Can seven super powered individuals work together? Maybe someday.
What They Say:
In a world where inexperienced superheroes operate under a cloud of suspicion from the public, loner vigilante Batman has stumbled upon a dark evil that threatens to destroy the earth as we know it. Now, faced with a threat far beyond anything he can handle on his own, the Dark Knight must trust an alien, a scarlet speedster, an accidental teenage hero, a space cop, an Amazon Princess and an undersea monarch. Will this combination of Superman, The Flash, Cyborg, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman and Aquaman be able to put aside their differences and come together to save the world? Or will they destroy each other first?
The Review:
The preamble: I got into DC comics about a year prior to Crisis on Infinite Earths and fell out of comics entirely in the 90′s. I dabbled again in the early 2000′s and then bought a lot of trades over the years. I’ve spent the last year reading a lot of DC again exclusively via Comixology as I don’t want physical issues (I’ve got 20,000 I’ll never reread again in floppy form) and I love the portability and the ease of it. I’m a long time comics fan of both Marvel and DC, plenty of independents and a whole lot of manga and other comics. I love the art form. And I’ve been enthused since day one about the relaunch and soft reboot. My only frustration back then was that I didn’t get the segue in Flashpoint because the 4th and 5th issues still aren’t available to digital consumers at this point. While their plan made sense when they announced at the start of 2011, it does not make sense now and they missed an opportunity.
With that in mind, I picked up the first three issues of Justice League and reviewed those, but time got away for me and I opted to shift to the graphic novels going forward. Taking this story arc in within one sitting did change the flow of it, mostly for the better since it’s the kind of story that should have been done in one oversized first issue rather than six. The importance of this story, taking five years prior to the present day continuity and focusing on how various super powered people were starting to make their way into the national consciousness. Through the issues, we get a pretty good introduction to how everyone first met with the focus on an alien attack that’s about to hit as Green Lantern discovers that Batman is real, they decide to see if Superman knows anything since he’s an alien himself and then it all goes to hell. Amusingly, Hal’s a pretty cocky guy here, more than usual in some ways, and that causes things to go to big misunderstandings level rather quickly. Which is a bit of a cliché to be sure, but it does let us get a feel for the characters, abilities and the personalities at hand here.
Over the course of the book, more of the core super seven show up as well, such as Barry Allen as the Flash being friends with Hal and coming to try and settle things down. Wonder Woman gets involved when she learns that there may be harpies about but ends up dealing with aliens instead and just relishes the thrill of battle. And naturally, the alien incursion is having its presence undersea as well, which has Aquaman making his debut and definitely coming off as the leader type as he pushes in his own particular style that he’s the most suited to lead. The opening arc also serves as an origin story for Cyborg as we see Vic Stone and his problems with his father, the place he is in his life as his natural athletic skills are going to lose their value in the face of superhumans out there, and how he becomes integral to the team that’s slowly forming. Which has no name by the end of it but does have a great bit of humor about it, giving Flash more of a personality than I’ve felt he’s had since his return a few years ago.
The opening arc is something of a mixed bag and I really hesitate to call it that. I thoroughly enjoyed the individual issues I read and I really liked what I got here, but in terms of story it’s a very big by the numbers work. But realistically, with this being a foundation piece, it has to be since it’s establishing how these characters met and their core personalities, making it easy for the wave of new readers to get into it and for older readers to see where they all stand. There really aren’t any surprises here, from the way they come together to the villain at hand, but the execution is spot on. With Jim Lee’s art and the smooth and fairly classic banter her, mingled with the contemporary references to things, it properly dates itself as it should and as comics always have. It comes together well and sets things right, but it also feels like it should have gone a bit extra in what it did to separate itself from the past.
In Summary:
The first six issues of the Justice League series does a lot of things right and when you want it to be a somewhat accessible series at first where it deals with the characters in their base form, you really can’t complain. Long time fans may have issues with it for a variety of reasons, but the work as a whole does a lot right in my book and has me looking forward to more and definitely has me wanting to check out pretty much all the characters in their respective books. The series does the job it has to do in style and with a all the right marks hit, and some amusing humor that worked better than I thought it would since it plays off of elements in the past incarnations as well. It’s a well done book and left me happy, though conflicted in some ways as well.
Grade: B+
