JLA - The Justice League of America

PAGE TWO

Justice League Adventures: The Magnificent Seven 2004 (SC Digest) 112 pages

Writers/artists: various.
Colours: John Kalisz. Letters: Kurt Hathaway.

Reprinting: Justice League Adventures #3, 6, 10-12

Rating: * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Comics can be an unusual medium in the way it plays back on itself. Take the Justice League -- heroes of a successful comic, they were turned into a successful cartoon TV series...which then inspired DC Comics to come out with another comic based on the cartoon. The result was Justice League Adventures -- a comic, ostensibly aimed at, or at least accessible to, younger readers, appropriating a visual/artistic style evocative of the cartoon and which, though featuring the familiar super heroes, is not really meant to tie-in with the regular DC Comics Universe.

DC Comics was down this route years ago when they produced a spin-off of the popular cartoon series, The Super Friends (which was the Justice League in all but name). And have continued the trend -- after the Justice League cartoon ran its course, there was Justice League Unlimited (which also begat a comic) and even more recently, a new Super Friends comic (taking the old title, but using a modern, cartoony art style).

The difference between the original Super Friends series and the modern Justice League cartoons is that cartoons have become more sophisticated (the animated movie, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, was head and shoulders more sophisticated than any of the live-action Batman movies). Anyway, the point is, cartoons have come a long way from the simplistic Super Friends.

DC released digest-sized collections of the Justice League Adventures comic, the first of which is titled, The Magnificent Seven, after the team's seven regular members of Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, J'onn J'onzz, The Flash, Green Lantern -- John Stewart as opposed to Kyle Rayner or Hal Jordan (who hadn't yet been revived at this point anyway) -- and Hawkwoman (but no Hawkman). Why those latter two additions? Presumably network executives were uncomfortable with an all-white League and only one woman...and good for them. DC Comics apparently needed a TV network to shame them into presenting a more inclusive vision of their "world's greatest heroes".

The Atom guest stars in one story, as well.

Each issue is largely self-contained. And though supposedly aimed at kids, there's the question as to how well adults might enjoy them. After all, The Super Friends comic book found itself snagging an older audience who enjoyed its unpretentiousness.

The issues here boast some surprisingly ambitious stories. Even ones that might raise a few political eyebrows. The first and last story both could seem to have metaphorical relevance to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, with the first story, inparticular, seeming to be critical of it (the later story depends entirely on who the reader thinks represents which side). The irony is that both stories were originally published before the war (and the first story, "The Star Lost" (#3), seems suspiciously like a rehash of an earlier graphic novel, JLA: Superpower!)

The stories are marginally more sophisticated than just "kiddie" fair, with some shading to the characters and bad guys who aren't one-dimensional. The strongest story is undoubtedly "Moments" (#11), written by Dan Slott, a head-trippy tale of time travel and time paradoxes that, at its heart, is a very human drama about coming to terms with loss and grief. Actually, it might be a bit too heavy for kids, both in regards to the meta-physics of time travel, and emotionally.

All these stories, with very little tweaking in dialogue and plot development, could have made decent enough stories in the regular JLA comic. And the tell-it-in-one issue plots are certainly appreciated.

The biggest stumbling block is, ironically, the very thing that cements its identification with the TV series: the art.

Drawn in a cartoony manner, the art has the advantage of being clear and comprehensible. I don't think I'm alone in feeling a lot of modern comics artists can be almost overwhelming, cramming lines and detail into their panels, while not necessarily matching the detail with any particular sensitivity to composition and storytelling. But, aesthetically, the art is still problematic. What works in a cartoon begs some embellishment when shifted to comics, just as frequent Super Friends artist Ramona Fradon employed a style that was evocative of the cartoon series, while marrying it with a slightly more sophisticated comic book style (at least, going by a Super Friends comic I have in my collection).

The artists here are arguably restricted by having to conform to a rigid artistic template that might not be their regular styles (though three different artists are involved, the visuals maintain a uniformity). Although one could argue the gulf isn't that wide between the style employed here and some mainstream artists!

The simple art might woo younger readers put off by the over-complexity of a lot of comics, although equally it might turn them off (I seem to recall, in my own childhood, preferring realist artists).

