For being 38 pages long, noting happened.
Okay, I'm exaggerating, a bit. Members are introduced, but there weren't any scenes when someone actually said that they'd be a member of the new league. Three mysteries--Who want's Red Tornado's body? Who ambushed Vixen? Who's killing "super villains"?--were introduced, but I'm pretty sure that they will all come together neatly in the end. But there was no action.
When Giffen, DeMatteis, and Maguire started their league, the UN was attacked.
When Morrison started his league, the last league's satellite crashed to earth and Metamorpho died, again.
When Meltzer starts his league, Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman sit around a table and talk, Vixen goes to a bar, Green Lantern and Arsenal go to a boxing match, and Black Lightening talks to a junkie.
I know that this is all setup for what's going to happen in the rest of Meltzer's run, but it doesn't help. The first issue of any superhero comic should jump out and pull the readers in. We shouldn't sit there full of exposition and be expected to buy the next issue because the guys writing and drawing it have done some good stuff in the past. The first issue should show why the second issue is worth buying, not sort of hint at some things that might, possibly, happen.
I am only going to pick at three nits (knits?) for this comic:
- The first is the cover. Why wasn't this a wrap-around or folded cover so all of us out there could get the full picture on one book? Even if (probably when) I buy the other cover, there's still going to be that annoying line down the center of the picture, and I always have trouble lining these things up well. If DC wanted to do two covers, they could have done one book with the wrap-around with this artwork and one with the awesome promotional artwork.
- The second is the fact that Kathy Sutton knows who Hal and Bruce are. She's a civilian, the wife of Red Tornado. It should be unlikely that she'd know the secret identity of Green Lantern and there's no way she should know Batman's secret identity. Meltzer started this with Identity Crisis, the having all the heroes and their families know all the identities, and I don't like it. The best thing to come out of Dan Jurgens run on his version of the JLA was that no one knew Superman's secret identity. I thought that added a nice bit of tension. Obviously, Mr. Meltzer disagrees.
- And third, when someone decides to do the retro dot coloring, make sure the colorist has actually seen a comic with that sort of coloring. That means, when it comes to back-in-the-day flesh tones, there is no cyan, only magenta, yellow, and white. That's why all the white heroes were the same color. Cyan was used only when they were in shadows. There was no shading in the 70s. Also, don't do the dots over modern day coloring. Do not dot blonde hair that fades to white to show highlights. Do not dot a face that has obvious shading. It just looks bad.
Why? Because the first comic I ever bought was a Justice League comic and I'm hoping that this one will get better. Even if it doesn't, Meltzer is gone after issue twelve and the roster and the tone of the book will probably change with the next writer, hopefully for the better.
Jeez, I hope Geoff Johns is going to be on the new JSoA for the long run. Comics are so much better when the writing is consistent.
2 comments:
Only 3 (k)nits, eh?
There were more than three. Way more. I had to limit myself or else it would have turned into a bitch-a-thon, and those aren't fun without other people to bitch along with.
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