Adventures in the DC Universe #1 (April, 1997)

The Batman & Nightwing villain Blockbuster was attempting to steal millions of dollars worth of gold from the Denver Mint, and despite having been forewarned about the Martian Manhunter, was caught off-guard that the "treacherous alien" could turn invisible. J'Onn J'Onzz tried to cart the big brained brute back down into the tunnel he had dug underneath the mint to prevent his doing any more harm. Blockbuster fought back, unintentionally trigger a gas explosion, into which the villain vanished. The alien fought off his fear of fire to douse the flames by breaking a water main, then pondered Blockbuster's fate. Elsewhere, Flash's foe Super-Gorilla Grodd pulled a similar mid-heist disappearing act, as did recent Aquaman adversary Major Disaster, Superman scoundrel Parasite, Wonder Woman wretch The Cheetah, Green Lantern Kyle Rayner devil Dr. Light, and another Batman baddie, the Scarecrow. The JLA convened at their moon base, and the Caped Crusader traced satellite transmissions related to the vanishings to a location in the desert of the southwestern United States. The JLA crashed their cavernous base and easily overwhelmed the evildoers. However, a mysterious mastermind in an armored mech known only as "Cipher" easily downed Manhunter, Superman, and Lantern with weapons exploiting their weaknesses. Batman directed the JLA to victory, but when the allied aliens ripped open the armor, "He must have teleported away! The suit's empty!" Aside from a bomb to be evaded, that is. The League was left with a mystery, and their foe a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses...

The Justice League of America in "Now You See 'Em..." was by Steve Vance, John Delaney, & Ron H. Boyd. In the editorial material by Frank Berrios, Vance is introduced as a co-founder of Bongo Comics who designed several DC logos and wrote for Paradox Press' Big Book series. Delany was an animation veteran with credits including Flash Gordon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Savage Dragon who was looking for the creative liberty of... corporate comics? Boyd was a film school grad who had one of the longest run working on Legion of Super-Heroes titles. Despite being created as an intentional complement to the Batman and Superman animated series tie-in titles, they allowed Delany to indulge his own design aesthetic rather than hewing closer to the Bruce Timm school as Ty Templeton and Mike Parobeck had done on the short-lived Superman and Batman Magazine. However, like that magazine, Adventures clearly targeted a younger demographic with shorter, simpler stories. This one basically repeated the same plot in four segments of decreasing length, then three additional single panel summaries, leading to the final battle. It's nice that J'Onn got the second, and thus second-longest segment to introduce him to new readers. I preferred Delany's design to Timm's on the Manhunter, and I guess maybe Blockbuster was perhaps some sort of nod to Arnold Hugo and the Detective Comics run? As with Kyle Rayner and the hook-hand Aquaman, Adventures was aggressively rooted in then-modern comics continuity, perhaps to its detriment.