Like many of the Secret Files these days, this doubles as a marketing tool in addition to being a comic. It's a warm-up for the big event of the JLA/JSA hardcover, including a prologue with the two teams together as well as assorted profile pages and short stories that seem like they could have slipped easily into either a JLA or JSA Secret Files. The lead story is quite good, based on some fun interaction between the members of the two teams, but I'm afraid that most of the rest of the issue didn't do much for me. The comic serves its marketing purpose well, in that reading the main story really has me interested in seeing what these writers do with the JLA/JSA hardcover, but it didn't hold up the entertainment end of the bargain in the rest of the issue.
While the focus in team books of late has been on big action that can challenge a powerful group of heroes, the best of them have often incorporated some of the soap operatic relationships and subplots that made books like New Teen Titans or Uncanny X-Men popular. The lead story in this issue is mostly in this vein, because while there is a thread running through the story that hints at the plot of the JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice story (complete with creepy and satisfying ending courtesy of Sadowski), the bulk of it is all about how these heroes interact.
Johns and Goyer have done plenty of this kind of thing in the pages of JSA, so it's no surprise to see it turn up here, but it was interesting to see characters from the JLA brought into the mix. The Batman/Mr. Terrific relationship, based as much on differences as it is similarities, is fascinating, and Johns and Goyer really nail the obnoxiousness of Plastic Man as well. The "girl talk" spurred on by Star-Spangled Kid between Power Girl and Wonder Woman was also a lot of fun. Sadowski also clearly enjoyed his return to the characters, doing a bang-up job on all of them and showing off some neat tricks, such as the Batman outline panels during the Terrific/Batman story.
It's the rest of the book that left me a bit dissatisfied. Most of the stories are too brief to really accomplish anything, although I did find Hedden and Winslade's story of Metamorpho to be a good way to restore that character's status quo, even if the story itself seemed rushed in the sparse page count it was given to develop. The other stories, unfortunately, just seemed a bit empty, or worse, like naked marketing ploys. "Home Again" by Veitch is cute enough, but seems like little more than a continuity catch-up and teaser for the Aquaman series. Stranger is the plug of sorts for Young Justice in "Stormchasers," given that book's cancellation, and the story itself is a little too pat and familiar as well. Finally, I was surprisingly disappointed in "Telephone" by Dan Curtis Johnson, which takes an old joke/party game and runs for a few too many pages, all in service of another "paranoid government agency doesn't like super-heroes" conclusion we've all seen a million times before.
The Secret Files format has always been hit and miss with me, with more of an emphasis on the "miss" part. The hybrid format of story device and "Who's Who" rarely serves either well, and in cases like this one, where the marketing timing of the book is so blatant, that's more true than ever. I can usually at least count on the pin-ups, empty calories that they are, being nice eye candy, but this time out, three or four of those are repeated from marketing materials seen at Cons, in Previews and online as well.
