CAPSULE COMMENTS: Justice League United #2

Justice League United #2 

DC Comics, $3.99, 32 pages

Released: June 11, 2014

Story Grade: C+

Issue Score: 65.00*

BARELY RECOMMENDED

"Justice League Canada, Part 3 of 5" 

(22 pages / 91 panels / 2,263 words / 14:15 read time)

Writer: Jeff Lemire 

Penciller: Mike McKone

Inkers: Mike McKone, Dexter Vines, and Cam Smith

Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo

Letterer:  Travis Lanham

Editor: Eddie Berganza

In my review of All-New Invaders #6, I mentioned how I had dropped that title from the pull list at my local comics shop, but intended to seek out future issues because it ended up being pretty good. I similarly dropped Justice League United a while back and this is my last pre-orderd issue. However, unlike the reprieve granted to the Invaders, I won't be going out of my way to buy future issues of this book, at least not until back issues start showing up in the $1 bins. 

Previously, I had joked about how what was Justice League Canada, then became Justice League United, really ought to be titled Justice League Random, based on the member line-up. That feeling is underscored in this issue when Supergirl shows up on Rann just because she happened to be flying around "halfway across the galaxy" on a happy little jaunt through space, which, by the way, strikes me as a very Silver Age thing for a Supergirl to do. And besides, isn't she currently a Red Lantern?

For the balance of this issue, the team really could be called Justice League Stands-Around-and-Talks-a-Lot. There's a brief bit of chatter to start with, done for comic effect, and then a brief battle with an unnamed monster, which gets sad later in the book when we discover it's really an aborted clone-baby. Most of the book is then given over to medium-depth, mid-level shots of Sardath explaining the aborted clone-baby project and JLUers standing around debating what to do about it. Given that we have two double-page spreads and one full-page splash, there's not a lot of room for much else, other than Hawkman and Lobo kicking each other around and, frankly, I've completely forgotten why they're doing that. Not really being brought up to speed on that subplot this issue, those pages do little to capture my attention. Also, I hate Lobo. And Hawkman just confounds me as I can never figure out which version I'm dealing with.

I also have to say I was disappointed in the subplot involving our new Indian heroine, Miiyahbin. Or First Nations hero, if we're being politically correct.  There's a fairly exciting two page prologue of her and a friend uncovering the secret Rannian base from which the JLU was zeta-beamed last issue. Then a monster, presumably another aborted clone-baby, attacks, and Miiyahbin disappears. But after racing the gun across the mantle and making it go poof, Lemire, in stark violation of Chekhov's rule about guns and mantles, never addresses Miiyahbin again. 

Now, her story arc may read better when these issues are eventually collected into a trade paperback, but  what we get of her here makes for a pretty dismal reading experience under the covers of this one issue. At the very least, she should have popped up on Rann (I presume her disappearance was due to a zeta-beam) in the very last panel just as everything is going ka-blooey. As it is, no story element introduced is resolved, or even explored. All we really get is heroes standing around talking about the stuff that happens in the middle.

I should also mention that Lemire doesn't seem to get how Encyclopedia Galactica captions work. They are supposed to introduce a setting as if drawn from entries in something similar to the Encyclopedia Britannica. They are not you-are-here notations from the Randy McNally.

Now, I will say the whole multi-clone thing that is the New 52 Ultra the Multi-Alien is pretty neat, but it really makes no sense for the alliance of alien planets to have gone to all that the trouble to build a secret base in the Canadian wilderness just for the purpose of collecting some DNA from non-member Earth. After all, your corner cop can grab a DNA sample with a two-second swab, you'd think Sardath and his pals could've got hold of some with far less trouble.

So, we've got a flimsy reason for bringing random heroes together and once gathered what we get isn't that great. Really, it just seems as if DC has no idea what it wants to do with its Justice League franchise, and this book is proof of that. For my money, I'd prefer to see a Justice League of cosmic-level heroes led by Superman, and a Justice Society of street-level heroes led by Batman, with an annual team-up. 

Until then, or until something better comes along, I'm out of this book. It's too bad. I'm really digging Lemire's work on Green Arrow, and McKone is a solid, dependable artist. This book really ought to be a lot better than it is.

Oh, one final aside, as long as I'm in bitch mode — I absolutely HATE the packaging on DC's books. The pages are so glossy they're all but impossible to read under any light source, and you need to literally wear gloves not to leave fingerprints in the darker inks of the card stock covers. 

