Written by Peter Milligan
Illustrated by Mikel Janin
What is Madame Xanadu’s plan? And why is she urging Shade the Changing Man to recruit a killer? One by one, our anti-hero misfits are drawn inexplicably to each other… While John Constantine aids Zatanna in escaping a town destroyed by magic, June Moon seeks help from Deadman. But in the end, will any of it be enough to escape the dark clutches of the insane and powerful Enchantress?
Deadman! Zatanna! John Constantine! Shade the Changing Man! A whole bunch of other characters you probably have never heard of! Their first adventure together continues in only an adventure that they can undertake! Will they survive, or will they lose their battle against…whatever it is they’re facing? Will they look good doing it? This and more in this review of Justice League Dark!
Check the cut for more!
Justice League is a franchise that was sorely in need of a reboot. The formerly premiere Super Team had become less influential than teams from the other company, The X-Men and the relatively recently resurgent Avengers franchise dwarfed the team that started it all. The DCnU reboot was a great chance to bring back the big guns to one book, as well as starting a few niche titles within the same franchise. And with that, Justice League International and Justice League Dark were born. All of the books have very different missions and members, but how would one choose if they could only pick one or two? Aside from the Comics Should be Cheap lists we do, you’d have to compare what art and writing you like, right? Let’s start with the art.
This book sure is gorgeous. Even I really like the way it looks, and there are a lot of lines in the art. Maybe it’s because of how the lines are used. Instead of heavy lines that age the characters, the lines are used elegantly, to texturize and contour the face. In fact, there’s a lot of elegant artwork in here, provided by penciller Mikel Janin, which is the real highlight of this book. I’m not usually a fan of realistic art like that, but in this case, it really works. There’s just enough ambiance in the inking and coloring to make it more interesting to look at. Everything from the character designs to the magical hullaballoo that appears on nearly every page looks very lively and clean. It’s much better than the messes we see in other books. It’s really great stuff.
As for the story, it’s well told from a character perspective! Everyone is really well fleshed out, with their own quirks and eccentricities, especially in relation to the other characters with whom they’re interacting. John Constantine and Zatanna’s relationship has past issues all over it, which works for the new reader. It doesn’t factor heavily into their narrative, but it helps build the universe around them that much more. The same goes for Boston Brand and Shade. They all feel like organic characters in the book, and it reads really well accordingly.
But here lies the rub: the book reads well when it relates to the characters, but it is taking so long to get to the story we’re waiting for that I’m trying to figure out if that killer ending was even worth it. The characters are all awesome and they’re cool. Milligan succeeds on that. But they’re taking so long to get together, there’s not even enough time to focus on each character long enough to tell a cohesive story. Perhaps when the arc finishes, it’ll read a lot better than it does, but right now, it doesn’t really do anything for me other than cause frustration at what the heck is taking so long. I want to see who or what is causing that insanity that Superman was referencing in Issue #1.
Even though it’s the third issue, the entire team hasn’t even come together. Even though the Geoff Johns League hasn’t come fully together either, they’re picking up characters as they happen, it feels much more organic, even if JLnU has the depth of a Michael Bay movie starring Bruce Willis. Even the plot on the book moves quicker, as stuff seems to be going down.
This book is still really pretty to look at, and the characters are fun to read, but if you want to see actual plot movement, you’ll just find yourself disappointed. Tread with caution.
Final Verdict: 6.0 — Browse — it’s pretty, but something needs to happen quickly.
