Justice League of America #1

Another week spent with my head in the sand. I was off on holiday last week so I wasn’t able to get to the local comics shop and it was an English Bank Holiday on Monday. It was a big week as well what with Wonder Woman and Batman both shipping, but of course it was the first issue proper of Justice League of America that I was really waiting for.

One thing that did surprise me was the number of Michael Turner varient covers left over in the local shop. It wasn’t that they weren’t selling, but there had been a mistake at Diamond resulting in a massive oversend of that one cover – around here its the Ed Benes covers that are the rare ones. If you’re still searching for one try contacting Comics Guru in Cardiff. Both artists have fairly similar styles althrough Benes isn’t quite as stylised as Turner, which I personally think is a good thing. Benes has recently set up an official English language website and he’s posted up scans of the pencil pages for this issue.

One thing that did strike me whilst reading this issue is that its very easy to tell that its written by the same writer as Identity Crisis. Brad Meltzer uses the same camera angles, monolog boxes, and rapid cutting between scenes that he used there. The only thing that seems to be missing is Rags Morales and Benes comes very close, either by accident or design, to emulating him at times. On his blog Meltzer reveals something of his forshadowing in Archer’s Quest and Identity Crisis, namily the early spotlighting of characters he’d later use for his League roster. He’s also interview by Brain Bendis at Wizard Universe with the following quote getting picked up by those who think that Vixen and Black Lighting are perfect examples of ego characters.

Bendis: How does it feel assembling a team like this, though? It’s kind of a cool feeling and kind of unique?

Meltzer: Oh, it’s definitely the ultimate fanboy dream. If someone came to you and said, “You can pick the team of The Avengers, you can pick the team of The Justice League–or if I went back in time and I told the two of us that that’s what we’d be doing–I would basically die right there, even though we’ve been doing it in our heads since we were 10 years old. But again, the hardest part for me was not wanting to just do what I think is cool, but what actually is bigger than me. I think that there is just a history–even in the JLA, even in The Avengers–where you saw what can only be called “The Ego Character.” It’s the character that’s like, “I’m being put on the team so everyone remembers me.” I hate that character. It’s in just about every run of every Justice League and it’s in just about every run of every Avengers. There’s always one character that’s the ego character. I really wanted to not be that guy–and listen, I’m sure I’ll get called on that whether it’s for Black Lightning or someone else–but to me Black Lightning has total business being in that book.

Tom Bondurant’s Grumpy Old Fan Column at the Newsarama blog also picks up the same quote and does a nice run through of the various vanity and ego characters in the history of the Justice League.

Over at Monitor Duty Hutch raises the issue of Traya’s age. The last appearance of the character I can remember was in Young Justice where she’s shown as attending the same private school as Wonder Girl, admittedly she was also shown as a kid genius who had been boosted up to the older kids classes, but she can’t have been much older than ten or twelve (I don’t buy the decompressed twenty year-plus timeline idea as it would put Superman and Batman in their late 40s). Yet, here she’s portrayed as not being much older than she was in her first appearance (issue #152, March 1978, of the old series) where she can’t have been much older than four years old. And is it my imagination or has Traya’s skin colour lightened since she was first introduced?

Brian Cronin’s review at Comics Should Be Good mirrored many reviews I’ve read. He channels the blogosphere by noting that:

The comic seemed ready to be a fun book, and it had quite a few nice character bits, but ultimately, for the debut issue of a major title, with thirty-eight pages to work with, the book had far too much sitting around and talking, and not nearly enough action.

Personally I didn’t mind the lack of action, but it fairly obvious that this relaunch is going to be a different beast from the “widescreen” instant action of the previous relaunch. (A Todd Nauck-esque Doctor Impossible? I didn’t stop it to start with, but now that it’s been mentioned.)

Updated 03 Sept 06: More on Doctor Impossible (From Wizard #180): “‘I love this guy,’ crows Meltzer. ‘Is he an evil Mr. Miracle? We’ll see. Even DC thought he was an old character from years past.’”