Formerly Known As the Justice League

Synopsis: Maxwell Lord reunites several members of his one time "Justice League International" team, and hey go on several adventures, one against Roulette, a woman who kidnaps superheroes and turns them into Gladiators, and against Manga Khan, a robot leader of an organization called the Cluster.

Good Stuff: Let me start by saying that I missed Giffen and DeMatteis' tenure on Justice League, so I do not have fond memories of that era, nor am I that familiar with many of these characters either. So, for obvious reasons, I walked into this with very few expectations, other than a knowledge that the emphasis was on humor.

First of all, I really liked the art team of Maguire and Rubenstein, as I thought they had a nice, clean, relatively sparse style that made it fairly simple to figure out what was happening, as well as an excellent job with facial expresssions. Kudos to them.

As for the stories, there were some nice humorous moments; I particularly enjoyed the characterizations of Batman and Mary Marvel.

Not so Good Stuff: Much of the humor seemed tremendously forced, much like Soulsearchers and Company when Peter David is "off". It really doesn't service the story well if you're stopping the momentum every other panel for "setup, punchline, setup, punchline" ad infinitum.

While I realize this is a humor comic as well, I thought it was a shame that the authors felt that the Justice League had to come in to save the day, as I felt that it would have been better if--despite the ineptness of the team members--the team resolved the conflict.

I give this book 6/10.