"The End" Week: Justice League Odyssey #25!

We saw an issue of this some time back, although without looking I couldn't have told you what crossover this series sprung from, or into what crossover it returned. Ashes to ashes, funk to funky...wait, that's not right. From 2020, Justice League Odyssey #25, "Last Stand" Written by Dan Abnett, art by Will Conrad.

Anyway, I think I liked the idea of this and the lineup maybe more than the actual execution, but part of that is probably just the nature of the crossover mill, and that probably at least three of these characters were needed elsewhere. This issue finds the space-based JL team of Starfire, Azrael, Cyborg, and Green Lantern Jessica Cruz; with series regular Dex-Starr and Orion, and Starfire's sister Blackfire, and doomed timeline versions of Cyborg and Jessica; all in a final battle to keep Darkseid from rewriting the timeline. If that seems a little esoteric or out of character for him, it probably was, but he wasn't at the top of his game...until afterwards. His plan gets stopped, doomed Cyborg and Jessica sacrifice themselves, and the team separates to warn the universe of Darkseid's new rise. Oddly, although he mentions it later, we don't see Azrael return to earth in the end: he joins Dex-Starr and Orion, to prepare for war...starting on Thanagar? Orion says it's a planet of warriors, but didn't he shoot the hell out of the planet in Cosmic Odyssey?

I'll look later, but I think I have the next appearance for Jessica, where she gets traded to the Yellow Lanterns, presumably for a draft pick in the next round. Cyborg and Starfire return to earth, and get immediately redesigned, for Death Metal. Fun...