I liked getting a scattershot sampling of One Year Later answers that I otherwise would never have encountered... like Aquaman's big change and Martian Manhunter's new X-Men Movie suit. Would it have been nice for the zeta-ray-mishap heroes to have been explained better? Absolutely. But most of that was so stupid that I think even the writers hated that they did that. Hawkgirl unexplainedly six stories tall? Cyborg fused with Firestorm? Random, dumb, and now all neatly wiped away.

My only problem with World War III was the use of "World War III," because there was nothing World Warry about it. Black Adam goes apeshit and does regular, garden-variety supervillain damage to various countries. That's what I don't get. What makes this a "World War" when other guys have done this, repeatedly? If you're going to criticize event books, you don't need to look any further than that. It's impossible to raise the stakes, because all-encompassing Grant Morrison universal cataclysms happen every month.

OK, so there's a very small geo-political aspect to Adam's rampage. It's so small that it boils down to China not letting the (primarily) American heroes cross into Chinese airspace. I can't even tell you how many times Superman has not given a shit about rules like that, most recently in a tedious story arc over in JLA Classified. If some nutcase is obliterating the innocent populace of China, Superman is going to get in there. Now, Superman is "in hiding" during WWIII thanks to his powers getting shafted at the end of Infinite Crisis, but my general feeling is that 90% of the hero population would act in the same way. Particularly the JSA, who, as Alan Scott has pointed out, consider Black Adam one of their own.

And for a World War, we sure didn't see a lot of actual heroes die, did we? For a guy that was billed ad nauseum as "ferocious" and "every blow is landed to kill," Black Adam left a lot of breathing bodies just lying there.

It would have been more interesting, yes, to have WWIII go even more deeply political, perhaps provide a better lead-in to Checkmate, and see more of China's Great Ten in action. (I have become a huge fan of the Accomplished Perfect Physician, and he only has, what, ten lines in all of 52?) As it stands, WWIII is not substantially different than a billion other villain-goes-amok stories, most of which could therefore justifiably be termed "World War III." The whole World War concept just carries too much historical weight to be slapped onto something like this, which will be forgotten (by DCU standards) almost immediately.

Calling this World War III is like when the news channels rush to label something a "massacre" or a "tragedy" or a "crisis," just so they can be the first to get a fancy graphic on the air. Probably involving crosshairs and a big blocky font.

I thought the ending (as seen in 52 #50) was clever. It's a nice dangler that hopefully will stand for years before some writer decides to come back to it. Unlike, say, the two days that Jean Loring spent in Arkham after Identity Crisis.

Actually, I wouldn't mind if the entire Captain Marvel subset disappears for a while. Because far too many of these events end with one of them bringing down the lightning ex machina.

I really need to get some friends who read comics.