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
Grade
Conclusion