Justice League: A New Beginning II – The International Exchange Finale

This ain’t your daddy’s Justice League International.In fact, this ain’t anybody’s Justice League International. One of the only things that the Justice League International Annual #1 has in common with the just-concluded series is that it really ought to have been called “Booster Gold,” although even that would have been odd since Booster (like everyone in this book) was written in such a way that it makes you wonder whether Geoff Johns and Dan DiDio have even been reading Justice League International since the company they head up launched it last September.After spending a year verbally sparring with Booster and finally coming to the conclusion earlier this month that the JLI is his home, Guy Gardner storms off early in the issue, accusing Booster (rightly) of having lied to him and the rest of the team in order to make the JLI seem like a more attractive place to be. None of this jives with any of what happened in the actual ongoing series, of course, and Gardner and Batwing–who remains behind following a bloody-but-successful international mission at the start of the book–are the lucky ones here.The entire issue is a reboot within the New 52 reboot, incorporating elements of previous histories that were never a part of the ongoing series and creating an environment where (as has so often been the case since the relaunch of the titles last year) it’s not clear exactly what from the “old” universe does and does not count.The art is strong, but doesn’t particularly suit Booster Gold as a main character. Fabok depicts Godiva and Blue Beetle beautifully, but Booster doesn’t work at all, from a face that doesn’t look consistent with any version of the character we’ve seen recently to an oddly thin hairline (maybe Giffen and DeMatteis were right!) to a coloring scheme that fails to capture the “metallic” look to his costume completely. Ironically, the dulled, grainy nature of the colors here works better for Blue Beetle than anything we’ve seen since the earliest issues of Jaime’s first issue.The whole story seems pointed at resetting the series to the pre-Generation Lost status quo, with a lineup and a villain that evokes the feel of the Giffen-DeMatteis Justice League years, but without any of the heart and humor that made them work. O.M.A.C., one of the great character finds of the New 52, is relegated back to where he was during Infinite Crisis and its fallout–a mindless creature controlled by Maxwell Lord an anonymous master who seeks to destroy the JLI for reasons unknown, but related primarily to a desire to kill Batman, who designed the Brother Eye satellite that created it.