Justice League #2 Review

Were more than a month into DC’s relaunch and with the introduction to DC’s three biggest superheroes out of the way we begin to get at the meat of Geoff John’s and Jim Lee’s first arc with Justice League #2.

Justice League #2

In a lot of ways Justice League, THE flagship title to DC’s relaunch initiative, is breaking new ground; were getting the new first meeting of DC’s biggest superheros, in new costumes with new attitudes and origins and were getting the option to buy it in print, online, or in a package that includes both (all on the same day) but in a lot of ways….we’ve seen this all before.

If you were hoping that Justice League would usher us into a new era of comic books than chances are your probably a little disappointed. Granted, if the book is truly doing it’s job and a certain percentage of it’s readers are new to comics than perhaps the story and experience is fresh, even more so if they’re downloading it to their mobile devices, but outside of this group Geoff Johns and Jim Lee aren’t reinventing the wheel here, they’re essentially creating one heck of a summer blockbuster movie.

To be clear, this isn’t a bad thing.

I love summer blockbusters.

But raise your hand if you’ve seen good guys fight each other before. And keep your hands raised if you were ever really worried about Superman killing Batman and Green Lantern.

But like I said, I love summer blockbusters.

I think there is a really good story here. We know Darkseid and the Fourth World characters/elements are around the corner, we know that Wonder Woman, Aquaman, and the whole team will eventually come together, we know that Geoff John’s is a “big picture” writer and this is about as ‘big’ as Jim Lee’s art can get (lots of splash pages) but this issue is unfortunately a little forgettable. Entertaining, but forgettable. Half the book is spent watching Superman beat up on everyone until 11 pages in when Batman says, “Hey, please stop. We should talk this out.” Yes, the fight provided more character introductions and both the reader and the characters in the story learned a bit but at the end, when I’ve got a wealthy stack of Justice League comics to flip back through I doubt this will be the emotional high for me. And frankly the story didn’t move much here. Lots of action, fists, and buildings getting beat up but at the end were only a few moments past the last issue.

Now; Victor Stone’s appearance here with his dad was memorable. The book isn’t solely about Victor or his transition into Cyborg but his moments here were impressionable, perhaps the most impressionable portion of the whole issue. The three-panel splash page with the robots bursting through was 70% Superman/Batman/Green Lantern and 30% Victor and his dad but it was that 30% that had me glued (man, I wish the whole page had just been Victor and his Dad). The conversation prior to the explosion between father and son was cold and the reaction his father had after seeing his son caught in the flames was anything but – worth the price of admission right there.

Also, loved those new S.T.A.R. Labs suits.

At it’s core, similar to how I felt in issue #1, Justice League is superhero fun. I like my deep long-winded connected plot points and stories that build and build but Justice League is was it is, a fun superhero story chock-full of DC’s favorite heroes, and soon villains (cannot WAIT for Darkseid) with art by Jim Lee and Scott Williams, I got no beef with that.

My only beef, for $3.99 and just 22 pages of story I’d like more than a transcript of an interview and not-Jim Lee character sketches. The upcoming Shazam backup with Gary Frank and Geoff Johns will probably convince me (I’m a sucker for anything Gary Frank).

More Justice League @ acomicbookblog.com/tag/justice-league

Tags: Aquaman Comics Batman Comics DC Comics New 52 Reviews Geoff Johns Green Lantern Jim Lee Justice League Comics & Reviews Slider Superman Wonder Woman Comics