I love Alex Ross’ art; he pioneered the style of very realistic painted characters that is starting to really catch on. My collection of stuff includes several pieces both created and inspired by his work. Including a Signature Series Superman print that I’m staring at in order to help me move this piece along. It’s very inspirational to see Superman floating in the air and looking almost like you could reach out and touch him. That’s what I love most about Alex’s art; it makes you believe these people are real. He gives such depth and realism to the bodies and faces that you feel like he had Superman or Batman pose for him.
I’m a huge Superman fan, so the over-sized Superman: Peace on Earth was the first piece of work I bough by Alex. This was quite a while ago now, but man did I love that book! What amazing work and life it had.
More recently, though, I’ve been reading Justice. This series has been fantastic and I love the golden age feel it’s got to it. They really pulled in all the best elements of each character from each generation. I don’t think this story would have been nearly as effective otherwise. It stands very alone in the DC Universe so far. It doesn’t draw on any specific timeline or assume that any one specific event has ever happened. Barry Allen is the Flash, Dick Grayson is Robin and Aquaman has both of his hands. All these characters seem to have stepped out of time to be a part of this story.
As much as I was enjoying the look of the book and the tone, I really wasn’t into the overall story until issue 9. Everything was still very vague and confusing until the most recent issue, which although it laid everything out quite nicely, I feel is a little late in a series that’s only 12 issues long to be bringing things to a head. I don’t think the reader should have to wait quite that long into a story to get the full picture of what is exactly happening. Please don’t take that to mean I don’t like the story, I just wish certain questions had been answered earlier. It also may have something to do with the issues being bi-monthly. (Perhaps I should go back and read all nine issues at once.) You’d have to read it to decide for yourself. The dialogue and the character interaction is very intelligent and well thought out. Jim Krueger gives you a true sense of each hero, and villains, personality. Which is hard to do when you’re talking about 20-25 main characters. You don’t make that many people believable in a 12-issue series without some serious talent.
Even if the whole story was a complete burn – which it isn’t - there’s a money shot almost at the end of issue 9 that makes the whole freakin’ series worth while. It has to be one of the coolest group shots of the Justice League I’ve ever seen. I’m just hoping that DC makes a poster out of it once the series is over… so here’s what I’m going to do, I’m going to post the image below in the hopes that someone at DC reads this. So I want everyone who wants to see this made into a poster to post a ‘make it so’ comment. If you don’t really care, post anyway because I really want one!
Here it is!
Isn’t that great?!
Seriously people, do this for me, and post, I want it!
Posted: Monday, January 15, 2007