Today Brings Justice

I love the Justice League, always have. Since the day I got my first Super Powers action figure (Superman by the way) I’ve been a fan. I’ve collected the series here and there over the years. The biggest part of my collection is from the early 90’s… not a good time for the book, but for some reason I purchased it anyway. Guy Gardner was a putz, and Fire and Ice, are not the most thrilling characters to ever hit the pages. The books no longer had any of the original characters, which I think was it’s biggest problem. I also have a few of Justice League books from the late 70’s. Now, these had their very cheesy moments – as did most comics in the 70’s – but they were great because they had all the original classic heroes we love: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern… all the pillars of the DCU.

 

This new series written by Brad Meltzer looks like it will move back to that. This is totally what this book needs. It needs the greats back together on one team, battling to save the world! Those iconic characters that really helped make comics into what they are today, together again.

 

Now that I’ve said that though, I don’t like issue zero. It jumps timelines. I’m a fairly intelligent guy, so usually I can follow these things. In this case though, it’s almost impossible. You see it jumps from yesterday, to tomorrow, through the whole book…easy enough right, NO. See the ‘yesterday’ and ‘tomorrows’ don’t follow any chronological reference points. It’s little confusing to even explain. So frankly you’d have to read it to understand what I mean, but trust mean, you’ll understand what I mean

 

Now, to me, this doesn’t spell doom for the series. For one thing, I know Brad Meltzer is a good writer. So I assume that when we get past this issue, we should be in good shape. Issue 0’s are always messed up. They tell a story that needs to be told, but in the grand scheme of everything, really doesn’t matter, nor do we typically care about a lot. In this case, we get the reasons that Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, created and struggled with having the league over the years. This is something we should know and need to understand in order to see why they’d reform it. Overall though, it’s kind of a boring topic. So I’m not going to judge how Justice League of America will turn out. I have faith that Brad will bring us back to something very cool starting with issue 1.

 

As for the art in this book, and my prediction for moving forward… I see good things. This book is cool because we see a pretty wide variety of artistic talent. Big names like Adam and Andy Kubert, George Perez, Jim Lee, Phil Jimenez, Dan Jurgens and many others. Included in this is Ed Benes. Ed will be the go forward artist on the title, which I’m looking forward to. He recently did work on the Superman titles, which I enjoyed very much. He pencils the last few pages of this book and it looks great. I like his versions of the big three. So he should be able to handle the upcoming job. On the last page of the book Batman throws a pile of pictures on a table, showing some of the other possible Leaguers. He does fantastic renditions of these characters too.

 

So I have high hopes for this book. I’m certainly going to be picking up a few more issues at least. I would also recommend this book for the duel covers. One is by Michael Turner, the other J. Scott Campbell. Both look fantastic, and will surely make for good collectors items. So you may want to grab these babies for that purpose alone.