Justice league of America # 30

The Shadow Thief fights the Justice League and the Shadow Cabinet with shadow duplicates. But there is more to this plot than meets the eye as it’s not clear who has set up this fight with the Justice League. Will the Shadow Cabinet trick the League or is there a more dangerous design for this confrontation.

This is perhaps the last Justice League issue in its current form, as Superman, Wonder Woman and Batman will probably be out next issue. I assume that Black Lightning will also be gone which will be good. Now if they can only get rid of Firestorm that will sweeten the deal. This is a standard fighting issue with poor opponents for the super heroes. It read well, but will not be the hallmark of this series. Although it’s part of larger set up to introduce the Milestone characters, it also felt like a filler issue for the next big changes. Let’s hope they don’t break what took Meltzer a year to build...

When you can’t get Ed Benes to draw, you get his clone. He’s a better artist, but I’m annoyed at the thought that the editors feel they must serve reader a clone of their “star” artist in order for readers to be satisfied with this issue. Luis may be a better artist, but there are visual effects, such as the display of power of Red Tornado that he can’t pull off, the way Benes can. I can’t believe I actually said something positive about Benes...