The point of the stories is to present clear, comprehensible stories, and though they succeed reasonably well, I'll admit there were still a few spots where I took a few moments to figure out what was going on (in fact, I'm still not sure what happened to the villain in "Must There be a Martian Manhunter?" (#10)!) Although, if this is aimed at kids, I might've preferred less emphasis on hitting and fighting and more on problem solving. Let's face it, Superman solving the situation by employing an obscure scientific theorem is going to stick with kids a lot longer than Batman using a right hook (I'm not going all Fred Rogers on you, I'm citing my own childhood recollections here). To be fair, a number of the issues had the conflicts resolved more by words than deeds.

Anyway, I can't call this an unqualified success for an adult but it's moderately interesting and somewhat thoughtful. And kids and adults can enjoy the straight forward storytelling, not mired in a hundred continuity points.

Original cover price: $10.75 CDN./ $6.95 USA.

Justice League of America: Another Nail 2004 (SC TPB) 150 pages

Written and pencilled by Alan Davis. Inks by Mark Farmer. Colours: John Kalisz. Letters: Pat Prentice.

Rating: * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Six years previous, Alan Davis concocted Justice League of America: The Nail -- an Elseworlds mini-series involving the Silver Age incarnation of the JLA in an X-Men-like allegory of bigotry and paranoia, as superheroes find themselves pariahs as a result of an unknown foe's secret machinations. Add to all that ("Elseworlds" being stories that exist outside established canon) Superman doesn't exist -- or rather, he was not raised by the Kents, and his fate remains part of the series' mystery. Davis wasn't maybe breaking new ground...but nonetheless crafted an exciting, colourful, superhero-y adventure that still managed to deal with its themes of persecution and paranoia sincerely and credibly. It even succeeded as, of all things, a mystery, with the final revelation as to the master criminal's identity a definite surprise (a problem with this sequel is that it makes passing references to the first, spoiling that surprise if you haven't read the original). The Nail, for me, stands comfortably as a minor classic.

With Another Nail Davis revisits that reality with the three issue mini-series published a half dozen years later. Such return trips can be treacherous going -- Frank Miller's much ballyhooed sequel to his legendary Dark Knight Returns, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, though having its defenders, was, in a word, dreadful, even an embarrassment.

Fortunately JLA: Another Nail is neither dreadful, nor an embarrassment. At the same time, it falls far short of the original.

Part of that is intentional. While The Nail wrapped its colourful heroics around serious socio-political themes, Another Nail is more just a larger-than-life romp. Whereas The Nail joined the long list of DC Comics projects which worked in as many DC characters as possible in bit parts and cameos, it nonetheless focused on Green Lantern, The Flash, Hawkwoman, Wonder Woman, J'onn J'onzz, The Atom, and the Batman. In Another Nail, though, the fanboy desire to just work in anyone who was anyone, even if only in one panel cameos (including Omac and the Inferior Five!) threatens to overwhelm the story. As such, although more characters get genuine scenes, it seems a little top heavy.

The story actually overlaps a little with The Nail, in that in the previous saga there was a minor cutaway to a conflict involving DC Comics' cosmic creations the New Gods and the Green Lantern Corps (as I said, even with original, Davis clearly saw it as a chance to draw everyone he wanted to draw). This story begins by seeing that conflict in greater detail, in an epic, conflagration, before cutting back to the earth based heroes, a year later. Granted it's an odd way to "begin" a story -- basically with a climactic battle. Although one is doubtful David really planned this sequel when he was first writing The Nail, it is interesting how he makes the effort to make it seem like it was foreshadowed, not only by expanding on the New Gods sequence, but there are other spots where characters will allude back to a scene from The Nail as if it was a clue to the current crisis.

The basic concept here is not dissimilar, at least initially, from The Nail (one character even remarks on a feeling of deja vu) as the characters suspect something ominous is brewing, though they can't quite be sure what or even if, and they separate into smaller groups to follow various investigations. But whereas the original involved a sinister social and political movement, here something's starting to affect the very fabric of time and space.

The Nail emphasized the mystery, the running about, and the social metaphor. Here, Davis tries exploring the personalities more. It's a nice idea...but he's just not that great at character shading, with dialogue that often seems generic. As well, he kind of undermines his own conjuring up of the old, Silver Age characters, by imposing the modern characterizations (The Flash and the Atom were, in the Silver Age, level-headed, adults, but here spout dialogue that makes them sound more like they're fourteen...which, I think, is reflective of DC's current editorial policy). Potentially the most intriguing character -- and the one that mainly identifies this as an "Elseworlds" story -- is the novice Superman who, in this reality, was raised by the Amish. But even this isn't really used to its fullest. As mentioned, this was meant to have a "Silver Age" feel, with Hal Jordan and Barry Allen at play (remember, when this was first published, both characters were dead and no one expected DC to bring them back in regular continuity), and the story itself even involves the multiverse of parallel worlds that DC had, at that point, dropped from continuity. Yet occasionally Davis breaks from this nostalgia, such as having a female Wildcat (a later day creation). And, because this is an "Elseworlds" story, Davis also throws in a few variations on characters that are unique to his story.

