Review: Justice League of America #24

February 15, 2018

By Jonathan Edwards

With Justice League of America #22, Steve Orlando rose to the occasion and finally wrote what I would call the first truly decent issue of his run on the series proper (meaning not including the prequel one-shots). Sure, issue #17 ended with some legitimate character development for Ryan, but that was in spite of the first half, as well as every other issue in that story arc, being crappy. And yes, if you ignore the art problems, the Annual was a relatively fine read. But, with double the page count and only about a third of the main cast (read: Lobo and Black Canary), it failed to represent or even adequately connect to the rest of the series, and it sure as hell didn’t give the impression that the book, as a whole, would be getting any better. However, that changed with JLA #22. We finally got a villain with some complexity to her, and none of the title team’s members did anything too stupid. And then, Justice League of America #23 managed to keep it mostly together. But, as I said in my review for that issue, it takes three to form a pattern. So, here we are with Justice League of America #24, the upshot of which is twofold. On the one hand, it appears that Orlando has indeed settled into a new, less stupid standard for his last half-dozen issues of JLA. But, at the same time, there’s been a conceptual short-sightedness that’s been at the heart of his work on this title, and it returns as clear cut as ever here.

Review: Justice League of America #23

February 5, 2018

By Jonathan Edwards

It seems I was wrong about “Deadly Fable” being only two issues long. Well, sort of. Because while DC claims the next issue is part one of “New Life and Death” (which is supposedly “following the Queen of Fables saga”), this one ends on a cliffhanger without any kind of conclusion in sight. Now, could I simply be taking DC’s description of next issue a little too much at face value? Sure. In fact, I hope that’s the case. But, it’s hard to be certain with a book that has previously failed to end arcs satisfactorily and at one point abruptly injected two flashbacks into the middle of a story before resolving its own cliffhanger. Of course, the biggest question regarding Justice League of America #23 is whether or not it keeps up the actually decent quality the previous issue finally managed to achieve. And, the answer is, again, sort of.

Review: Justice League of America #22

January 11, 2018

By Jonathan Edwards

Huh. In a lot of ways, Justice League of America #22 is a pretty decent, even good, issue. And, that’s legitimately surprising. Steve Orlando’s entire JLA run has been building up to this story, but so much of it has been mediocre (or just plain bad) that it was hard to expect much good to come from “Deadly Fable.” Any yet, so far, it’s avoided a number of previously seen pitfalls. In place of the usually paper-thin and blatantly wrong antagonists, we get one with relatively sounds motivations and rationales behind her actions and statements. At least for a villain. Instead of ungrateful civilians who’re willing to turn against the JLA at the drop of a hat, we get citizens that’re concerned and horrified by their defeat. And, even the majority of the heroes react and respond appropriately to their given circumstances. Killer Frost is perhaps the major exception, but at the same time, her irrationality isn’t wholly without justification either. It’s not flawless, but it is a substantial step in the right direction.