Meta-Cancelled
I've long since been frustrated with each issue being half drawn by Phil Winslade and half by Tom Raney. The styles are vaguely similar, but half the issue looks great and half looks just so-so. This issue is no exception. Timothy Green II is on fire on the co-feature still though.
There's no real good way to break down this issue into small chunks to analyze. Instead of coming to a natural close, Giffen literally grinds things to a halt . There's no more real character development or anything, the plot takes a whiplash sudden turn into completely insane territory. And honestly, the whole things gets WAY too meta in an extremely odd way, especially considering how tied into the New 52 this was in its own odd way. I mean, after Blue Beetle's whole cosmic journey; he's suddenly just teleported back to Earth just like that?
It's way too self aware. The Hunted being staged as deeply as it was comes across as just too far fetched in the way things are presented. It paints all the events of the issue as utterly hopeless and meaningless, as none of the characters REALLY had any true control over their own destinies. Plus there's just too many mentions of 'stunts' to 'boost ratings.' At times it literally feels like we're in the offices of DC. Maybe if this was built up more it could've been a nice deep idea, but the way it comes out of left field, definitely as a play on the actual cancellation is just weird.
In Conclusion: 3/5
I feel like the idea behind this had tons of potential, but it was executed with such a lack of finesse that it just kind of grates on the mind as you try to piece together how deeply layered the deception was.