Although, despite the "anything goes" Elseworlds banner, in your gut you don't really find yourself thinking the heroes might actually lose (the way you did in The Nail). And the Elseworlds concept may be part of why I remain mixed on the story. It sticks close enough to the familiar characters that it often doesn't benefit from the novelty of seeing wild re-interpretations...yet is just enough of an "imaginary" story that it doesn't quite have the visceral impact of seeing all these characters teamed up, because, in a sense, they're not the characters.

I don't think Davis is really aiming for the same ambition as The Nail. This is just meant to be a fun, fanboy indulgence as a gazillion DC Comics properties get involved in a reasonably fast paced, reasonably grandiose, world saving adventure. And there are some nice touches, like who ultimately gets to save the universe, and the method he uses, which seems as a nice apology to a character that some might have felt was shabbily treated in The Nail. At other times, though, Davis is pushing to create mysteries, with characters creating confusion simply because they're not telling each other what they're up to.

As an artist, Davis is a popular talent, and I definitely lean towards his corner. He's got a style that I always think of owing a bit to the late Don Newton, with aspects of Neal Adams and others thrown in. I would quibble and suggest there are few scenes -- human drama or spectacular action -- where the scene itself, the presentation of the characters, really stands out. Still, a lot of people will be buying this for Davis' art, and I can't quite blame them. Davis also has a penchant for glamour art. His women are often, um, amply endowed. He particularly has fun with Power Girl, a character who has, perhaps unfortunately, too often been used as the epitomy of the busty heroine -- and has become an excuse for people like Davis, or Alex Ross in Kingdom Come, to trot her out in mass team ups in her pneumatic glory (without doing the character the service of actually giving her a decent part). I'll admit, though I like sexy heroines as much as the next guy, the uniformly thrusting bustlines Davis provides his heroines can be a bit distracting.

DC (moreso perhaps than Marvel) seems to have a special penchant for these sorts of plethoric accretions of heroes, where half the point is just the fun of identifying a cameo (there were still two or three characters I didn't identify). As such, the novelty of Another Nail -- seeing all these characters in a single adventure -- isn't really a novelty, as DC seems to do one or two a year -- including in the years since. This trend presumably owes its genesis to The Crisis on Infinite Earths -- a maxi-series that Another Nail evokes, with its story of a menace that threatens the fabric of time, space, and dimensions, allowing characters from different times and realities to share the same page. Interestingly, both Another Nail and Crisis may well owe something to an even earlier story.

In 1978, DC Comics' try-out comic, Showcase, celebrated its 100th issue with a story that incorporated many of the characters who had appeared in it over the years -- no small feat as the features had ranged from super heroes, to caveman adventures, to comedy pieces. So they concocted a "double-sized" (34 page) adventure where time starts to unravel, meaning people from the far future and the distant past all wind up together. Like with the Crisis on Infinite Earths and subsequent stories, many of the characters were reduced to cameos, but they also did a nice job of focusing on an eclectic group of characters -- from high profilers like Green Lantern, to Lois Lane, to more obscure properties like Angel (of Angel and the Ape) and Space Commander. Though it may have been imitated over the years, as a story, as an adventure, and even as character exploration, I'd argue that old Showcase issue remains one of the best handlings of the concept.

That may be one of the biggest problems with Another Nail -- for a grand, apocalyptic, DC Universe spanning epic, it has to take it's place on the shelf next to all the others. Davis clearly wanted to do his version of such a story (presumably feeling The Nail wasn't quite grand and cosmic enough) without, in the end, quite distinguishing it sufficiently. Admittedly, repetition is true of comics -- and storytelling -- in general. After all, how many Batman vs. Joker or Superman vs. Luthor stories have been told over the decades? Writers and artists continue to tell them, and reader continue to enjoy them. At the same time, only a few rise above the others enough to be considered notable, let alone classics.

