Mister Action! Robin! Hero versus Her... um. Never mind.
Once again, Jimmy manages to make a fool of himself. Oh, it's not that he doesn't have the powers, it's that he hasn't taken the time to think things through. So, he goes and applies to the Teen Titans for membership. Only thing, it didn't occur to him in advance that his powers only work when his life is in danger. So, no powers when he tries to demonstrate. Ouch.
I'm assuming his powers somehow know whether an attack is going to be life-threatening. Does that mean there's a sentience behind the powers? Otherwise, how exactly would this work?
Mary Marvel and Zatanna find their cruise ship under attack, and find themselves fighting Slig, of the Deep Six. Things don't turn out well. We do get our first glimpse of Eclipso, though. For anyone who's forgotten, she's also known as Jean Loring, the person who set into motion the whole sequence of events leading from Identity Crisis to Infinite Crisis to 52 to Countdown and, next spring, Final Crisis.
Pied Piper and Trickster have their confrontation with Batwoman and The Question, and they don't end up looking too good. On the other hand, they do get let go once The Question decides they're morons who would have been incapable of killing the Flash.
We get a brief look-in at the Monitors, who've realized that Bob, Jason Todd, and Donna Troy are missing from the multiverse, along with Ryan Choi. One of them ties this in with the missing Ray Palmer, Ryan Choi's predecessor as The Atom. For folks who are supposed to be nigh-unto omniscient, and who have theoretically been keeping their beady little glowing-red eyes on Jason and Donna, they certainly mucked this one up.
Oracle (Barbara Gordon) is simultaneously fighting the Calculator in two different arenas. First, there's the attempted hack on her database servers, and secondly there's a global virus attack (intended to sew chaos and distract her from fighting the hack). Need I mention that she shuts both down cleanly, mightily pissing off Calculator in the process.
We also get to see some of the other heroes fighting the chaos. Superman, Power Girl, and Supergirl keeping aircraft from colliding. We've got Green Lantern rescuing a space shuttle whose computers are down. The JSA recaptures escapees from "Stryker's Island" in Metropolis. Okay, Metropolis is loosely based on New York (as is Gotham City, for that matter), but is it really necessary to have stupidly named and thinly-veiled versions of New York's landmarks? Stryker's Island? As opposed to Ryker's Island in New York? Shgeesh. It's a name that might have worked in the forties or fifties, but nowadays it's enough to pull you out of the story. At least it did for me.
Oh, and we saw Uncle Sam and the Freedom Fighters stopping some nuclear-tipped missiles from successfully launching. It seems they thought that dropping nukes on our allies would be a Bad Idea. Silly heroes. They should have checked first with George W. and Dick C. They wouldn't have been distressed by an accidental nuke or seventeen.
Finally, we have the start of the postponed meeting between Oracle, Karate Kid, and Una. We don't find out much new, but what we do discover... if true, it's a big one.
Oh, yeah, just one more thing... Darkseid. We're starting to get a clue of his plans, and I'm beginning to think he's been a prime mover behind the scenes for several years now. He's working on something called the New Multiversal Dynasty. This sounds double-plus-ungood.
