Given my love for the vastness and diversity of DC's history and characters, I'm a prime target for Geoff Johns's celebration of super-heroes past and present. Sadly, though, that enthusiasm for colorful characters and tradition doesn't translate into a strong script for this concluding issue. In fact, this stands out as the weakest issue in the run. At best, Johns's plot here is derivative, and at worst, it's illogical. I'm still a fan of his work overall -- this week's issue of Hawkman is quite strong, for example -- but JSA: All-Stars was not a satisfying experience overall.
The junior members of the Justice Society of America reconvene, all having reached out to loved ones in their lives to make amends for past sins, as per the Spectre's instructions. Their ghostly ally reappears and reiterates that emotional mission, and the heroes begin to realize that all is not as it seems. Legacy's manipulations stand exposed, but not his motives. As the heroes fight on an other-dimensional plane, they try to free their mentors' souls and divine their magical foe's true identity.
Though I don't care for the antagonist's (new) generic design, it's still a treat to see Sal Velluto and Bob Almond, the onetime art team on Black Panther, back in action again. They handle super-hero action quite well, and they convey the wide range of the heroes' ages adeptly as well. The backgrounds are lacking on occasion, though, and the colors here are a bit murky.
As far as I can tell, the villain's plot falls apart here because he turns out to be a rather bad liar. The emotional source of his poewr is never explained, and Johns's attempts to hook the individual heroes' personal plotlines into this larger, conventional super-hero showdown fall flat. No real explanation is given as to how the antagonist managed to gain such immense power levels so as to take out for the more formidable heroes -- such as Green Lantern and the Spectre -- yet despite that overwhelming power, he is defeated rather easily by one of the least powerful heroes.
The saving grace of several issues of this series were the backup stories from other creators, featuring stories that featured Golden Age characters and that paid tribute to that pioneering time in the medium. There's nothing of that to be found in this final issue, but that comes as no surprise, since it wasn't a part of the first issue either. This bookend is a disappointment, mainly because Johns has proven elsewhere that there's a great deal of potential in these characters.
