Justice League Dark #2 Review

The magical beings of the new DCU are gathering, but will the very thing bringing them together tear them apart?

Justice League Dark #2

Zatanna arrives to deal with the Enchantress.  However, she instead finds a town overrun by giant bugs, death, and destruction.  She goes into a mystical bubble to protect her from the Enchantress’ oncoming attack.  Meanwhile, Deadman and Dawn try to figure out new ways to take their blossoming relationship to new physical levels only for it to end completely weird with Boston taking over the body of a married man and wanting to take Dawn back to their place for a little of the naughty.  Not to mention June Moon showing up in the middle of their sex fight doesn’t help matters too much.  In another part of the country, John Constantine gets his ass handed to him to give him enough mojo to do some serious magic stuff to track down Zatanna.  When Dawn leaves Boston for a late night drive, she too gets attacked by the darkness of the Enchantress who threatens to hurt everyone who tore her out of June.  The next day, Zatanna is found in a catatonic state and Madame Xanadu summons Enchantress instructing her to “kill them all”…

This particular issue is incredibly sharp.  Peter Milligan is continuing the mystery of what is happening on the magical plane while laying out a clear cut plot.  These heroic magicians and sorcerers need to put the Enchantress down, but can they protect June Moon at the same time?  There’s a lot of very cool scenarios with each of the characters involved.  It appears that Madame Xanadu would be a trustworthy person, and potentially an ally, but now we have to question that.  Where is Shade?  What’s his connection to Xanadu and potentially the others?  As a bonus, we don’t have the other Justice Leaguers shoehorned into this issue.  It’s like this series has grown its own wings and is free now to continue on with the story.  I can’t tell you how happy I am not to see that again for this issue.  It shows that this series can exist without them even though Justice League is in the title of the book.

For as much as I liked Milligan’s story, Mikel Janin’s art really steals the show.  There’s a quality to it that reminds me of Mike Deodato’s current work.  The two page spread at the beginning is creepy and kinda gross with all the giant bugs crawling over everything.  There are moody scenes full of darkness and insanity.  The final panel with the really grossed out version of Enchantress is eerie and leaves you with a really disturbing image.  Janin’s depictions of Dove, Xanadu, June, and Zatanna are gorgeous.  I almost hate to admit it, but I think I’m even more attracted to the new Zatanna than I was to the old.  Finally, I’d also like to point out Ulises Arreola’s colors on the book.  I love that each character has their own tone.  They each have varying shades of light and dark.  Deadman and Dove have much brighter scenes whereas Constantine’s scenes are almost entirely shadowed with Zatanna somewhere in between.  It’s a really neat trick to give us an idea of how we should feel about the characters.  Clearly Deadman and Dove are the true “good guys” and Constantine has some serious moral ambiguity.  It’s a nice touch on an already beautiful book.

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

Tags: John Constantine Justice League Comics & Justice League Reviews Justice League Dark New DCU Peter Milligan Zatanna