By: James Robinson (writer), Mark Bagley (artist), Rob Hunter and Norm Rapmund (inkers), Ulises Arreola (colorist)
The Story: A training session of the JLA is interrupted by a great big glowing green rock that sucks half the team into space. After the rescue, they race after it and face the demon Etrigan over who controls the rock.
What’s Good: Bagley does action well. I have small issues with his proportions, but his layouts are dynamic and people in his panels *move*. Bagley is ably assisted by thick, textured inks by Hunter and Rapmund and some bright and evocative color work by Arreola. On colors, Arreola used dominant color for a lot of panels that really helped the layout choices burst from the page – like the green explosion on the satellite, the fiery orange in Germany and the grays and earth-tones after the dust settles in the big JLA fight. The art was also consistently clear, in that no matter what was going on or how many fists were swinging, who was where and which direction they were going was never a secret.
What’s Not So Good: I had some real problems with the writing. On dialogue, frankly, some of it was just painful to read. The opening sequence in the training room had each person explaining their powers, or new powers, in the middle of a pitched battle. Even if you buy that premise, it wasn’t clever banter or character-revealing insights. It was just info-dump. Tell me how much you learn about Donna when she says: “Bill, you’re a little bit confusing, your origin…what you are…” or when Batman says “But you can grow, I didn’t know that.” The “conversation” between Batman and Starman is worse: “All right, back to your gem. What does it do?” Then, Starman responds with a personality-deprived response that would have made Who’s Who proud (ok – that last bit might be a bit much, but if I’m paying $3.99 for a book, I expect the editor to have checked if it was well written). The “discovery” of new powers by some characters was equally wooden and characters obviously served the writer rather than the story. The thematic issues are handled in an equally heavy-handed manner with a line from the villain like: “Thank you. All of you. Taking down the demon took teamwork.” As if we didn’t catch it before, Robinson made sure that Donna said: “No, Bill…we’re a team.” I’m not trying to be a fanboy nitpicker here (apologies to all our nitpicking fanboy readers!), but the writing craft of the story does not pass muster.
Conclusion: The writing flaws in this comic were difficult to overlook. Robinson had some hits and misses with New Krypton; Cry for Justice was really poor (on the writing side); and now I’ve been almost consistently disappointed with JLA since he took over. Don’t buy this book. Despite the Brightest Day element, I’m considering not buying the next issue.
Grade: D+
-DS Arsenault
Filed under: Other Tagged: | Batman, Blackest Night, Brightest Day, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, comic reviews, Comics, Congo Bill, Congorilla, DC, DC Comics, Dick Grayson, Donna Troy, DS Arsenault, Green Lantern, James Robinson, JLA #44, JLA #44 review, Justice League of America, Justice League of America #44, Justice League of America #44 review, Mark Bagley, Norm Rapmund, Reviews, Rob Hunter, Starman, Ulises Arreola, Weekly Comic Book Review, weeklycomicbookreview.com
Can a comic book company afford a 2% drop on one title every month, especially if that translates to other titles from that same company? I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here, actually. I know that various lines within the various companies target different audiences, however, my comment was directed specifically at comics that fall squarely within the confines of in this case, the DCU. I would also disagree about your take on Power Girl, as that seems to be aimed squarely at the fanboy audience that can’t get a date with a real girl with average sized breasts. But I digress
Mostly likely, you could be wrong, but you might be right, and at this point, we’ve spent more time on this than the book itself deserves, so, feel free to take the last word, however, the results of this conversation may spillover onto other threads both on your site and elsewhere…..
Hey Matches: The 1k-reader drop doesn’t register statistically, because the diamond tracker doesn’t capture all sales (ex.: subscriptions aren’t captured). Also, 1k on 57k is less than 2%, which is also probably less than the sales vary month to month anyway. I only use diamond sales trackers to get order-of-magnitude impressions on sales numbers (that was my statistical nerd-out for the day, hopefully the weekend – lol). On targetting subsets, I would respectfully disagree. While some comics will have the *broad* superhero appeal (the top sellers of each of DC and Marvel), not every comic is going to please every reader. The Marvel Adventure and DC Kids lines target kids. The Vertigo line targets a relatively sophisticated audience. Hercules, Deadpool and Power Girl are looking for humor-seekers, while Daredevil and Batman target the noir and gritty. I’m wondering if JLA is targetting younger teen readers (perhaps a reason they brought in Bagley), in which case, it would hardly be surprising that I wouldn’t enjoy it. All that being said, I still could be all wrong
Thanks for that, DS. The thousand reader dropoff from one month to the next doesn’t concern you? I get that Robinson has been writing for a long time, however, the demographic they should be targeting is comic book readers, and not any particular subset thereof.
Hey Matches! The book was edited by Berganza and Schlagman, but I’m never sure how much to credit them with an issue I didn’t enjoy. It could be that the writers have a lot of creative latitude (Robinson has been writing for a long time) or it could be that I’m just not their demographic. (I’m always aware that there might be a hundred people who are jumping up and down loving this issue – I’m just not one of them.) JLA is still pulling in respectable numbers (#43 has 56k listed on diamond sales for march and 57k for february, so obviously someone is reading….)
DSA
Ok, I promise not to buy the book, if you tell me who edited it, as you don’t give them proper credit
Or, does this problem filter all the way to the top, and should we blame Dan Didio?
What do you think?