People’s tweets on Twitter seem evenly split between loving and hating this series. I’ve been fairly bullish about the first two parts as I’ve enjoyed the banter between Hal and Ollie, and the beautiful artwork, however, this issue make me a little nervous. The villain and the dialogue is on the borderline between melodrama and pastiche. There is still enough here for me to recommend the series – the beats are nice, the artwork is beautiful, and the plot is obviously going somewhere – however its over reliance on tropes is beginning to get a little stale.

Cry for Justice #3 addresses the topic of this series’ bad guy – namely Prometheus. There is a two-part origin story by Len Wein that is quite good, but the Prometheus’s monologue in-story is unintentionally hilarious. The august, very serious way he addresses people makes him read like Doctor Evil. Try reading it back in Doctor Evil’s slightly Eastern European accent and you’ll see what I mean. I’m convinced that by the end of this Prometheus will be railing for his “sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads.” Lets remember that this was a bad guy who was first defeated by Catwoman whipping his love-spuds.

The issue open with Supergirl joining Hal Jordan, Oliver Queen, Ray Palmer, and Freddy Freeman on the streets of Gotham City. They discuss the Kryptonian situation (nice acknowledgement) which upsets Supergirl before they notice that they’re starting to look like a team (nice trope self-awareness). Meanwhile Congorilla and Starman are having fun fighting flying robots. Hal’s posse finally think they’ve tracked down Doctor Evil Prometheus, but it turns out they’re accidentally torturing one of the Clayfaces. She (I think) stays alive along enough to deliver the necessary exposition before exploding. The real Doctor Evil Prometheus then spends the rest of the issue telling I.Q. about his European vacation (complete with holiday snaps of murdered Global Guardians).

That explosion is something of an anti-climax as Hal’s ring should protect him, Freddy and Kara are invulnerable, Ray can shrink out-of-the-way, so only Ollie is actually in any danger. The death of yet another set of rare international heroes irked many fans (anybody remember that it was the same Mr Robinson who killed off an entire JLE branch in a random Starman issue). I particularly didn’t like the treatment of Taz. Then again this story is pre-Blackest Night so I wouldn’t be surprised if all these fellows turned up again somewhere. Come to think of it a Black Lantern Tasmanian Devil would be great, “What for you bury me in the cold, cold ground?”

Bottomline – if you liked the first two: keep on buying, if you didn’t: then don’t. If you haven’t started: probably best to wait for the trade.

The Verdict