Published: 28th September 1994 Cover Date: November 1994 Penciler: Chuck Wojtkiewicz Inker:Bob Dvorak Editors:Brian Augustyn / Ruben Diaz
Introduction
Ironically I'm just a month shy of this issue coming out thirty years ago. As well as making us I'm sure all feel old (the '90s were just yesterday wasn't it?), it's amazing how different things were back then.
It also means that the baby story picks up almost straight away, and it continues for eight more issues! Luckily we can skim some of them but this is the first one that suggests something special is going on!
Plot Synopsis
We pick up with a full-page spread of the new team. After Zero Hour we had a new team from the combined members from all the previous versions. The Justice League International/Europe is now dead and gone!
Currently, the team is Wonder Woman (the leader), The Flash, Hawkman, Metamorpho, Fire, Crimson Fox, Obsidian and Nuklon. Power Girl isn't, yet which as we'll see is a little complicated!
As a bonding ritual, or maybe just as something to do, the new members are exploring the Refuge. This is the current Satellite orbit at, repeat with me 22,300 miles (~36,000 km) above Earth! It's a giant escape pod from a villain called Overmaster, that they inherited in JLI #66. The former Infinity Inc. members, Obsidian and Nuklon go explore whilst the others go to meet Maxwell Lord. Or at least I think, as they all call him Max, maybe he's an evil version of Maxwell!
He seems to want to take back control of the team, bringing in new members as usual. And those that know about him really don't want to happen! Though they seem to be humoring him for some reason! We're very far from the dysfunctional family version of the group from the classic JLI days!
A discovery of ships is an excuse to cut short the meeting, and Maxwell seems to be having headaches again. Wonder Woman splits from the group and is attacked by some kind of demon-like creature. And it's not like it's a fight where the creature eventually gets the upper hand, but looks almost like an assault. Even worse the creature rips the knowledge of Power Girl's location from her mind.
Kara and baby are perfectly safe in another dimension hanging with Echidna, mother of monsters! How she ended up here and why isn't actually revealed, though it's probably not a good thing that Pee Gee calls her mother!
Power Girl and baby get dropped off on Lesbos, which is also I've found out called Lesvos because I guess they're not allowed to use the common name because it might scare innocent minds or something!
It looks like the team is going to get involved in the plot but the craft they take down to Earth, whilst bickering. And not the fun kind of bickering but just people who don't seem to like anyone. But they bounce off of a shield protecting the island. Kara notes that the baby already looks much older than he should, probably because artists are terrible at drawing babies!
Power Girl is facing the big bad of this issue, Scarabus, who looks like he's been reading to much Warhammer 40,000. Which makes some sense as he's one of the Lords of Chaos.
He's finally seen in what's a fine full-page spread, though as a theme Pee Gee her seems like a horror movie girl! This seems appropriate as I'm covering it for Spooky season! But it also seems that this issue has some weird ideas about the female characters! It's just weird that this is by the same writer, for better or worse, who had Doctor Light as the leader and Power Girl be a grumpy badass who didn't take any crap!
Anyway, they fight and Pee Gee gets quickly defeated, the baby goes into a force bubble. One of the rest of the League, Obsidian, actually gets to fight this issue's big bad. All this does is allow Power Girl to flee with the baby, only for her and the baby to be taken in a force bubbles into the Mediterranean. This bubble takes them to Atlantis, or at least an Atlantis maybe the original one of myth? People more knowledgeable about such things in the DC Universe can key me in which one is which!
On the last page, we meet someone who might actually tell us what is going on, Arion Pee Gee's (for now) great-grandfather!
Final Thoughts
This is an ugly comic in more ways than one! Not only is the art incredibly sketchy and muddy, but the characters all just seem off! They bicker but it's like a bad workplace sitcom where you wonder if anyone likes each other? And how the female characters, the ones that get anything to do (though to be fair very few of the male characters do anything either) are treated terribly in the issue. Yes obviously bad villain is bad, but the framing of things just makes the whole thing kinda icky.
As to the plot, well it just meanders along before things come to a head near the end of the issue! Weaving plots and subplots can be done, All-Star was built on such things, but here they're just not done well at all!
All in all, it's just meh, there's just not enough meat for me to hate, just looking in confusion about just what's happening and why I should care!
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