*[COVER: 7.50 — PLOT: 6.50 — SCRIPT: 7.25 — LAYOUT: 7.75 — ARTWORK: 8.25 — EDITING: 5.0 — COLORS/PRODUCTION: 6.0 — DOLLAR VALUE: 5.50 — COLLECTIBILITY: 5.25 —GOSH-WOW FACTOR: 6.0] 

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Capsule Comments, DC Comics, Jeff Lemire, Justice League, Mike McKone,

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CAPSULE COMMENTS: Green Arrow #32

Green Arrow #32

DC Comics, $2.99, 32 pages

Released: June 4, 2014

Story Grade: B+

Issue Score: 72.00

POINTEDLY RECOMMENDED

"Broken, Part One" 

(20 pages / 87 panels / 1,366 words / 10:05 read time)

Writer: Jeff Lemire 

Artist: Andrea Sorrentino 

Colorist: Marcelo Maiolo 

Letterers: Dezi Sienty 

Editor: Brian Cunningham

The two-in-one image on this month's cover is a compelling one, effective in that it's almost certain to entice potential buyers to pick it up off the stands for a closer look. And that, of course, is 90 percent of making the sale. 

The plot however, is not much to speak of. Green Arrow returns to Seattle — and it's a measure of how successful the CW Arrow series is that mention of Ollie protecting Seattle, instead of Starling City, or even old-school Star City, seems at first jarring — whereupon he promptly gets smacked around by admitted D-List villains. Meanwhile, Diggle gets slapped by Not-Richard Dragon. And that's about all that happens, really.

Among the D-Listers, The Red Dart seems an interesting new addition to Green Arrow's personal Rogues Gallery and I do like Killer Moth making the transfer from Gotham. Brick, however, is new to me, although it's clear from the dialogue that this is not his first appearance. Unfortunately, Sorrentino's art is terribly, and uncharacteristically, unclear on the page where he crashes in — he looks to be about twice Green Arrow's size — making it hard to tell exactly what his powers are. It seems that he has some kind of thunder-stomp, on maybe he wields a boom-stick, I'm really not sure. Meanwhile, I also had to search his scene extra hard because, while Red Dart mentions splitting the bounty on Green Arrow's head three ways, Killer Moth doesn't actually show up for another page. So, I was taken out of the story for an entire page, confused by Brick and also wondering where the heck D-Lister #3 was supposed to be.

Speaking of showing up, theres Emiko at the end in the prototypical last page, splash-panel surprise, claiming to be the New Green Arrow while wearing black and red. It seems she's destined to become the New Speedy, which I'm not at all looking forward to. For decades, writers have struggled to make Green Arrow more than Batman-with-a-bow and yet here's Lemire saddling him with a Damien-like adolescent asshat.

Of course, Green Arrow's thing, as made clear on his TV show, is that he's part of a team, as opposed to the Bat-family being, largely, a collection of individual operatives. I can't wait for Felicty to show up in Seattle, but I am glad we have Diggle at this point. Interestingly, and again proving how important the CW mythology has become, the revelation this issue that Diggle took down Not-Richard Dragon's father plays a lot more powerfully if you're familiar with similar scenes from the TV show. 

The Not-Richard Dragon flashbacks are down well, stylistically, with archaic coloring rendered in a way that gives a sense of times past (even if you don't happen to have begin reading comics in the 1970s) while not being overly garish, as the technique can sometimes be. So, hats off to Sorrentino and Maiolo. My only complaint is that the flashback scenes take up entirely too much space. Not-Richard Dragon's origin, for example, could have been done just as well on one page as two. Trimming some of  those sequences might have left room for a little more in the way of character bits. After all, with all the chatter about Billy Tockman this issue, it's sort of a shame he gets no actual panel time. 

But the biggest benefit of cutting needlessly large flashback panels would have been to make room for more plot development. As noted, while there's a lot of neat character bits and some great dialogue this issue, not a ton actually happens. That's largely been true of Lemire's entire run on this title. While his work is vastly superior to what came before in the New 52 era (better, even, than most of the post-Grell comics, for that matter) each individual issue tends to cover precious little ground. The Outsiders epic, for example, ran about four months longer than it needed to, and this new storyline promises more of the same.

My only other critique this issue is that, for some reason, almost all of the sound-effects lettering looks too much like what it is — Photoshopped fonts layered on top of the art — instead of something that is organically part of the page itself.

[COVER: 8.00 — PLOT: 6.25 — SCRIPT: 8.75 — LAYOUT: 7.0 — ARTWORK: 8.50 — EDITING: 6.0 — COLORS/PRODUCTION: 7.50 — DOLLAR VALUE: 6.25 — COLLECTIBILITY: 7.0 —GOSH-WOW FACTOR: 6.75] 

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Andrea Sorrentino, Capsule Comments, DC Comics, Green Arrow, Jeff Lemire,

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