Justice League #1
Warning this review contains spoilers for the first issue of Justice League by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee
First off I want to say that only 4/7 of the characters on the cover show up at all in this first issue, and I have a problem with that since in the 80’s we could have a half a book story in Secret Origin and we would get the back story on all the characters and why they needed to come together in the first place. Anyways so yes in this issue we are privy to see Batman, Green Lantern, Vic Stone (eventually Cyborg), and the Man of Steel himself Superman. As we saw in the six-page preview two months ago the world, or just Gotham, isn’t to friendly to the whole vigilante super hero thing with the police hunting down Batman and the thing he is chasing. The beast Batman is chasing looks to me like some kind of strange robot/Parademon/Doomsday hybrid. Then out comes Green Lantern to help out old Bats, but Batman doesn’t care for how bright Green Lantern is. At this point the beast shots some sort of laser blast at the two heroes, but misses them and hits the police helicopter instead. To be the hero Green Lantern catches the crashing helicopters with bats, have to say I would preferred to have seen him use a catchers glove instead. This is where we find out that old robo-para-doomsday can shape shift, as he does so to run away. The creature escapes underground and our heroes are quick to follow. By this point we are made fully aware of how cocky and arrogant Green Lantern is, with his attitude of “I can do everything and you can do nothing because you are just a puny man dressed as a bat. Nothing makes you special.” The batman spots the creature and that’s when it sets of some ort of device, Green Lantern protects the two heroes as the creature cries out “FOR DARKSEID”. Green Lantern mistakes it as “Dark Side”. The two heroes check out the device after all the smoke and fire subside, Green Lantern scans it with his ring and guess what its unable to identify the strange thing, well Batman thinks it could be some sort of alien computer (possibly and exploding Mother Box). So since Batman and Green Lantern both agree that the device is alien they decide to be xenophobic and question the only known alien on the planet. Cut to a football game where star athlete Vic Stone scores a touchdown, but that means nothing to him since the person who he had a reserved seat for did. In the coaches office scouts offer anything they can to get Vic, but the coach wont let any of them talk with Vic till his dad is there, unfortunately for Vic daddy is a busy man. A green light construct of a fighter jet fly’s overhead, and everyone is excited to see”…one of them!” even if its not Superman. This also where we find out that Vic’s dad studies super-humans. Now if I were abetting man I would be putting money down on Vic’s life being drastically changed after this. Batman and Green Lantern land at a Lexcorp demolition zone where Superman is supposed to be according to the ring. Batman grumbles about how they should have been stealthy in their approach instead of taking “a glowing green jet”. Green Lantern has still got the cocky attitude that he can handle anything, so he locks Batman in a construct and faces off against Superman all by himself. Turn the page and Superman is knocking Green Lantern out, and with the three dialogue balloons I get an attitude of arrogance from Superman that I don’t care for, hopefully Grant Morrison can fix that. After that we get a couple of pages of concept art from the designing stage of the title.
As much as I have my problems with this issue I still enjoyed it. There’s not a lot of meat to this first issue, but it’s paving the groundwork for this new universe to take shape. I don’t think they should have reveled that the big bad was Darkseid, because now the suspense of who is behind all this is gone. One more problem I have with the Darkseid story plot was that all through SDCC we kept hearing that the New Gods were going to be Earth-51 and that we would see them in Multiversity, but here we are in Justice League getting a New God, or is it that Darkseid isn’t a New God anymore or is this “Darkseid” something completely different? The final thing I have to say is that I still feel Geoff Johns can’t write Batman anywhere near as good as we have some to expect thanks to writers like Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder, Johns still seems trapped in writing Batman as “I’m dark, brooding, and angry… FEAR ME!!!” and we all know that Batman doesn’t have to be like that anymore. Sadly the personality traits Johns gives Batman lead me to believe that he still thinks of Batman as the paranoid crazy person that dresses up as a bat and has plans to take down everyone in the universe because he can’t trust them.
The next issue is Batman vs. Superman out in store on October 19, 2011. I hope you all enjoy this first month of the reboots.
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