"The End" Week: Extreme Justice #18!

Huh, my caps lock was stuck when I started this post. Maybe I should've left it on, it seems appropriate. From 1996, Extreme Justice #18, "Deathmatch Doom" Written by Robert Washington III, pencils by Tom Morgan, inks by Ken Branch.

Sometimes, reading these last issues can be a chore: I had to read this one twice, to see if the main villain was ever referred to by name. He was not; but I think it's a cartoonishly insane and redesigned Brainwave, Jr. In a sick jacket, though. He looks like an evil Grant Morrison. It's his Legion of Doom--wait, really? DC must not have thought the name was worth anything in those "EXTREME" days--versus Captain Atom's breakaway Justice Leaguers: Maxima, Blue Beetle, Booster Gold, a new Amazing Man, and the Wonder Twins. Wait, really?

I'm not positive any continuity from this book was carried forward: Captain Atom mentions having a hole in his chest, that I don't think was ever seen again. Maxima is heroic here, but would probably go back to stalking Superman; I don't think Booster's "Midas" armor would be back. Did we see these Wonder Twins again? Beetle uses a "fibrous-polymer grenade," "the recipe from this guy who just drifted through from some alternate universe recently." That's mostly for a joke, but no way they'd let him use that again! And Amazing Man would (allegedly) be killed off by the Mist, in Starman #38, which seems a waste.

This book, along with Justice League America and Justice League Task Force, was being wrapped up to clear the decks for the new "Big 7" JLA. Which still holds up as a good comic, but if you read it coming off of this one? Like going from a burger on the dollar menu to an eighty-dollar steak.