Harmless. As a follower of the Milestone universe, I'm picking up all these team-ups introducing that publisher's characters into the Marvel U. Matt Wayne does a nice job integrating Static and his world into the DCU with little bits like having Black Lightning having spent time in Static's home town in the past. With a smaller-time hero like Static, it is believable that he wouldn't have a lot of exposure to the A-list heroing set, so it was fun seeing how confident and smug Static was when dealing with Black Lightning. Holocaust was a toughie back in the Milestone days, and he stood pretty tough throughout most of this issue too. I enjoyed seeing Static constantly ribbing on both the villain and the hero here, Virgil was easily the star of the issue. In fact, when paired, Static comes off as a vastly better character, there is much more to him than the fairly bland Lightning. This was generic, but fun, so it was worth my money.
Peter Tomasi turns out another fantastic lead in to Blackest Night. There is so much plot running here, it is hard to keep up with. Honor Guard Lanterns Guy Gardner and Kyle Rayner are in the midst of transporting the wounded around the newly vulnerable Oa (it's battery-shield broke apart last issue). As an aside, it seems my new character find of 2009, Voz the Jailor Lantern, is alive, since Rayner is taking him to be fixed up. Yay!
Warren Ellis has a great handle on about half the characters in this comic. His White Queen is snooty and smug, Beast is earnest and clever. I liked his take on Armor as a new member getting over her nervousness about working with the A-team. Storm is tough and regal, while retaining some of her old nurturing ways. But Cyclops is WAAAAY to bloodthirsty and comes across as a villain. Speaking of villains, Forge comes off like a nut here, totally out of character too. I don't think this type of character progression is necessary, and in fact, is kind of pointless. Forge wanted to attack a parallel Earth through a Ghost Box, and the X-Men immediately attack him and try to stop him. Then Beast has his girlfriend Agent Brand of SWORD zap a laser through the Ghost Box anyway, and Cyclops says it was the right move. What? I really don't like where this story arc left a bunch of characters.
I'm relieved that Dwayne McDuffie at least got to wrap up his Starbreaker story, even if it did go on too long. It turns out that Icon and Hardware fit into the book better than I expected, although Hardware would probably not have fit in to the team too well (unless Hawkman had come back, I bet those two would get along). Starbreaker explains how the DCU Sun-Eaters are in fact larval stages for his race, which makes sense from a nutritional point of view, I suppose. I never became too interested in Starbreaker as a villain at any point in this story though. I did enjoy all the teamwork the JLA showed in this issue, they actually won their battle through teamwork and toughness, which was nice to see. I hadn't figured I'd like this B-team of the JLA too much, but with Hardware, Icon, and Paladin (an alternate Earth Batman) the team worked out ok after all. The highpoint of the issue would be Dr. Light and Firestorm getting some nice revenge on Shadow Thief. I particularly liked Firestorm mentioning Ronnie Raymond, the previous hero to bear that mantle.
This was actually a pretty enjoyable trade. The whole time I was reading this, in the back of my mind I was thinking how none of it really matters since the Ultimate U is being destroyed in Ultimatum. But since I haven't read that, I tried to go ahead and just read this story for what it was. It actually functions quite well as an inter-universe crossover.
What a fantastic idea for a team up. Putting Professor X as the lead of an X-book would have once turned me away, but pairing him up with Gambit and having the two of them wander through X-Men history? That's a great idea.