JLA : Classified #36 - DC

This issue wraps up the 4th Parallel storyline. It wrapped up more or less how I expected it to. But . . then again . . not really. There's a few little twists. We come back to the world where Darren, sorry the Red King, is a hero. The public has accepted him, and so has the JLA. At least that's what he thinks. But everyone, is a little skeptical. It appears that Darren and Wonder Woman are starting to have a relationship also. But then, as Batman is bringing Killer Moth back to Arkham, he finds out that John Dee, the original possessor of the Materioptikon, has been muttering the Red King's name. But he's been in a catatonic state since before the Red King's appearance. So Batman starts to do some investigating. We see back in to the crystal, where 2 other of Darren's splits are arguing about keeping the 4th Parallel open. It's draining to much of their power, but they need it as a contingency. In the Parallel where the Earth blew up, and the JLA has repopulated Mars with all of Earth's inhabitants, Batman has figured out who's behind all this, and that they need to go in to the crystal to bring it to a stop. And just as the one Red King is in the process of killing the other, Plastic Man comes slithering through. He find's Destiny and both Darren's talking about the 4th Parallel. "A normal, uneventful place. Created as a fallback . . . a "reset" button in case everything went wrong. A back door to escape this insanity."And then Darren snaps his neck, or . . his own neck. The JLA then puts a plan together to take the Red King down. It's kind of long and complicated, but basically it involves setting Destiny free, in the crystal world, getting the Red King to merge with his final self, so he's down to the last split, and then forcing him back in to the crystal. They pull it off, and now Darren is at the mercy of Destiny. The JLA lock up the crystal, and the only real peripheral damage is that Plastic Man played such a big part in both realities, and there ended up being 2 of him, so they had to merge. But he still has all the memories of both Parallel's. And in the one, all of his friends were killed. So they aren't all good ones. I think this is going to change Plastic Man a bit. We'll see. Anyways, overall a very good story. A little complicated, but it needed to be. If Dan Slott had taken to many jumps, without explaining them or justifying them, it would've made the story sloppy, and less believable. So overall I think that it was put together quite nicely.