Cry for Justice: #3 Review

Cry for Justice: #3

Roll Call: Green Lantern (Jordan), Green Arrow, Atom (Palmer), Shazam, Supergirl, Starman (Mikaal), Congorilla

Villains: Prometheus, IQ

Guest Stars: Bobo Binetti, Shade, Clayface, various heroes

As ever, beware, there be spoilers in my reviews.

Part three seems to be called “Cry for Justice The Villain” which is both oddly phrased and grammatically incorrect, I believe. Shouldn’t that be “Cry for Justice: The Villain”? Anyway… We start right from where we left off, with Supergirl having joined the slowly forming team to finish their villain fight, and Hal asking her right off “Are you here now as a hero… or a villain?” I can only presume that has something to do with World of New Krypton or one of the current Superman story arcs, as I’m not reading any of it. It sounded odd to me. Supergirl says her father was slain by Reactron, and she wants justice. I have no idea when this killing occurred, and funny how everyone who they meet says some variation of “I want justice.” They debate back and forth what they are going to do next, saying they want Prometheus and justice, and Hal and Ollie muse on this being the start of a new team, Hal wondering how many more heroes out there are going through something similar.

On cue, we shift to Congorilla and Starman, flying along in their Blackhawk plane, comparing notes. The slaughter of Congorilla’s troop finally makes sense, as he reveals that Malavar, a (to me at least) previously unknown scientist from Gorilla City was living with the troop, and his body was the only one not accounted for. Back to the main part of the group, Atom does his relatively recent trick of shrinking and smacking around someone’s sinuses to torture information out of them as they interrogate Prometheus. When did they capture him? Good question. That to one side, Prometheus says, oddly “Prometheus wants to be Batman.” This is just after Hal mentions the sting of the deaths from Bruce and J’Onn’s passing. Eventually, he says that the villains, and many heroes, were terrified of Batman, even though he had no powers, and Prometheus wants the same. He keeps slipping in and out of first person to third person when talking about Prometheus.

Back to “Bill” as Congorilla prefers to be called now, and Mikaal. The eschewing of code-names seems to be a theme of the series, but I digress. They fly into a swarm of killer robots, where Bill decides to make the tactically brilliant choice of leaping out of the plane into the ‘bots. He and Mikaal make short work of them, Bill leaping from victim to victim as Mikaal uses his various powers. Oddly, Mikaal reveals that while he is stronger than human, he can’t carry the 900 pound Bill to the shore. I think this is a downgrade of his past powers, but I can’t swear to that. This does lead to the best exchange of the issue: Bill, upon learning of the strength limitation “Oh well, the European coast is only about five miles from here. I’ll see you there.” Mikaal “What are you going to do?” Bill “The backstroke.”

Our main group continues the interrogation, and then finally learn that this is actually not Prometheus, it’s one of the Clayfaces who agreed to the deception because Prometheus threatened to kill his son, Cass. Or maybe her son. Hard to tell with Clayfaces. The ring warns Hal (calling him by name as well) that a bomb was just activated. There is the revelation of the Clayface imposture, and then the building explodes. Oh my, how will they survive? Four of them could do so on their own with no real issues, and three of those four could save Ollie easily enough. Of course, Ollie was killed by an explosion once before and came back.

With the wonderfully unhelpful caption of “Before” we see Prometheus, the real one presumably, at his own lair, working on a project with mad scientist/villain IQ. We also see a captured gorilla in a tube, likely the aforementioned Malavar. Prometheus recounts his origin and history for IQ as they sip wine. He remarks that killing heroes after a while gets boring, and since most of them come back, it doesn’t mean anything. He wants to hurt them worse than that. We don’t learn yet what his plan is, just that he has sent the villains out to gather the various components he needed, which seems to have kicked off this whole story. We also learn he killed more heroes. The flashback shots are done in that odd monochrome color scheme, so it’s hard to be sure, but consensus on the DC Message Boards is that the victims are Global Guardians Gloss (formerly of the New Guardians), Sandstorm (who I think had one group shot appearance before this), and definitely the Tasmanian Devil, who Prom skinned and made into a rug. Tas’ death is bit odd, since Prom mentions going to Europe and Africa, and Tas was based in Australia, but I guess he could have been in Europe for some reason or other. We see Prometheus poisoned IQ’s wine (shocker) but instead of killing him, it regressed his mind to that of an infant. We see Prometheus looking triumphant before a map of the US with various places dotted and circled in red (we can’t really see where) and him shouting “And God help America!”

