What has been so cool about Resurrection Man since it's inception has been the lack of superheroes involved in the title. Sure the JLA and Batman popped up, but they never interacted at all with Mitch Shelly, the mythic resurrection man. But this issue, while including many of DCU heroes, sticks to that pattern, using DC's mystical heroes: the Phantom Stranger, Deadman and even Cain and Abel.
Mitch is on the brink of death, for real this time. The nanites that revive him from death continually don't seem to be functioning properly. So in "the dreaming" (from the Sandman comics) Mitch helps and gets help in return from the Phantom Stranger and Deadman, while some strange tricks are turned in Abel's house of secrets.
The story works so well, providing more and more surprises, first as the Stranger bursts on the scene, then when Deadman pokes his ghostly head in, and then when the trio land in the middle of Cain and Abel's chess game.
It's so great to see this darker DCU title interacting with Vertigo characters (the former DC characters they were), and it's always a pleasure to see Deadman. And I think this is perhaps the best version of the Phantom Stranger I have ever seen, more revealed in one issue about this character than over the past ten years.
The writing, as usual by Abnett and Lanning, is superb. Humour is present throughout as is dead seriousness when required. In one now classic scene, after duking it out with the "feeble-brained sputum from the lips of hell", Mitch and the Stranger mistakingly pick up one anothers' hat. They pause, looking at it, then exchange hats, Mitch saying, "Yours, I think," the Stranger saying, "So sorry."
The art by Calafiore, Velluto, et al. is great for fill in artists (both having had regular tours on their own titles in the past), and fit both the lightness and the darkness of the book's tone very well. Big things happen in the issue, a lot of allusion to future stories, but acts well as a great stand-alone for new readers to jump on or try out.