Justice League #1 - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Justice League #1
By Dan Horn
August 31, 2011 - 14:44

DC Comics
Writer(s): Geoff Johns
Penciller(s): Jim Lee
Inker(s): Scott Williams
Colourist(s): Alex Sinclair
Letterer(s): Patrick Brosseau
Cover Artist(s): Jim Lee, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair with variant by David Finch, Richard Friend, and Peter Steigerwald
$3.99 US

After "Blackest Night," I'd vowed never again to buy a Geoff Johns comic except to use as high-gloss toilet paper, but the obsessive compulsive collector buried in my subconscious, like some nagging Tell-Tale Heart, wouldn't let me pass on Justice League #1, a possibly historic issue by comic book industry barometers.

This was the dawn of the new age, and Justice League #1 would be its herald. It would be the standard by which DC would hold its new line of books. The new line was going to be punctual, of uniform quality, and kept at the same low price point of 2.99.

Well, of course the first discrepancy here then is the cover price: $3.99. Is it a read that warrants that price point? Absolutely not.

To readers who remember Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee's "Hush" arc in Batman, Lee's opening panels are immediately familiar. Batman is chasing an alien that at first glance looks an awful lot like Killer Croc while cops with a lot of high-speed weaponry and gear are simultaneously tailing Bats. The interiors are definitely Jim Lee's brand of ultra-detailed artwork, but a lot of his panels are used mainly as filler. Not a lot transpires in Justice League #1. We don't see much of anyone besides Batman and Green Lantern, either, whose irritating and poorly written banter throughout put my patience to the test. Add an astoundingly cliche scene of parental neglect at a high school football game, a head-scratching new status-quo (haven't we seen enough stories that center around the advent of super-humans?) for all of our heroes, and some awful characterizations of some of DC's icons, and you've got JL #1. This is generic origin garbage 101.

Is this the standard by which DC will hold the rest of its new line? Let's hope not. Our respective pull-lists are about to become much shorter.

Rating: 5/10