And such is JLA: Another Nail. If you're itching for just a fun, brisk romp, with lots of DC characters, and a cosmic threat, all nicely illustrated...it's a moderately enjoyable read. But it is nothing more than an afterthought -- an enjoyable, but not especially memorable, sequel to a much superior original, despite an attempt at deeper characterization. Even the title has little meaning.

Now excuse me while a dig out my tattered old copy of Showcase #100 for another read.

Cover price: __

JLA/Cyberforce 2005 (SC GN) 48 pages

Written by Joe Kelly. Pencils by Doug Mahnke. Inks by Norm Rapmund.
Colours: David Baron. Letters: Jared K. Fletcher.

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Mildly suggested for mature readers

Published by DC Comics/Top Cow

A company crossover involving DC's Justice League and Top Cow's Cyberforce, drawing mainly upon Cyberforce's mythos as it involves Ripclaw, a former member of that super team, who's gone evil and is attempting to uncover a supernatural power source beneath the streets of Budapest. Oh, yeah, and he's got an army of cybernetically enhanced zombies.

And the result...is better than you might expect. It's squarely an action story -- capital "A" -- as the fighting starts in the first few pages and doesn't let up for the next forty. Yet despite that, it manages to be an entertaining read. Despite the action, the story still manages to be wrapped around some emotional character stuff at its core, focusing in particular on Velocity (of Cyberforce) who still loves Ripclaw and holds out hope of saving him from his madness, and on J'onn J'onzz (of the JLA) with the other team members getting moments here and there. Although some may seem less "in" character than others (Wonder Woman seems oddly belligerent). And there's some light-hearted quips and banter as well. Instead of having the usual "heroes battle each other over a misunderstanding", the two teams work together right off the get go, allowing for some appealing bi-play and camaraderie rather than a snark fest.

Well...the two teams do eventually go at each other, but it's a little more justified, and even then, Kelly laces it with some humour, particularly as they are reluctant combatants.

The art by Doug Mahnke is generally quite good, though oddly erratic and uneven. Not having looked too hard at the credits at first, while reading it I assumed there was more than one penciller involved -- or at least more than one inker.

The visuals are also somewhat gorier than you might expect -- or find appropriate -- for a JLA story, presumably reflecting Cyberforce/Top Cow's more "indie" comic sensibilities.

But that aside, and the fact the story, after all is said and done, is nothing more than a minor adventure (Ripclaw escapes), it's a "non stop" action story...that shows non stop action doesn't have to be a watchword for numbingly stupid and tedious.

Original cover price: $__ CDN./$5.99 USA

JLA: Earth 2 1999 (HC & SC GN) 96 pages

Written by Grant Morrison. Art by Frank Quitely.
Colour: Laura DePuy (and Wildstorm FX). Letters: Ken Lopez.

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Slight Mature Readers caution

The Justice League of America is recruited by Alexander Luthor -- a counterpart of the Lex Luthor they know and despise, but from another dimensional earth, where good is bad and bad is good. The planet is held under the tyrannical sway of the Crime Syndicate of Amerika, which is comprised of evil counterparts of the JLA. Alex Luthor, who is a good guy on his world, wants the JLA to help him clean up his world, first by confining the CSA, and then by helping to clean up other, social problems.

Earth 2 is inspired by (though not necessarily a direct remake) of a now out-of-continuity 1960s Justice League of America story (issues #29-30) in which the JLA encountered their evil counterparts of Utraman, Owlman, Super Woman, etc. It also may be the first story to use the new rules at DC Comics that came about with The Kingdom, which re-instated the idea of "alternate" earths that DC used to do all the time, but which had been eliminated with The Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Earth 2 is enjoyable, but leaves one feeling a tad...unsatisfied.

It starts out well, and moody, as we get glimpses of what's to come with weirdly dressed characters who aren't quite the characters we know, and as the Justice League investigate a plane crash where all the victims have hearts on the right sides of their bodies (though how Wonder Woman, who has no x-ray vision, can know this is not explained). Writer Grant Morrison allows the story to progress at its own, unhurried pace, and avoids the obvious plot idea of simply having a fight between the heroes and their evil counterparts (conversely, someone might argue the lack of a Superman-Ultraman showdown might be a disappointment). The piece benefits from its big, prestige, graphic novel format of 96 pages, presented on heavy expensive paper that shows off the colours and art, allowing artist Frank Quitely to indulge in big, atmospheric panels, sometimes spread across two pages.

