To be honest, I haven't particularly been holding my breath waiting for JLA/Avengers.  I'm not a huge fan of either team.  But there are plenty of people who've been asking for this book for years, guaranteeing it a nice big audience.

Realistically, JLA/Avengers is a book that's intended more as a treat for the hardcore fans who wanted it all that time.  It's an excuse to bring two separate universes together, mix up the elements and let them play off one another.  It's having fun, and inevitably it works on the assumption that you have at least a passing familiarity with both universes.  (If you don't, then you'll follow the plot but I doubt whether you'll really be all that engaged.)

The target audience should be very happy indeed.  If it's mainstream superhero team stories that you want, then Kurt Busiek and George Perez are the ideal creative team.  You're dealing there with people who obviously know and love both companies' history and are clearly taking tremendous pleasure in playing with the toys in new combinations.

The story sets up a fairly standard quest framework (here's a list of objects, go and find them) against the background of a cosmic threat clearly set up to echo Crisis on Infinite Earths.  It's a little surprising to see a long-established alternate dimension from Marvel's universe wiped out in the opening pages, actually - even if it is a backwater that hasn't done much of interest in years.

The entertainment comes more from sticking the characters in the other universe and watching it confuse the hell out of them.  In a particularly nice touch, the DC characters arrive on Earth-Marvel and think they've stumbled into a dystopian hell.  Meanwhile, the Avengers reach the DCU and promptly decide that it's a superhero version of the Stepford Wives.  Okay, this is a point which is much less valid than it once was, and Captain America's perhaps not the best spokesperson for the Marvel characters on the issue - but it's still funny.

To be honest, I enjoyed this much more than I was expecting to.  It's got enough of a story to justify the whole exercise, but not enough to distract from the real point.  And it does work.

Rating: A

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