The trick of comics, as we all know by now, is to be perpetually arriving. The first volume of Mark Waid’s Justice League Unlimited saw the team battle a threat that was revealed in the end to be a disguised Legion of Doom; the We Are Yesterday crossover with World’s Finest then had Grodd emerge from the Legion as the biggest threat, defeated by stranding time-lost heroes in the present.

We come then to Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2: The Omega Act, in which Grodd’s presence finally puts the Doomsday Time Trapper in front of the League, such to begin to discuss Darkseid and his evil Legion of Super-Heroes. We might could have just started there, a la the Time Trapper’s appearance in Superman early in DC All In, but then it wouldn’t be the excitement of monthly comics, starting the story from as far back as possible and building cliffhanger upon cliffhanger.

It is all very exciting, and after the relative success of Dawn of DC and Absolute Power, if DC can pull it off a second time — the sub-event of DC K.O. leading to the main event of … something — that’ll be impressive indeed. The seams are obviously showing, in that a majority of Omega Act’s forward action actually takes place in the parallel Superman issues, but Waid still manages to wring some pulse-pounding moments out of Unlimited essentially biding its time. If even the “throwaway” issues can deliver suspense, that’s a good sign for what’s coming.

[Review contains spoilers]

Of the three main Unlimited issues collected here, one sees Mr. Terrific try to save displaced young hero Air Wave, and the other two follow multi-front battles: Metamorpho et al. conducting surgery on the Time Trapper as the Watchtower disintegrates around them; Terrific trying to escape a horde of rampaging Parademons; and a crew consisting of Power Girl and Captain Atom battling the evil Legion of Super-Heroes on Earth.

We know with regular certainty that most of our heroes will survive, so whenever a writer can create this kind of “how are they going to get out of this” suspense, that’s worth taking note; Waid has shown this aptitude for years. Here, I think it’s what seems like an overwhelming number of Parademons going after Terrific, more than he can perhaps realistically escape from, and the paneling of Terrific racing across a swiftly collapsing Watchtower, that really sell the sequence. Artist Dan Mora is pitch perfect in the first part as always, but Carmine Di Giandomeico and colorist Tamra Bonvillain really deliver the scope of the calamity in the conclusion.

Again, that’s about the best we can hope for among a trio of issues that don’t matter that much all told. The Parademon’s been bopping around the Watchtower’s brig since Justice League United Vol. 1: Into the Inferno, and its releasing of its eggs doesn’t seem so much a plan by Darkseid as a malevolent coincidence. The Trapper is healed and the Watchtower preturnaturally repaired in the end, so there’s no real consequence to anything that took place in the previous pages — just in time for Superman to reconnect with Unlimited headed in to DC K.O. Clearly this story could be told with fewer issues (even replacing some of these issues with the contents of the two included specials), but then that wouldn’t be serial comics.

As I mentioned also with Inferno, Waid’s either planning something for Mr. Terrific or has a particular conception of him, different than mind. In Inferno, Terrific was frantic about never being wrong; here, we see a Terrific so frustrated at not being able to solve a problem that he throws a keyboard at Blue Beetle, and curtly tells Martian Manhunter, “No one asked you,” when J’onn asks after his well-being. Hearkening back even Terrific’s Geoff Johns JSA days, I recall Terrific being far more level, and I’m curious what Waid’s plan is with a Terrific who seems not himself.

(I’ll venture some other characterizations seem off, too, including Hal Jordan saying, “That’s my Green Lantern schtick, dude,” or Superman bringing up the travails of Jason Todd to needle Batman!)

In Superman Vol. 4: Rise of the Superwoman, I was impressed with Joshua Williamson recalling Doomsday’s origins from the 1990s Hunter/Prey, what some might call ancient history. In Williamson’s Omega Act special, included here, we find that was an opening salvo; Williamson’s building on those origins, now suggesting Doomsday’s creation on Krypton was directly tied to battling the threat of the “King Omega” Darkseid. Slotting that into a friendship between Superman’s mother Lara and General Zod’s paramour Ursa is fun; I’ll also be curious to see whether Williamson and Waid intend to make more of the artifact that Lara and Ursa found or whether their presence was just to put color on the new origins of Doomsday.

Justice League Unlimited Vol. 2: The Omega Act and the Superman titles and DC K.O. all likely worked seamlessly in monthly form, and it’s not the creators' faults that the collections are less straightforward. The Superman issues that run parallel to Omega Act will be collected with Superman’s DC K.O. tie-ins proper in August and, of course, any right-minded person would read the DC K.O. trade before they read DC K.O.: Superman.

That means the reader doesn’t get the really salient information from Omega Act — where did Booster Gold come from? Where’s he been? — until after DC K.O.; that trade-waiters will read the end before the beginning, as it were. That’s not optimal — DC could’ve stuck three issues of Superman in here, maybe — though we’d rather collected than not, of course.

[Includes original and variant covers]