Well, that took a turn…

Writer: Scott Lobdell
Artist: Paolo Pantalena
Colors: Arif Prianto
Letters: ALW’s Troy Peteri
Covers: Paolo Pantalen & Sunny Gho; Phillip Tan & Sunny Gho
Editors: Ben Meares; Ben Abernathy
Publisher: DC Comics

Before we get into the amazing, continuity loving, end of this issue, let’s take a brief break to check in on Generation: Outlaw and poor Ma Gunn trying to deal with a houseful of super powered, barely sane, children. Spoiler alert: it’s not going well. While nothing and no one is on fire, yet, Faye is having a hell of a time finding anyone with the ability, and more importantly, patience to deal with Jason’s wards when he’s not there. However, after a few stops and starts it looks like she may have found a decent set in Monsieur Mallah and The Brain. Now if she can only convince Ernst that the kids are, in fact, alright and keep Jason from losing it when he returns to find The Brain in his home…

Which is not a guarantee, as Jason, Biz, the General and Artemis are battling the Untitled and Essence (who refuses to accept that she was wrong about Jason) on all fronts. It’s a mess that’s not helped when one of the crew gets bitten by an Untitled and all hell breaks loose.

There were so many ‘Oh my gawd! What??’ moments this issue that I genuinely do not want to spoil for you but suffice to say Lobdell does one hell of a job patching in continuity from several points in the DC universe to give us a storyline with some deep roots. On top of that it is becoming increasingly clear that the fallout of the events of this book will have long term effects on the entire DC mythos. That Lobdell, and his editors (seriously, amazing work guys) are doing all of this while keeping the story very much centered on Jason and his makeshift family is just outstanding.

Paolo Pantalena gives us some great artwork with fight scenes and backgrounds that are fantastic. However, again, I need a bit more variety on the faces of the ladies, you know, the same amount of attention that’s paid to the gentlemen. There is no reason that Essence, Artemis and Isabelle should look so much alike (and have the same damn nose!) that if it weren’t for coloring and outfits I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. Do better.

Overall this was a truly blow you away issue and I feel as if we’re only getting started.

Four Obelisks out of Five

P.S.: It looks like Essence and Artemis are Jason’s Talia and Selina respectively which… interesting. Let’s see how that goes.