JSA #78

Archive

Reviewer: Tim Stevens
Story Title: Lost and Found

Written by: Keith Champagne
Penciled by: Don Kramer
Inked by: Keith Champagne
Colored by: John Kalisz
Lettered by: Rob Leigh
Editor: Peter Tomasi
Publisher: DC Comics

One of the biggest compliments I can pay this issue is that at no time (until I glanced back at the front cover after reading it the first time) did it occur to me that I was reading a JSA book that was written by someone else as a fill-in arc. Champagne’s prior assertion that this was a fill-in that walked, talked, and acted like a natural part of the book is dead on. It smartly builds on already introduced plot threads, not just merely mentions them in passing.

The specific plot thread of focus is where the heck Jakeem and the Thunderbolt disappeared to when Spectre put the whammy on them about four months (our time) back. To find out, the team first has to find what the heck happened to Dr. Fate during Day of Vengeance. They don’t find an answer, per se, but they do find his floating vestments. In a move correctly labeled as creepy by Wildcat (although he does not mention that it is also foolhardy and quite possibly suicidal) Sand dons the gear to tap into the Fate power. Nabu checks in, Sand checks out, and things get considerably more complicated. Without spoiling those complications, the team gets divided in half, as the JSA is often wont to do, leaving each team at half strength to face dual unanticipated threats.

A big part of this is the fifth dimension, where imps like the Superman foe Mr. Mxyzptlk and the pink Thunderbolt live together. This idea (not the 5th dimension itself, just the idea of it housing all these various critters) first appeared in Morrison’s JLA run. I thought those issues, despite featuring the first JSA/JLA in-continuity team-up in some time, were the weakest of Morrison’s run. Thus, I have a bit of hives at this issue even bothering to broach the topic. However, this 5th Dimension ain’t that one. For one, they look much different (to give props where props deserved, the 5th Dimension in JLA was very well done…this version is a bit…uncreative) and for another, I’m enjoying this story.

Like a lot of issues of JSA the divided focus hurts some of the issue’s momentum. Every time I got into one storyline, we were immediately cutting to the next. It is disorienting, which I am sure is at least partly the point, but I hope to see the focus become more streamlined for the next two issues of this arc.

So, color me pleasantly surprised. A writer promised a fill-in that didn’t seem like one and he delivered a fill-in that didn’t seem like one.