Next caption reads “Opal City: The Present,” and Robinson returns to his greatest success, the Starman cast. We see Charity, a fortune teller Jack Knight met as Starman, who has summoned reformed villains and Starman allies Bobo Benetti and the Shade. She says she has seen a vision of death coming everywhere, to touch everyone’s lives. The final page is a multi-panel shot of various heroes, presumably those who will be affected by the vision. Some are the Cry for Justice cast, others are seemingly random, from Guardian and Manhunter to Miss Martian and Cyclone. One of the other depicted heroes is Batwoman. The page ends with “To Be Continued.”

I’m giving this a 2 out of 5 and falling fast.

What I liked. Umm… well… the art is consistently really good. Aside from the flashback scenes with that coloration bit obscuring who was who that I mentioned.

What I didn’t. Long list this time around. Working forward from the beginning: once again, they screw up Ray’s not being able to be in costume at full size, granted a trivial error but still irksome. When Kara being good or evil is being debated (in front her, real nice), Freddy/Shazam says “I certainly sense no harm in her.” Since when was THAT one of the powers bestowed by the Wizard? Ray makes a reference to the Wisdom of Solomon, but that really seems like a stretch. Ray being so willing to torture for information seems out of character to me.

Hal mentions the “sting of Bruce and J’Onn’s deaths” right in front of who they think is Prometheus. I realize they seem to be giving up using heroic names in this title, but do they get to make that decision for everyone else, too? No he didn’t say “Batman was Bruce Wayne” but really, do you want to give ANY clues about secret identities to someone as smart and ruthless as Prometheus? Bill leaping out of the plane to fight airborne foes seemed just stupid. I have four possible solutions for that I guess: 1. The Congorilla body is a lot more durable than we’ve ever seen 2. After so long as an adventurer and his recent losses, he doesn’t really care if he lives or not 3. He just assumed Starman would catch him or 4. Just plain bad writing. I’m going with selection 4. I also find it odd that the abandoned Blackhawk island had a plane that was in perfect shape for flying, was big enough to have a gorilla pilot it, but had no functioning weapon systems. The Blackhawks were fighter pilots.

As I said earlier, I thought Mikaal’s power levels were decreased from earlier appearances. The so called cliffhanger of the bomb exploding on the other heroes does nothing for me. Hal could make a bubble for all of them (which I expect to see next issue); Hal, Kara, and Freddy would easily survive anyway, and Ray could shrink down enough to avoid the blast, he’s done it before. Hal, Kara, or Freddy could also easily save Ollie.

We see more pointless deaths, as in this issue one of the Clayfaces, Tasmanian Devil, and presumably Gloss and Sandstorm die. With the possible exception of Clayface, none of these furthered the plot. Is this series part of DC attempting to clear out some of their little used characters? Prometheus poisoning IQ in the manner he did makes no sense. I can see him killing IQ right off, but regressing his mind? What was the point here? And the Tas-fur rug seemed over the top.

The Opal City scene was well written, and nice to see some old favorites again, but even here there were problems. I know who Charity is because I read the Starman series, but if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have a clue. She is never really identified. The random heroes who are going to be affected was an odd assortment, too. I see representatives from the Teen Titans, JSA, and Doom Patrol, but no Leaguers barring the ones in this title. We’re at three issues out of seven, and the team STILL isn’t together. Batwoman was promised as a player here, and aside from one panel on the last page, lost amid a host of other heroes, she’s still not here.

Let me be clear here: I think James Robinson is usually an amazing writer. His Starman series was one of the best things I have ever read in comics. I’m not a “hater” as they love to say on the boards. But this is just not a good story. More pointless body count, a lot of talking, and heroes acting not really heroically. This is just not what I’m looking for. I was pleased earlier when I heard that Robinson would be writing one of the two JLA books upcoming. Now I’m wondering which Robinson it will be: the amazing Starman writer, or the rather uninspiring Cry for Justice one?

Tags: Cry for Justice Justice League Comics & Justice League Reviews Prometheus