grace is the artwork.  Mauro Cascioli is doing some great work here.  I particularly like his work on Congorilla.  In this issue we have two back-to-back splash pages that show Congorilla and Starman fighting off some bad guys and it looks absolutely awesome!  When I heard Conogrilla was going to be a part of this team, I thought I wouldn’t like the character, but so far I like him and think he would be good on the Justice League for a while.  Now to the story.

In our last issue, we saw Green Lantern’s pro-active Justice League taking shape.  GL and Green Arrow met up with the Atom, Shazam, and Supergirl.  In a weird scene, the issue opens up with GL questioning Supergirl on whether she’s here as a hero or a villain.  He asks her this because of the recent events in the Superman books with New Krypton and some of the Kryptonians acting like bad guys.  Instead of having Supergirl stand up to GL and say she’s a hero and her own person, she begins to cry!  I know Kara is a teenager, but come on.  It’s bad enough that female characters in comics have tough times being front and center of things, but to have her cry is just wrong and it makes her look weak. 

In another weird scene, we have the Atom shrinking down and going into Prometheus’ head to torture him into talking.  I have no problem with these tactics, but it seems out of character for GL and the Atom to willingly do this.  I would also expect Green Arrow to be much more outraged than he is here.  I know in the 1970s Green Arrow was much more of a liberal character.  Not sure how much DC has toned it down or not.

I also felt Prometheus was acting somewhat out of character until it was revealed that the Prometheus that GL and his crew captured was in fact an impostor.  We then flash to the real Prometheus who is working with the villain I.Q.  Here he reveals that when Prometheus first appeared and fought the JLA, he was imprisoned and an impostor took his place.  I’m not sure if this is something writer James Robinson created specifically for this story or not.  With each issue, James Robinson has been writing some prose to go along with the story.  Here he says he wants to bring Prometheus back as a major player in the DC Universe and maybe this is his way of wiping clean a lot of bad continuity over the past few years.  I have no problem with this if it’s the case.

The story ends in one of my favorite places in the DC Universe: Opal City.  There we see Shade meeting up with Charity.  Charity is reading her tarot cards and announces that death is coming and it will touch the lives of many super-heroes.  We then get a full page of all of the super heroes we’ve seen so far in this story including some others like Wildcat, Liberty Belle, Hourman, Batwoman, Shining Knight, and Manhunter.  I know that Batwoman is supposed to join this team, but what about the others?  Will someone die?

Other than the scene with the real Prometheus where he poisons I.Q. with a concoction that reverts him back to a child and Cascioli’s artwork, I was really let down by this issue.  The story is moving at a snail’s pace and I’m starting to not care where all of this is going.

I’m disappointed in James Robinson.  His Starman is an all-time favorite of mine and his work has been subpar since his return to comics.  Hopefully the story turns around.  If it doesn’t, I won’t be picking up the Justice League when he starts writing the book.  Don’t recommend this book, but if you’re at your local comic store, flip through it because it’s great artwork.