Morrison scripts decently enough, and Quitely's art, though maybe a little too prone to pronounced jaw lines, is lavish and detailed and grandiose.

But there are some central weaknesses with the book.

One is that Morrison writes in the cinematic style that's so much en vogue these days, telling the story entirely in dialogue and pictures, without thought balloons or text captions. I realize it's much easier to write that way than in the old, multi-tiered approach. And when the technique works, it can make for an easy, fluid read. But the down side is that it can render a story superficial. There's barely a deeper "character" moment in the entire book, largely because Morrison and Quitely never really put us inside anyone's head. There are exceptions, like a scene where Batman encounters a still living version of his father on this alternate earth, or a later scene where Owlman (Batman's evil counterpart) confronts his own personal demons. But generally characters just kind of wander through the story, without any real emotion or passion.

Of course, maybe I'm wrong to blame that solely on the "cinematic" style, and instead should suggest it's a fault simply of Morrison's story.

The other major weakness relates to the very foundations upon which Morrison has based his story. The heroes discover cleaning up this alternate earth isn't so easy because it's the opposite of their earth. Whereas on their earth, good always triumphs, on this, evil always wins, so how can good guys triumph? Yeah, you read right. The entire book is predicated on the idea -- stated uncategorically -- that good always triumphs on the JLA's world (which, after all, is supposed to be basically our world).

How silly is that?

Having the heroes acknowledge what, after all, is simply a conceit of storytelling, is distracting -- as if Superman were to refer to being a comicbook cartoon. But, more to the point, surely the comicbook world is a metaphor for the real world. Ask a person who is living on the streets, or suffering under a brutal dictatorship, if they believe "good" always triumphs. Did "good" triumph because the Nazis were defeated, or did evil triumph because they managed to murder millions before they were defeated? Maybe Morrison intends it as an in joke, a wink at the conventions of the genre. After all, Morrison wrote the critically acclaimed Animal Man series in the 1980s in which, apparently, the hero became aware that he was a comicbook character.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Although (among comic fans) writers like Morrison, Mark Waid, Alan Moore and others are considered literary Titans who have elevated the medium with their prose, too often there's a feeling these are guys who've spent wa-ay too much time reading comics and have lost sight of the fact superheroes don't exist. Superheroes are best treated as symbols and surrogates for the real world and real issues, rather than crafting whole "important" stories around non-existent issues, and endless dissections of what it means to be a super hero.

The story has some nice plot twists and there's a cute play in the very title in that, to the reader, "earth 2" is the evil world, but the only time the phrase is used is when Alex Luthor is referring to the JLA's world. Of course, in the Silver Age, Earth 2 was something else entirely. The characterization overall is kind of thin, but I liked Morrison's quirky version of Power Ring (the evil Green Lantern). And Morrison's Alexander Luthor, a similar personality to Lex -- arrogant and aristocratic -- but now a good guy, is a cute concept (and is a contrast to the pre-Crisis version of Alexander Luthor). And taken on its own, sci-fi level, it's a cute premise, of the characters grappling with a situation where fate itself seems to be against them. And it causes me to rethink an earlier scene where Green Lantern rescues a dog and, moments later, the dog gets run over by a bus. I initially thought it was just Morrison and Quitely's idea of a "gag", but maybe it was intended to be foreshadowing. The whole book put me in mind, however vaguely, of Tales of the Bizarro World (reviewed in my Superman section) with its vision of a topsy turvy reality. Though the how and why of things isn't always clear...like why Alex Luthor has super powers!

Earth 2 was an enjoyable, grandiose read. But given some of the hype, given that it was published first in hardcover, and even the soft cover version is pricey, and given that alternate world stories can often be great, and that Morrison was already working with ideas previous writers had come up with for him, it seems a bit...light weight. Ironically, Morrison's first JLA story arc, originally published just as issues of the regular comic, and collected in a TPB (New World Order and considerably cheaper than Earth 2), struck me as a more successful read. And YET...the strange thing is, I've read this book twice, and each time I feel this review is fair and correct. But when I think back on it, I remember it even more fondly. Maybe it's the epic concept, or the grandiose art and colour, I dunno. Maybe a third reading will settle my feelings.

The book is written with a slight mature readers sensibility, usually relating to a few kinky scenes and subtext.

Soft cover price: $24.95 CDN./ $14.95 USA. 

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