The New 52 has been taking a page out of the modern Marvel handbook by combining seemingly random groups of characters onto teams they can slap the “Justice League” moniker across. We’re finally starting to see the payoff of that approach in the strongest issue of the consistently strongest “Justice League” title yet.
Written by Jeff Lemire
Illustrated by Mike McKoneIt’s all out battle issue as Hawkman has a showdown with Lobo as the League is teleported to Rann to face the shape-changing alien called Byth! This looks like a job for Supergirl!
What do Hawkman, Animal Man, Stargirl, and Martian Manhunter have in common? Not very much, but the true magic of modern team books seems to happen when you cull together teams that don’t necessarily make sense on paper and make them a “Justice League” team. You don’t even have to do much explaining – just put personalities in a room and let them bounce off of one another. That’s what Jeff Lemire has been doing on “Justice League United.” While I don’t think DC is necessarily ripping off Marvel, Marvel found more success by having more books with “Avengers” in their title. It’s tough to blame DC for doing the same thing with their most recognizable team brand.
“Justice League United” also shows off the DC Comics heroes’ abilities to play light, loose, and humored in a world that has been made to be incredibly dark. Putting Buddy Baker and Oliver Queen on the same team makes for a few surprising and welcome moments of levity and combativeness. Why do we like Marvel’s The Avengers? Because Robert Downey Jr. cracks wise, Cap and Thor misunderstand the ways of the modern world, and Hulk smash – that’s why. And while there’s plenty of room among all of that for harrowing feats of superheroism and good-vs-evil, gods-among-men allegories – no publisher should completely drench themselves in that stuff. “Justice League United” is just the type of book that has its cake and eats it too, when it comes to pitting galactic-level stakes with snark.
Lemire also embraces the silly aspects of comics, taking this unlikely group of heroes to the planet Rann, where we learn about the experimentations gone wrong, committed by the people of Ranagar. Professor Hubert Farnsworth would be impressed by the “abominations unto the lord” that are going on here. Meanwhile, Hawkman takes on the ridiculous reboot of the already ridiculous Lobo, and somehow turns it into a hard-hitting and crowd-pleasing sequence with the help of some of Mike McKone’s strongest art to date on this title. There are a lot of plot elements being juggled in the air, and very little to tie everything together into a team book that feels like it should exist, but that probably saves it from being yet another overly serious and decompressed “Justice League” book.
As I just alluded to, “Justice League United” #2 finds McKone settling into the universe extremely well at some points – featuring some of his boldest and strongest ‘New 52’ work to date in the sequence of the Hawkman-Lobo beatdown. Unfortunately, a handful of inkers on one 20-page issue makes for significant variation throughout its span. Some sequences fair better than others, to be sure. It’s a common complaint with titles that aim to ship monthly on a regular basis, but it’s not played out – it’s just a very real problem. McKone is a very strong superhero artist and its obviously preferable from a critical standpoint to see a consistent product on the page.
Nonetheless, I don’t mean to dwell on it all that much, as what we do get is strong enough all around anyway. “Justice League United” is stretching McKone’s muscles quite a bit, asking him to depict outer space-scapes right alongside animal horror straight from the weird forests of Canada. Jeff Lemire loves to embrace the weirdest aspects of comics and find the heart and humor that lies within in them, and McKone is with him every step of the way. He gets to throw a couple of 1-2 page spreads our way that impress with their scale and detail, but McKone’s greatest trait is in his ability to make each person in the comic unique and imbue their bodies and faces with character. Along with colorist Marcelo Maiolo, he even pulls off a few tricks similar to what we see from Lemire and Andrea Sorrentino on “Green Arrow” every month, where the colors will drop out, invert, or radically change in an attempt to attract the focus and attention of the reader. It might not feel as organic as it does on “Green Arrow”, but the effect is still striking.
“Justice League United” is a book that is somehow allowed to embrace the wacky, unlikelier aspects of the DC Universe and do its own thing in a line that still wants to be really cohesive to a fault. Maybe it’s a sign that things are loosening up. Maybe a book like this can exist now that DC Comics has all the readers it thinks its going to have, post-relaunch. Maybe Jeff Lemire and Mike McKone are damn talented and would make a solid superhero title no matter what. Maybe I’m wrong about all of this and some books are bad, while some books are good, no matter the status quo or reason behind their existence. Whatever the case, “Justice League United” #2 is just flat-out good cape comics.
Final Verdict: 7.8 – Buy
