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| [ SLAMMING SALE ] |
TO QUOTE HAL-9000: "Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I
honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think
things over."
THE REVIEW:
Well now, last month I wasn’t completely wrong with my
whodunnit theory. No pre-teen
support crew, though. But Lily Palmer is
shaping up to be an excellent junior hero in her own right. And, yeah, apparently no relevance to Ray
Palmer or The Phantom either! Ah well, maybe I'll do better next time around.
Now I do realize that you won't get the
chance to read this until 2017, but the Justice League focus for the
closing weeks of 2016 was presumably supposed to be focused on building up to
the Justice League vs Suicide Squad crossover event. Yet with the story of Hitch’s Justice League
finally on an upswing over the past few issues, there’s plenty of solid JL meat
for fans to sink their teeth into as we await the one-shots
that kick off the new JLA series.
It’s not all sunshine and roses, but the
overall trend is veering towards the good.
Alfred still looks like Tim Curry’s Rooster, and little Bobby Palmer
periodically has his hands melt into his head, but that said, Edwards and
Henriques’ art is, for the most part, the bold, bright, fun style that I
expect from a Justice League series. Sadly,
their art is at its best when there’s no action on the page. There’s an uncomfortable number of faces that
look like the heroes really need to take a bathroom break, or limbs that are
having a slow seizure, and sometimes
faces just seem to be melting, but that’s more than made up for with the slower
moments. They masterfully render the
side glances, the sheepish guilt, the fear, the panic, the posturing. There are some dubious layout issues (that
I’ll touch on later), but for the most part, everything flows smoothly. The pseudo-science hacking speak is a little
better than in prior issues -- totally within reasonable norms for a world where
Cyborg does what Cyborg does.
Story-wise, we’ve got a mixed bag. Issue 9 was a fairly chaotic mess of a
fight sequence with too many characters in it.
To a degree, that’s the cost of a Justice League book. There are some great moments, including a
great detail of comic book science rules as they apply to Barry Allen. Both unconscious Simon and Barry’s
proposed solution to his hacked ring have got to qualify as some of my favorite
Justice League details of recent memory.
And yet overall, it’s still just a big fight. So much page time is given to very ‘meh’
fight dynamics that the actual resolutions with both Victor and Simon
are compressed down in to a single frame with a couple of frames of dialog
post-script -- it makes one feel like you missed a page. This issue would have been much more powerful
if those two moments were given more splash and focus instead of getting lost
in the mess of a fight layout.
On the flip side, the opening half of issue
10 is the payoff that really moves the story along (Before we dig in for
another round of chaotic fight mess). There’s
some awesome character time, with the League coming face to face with the
unintended results of their actions on average people, for what I believe is
the first time (on page) in post-Flashpoint continuity. It would be great to see these realizations
actually go somewhere as the series progresses beyond Outbreak. Lily Palmer is also shaping up to be a great
supporting character, and I really hope we get more of her beyond this arc as
well, but the “grownups” standing around as she’s trying to share vital
information made me really miss the inexplicably-absent-post-Rebirth Captain
Ma... err... Shazam. Big Red
Cheeselessness notwithstanding, the escalation of the situation allowed Hitch
to build on the different levels of experience each League member has, how they
individually respond to the incoming crisis, and mock the villain names of yesteryear
as Simon tries to guess what each one is called.
(Simon gets bonus points for the Star Trek jab as well.)
Best of all, we get the return of a whole
busload of characters that have had minimal, if any, appearances since Flashpoint,
smashed back in to continuity in all their ludicrous glory. Yes, that likely comes with another impending
series of chaotic fights interrupting the story, but now that we’re in the guts
of it, it’s a trade-off I’m willing to tolerate.
THE MUSIC:
Oh yeah, this is one of those issues. The prior kerfuffle has passed, the heroes
track down the most likely suspect, and after some friendly coffee conversation
we’ve got ourselves an explanation of all that has occurred thus far. While the thought should have occurred to
just about any member of the League, the narrative honor of forethought always
goes to Batman, whose gloves are, of course, touchscreen sensitive (He can also apparently read hexadecimal, as
established previously). And of course
they aren’t out of the woods yet. Our
intrepid heroes and civilian bystanders quickly learn that, well, as Argy Bargy
once told us, There’s Gonna Be a Riot.
Maybe it’s a bit too obvious a comparison,
but despite the technology having progressed from war dialing a military
computer to an iPad running a wishmaker app, the revelations at the core of
this story simply must be compared to the film, War Games. Swap out David Lightman and Joshua
for Bobby Palmer and Genie, fast forward 33 years, and insert
some superheroes in to the situation, and you’ve got the same story. Give or take a killer learning android.
THE CONCLUSION:
Well, we didn’t get to see any of
Hephasteus’ weapons, the Atlantean military fleet, the Speed Force, or Fortress
of Solitude get hacked (again), but, to be honest, if we had I’d probably be
complaining about the story dragging on, right?
But our mysterious hacking entity is no longer mysterious, we’ve got an
awesome new character introduced in to the DCU (and her
good-for-nothing brother and father), and, well, all hell is coming in on the
Justice League.
Frankly, it’s a fun twist on the classic
what-if scenario, and a great opportunity for the still relatively
inexperienced post-Flashpoint Justice League. Time will tell whether we’ll ever get any
interesting individual story threads out of the gamut of villains, but for the
time being it’s a nice rubber-meets-the-road test for the League.
I’m just hoping Lily gets along well with Emiko
and Tiffany. That’d be a team to be reckoned with.
*** Just reading and writing and rambling in the back of the Joker's old Ho-Home-On-Wheels... Keath.
JUSTICE LEAGUE #9 & #10
Reviewed by David Andrews
on
January 10, 2017
Rating:
Reviewed by David Andrews
on
January 10, 2017
Rating:
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