Justice League of America #257 – “Coming Down” – J.M. DeMatteis/Luke McDonnell/Bob Smith
Last issue, Zatanna and Gypsy journeyed inside the mind of Adam, the cult leader who tried to make himself a god by mixing some of Zatanna’s magical DNA with his own. He succeeded a little too well and ended up expanding his mind so much that he encountered the Godhead, the creator of the universe, which drove him nuts. Adam’s mind is so far gone that he’s unwittingly altering reality, which freaks out Gypsy’s friend Pamela. J’onn J’onzz is monitoring Adam’s mind,
but can’t do much to help Zatanna and Gypsy, who end up being pulled into the quagmire of Adam’s subconscious. Zatanna gets them out, but feels guilty about bringing Gypsy into Adam’s mind, so she sends her back outside. Zatanna goes deeper into Adam’s mind and is almost overwhelmed by the psychic onslaught, but she hears a voice she believes is her father Zatara (who died recently in Swamp Thing) and that gives her the strength to go on. J’onn can sense the other presence too, but doesn’t believe it’s really Zatara. As reality goes completely wild, J’onn asks Gypsy to counter it with her illusion powers, making it seem like everything is normal to keep Pamela from losing her 
mind. Inside Adam’s mind, Zatanna starts to wonder whether the voice guiding her really belongs to her dead father, but he reminds her that she heard his voice before she made contact with Adam’s mind. She makes her way through the chaos of Adam’s insanity and finds his ego, but it’s being eaten away by the Godhead. The voice tells Zatanna that the Godhead contains all of creation, pat, present, and future, and urges her to surrender herself to it instead of severing its link to Adam’s mind. Wanting to see her father again, Zatanna allows herself to be consumed by the Godhead, which causes reality to go crazy outside again, and freaks J’onn out. Zatanna emerges back into reality
(which goes back to normal) and tells J’onn and Gypsy that letting Adam’s ego be consumed by the Godhead was the right thing to do. Adam wakes up and starts spouting New Age bullshit about how everything is destiny and he knows his purpose in life now. After curing Pamela’s madness, Zatanna tells her friends she’s leaving with Adam to fulfill their shared destiny. (I think this was setting up a Zatanna mini-series.) J’onn isn’t too happy about Zatanna’s sudden departure, but Gypsy says she could feel the love and good 
vibrations emanating from Zatanna and Adam, so it’s probably fine. Later, they tell the rest of the JLA what happened and opinion is divided on whether Zatanna’s in trouble or not. Before they can discuss it further, Firestorm shows up to tell them he needs help against Brimstone (which leads into the Legends mini-series). This issue reads like Marc DeMatteis was cribbing from a Psych 101 textbook, but he always did like delving deeply inside the heads of his characters; he did the same thing during his run on Spider-Man.
All-Star Squadron #64 – “See You in the Funny Papers” – Roy Thomas/Wayne Boring/Tony DeZuniga
This is another of Roy Thomas’s attempts to deal without the fallout from Crisis, this time adapting a story from Superman #19 to place the All-Stars as the heroes instead of the Golden Age Superman (who no longer existed in post-Crisis continuity). I get the feeling most of the comic strip characters in this story were based on real comic strip characters, but I’m not certain. Anyway, this story takes place between All-Star Squadron 46 and 47, so it starts with Johnny Quick and Liberty Belle discussing Tom
Revere’s death and quickly leads to Johnny proposing to Belle. She says yes, but the celebration is interrupted by a report of a giant named Torgo (who’s a character in a newspaper comic) rampaging through Metropolis. Johnny and Belle head to Metropolis and confront Torgo, but he vanishes with some money he stole from a bank. The two All-Stars aren’t sure if they were hallucinating, since fighting a comic strip character isn’t something that happens every day, but a weird balloon-head calling itself 
Funny Face pops up and tells them they’re not dreaming, then it vanishes too. Belle and Johnny head back to New York to alert some other All-Stars (Tarantula, Robotman, Starman, Firebrand, and Atom) and Belle contacts newspaper publisher Lee Travis (who’s secretly the Crimson Avenger) to ask him about the cartoon-gone-wild. He’s skeptical until another report comes in about Machine Gun Mike (another comics character) leading some thugs in a robbery. Robotman goes after Machine Gun, who disappears thanks to Funny Face. Robotman does manage to catch the gang members and recover the loot. Atom and Firebrand check out the stockyards, thinking
the Black Raider (a cowboy comic character) might strike there. Black Raider is there and ends up starting a stampede, which is enough to distract Firebrand and get her captured. She’s taken back to Funny Face’s hideout where he shows her a machine that can bring two-dimensional characters (like comic strips) to life. He demonstrates by animating Goola, a Martian villain and sending him to rob a train. Goola runs into Starman, Sandman, and Sandy, but escapes when Funny Face makes him vanish. Tarantula ends up fighting another comic villain, the Viper, but before he vanishes Tarantula notices the location of Funny Face’s hideout scrawled on Viper’s shirt … apparently Firebrand did it while Viper was still just a 2-D drawing. The All-Stars bust into the hideout and pound Funny Face (who turns out to be a disgruntled cartoonist), destroying his machine.
Infinity Inc. #33 – “Obsidian: The Origin” – Roy and Dann Thomas/Todd McFarlane, Ron Harris/Tony DeZuniga
This is a digression from the regular storyline to present Obsidian’s origin, so if you were expecting to see the Infinitors and Global Guardians in Calgary, you’ll have to wait until next issue. I get the feeling McFarlane might’ve had deadline troubles with that story, so this one was slotted in to give him a bit more time. It’s pretty familiar territory, since we already kinda know Obsidian’s origin; this gives more details, but I’m not going to get too deep into it. Obsidian is Todd Rice, who was adopted by a couple in Milwaukee. His twin sister Jennie-Lynn (aka Jade) was also adopted by a
different couple and the twins didn’t know of each other’s existence, even though they grew up only a few miles apart. Todd’s father lost his job and turned into a booze-hound, causing his wife to walk out and take Todd’s younger brother along. Todd stayed but his father’s drunken rant about him having a sister made him curious. His father ended up taking out his frustrations on Todd, causing his darkness powers to manifest for the first time. He tested his powers out for a while and used them to get into the hospital where he was born to look at birth records. He found out about Jennie-Lynn and started following her 
around (it was a bit creepy, actually), afraid to introduce himself for fear his only blood relation might tell him to get lost. But Jennie-Lynn found out about her own powers by accident (when she suddenly turned green) and her parents told her she was adopted and had a twin brother. She tried the “psychic twin” thing and made contact with Todd’s mind, coming to see him and reveal her powers. Because of her powers, Jennie-Lynn assumed Green Lantern was their father, but Todd was skeptical. Thy trained together and Todd helped her fight off some punks at the store where she worked, although his power to bring out a person’s darkest fears freaked him out the first time he used it. He met
Jennie-Lynn’s family and she showed him the costume she made and proposed they try to join the JSA (and talk to Green Lantern to see if he really was their father). Todd wasn’t too keen on being a super-hero until he used his powers to save his boss at the steel plant where he worked. That made his mind up and he told Jennie-Lynn, who had already made a costume for him. They told her parents about their powers (and that they were twins) and went to crash the JSA meeting, which we saw in issue 1.