Reviewing Justice

COLLECTIONS OF DC's premier superhero group books reviewed.

JLA: Rock of Ages
By Grant Morrison & Howard Porter/John Dell et al (DC/Titan)

The Justice League of America is a superhero team that leads by example, following in the traditions established by the earlier Justice Society. However, they have more raw power and tactical ingenuity than any other group. They also take lesser talents and younger, rawer, super-beings and make men and women of them. They're a lean, occasionally mean, fighting machine that wages war on world villainary at large.

The write up on the back of this collection's book jacket reads like more happens than actually does - unless that story was bleached out by original editor Dan Raspler who I rarely heard anyone ever have a good word for.

Regardless, Rock of Ages starts half way in as anti-revenge squad type hard light hologrammic dopplegangers of each of the JLA fight them but lose. In reality it's the latest incarnation of the Injustice Gang (I still prefer the Secret Society of Super-Villains, despite its daft name it just means more) lead by none other than Lex Luthor who's applying his corporate takeover acumen to the proceedings (dirty double deals under the table).

Luthor's big mistake here is not knowing that the Batman is Bruce Wayne and can play the same game: paying the Mirror Master off, employing Plastic Man etc. Meanwhile, Aquaman, Green Lantern and the Flash get zapped to the future courtesy of a guest interruption by Metron of the New Gods - Darkseid's taken over Earth in 15 year's time and all's doom and gloom, with the few superheroes remaining alive acting as pitiful resistance. Suffice to say, the fat's pulled out of the fire, our heroes go back and together save the day there too.

Morrison knows that for time travel stories to work you have to mount paradox upon paradox for an ever-changing perspective on your own version of reality (first noted in comics by Steve Englehart on his run on The Avengers in the 70s where they went up against Kang). It's a comment on the recycling of idea in mainstream US superhero comics too and mythology at large - we retell the same stories, invert or dress them up; clothing/retooling them for the here and now of our own time so that readers purchase them. This is why monthly comics work the way they do - it is the immediacy of them, already there are signs that the style and feel within these comics are looking old: The art poses in a late 1990s manner, the words shout, temper-tantruming to be seen and heard for a shallower surface stuff, but fortunately Morrison ensured there was also depth, especially when dealing with groups.

There are still some shake-ups. A lot happens off panel, and occasionally you have to imply it yourself on behalf of the story. The philosopher's stone subplot is more of a red herring than anything else and Morrison closes the door by getting the group to fold after its metaphorical greatest hit!

Morrison doesn't bring his eclectic bag of writing tricks so much as his interest in technology and philosophy to the writing table to harness this into a workable mainstream adventure with dips into the outré. He notes himself in a point about Scotsmen that they can be sentimental - he knows there's people read the original Fox/Sekowsky JLA stuff (like him) as much as Giffen/DeMatteis/Maguire run - he plays with that, uses it honed to his natural writing temperament and established himself as a best selling comic book writer in the US market

JLA: Earth 2
By Grant Morrison & Frank Quietly (DC/Titan)

Once upon a time there were a zillion Earths that had appendages such as 1, 2, X, B and what have you. DC Comics used to have the Justice League and Society of America visit, fight against or save them from destruction about once a year. Marv Wolfman and George Perez' neo classic Crisis on Infinite Earths from the 80s was supposed to put an end to all that, make life simpler - if only for potentially new readers and the traffic management style American comic book editor.

It's ironic that DC Comics labels its superhero books with the imprint The DC Universe when once they had the whole of the multiverse to play in.

Still, characters never stay buried forever. Good and bad alike, they always return to crop up in the most unlikely places - someone, somewhere has a fondness for the Mind-Grabber Kid and he'll be back, but until then Grant Morrison reveals in this collection that in an anti-matter universe there's still a bad version of the JLA going under the name of The Crime Syndicate - For every Superman there's an Ultraman, for a Green lantern a Power Ring - mirror images in personality. There's also a Lex Luthor and he's the only costumed-up good guy on this Earth.

Chance happenings on the JLA Earth and a meeting with the good Lex send the good guys into the bad ones' world and, initially, their Black Ops terrorist (did everyone get the illegal American invasion analogy here?) activities make it look like its going to be just hunky dory and they'll win no problem - Only what's morally right in this reversed world? And is it in fact all a secret ploy by the Crime Syndicate anyway?

Quietly's art is quietly powerful in most cases although I don't care for his pug-nosed faces, especially on characters like Wonder Woman and Superwoman.

There is a certain predictability to the whole thing but then near the end a few surprises come to the forefront.

It's a moral fable that has Morrison again evoking those early Fox/Sekowsky JLA/JSA crossover stories as a plot device, then appropriates the early snap, crackle & pop attitude Milligan & McCarthy gave Paradax, loads up on the negative in your face emotions surfing over Watchmen, and presents it all in a cumulative manner that balances the now-old with his own admirably.

JSA: The Return of Hawkman
By David S Goyer, Geoff Johns & Stephen Sadoski/Mchael Bair + (DC/Titan)

A well-packaged book that fills us in on cast members featuring the original superhero group founded in All Star Comics back in the 1940s and thankfully going strong again.

It's been done a fair few times before (not least in JLA: Rock of Ages to some degree) but there's a hefty plot that thickens gradually, stirring adventures - most of the action taking place with a new Injustice Unlimited pulling a fast one on the JSA, but they didn't bargain on Black Adam returning to his original heroic nature.

Somewhere in between all this we're fast-shunted to ending chapters where Hawkman (thought dead) gets reincarnated. What this book does is put all the mish-mash contradictions of DC continuity together into a cohesive whole. Entertainingly so.

Sadowski is a pencil artist I'm unfamiliar with and he produces the bulk of the work within. He's good, pulling off that in-your-face action of today approach with classic storytelling layouts throughout.

The JSA are portrayed the good guys that those from the JLA on look up to as the noble example of what a superhero team should be. Okay, that's not the way of the real world, but it can be in fiction and there's no reason the real world can't learn from it.

I could do without the new Mr Terrific and JJ (the replacement to Johnny Thunder) having such badly designed costumes. How come the first black superhero, Marvel's T'Challa the Black Panther had a cool looking costume but his brethren since have had to suffer looking like multi-coloured pimp or failed rapper cast-offs? I liked the original Mr Terrific character - dumb outfit and all. It's good that the new guy's got a personality he needs it with what he's wearing. Check this book out. It has the new and the old bobbing along nicely together.