Justice League #14 – Review

By: Geoff Johns (story), Tony S. Daniel (pencils), Matt Banning & Sandu Florea (inkers), Tomev Morey (colors)

The Story: Wonder Woman loses a friend and gains a beau—a pretty good exchange, honestly.

The Review: The persistent mediocrity of certain, often major titles sometimes makes you wonder if DC is truly out to deliver the best, most ambitious stories possible, the way Marvel NOW! seems to be doing, or just settling for entertaining enough.  Justice League certainly falls into the latter category, and this issue shows why.  Instead of being the grand, epic, anchor title it should be, it mostly comes across as a readable and diverting series, and little more.

In terms of pure teamwork, the League is efficient and effective.  Every member gets a part to play, but they rarely break out of predefined roles.  The most interesting part of the whole mission is the Flash acting tank while his other teammates are occupied elsewhere (i.e. trying to get the feline out of Superman).  Unfortunately, Johns doesn’t explore the possibilities of Barry taking point, and things eventually revert to a very neat, but predictable battle sequence.

Johns invests so much time creating Cheetah’s backstory that he neglects to make her a very compelling villain.  Despite proving to be a pretty formidable challenge to the League, she doesn’t have a very impressive power set or a proper motivation.  Johns tweaks her from being a poor woman possessed by a mad goddess into an unrepentant criminal who corrupted the deity within her, but this only changes her from one flat character to another.  Even the last-minute reveal of her connection to a much bigger web of villainy does nothing to increase her stature.

In the end, Cheetah only serves as a convenient means to a couple ends.  One of those ends is for Johns to actually do something with Wonder Woman’s character, though I’m not sure portraying her as naïve and a bit wishy-washy (her constant fretting about getting others hurt gets very old very fast) really does anything for her.  Another end is to move the League’s celebrity coupling forward, though Superman making a connection between her getting suckered by a wanted felon and her desire to do good for the world requires a painful amount of saccharine smooth talk.

There are some bright spots, however small.  As overseer of the developing DCU, Johns can freely knit disparate points of it together.  The link between Cheetah and Aquaman’s Ya’wara is rather clever, and we get some mentions of other deities that probably will pop up sometime (otherwise, why mention them?): “the lioness Pakhet of Egypt, the frigid Skadi and a mysteriousalien sun god who angered many others.”

Daniel delivers some very pretty art, but lacks almost completely any emotional depth.  Skip ahead to the last few pages of Superman and Wonder Woman bonding on his boyhood home.  Almost every panel features them with an invariably strange blankness in their faces, one that’s neither warm nor cold, but just there, as if their souls have been stolen.  There’s also a lot lacking in the action, as Daniel never manages to build momentum in the fight between Cheetah and the League, though he delivers a rather awesome splash of Aquaman chokeholding the cat-lady in a jungle river, surrounded by piranhas.  Morey’s colors are straightforward and sensible, bringing out the best in Daniel’s figures, such as they are.

I’m afraid the Shazam! back-up also suffers from sluggishness in the plotting, the pacing, and the character work.  Again, however, you do have a couple interesting points.  Black Adam, despite his eye-for-an-eye brutality, does show a concern for Sivana (“If something is not done, you will wither, and it will be painful.  There will be a cure within the Rock—”) that avoids painting him as outright evil.  And at least you’ll always have Gary Frank and Brad Anderson’s superb art to look at, offering the kind of expression, warmth, and tension Daniel lacks.

Conclusion: If DC wants to maintain its footing against the Marvel NOW! push, the powers that be will have to figure out how to give their flagship series the excitement and ambition it’s never produced.

Grade: C+

– Minhquan Nguyen

Some Musings: – Between that brooding gaze at Superman and Wonder Woman making out in a field and his clenched demand to a complete stranger to save “my friend,” Batman’s bromance with Superman gets full display in this issue.

– Perhaps in a commentary on the male figure in comics, Billy complains that the jacket Freddy gets for him is still too tight despite being a “triple-XL”

– That’s Sloth?  Looks more like Gluttony to me.