Images © DC Comics, Inc.

As this series gets closer to the present, the amount of time covered lessens, and I guess that’s only fair, since DC’s continuity has gotten larger and more complicated over the years as well. This time we see the return of Batman and Superman, and the crisis that befell Hal Jordan, turning him to the entity known as Parallax. The latter was interesting to me, as it happened at a time when I wasn’t reading any of the Green Lantern books. Writer Len Wein does a good job with these stories, as well as the more personal story of the family he’s been following through the decades, the head of which is a Metropolis policeman.

The art on the main story by Dan Jurgens and Jerry Ordway is fine. Ordway gives everything his own professional polish, so it almost looks like his pencils in many places.

The backup story this time is about Jack Kirby’s New Gods, kind of late time-wise, but perhaps DC is intending to push up their introduction in their new continuity from the original 1970 or so to the 1980s. The artist choice is an odd one, Frank Quitely. I like his work a lot in most cases, but his style is about as far from Jack Kirby as you can go in the superhero world, and it doesn’t work very well. He probably had fun with it, but replacing Kirby’s heavily stylized angles, facets and energetic bursts with Quitely’s very soft, rounded and almost pebbly approach is too far off for me.

Despite that, because I enjoyed the main story, the issue is recommended.