With the Gambler Dead, the Justice Society of America must start examining who the possible suspects could be, not helped by Sylvester’s over-enthusiastic approach.

It seemed pretty clear in the first episode that Sylvester wasn’t going to just slot in easily to the lives of everyone in Blue Valley and this instalment really does serve to confirm that. What’s less clear is whether Sylvester is going to turn out to be a straight up bad guy, or just a deeply flawed person – a level of nuance you wouldn’t normally expect from this type of show.

Anyway, the Gambler is dead and now begins the search for his killer, in a town full of super villains who swear that they’re reformed. Super Villains who also had a hand in the death of the original JSA. That means Sylvester isn’t exactly minded to give any of them the benefit of the doubt, including the Shade, who is convinced must have murdered his old colleague. That leads to some serious confrontation as well as Shade making a serious decision, but not before the show has tilted us just enough towards wondering whether the dapper Englishman really might have had a hand in the events of that fateful night.

Courtney finds herself fighting similar battles on multiple fronts – when she isn’t trying to stop Sylvester from overdoing it, she’s got Yolanda and Rick to deal with, neither of whom trust Cindy as far as they could throw her. To be fair to them, they did find their former nemesis standing over the body of the Gambler holding his gun which had just gone off. Courtney reaches the conclusion that whoever has the late criminals missing laptop must be the killer, though that theory has issues of its own.

Mike and Jakeem have to cause some mischief of their own of course, and decide to use Thunderbolt to try to short cut the investigation and discover the identity of the mysterious killer. That’s not really going to end well for them, based off previous experience, and so it proves here.

When Sylvester isn’t being annoying, he’s trying to help Courtney master the staff, by showing her some things she doesn’t know it can do. Courtney’s a quick study, but realistically how long can the pair of them keep sharing the staff, given Sylvester’s ego?

As the episode winds down, multiple suspects appear to be potentially in the frame for the murder – clearly this won’t be a simple investigation.

Verdict: It feels at times a little too much like the show is trying to point the audience where it wants them, but at least it’s offering us nuance and complexity in amongst the spandex. 8/10

Greg D. Smith