Starting in 2018, and I guess spinning out of one of those Metal or Dark Multiverse event things I did my damnedest to avoid, this is sort of a "Fantastic Four in the DCU" book, though Lemire has to work a little to bring together his chosen cast.
Mr. Terrific's company was bought up by Simon Stagg while Terrific was off in the Dark Multiverse or something. Holt shows up to meet with Stagg about it, finds him using Metamorpho as some sort of probe to explore said Dark Multiverse. I'm going to try and make that the last time I use that phrase in this post. It's mostly another way for Lemire to throw the cast into different worlds.
Stagg fucks it up, Holt busts out a comatose Plastic Man, who wakes up from a reaction to the energies being thrown around, and keeps Mr. T and Metamorpho from dying as they get sucked in. They find the corpse of some giant, and run into Phantom Girl from the Legion of Superheroes. Or a young girl from the same planet, a thousand years in the past, I guess. When they make it back to Earth, they find the energy won't let them get more than a mile apart. So they might as well deal with other problems while they're stuck together.
The problems don't waste any time showing up. They're attacked by a War Wheel, then a town in Michigan suffers an outbreak of Metamorphoing. That giant corpse they found had a beacon left by Tom Strong, so Mr. Terrific's determined to track him down. In the middle of that, he's targeted by a Dr. Dread. My first thought was it was the Dr. Doom knock-off from the Extremists that fought the Justice League in the '90s, but no, it's someone else entirely. I tend to have issues with Lemire's, let's call it leisurely, pacing in some of his other things I've read, but he keeps the ball rolling here.
The cast stick together in large part for lack of better options, even after the artificial constraint is gone. Phantom Girl finds she's been away from home much longer than she thought, and finds it more stifling than she recalled after a few adventures. Plastic Man had been in a coma for 5 years (5 years?!), so reconnecting with his kid doesn't go great. Metamorpho gets turned back into Rex Mason, but just like Ben Grimm, can't quite believe he's good enough for Sapphire Stagg that way.
Mr. Terrific's the most resistant, as Lemire writes him as extremely isolated. All this, the mystery, the energy holding them together, it's just getting in the way of his research. Tom Strong, who has a full life of action science, but also a family of adventurers, a talking gorilla pal, a robot butler, all that jazz, acts as a sharp contrast with Michael Holt, who had his own company and a skyscraper research lab, occupied solely by him.
The biggest issue the book has over Lemire's 14 issues as writer is the lack of a consistent artist. Ivan Reis is the first go, but Jose Luis is already drawing 5 pages by issue 2. Joe Bennett draws issue 3 and 6, with Shaner handling the two in-between. Then Dale Eaglesham for two issues of trying to find Tom Strong, but Jose Luis draws another issue before that arc's done. Then three issues by Viktor Bogdanovic, before the last two issues by Bennett.
You can sort of handwave the shifts in art style with the jumping between universes, although it's rarely a 1:1. Shaner draws the first issue of the Metamorpho story, but Bennett finishes it, for example. It doesn't kill the book. Jose Luis is adaptable enough he can draw close to either Reis or Eaglesham's to minimize the obviousness of the shift. Bogdanovic's rougher, more sharply squared off figures are the most out of place compared to the others. But it doesn't help it, either. Again, I could try arguing the shifts represent the quartet struggling to come together as a team, when they're even trying, but that would require the art team to stabilize when they finally choose to stick together.
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